Keeping an Eye on the Demolition Twins

August 21, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

August 21, 2011

First let me say how delighted Kiya and I are to be here in Austin. All summer, at Unitarian Universalist camps and at General Assembly, I’ve heard people say “I can’t imagine a better fit for you and for First Austin!” So, here we all are at the beginning of our time together. There is an Israeli proverb: “All beginnings are hard.” The Russians say “The first pancake is always a flop!” Why would people say that? I believe it’s because the Demolition Twins are almost always present in a special way in the beginning. The Demolition Twins can crash around doing damage if you don’t keep an eye on them. One is named Fear, and the other, Anxiety. It would be nice if we could simply serve them their eviction papers and get them out of our lives, but they serve some purpose. Sometimes they warn us of dangers so we can’t do without them. The reality of the situation is they’re almost always around, so let’s talk about how they affect us at home, at work, and at church.

You have heard a lot about family systems in the past two years, I expect, so let me begin by telling you some things you already know. One of the first family therapists, Virginia Satir, described any family system as a delicately balanced mobile that dances in any emotional breeze. If one part of it is moved, the rest moves too, until it can find its balance again. Businesses, volunteer organizations, and congregations all operate according to similar dynamics. The system seeks to rebalance itself after the events that send it spinning: deaths, births, leavings and arrivals.

The people in the system try to rebalance things (get back to normal, move forward) by seeking their familiar roles to play. Family therapists notice these roles are formed in childhood. Some in the congregation were the family hero, being responsible, taking care of things, having understanding beyond their years, staying strong even under difficult circumstances. If you can’t think who, in your family of origin, the hero child was – it was you.

Others were the scapegoat. When something broke in the house, you were the first suspect. If there was a lot of yelling or crying down in the basement play room, your name was the one your parents yelled. Whatever happened, it was your fault. Those with the scapegoat role always feel vaguely that they’re at fault for whatever goes wrong. Sometimes they will even shake things up when it’s all going too well.

We choose from lots of possible roles. Some of us tend to take responsibility for the emotional health of the congregation, others for the group’s sense of vision and purpose, others for process, fairness and justice in the practices of the group. Others spend their energy analyzing the system and pointing out what could be better. All of these choices are influenced by our roles in the family we grew up in.

We are also influenced by our families in the ways we tend to handle being glad, being sad, being mad. We are influenced by our families in the ways we tend to handle conflict, affection, change, friendship, money, tradition. If you picture the mobile dancing crazily, people moving into their family-appointed positions, becoming themselves only more so, you wonder: “What is to be done about this?” That is what I wonder anyway, the early family hero. Those in other roles observe the stress and say “I’m outta here. Call me when things are on an even keel again.”

Two major currents run through any system. The positive one adds health, solidity and growth to the system. The other makes the system brittle and jumpy. One current gives, one takes away. The positive one is presence. The negative one is fear and anxiety. There they are, the Demolition Twins. If you want the system to be healthy, to grow, you maintain presence. That’s the opposite of “I’m outta here!”

People tell themselves they have enough anxiety to deal with in their jobs and in their personal lives; they don’t need to deal with it more at church. What they may not know is that it’s all the same. You learn to deal with the anxiety one place and you can deal with it in another. The same principles apply. Church is actually the easiest place to learn it since you don’t have to live with any of the people. Anxiety is the poisoned gas of any family system. It seeps in and gradually toxifies any situation. Most folks, as I’ve said, find their familiar “go-to” roles when the anxiety rises. Here is another way to look at it, and this one has something the other way doesn’t: alliteration!

Some people FADE when confronted with anxiety and other start to FLUTTER. These folks go around stirring up anxiety in people who didn’t feel it before, which seems to satisfy them. When everyone is as upset as they are they can rest. Some fade, some flutter, and some FIX. Usually the heroes throw themselves into fixing what is wrong. They don’t let the pain last long enough to motivate people; they might not even let the problem be well-defined before they are rushing in proposing solutions trying to make the tension go away. That is my strength and my weakness, I’m a fixer.

Edwin Freidman was a rabbi who studied congregations. His book “Generation to Generation,” applies family systems theory to churches and synagogues. He says in order to maintain health and make necessary changes in a church, business or family, you need to do several things: one, work with the healthiest members of the group, the ones with the greatest capacity for insight, commitment and leadership. Two, maintain a “non-anxious presence.” Three, define yourself. “I am this and not that.” A congregation defines itself: “we gather in community to nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice.” When you define what you are, one important thing to notice is that you begin to define what you are not. We are not a place where you can come get a lot of therapy or where you can come lean on other people so hard that you make them stagger on their own path. A healthy church, workplace or family is not a playground for power heads or manipulators or people who like to play the “I bet you can’t please me” game.

I’ve heard that you all have none of those here, and that’s a relief! You all have been working hard on self-definition, and that goes a long way toward making a healthy congregation. You have talked a lot about what this church wants to be and how it wants to get there. You have begun talking about which paths are worn and tired and need to be let go. We’ll keep revisiting all of that as more people come. It will be fun. What does “non-anxious presence” mean? It means staying in touch with the people in your system, keeping your mission, goals and firmly in mind, and looking clearly at the strengths and problems that present themselves without letting yourself get swept up in a frenzy of worry.

We’re going to get big chances to practice in the next month. The Sunday after Labor Day, you all voted to try new times for the services and for the forum. The first service will be at 9, the second at 10:30 and the Public Affairs Forum at 11:45, also here in this room. The Forum, for those who are visitors, is a lecture series featuring well-known speakers that has been popular here for many years. It’s going to be at 11 45, you should stay after the service and check it out. These are big changes. Oh, and there’s a new minister. We’ll see how that works out!

Henry David Thoreau and the Simple Life

August 16, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Luther Elmore, Sermons

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Luther Elmore

August 14, 2011

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen. Audio is also available for free download at iTunes. Keyword: austin uu

Henry David Thoreau is generally recognized as one of us, a UU. He most famously lived for two years at Walden Pond and wrote of his life and observances while there. His quest at Walden and at other times in his life reflect a search for meaning and simplicity that we can apply to our lives today.

Sometimes you just need a good exorcism

August 16, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Marisol Caballero

August 7, 2011

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen. Audio of this sermon is also available for free download on iTunes. Keyword: austin uu

Ministerial Candidate, Marisol Caballero, is a life-long UU and Native Texan. She recently returned to Texas after spending the past 2 years in California, doing one year of hospital chaplaincy at USCF Medical Center in San Francisco, and one year as a Ministerial Intern at Neighborhood and Throop UU Churches of Pasadena. In 2010, Mari, as many call her, was honored to “fly solo” as Neighborhood UU Church’s Summer Minister. Mari earned her B.A. from St. Edward’s University in 2003 and her Masters of Divinity (M.Div.) from Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 2007. She now lives in Cedar Park with her long-term partner, Chanel, and their cat, Peppercorn Cottonpaws, and works as substitute teacher in the Austin school district and as a chaplain at St. David’s Hospital. She was a member of this congregation for a time during college.

Worship Service: “Sometimes You Just Need a Good Exorcism,”

Marisol Caballero, UU Ministerial Candidate

During my time as a hospital chaplain in San Francisco, I encountered rituals that were quite different from my own spiritual practices. In what ways can such rituals inform our own theologies and what lessons do they hold for Unitarian Universalists about compassion and renewal?

So let it be written

July 31, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Eric Hepburn, Guest Speakers

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Eric Hepburn

July 31, 2011

Prayer

Somewhere out there

On a dusty shelf

Or a spinning disk

On parchment aged

Or in pixels bright

There are words waiting for you

These words were written for you

And when you find them

They will touch your heart

And change your life.

Somewhere in there

Between the synapses

Of your frontal lobe

Or floating around

In the recesses of you consciousness

Are words destined for another

Words that will touch their heart

And change their life

It is your duty to record them

So that they may be found.

Somewhere out there

Is a better world

waiting to be described

We spend our days and our nights

Imagining this world

When we are wise,

We record these imaginings

For each other

To bring this dream one step

Closer to reality.

When we are unwise,

We think that

all of these imaginings

are just stories.

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Sermon: “So let it be written…”

“So let it be written, so let it be done.”

I have to start this morning with an amusing admission, I chose the title of today’s sermon off the cuff after being approached by Vicki and Dwayne who hoped that I would tie the sermon into the end of our Hogwarts Summer Camp and our Bookspring summer social action project.

I thought it was from the bible. I thought it was from Moses or one of the other Old Testament prophets… But, as I was doing research for the sermon I found out that the quote was actually from Cecil B. DeMille’s epic film The Ten Commandments. Furthermore, it was not one of God’s noble representatives, but the Pharaoh who utters this famous line. Here is the quote in context:

The Egyptian Master Builder Baka asks Pharaoh, “Will you lose a throne because Moses builds a city?” Pharaoh Rameses answers, “The city that he builds shall bear my name, the woman that he loves shall bear my child. So let it be written, so let it be done.”

Well, you can thank Vicki and Dwayne for saving you from the torturous sermon on self-righteousness that I was planning. And you can thank me for drawing the title of a sermon on the sacredness of all texts from a movie line that exemplifies the petty vengefulness of tyrants.

Being unfortunately trained in the contemporary American academic tradition, my first thought when I decided to write a sermon about the sacredness of all texts was to be critical of its weakest point, which, to my mind is more or less, the Harlequin Romance Novel. Can I make the case that even the schmaltz-iest novel is a sacred text? Now I want to clarify that I don’t believe that the success or failure of the proposition that all texts are sacred rests on whether or not I prove the holiness of the romance novel. However, I would like to challenge you to think about whatever genre or type of writing that you find most banal and least likely to be sacred. Must not the author of this dubious work, by necessity, confront the human condition? Does not this topic, this domain of inquiry speak to some pertinent aspect of our shared reality and thus derive its readership? What else is there? We are all at different points in our journey, and so it ought not be too surprising that we find a wide variety of different material insightful in different ways and at different times in our lives.

I think that the more important differentiation, in terms of sacredness, or to echo our prayer closing from Jack Harris-Bonham, holiness, is not what we read but how we read it. It is not which book we select, but why. It is not the level of enlightenment or spiritual power of the author, but how well the book resonates with our own spiritual journey that matters. Ultimately, the sacredness of any particular text to us is about whether or not, and to what extent, we allow the text to change us…

From this perspective, we can come to recognize the transformative potential of essentially all human writings. To be sure, some texts will have objectively greater transformative breadth and depth, but this describes a continuum of sacredness, not an either-or proposition. For the sexually repressed, salvation might just come in the form of a Harlequin.

In the spirit of this revelation, I would like to share with you some of the writings that have changed me.

I want to frame these writings using Ursula Le Guin’s introduction to her novel The Left Hand of Darkness. I started reading science fiction and fantasy when I was twelve, but it wasn’t until I read this introduction in my thirties that I understood why it had always had such a hold on me.

“Science fiction is often described, and even defined, as extrapolative… This book is not extrapolative. If you like you can read it, and a lot of other science fiction, as a thought-experiment. Let’s say (says Mary Shelley) that a young doctor creates a human being in his laboratory; let’s say (says Philip K. Dick) that the Allies lost the second world war; let’s say this or that is such and so, and see what happens… In a story so conceived, the moral complexity proper to the modern novel need not be sacrificed, nor is there a built-in dead end; thought and intuition can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the experiment, which may be very large indeed.”

I remember concretely the moment when I first read this paragraph. I was lying in bed reading, excited to start a new book by an author I was just discovering. I remember feeling a bit breathless, I remember laying the book down on my stomach. I remember closing my eyes and flashing through twenty years of my favorite books. I remember realizing that my favorites were the ones where this counterfactual universe, this imagined world, produced in me a type or degree of moral complexity, sometimes even moral clarity, beyond what I had ever experienced in reading traditional literary fiction.

For example, in his series that begins with Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card takes on the themes of xenophobia and just war theory in a fictional war with aliens. Ultimately, the reader finds a way to identify with and find compassion for the aliens, while becoming self-critical of the might-makes-right and win-at-all-costs mentality of humanity. I can think of no finer gift for a loved one preparing to enlist in the military than a box-set of Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. Not that these books would dissuade their service, Card’s work is steeped in the value of civil service and self-sacrifice. What these books would do is encourage them to struggle with questions that are particularly relevant to anyone preparing him or herself to enter a profession with regular access to weapons of mass destruction.

To continue from Le Guin;

“The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrodinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future – indeed Schrodinger’s most famous thought-experiment goes to show that the “future,” on the quantum level, cannot be predicted – but to describe reality, the present world… Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.”

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings famously describes the struggle between those who wish to live in harmony with nature and those who seek to control it. Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials describes the struggle between free inquiry and powerfully institutionalized dogma. While Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land describes the perverse oddity of culture, any culture, when viewed critically by an outsider.

(Quoting again from Le Guin)

“Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying. …Certainly. Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing this pack of lies, the say, There! That’s the Truth!

…In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane – bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren’t there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

What has struck me about some of my favorite works of alternative histories and futures, many by Kim Stanley Robinson, such as his Mars and California trilogies and his compelling The Years of Rice and Salt, is that these thoughtfully constructed alternative worlds have often felt far more sane than the world we live in. Not a Pollyanna-ish sanity that denies our darker angels, but a cooler-heads-have-prevailed sanity where our social energy is focused on living good lives together and not at each other’s expense.

Returning to Le Guin’s words:

“…I do not say that artists cannot be seers, inspired: that the awen cannot come upon them. Who would be an artist if they did not believe that that happens? if they did not know it happens, because they have felt the god within them use their tongue, their hands? Maybe only once, once in their lives. But once is enough.

I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.

The only truth I can understand or express is, logically defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor.

In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we’re done with it, we may find – if it’s a good novel – that we’re a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little… But it’s very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.

The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

Words can thus be used paradoxically because they have, along with a semiotic usage, a symbolic or metaphoric usage…”

Ah, paradox; such fodder for reflection; such a treasure trove of possibility for the mystically inclined. My first serious introduction to the power of paradox probably came through the robot novels of Isaac Asimov, most famously I Robot. In these books Asimov deconstructs the power of both logic and rules by forcing his sentient robotic protagonists through sequence after sequence of moral crisis brought on by situational conflicts with and between the immutable laws of robotics. Asimov deals similarly with the paradoxes of time and prediction in his famous foundation series. If I can claim today to have the insight that logic, in and of itself, is inadequate to solve the problems of humanity or to answer our biggest questions, the seed of that insight was planted by Asimov in my thirteen year old brain many years ago.

And now, Ursula Le Guin’s finale,

“All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is a metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life – science, …and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.

A metaphor for what?

If I could have said it non-metaphorically, I would not have written all these words, this novel; and Genly Ai would never have sat down at my desk and used up my ink and typewriter ribbon in informing me, and you, rather solemnly, that the truth is a matter of the imagination.”

That is how the six page introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness ends. I have tried to pull out the most succulent language and ideas from those six pages… my wife insisted that reading all six pages aloud to you was a bad idea, one that would end in, at best, a half-glazed congregation. After reflecting, I couldn’t disagree. When I read this introduction the first time, which was followed immediately by rereading it a second time, and then a third time, I put the book on my nightstand, turned out the light, and spent the next few hours in quiet contemplation until sleep finally overtook me. On subsequent nights, I went on to finish the book, diving deeply into the world of Gethen, where the native intelligent species is much like mankind, except for its being without gender. I’m not exactly sure what a planet full of androgynous hermaphrodites is a metaphor for, but I can tell you that it is a great book. I can tell you that it challenges you to think, and to feel, beyond gender to what lies at the heart of our shared humanity.

I have stood in this pulpit many times. I have shared with this community my reflections on growing up as an evangelical Christian, I have laid out for you my obsession with barefoot running, I have pondered with you the concepts of karma and natural law, and I have read to you the words of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and Tenzin Gyatso the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, and Mohandas K. Gandhi, these ones who seem to me the prophets of our modern age. But what I have not told you, not until today, is where my faith comes from. I have not told you… why. Why I stand up here, why I care so much about trying. I have not told you WHY I believe.

My faith comes from science fiction. I do not have to guess whether or not we can imagine a better world. I do not suffer from doubt on this count. We can, and we have, and we do… We actually know EXACTLY what kind of world we want, and we need, and we deserve. I see this knowledge reflected back to me from every single person I meet… in their desire for justice, for compassion, for community, for truth and for beauty, for goodness and for peace. But nowhere do I see these desires mirrored more faithfully and more clearly, than in the thousands of worlds and cultures and peoples that we, ourselves, have projected out there, onto the great metaphorical unknowns of space and time.

And so, we have already let it be written…

What remains, is to let it be done.

Love and Fear

July 24, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Gary Bennett, Guest Speakers

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Gary Bennett

July 24, 2011

I was originally thinking of some sort of cosmic smack-down between love and fear. In one corner, we have Machiavelli, Hobbes and a few others who thought fear essential to running a society. But the Beatles assured us that all we need is love, and they are not alone; how many pop songs, religious homilies and greeting cards say the same? Simple enough. But not really. I’m into love, but I’m also full of fears, from nuclear war to phone calls at 2 am to walking in tall Texas grass in summer, even botching a sermon. At best, I try to keep the fears to things I can do something about, or at least reasonable. I can’t help worrying about government default, but can pass on worrying about whether Casey Anthony’s verdict was an outrage.

Fear is pervasive among all living beings and keeps us alive, the great-granddaddy of all emotions. Once there was no freedom in the universe but quantum uncertainty; but as organic molecules proliferated, those that best avoided danger were likeliest to replicate. And that’s still what it’s all about for one-celled creatures. But life over time became more complex. Colonies of single-celled creatures; then multi-celled. Symbiosis. Sexual reproduction and protecting mom and the kids. All kinds of social species. Ecosystems, up to and perhaps including the Earth itself. Something has been driving this ever greater complexity; call it the ancestor of love. Love is what seeks to find completeness outside, a possible definition of agape . Romantic love probably fits in there somewhere, but that involves jealousy, which brings us back to fear. From amoeba on up the chain of life, somewhere you get to the emotions of love and fear as we know them, rather than just tropisms or instincts.

Human nature was primarily shaped in the hundreds of millennia of hunter/gatherer tribal life. Fears were directed outward, particularly in the earliest days, toward predators, natural disasters and starvation; I doubt much time was spent determining alpha males. The chief survival asset these tribes had was their internal unity, their willingness to work together for the common good; and because survival is what natural selection is about, traits that made us better tribespeople flourished. We developed language for conversation, stories and ritual, and to simplify teaching the next generation; we learned to flirt, and to make art and music together. We even developed a taste for questions which, surprisingly, only tribal lore could answer. Love was the principal tribal glue, but fear was also used to build unity: we were frightened of being ignored, censured, barred from mating or worst of all, exiled. A funny thing happened because we were so successful as tribes: external threats shrank in importance, and with it our sense of “tiger reality,” the urgent need to acknowledge the existence of that tiger within striking distance, diminished; it was far more important for our minds to focus on the group’s shared version of reality. If you are impressed by the Social Darwinist view of pre-social man struggling for survival against other humans, think about this: there would be a strong survival advantage for those who saw the world most clearly; but instead we are far better at rationalizing than reasoning, because our status within the group has been more important than out thinking others.

Very late in our existence came farming and herding, and the ability to hoard wealth came with it. Nomadic desert tribes in the Middle East were patriarchal; some men ended up owning large flocks, many wives, children and slaves and of course enough hired goons to keep it all. Then came cities, and mind-boggling extremes of wealth; states with priest-kings or god-kings and despotic rule followed. For a while there were other, more balanced societies around too, but the fear-based states came to dominate in all the world’s major civilizations.

Not unopposed. The prophets of Israel from the 7th century BC on denounced inequality and injustice. “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion,” said Amos; and “Hear this, you who trample the needy and bring ruin to the poor of the land.” Christianity began as a religion with a radical emphasis on love, as even a casual reading of the Gospels reveals. St. Paul’s letters to young churches focus on trying to bring back to earth starry-eyed hippies waiting for Jesus’ return; but he could get in the spirit from time to time: “Now abide these three things, faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.” St. Augustine was even more succinct: “Love God and do whatever you want.”

But the rebellions in the end failed. Within a few centuries after Jesus, Catholicism was about rigid obedience to the Church; punishment was persecution in this life and eternal torture in the next. Later the Reformation Protestants threw out much, including the authority of the Pope and some beliefs about the sacraments; but kept fear, in the idea of heresy, in demanding obedience to authority and even more anxiety about Hell. Those few who did go further, such as the Quakers – or several centuries the Universalists – were persecuted by every other religious group.

So what’s with Machiavelli? He’s talking government, not religion, and any government as last resort uses force on individuals. But there are repressive regimes and free ones, and legitimate or not. The Prince is written for the ruler who comes to power illegitimately; that ruler, if he relies primarily on charisma and popularity, will be in trouble when these fade. Better to rely on terror from the beginning, given the changing tides of public approval. You might be able to relax the reins a bit later; at least that’s what they tell beginning classroom teachers.

Though he wrote the best primer ever for dictators, Machiavelli’s true loyalty was to democracy; after all, he was a high ranking diplomat for the Republic of Florence before dictator Lorenzo di Medici came along. His masterwork was Discourses on the Histories of Livy, looking for historical patterns to help preserve republics. One lesson was that republics should rely on citizen armies; hiring mercenaries always backfires. How much was I influenced by Machiavelli? A few years later I must have been one of the few people in the United States of my age, gender and draft status who consistently opposed ending the draft. Forty years after Nixon ended it I believe more strongly than ever that is dangerous and possibly fatal for our middle class to be so detached from America’s wars and government policy. “A republic,” said Benjamin Franklin, “if you can preserve it.”

European settlers brought their fears to America with them, and added a few new ones. Forget the myths: with few exceptions, the colonists were interested in religious freedom only for themselves. Most of them came to get rich quick and go home, or to stay one step ahead of the law. The natives very quickly became enemies, as Europeans kept encroaching on their lands. Plentiful land and scarce labor led them to human slavery, and the more slaves they brought in, the greater the fear. And the march west led also to dangerous encounters with the French and Spanish Empires. Texas was the center of a maelstrom of all fears, as colonists dealt with the Mexican Army, their imported slaves and the Comanches; and in their folly, Texans took on the United States a generation later. They were tough enough to win most of these struggles; I can’t imagine America as a continental power otherwise, for what that is worth. But in winning, the core fear-based personality and culture predominated then, and by cultural inertia, it continues today.

Elsewhere in America and Europe changes were happening. In the 1600s New Englanders bred a patriarchal, tyrannical, even theocratic culture second to none. Massachusetts Puritans persecuted differences ruthlessly, driving out dissenters to create many nearby colonies; they tortured and lynched supposed witches as late as 1690 and manned stomach-turning slave ships even into the 19th century. Their clashes with the natives led to one of the worst of all such conflicts, King Philip’s War, in the 1670s. But life gradually got a bit softer after that, less dangerous and with fewer non-tribesmen to fear, and so the rough edges began to smooth over. The Middle Colonies also began to diverge from the slave revolt-fearing Lower South. Enlightenment ideas began to drift in from Europe, and without class extremes or a powerful church, took root faster than in Europe itself. The Revolutionary generation created the Declaration of Independence, followed by 200 years or so of trying to live up to it. These changes have shifted the over-all American culture more to the love end of the love/fear axis.

Transmitting the cultural values of love and fear is partly a matter of upbringing, and partly a matter of what the external world hands you. One psychologist breaks parenting styles into four types. Two of the four are the permissive and the non-involved; though quite different, each merits near-universal disapproval in the larger culture, because they tend to produce unpleasant children and dysfunctional adults. The other two, which have huge bases of approval, are the authoritarian and the authoritative.

The first and probably commonest of these, the authoritarian, emphasizes obedience without understanding, otherwise known as “because I said so.” Authoritarians believe routine harsh physical punishment is the only way to beat good behavior and good manners into kids; they will look at you blankly if you try to distinguish between discipline and whippings. Children come to take pride in the punishment they have endured; as adults, they believe it is responsible for their own highly-developed character, so as good parents they must repeat the pattern. Papa, as the strongman in the house, is naturally the unquestioned head of household, and the obvious source of punishment. Morality becomes confused with power, and their cultural heroes tend to be physically powerful, arrogant and underhanded, from John Wayne or Sylvester Stallone action movies to wars waged by the United States against weaker nations. The Founding Fathers’ documents, in particular the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they believe to be perfect and infallible in the same way they believe the Bible is; and they are equally unlikely to read any of them. God is the ultimate strongman Papa, and His infinite power must be shown by rewarding those who obey him and exacting infinite punishment on His enemies, the sinners. The only escape from Hell is obeying the Church’s teachings without question, from the particular 16 out-of-context Bible verses that make up its theology or, all too often, whom to vote for in the coming elections. Authoritarian adults tend to be hard-working and successful. But they are subject to an inordinate number of fears, which can be exploited by those who know which buttons to push. They have exaggerated fears of the likelihood of being crime victims, of foreign attack or of having their children seduced away from them by enemies within.

Authoritative parenting emphasizes democratic virtues. Unlike permissives, parents set limits on behavior and expect obedience. But within the limits of a child’s understanding, reasons are given; as the child matures, she or he is allowed more say in family matters generally and in personal behavior especially. Discipline is enforced, but with as little harsh physical punishment as possible. Because the rules make sense and the child is listened to, the world comes to be seen as fair and moderately benevolent. Culture heroes are judged as much by their sense of fair play as for their power and skill. My cousins, for example, adored the bullying John Wayne and imitated his strut; I preferred a straight shooter like Roy Rogers, who never cheated, bullied or did more harm than necessary for self-defense.

From this kind of childhood a self-confident adult can develop, capable of being economically successful, but also able to look past self-interest. These adults can certainly be frightened, for fear is intrinsic to life; but endless fear-mongering by politicians and media tends to become less and less effective. They are also more persuadable through fairness and compassion; when Martin Luther King’s marchers did not trade violence for violence, this made a much greater impact on this group than on authoritarians. When I was growing up in the 1950s and Ô60s, these were not liberal or conservative but the commonly accepted values of good citizenship.

I like to think that Unitarian Universalism can be a good home for those for whom love and compassion, not fear and unquestioning obedience, represent ultimate values. But we are not alone in holding these values; given our size, that’s a good thing. Other religious faiths, both Christian and non-Christian, also espouse them. According to a recent Pew Foundation study, most Christians in this country, even among Evangelicals and conservative Catholics, have moved away from the traditional beliefs about salvation and Hell; in overwhelming numbers they either do not believe in Hell at all, or believe that it will be reserved only for the truly wicked. Universalism, far from having withered away, has in some ways permeated Christianity. In a country where the media have been pouring fear into people’s living rooms incessantly in recent decades and where preachers and politicians successfully run political campaigns on fear alone, that is very good news.

So here we are. We need fear; we cannot survive without fear. But fear is not easily governed by reason. If the crowd around seems to be calling me to fear, I might find it stirring without ever passing through the rational critic in my head. Fear begets fear, and none are more compelling than those ingrained in us as children. All of these characteristics have been ruthlessly exploited since the beginning of civilization for the benefit of power and wealth; they have also been spontaneously generated by news events and even by the stress of living with those we consider as being “not from our tribe.”

And we have another need as well, love. It was an integral part of what made us human in the first place, even if limited to our own tribe; so we need it to remain human in the face of fear. We also need it to align ourselves with a cosmic principle that has moved to ever greater levels of complexity, cooperation and integration for billions of years, perhaps not so much shaped by a pre-existing God as shaping toward becoming God. And we need it right now most urgently for the survival of the human race, with its ever bloodier wars fought with ever more terrible weapons. Let W.H. Auden have the last word: “We must love one another or die.”

Are First UU's Inside Traders?

July 24, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Michael LeBurkien

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Michael LeBurkien

July 17, 2011

Good Morning Beloved Community. MEOW!! You are FAT CATS. We are a very wealthy, self satisfied, insider trading, tax cheating FAT CAT congregation. We are the spiritually richest congregation in the USA.

We are gorged with honest religion, true and relevant religion…..but you refuse to Evangelize, to share the Good News with others. You are guilty of Spiritual Insider Trading in a most precious life sustaining and enhancing commodity; authentic religious stocks and bonds and spiritual gold. You are inside traders, taking advantage of non public information, keeping it non public…..keeping UU’ism and FUUCA a secret as if this knowledge were your birthright. This is religiously illegal and a violation of our mission statement. This illegal activity raises the cost of purchasing honest religion, an essential commodity for all. It decreases the spread of spirituality over the entire planet earth. Our attitude is I’ll scratch your back and you scratch mine. You give religious tips to insider members, but not the general public. We are self satisfied in our little hidden cul de sac at the end of poorly traveled No Outlet Rd. This is fraudulent and violates the duty of full disclosure. We all may end up in prison. We may be in spiritual prison and on the way to spiritual Hell this very moment.

Speaking of prison listen to the story of Coval Russell from the New York Times. The Butte Co jail cell where Coval spent his last happy days is no bigger than a wheel-chair-size stall at Austin International Airport and dominated by a toilet. He called this place where few would want to spend a single night his home. He spent 14 months there for wounding his landlord with a knife. He became a beloved counselor. He was given dibs on TV program selection. Pops was first in the food line and had a reserved place in Monopoly Game Marathons. He never had visitors, but he did not need any. Here among the transient population of men awaiting trial or sentencing, he had found community. His body was found Wednesday in the Feather River, where he had fallen from a bridge just a hop from the Motel 6 where he was staying since his release. No one doubted what had happened. Russell had petitioned the court to keep him in jail indefinitely and became depressed when the judge granted him probation. He said he would kill himself if he was sent “back out there” with no friends and family. He took a taxi to Table Mountain Ridge….said on a railroad track for 1/2 hour and then disappeared. He was unaware that a UU church in Butte would have taken him into their homeless aid program because it was not advertised to the general public or the Butte Co. prisoners aid programs.

We delude ourselves when we say that UU’ism is just about lofty principals. People seek us out because they simply want a place where they belong. Our world marginalizes, discounts and ignores many folks who are just looking for a place to live a life of spiritual integrity. Lofty principals yes, but it is also a one at a time religion. We all have our secret struggles. We all need community to give us strength to cope with our secret struggles. That is why we need to evangelize to inform the general public that we are here for them.

Evangelism is in our genes, our history. In 1834, George Rogers, a renowned, Universalist circuit rider rode one horseback out West, then Pennsylvania, to preach in Pottsville, Bethlehem, & Womelsdorf speaking English to a German Congregation. Local clergy opposed him with violence. Rocks were thrown, windows broken. He told religious persecutors….”You have mistaken your man. I am not to be stopped, I will preach the universal love of God at the martyr’s stake” Hundreds came to hear him. Think of that next time you complain about a 20 minute drive to church. The evangelistic style spread the good news of Universaism and its heartfelt saving message and make us visible. It emphasized personal evangelism, leading to change is heart and behavior throughout the horseback circuits.

Can we talk? UU’ism is not for everyone. If you plan to attend Gov. Perry’s Houston’s Reliant Stadium religious rally wherein fundamentalist preachers will talk about the Sex Goddess seducing the Emperor thus causing social demise, this is not the church for you. If you think Oprah is an unknowing well meaning handmaiden of the anti-Christ, this is not the church for you, if you think children of immigrants who are born here are raised as terrorist time bombs and should be sent back to countries of their parents origin, this is not the church for you. If you think Mr. Michelle Bachman’s clinic is right in promoting reparative prayers to change gays to straight people and takes government money for that purpose, then this is not the church for you.

On the other hand, on the other hand…. If you think you are responsible for your own mind, body, and spirit, If you know that you don’t know every answer to every question, if you’re not afraid of humanists, who aren’t afraid of pagans, who aren’t afraid of theists, who aren’t afraid of atheists, who aren’t afraid of Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Christians, or Buddhists, if you’re fairly sure that tattoos and body piercing do not signal the end of Western civilization, if you are tired of the phrases acceptable losses & collateral damage, if you’re ashamed of the amount of press coverage given to the debate about the place of God in the Pledge of Allegiance in a country where 1/6 of the children go to bed hungry and health care is considered non-essential, if you’re tired of union rights denied to social workers and teachers who work 2 jobs to make ends meet then this is your church, your community, your spiritual home. This church is good news for you.

In this country we number only 1/4 of a million. Our population was greater 2 decades ago. But in the recent census 600,000 listed themselves as Unitarian Universalists. We are out there, but unevangelized. Fundamentalists have said UU’s believe in nothing and everything. No requirements no beliefs no faith. They don’t know us because we inside trade our beliefs, we inside trade our thoughts on revelation, repentance, resurrection, salvation and the Messianic Age. We are shy about evangelizing and offering our Amazing Grace to spiritual prisoners. We practice illlegal and criminal religion if we don’t communicate our access to spiritual wealth to a religiously impoverished world.

Hey People, we are a vibrant faith of believers. We believe in the motive force of love, We believe in the necessity of the democratic process, We believe in the importance of a religious community, we believe in the freedom of religious expression, We believe in the appreciation of religious ideas, but not religious myths, We believe in the authority of reason and conscience, we believe in the never ending search for Truth and spiritual honesty,We believe in the unity of experience, and all life, We believe in the worth and dignity of each human being, We believe in ethical application of religion with the goal of social justice, We believe in the Amazing Inner Grace that finds completion in community involvement.

When I tell young people students at UT about our beliefs they tell me they did not know a religion like ours existed. Where is your church? What time are services?

Let me end with my own personal story. About 2 years ago I initiated proceedings to end my marriage of 4 decades. Many years were happy and fullfilling . But it became intolerable. I was ashamed and afraid. I masochistically blamed myself for the events leading to divorce. I was afraid of being cut off from my grown children and beautiful grandchildren. I feared being branded a loser not meeting social expectations of not having a spouse, a girlfriend, a partner, a significant other, or even a roommate. I had allowed myself to be cut off from old friends and had been denied the opportunities to make new friends. Like Coval Russell being let out of the Butte Co. jail, I had no community. I contemplated the ending of my life.

But I was drawn to the FUUCA. Embryonic friendships became solid. The ties to community strengthened. I stopped being afraid. I felt strong and worthwhile, I gained spiritual strength and self esteem. I learned to love myself and accept love from other UU’s. I learned from this community and the gym locker room that friendship love and church family love was just as valid as romantic love and having a spouse, girlfriend, significant other or roommate was no guarantee of erotic love anyhow. I gathered my forces and crossed the the stormy Channel to find the safe haven of personal happiness and community service I never looked back. I now have matured, and grown emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. I am light years ahead. I have taken university level courses in family systems, leadership development and non violent communication here. We believe in continuing education here. I don’t even recognize who I was 2 weeks ago, let alone 2 years ago. This church saved my life and it can save yours.

In the Torah it says, “If I am not for myself who will be? If I am for myself alone, what am I?” Let’s get out of our inside trader comfort zone people.” There are millions out there in the general public who like me, like you, need to find a spiritually integrity who need to connected to all creation. What are you, if you are for yourselves alone?

The Virtues of Leadership

July 11, 2011 by tom Posted in Guest Speakers, Mark Skrabacz

Rev. Mark Skrabacz

July 10, 2011

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

I wonder what you think good leadership is? What is your experience of leaders and as leaders?

A few months ago 10 of our Congregation’s leaders gathered to share a Leadership Training. This was a round table discussion during which we explored readings and topics to enhance our understanding of leadership, specifically for our church. As UU communities we are committed to democracy, which means that “we the people” are the principals of our church. Our Boards are our elected voluntary representatives and as such serve as leaders for a time. We members are also in a way only temporary, too. Nevertheless, members present and future will endure as the responsible authors and leaders of our churches.

Right here, right now, I invite you speak out single words or phrases in answer to these questions: Firstly, what are some of the qualities you most admire in good leadership? Secondly, what are those qualities you most fear or dislike?

Changes are happening around our planet. The whole world is changing, and what can we learn from this? We learn that good leadership is absolutely necessary to navigate through times of change. Changes are happening in our church community as we grow with the steady addition of new members, new interests, new concerns, talents and energies. We are expanding our embrace and becoming more broadly linked to the world. We are blessed to be growing in increments, so that we can integrate new energies with the old. For we have something special here that called us and will call others. We all have to take responsibility for our church community. Today’s message will address this in part.

Nowadays there are countless new examples of how leaders mobilize others to get extraordinary things done in just about every area of organized activity. Leadership knows no bounds and can be found in every racial, religious, ethnic and cultural circumstance. Yet the traits of leadership follow remarkably similar patterns as mentioned in our brief Q&A today. Let’s examine some common virtues of leaders that will hopefully steer us toward further achievements in our church community.

In olden times, society and churches accorded great authority to clergy. The priests were the authors of their church’s destinies and the center of church communities. That was my experience growing up. It led me to pursue leadership training in a Roman Catholic seminary in the navel-gazing 70s. This was a time when many priests were looking at their lives and the dwindling prospects of their dreams being actualized in a church that seemed bent on preserving the past, and an extremely patronizing and authoritarian one at that. They started leaving in droves. In the midst of my own aspirations, I began to witness the loss of the best and the retention of the “yes men”. The inner authority that clergy demonstrated began to falter as many persons who possessed the personal traits of honesty, transparency and trustability left the clergy.

The great opportunity of the demise of authoritarian leadership lies in developing a new capacity for leadership. A title and authority can be given but it’s behavior that wins respect. The first virtue of leadership is that leaders must model the way. People respect and follow first the person, then the plan…bringing to mind the cardinal principle of parenting: kids don’t go where you point; they go where you go.

Leading means you have to be a good example and walk your talk. Exemplary leadership attracts commitment and achieves high standards, because it models the behavior expected of others. One of the guiding principles of modeling is that it clarifies your values. Your values are at the core of leadership. You have to open up your mind and heart to let people really know what you think and believe. Yet it’s not just the leader’s values that are important, because leaders aren’t just representing themselves. They speak on behalf of the larger organization.

20 members of our church met last December to launch our Long Range Planning process with an appreciative inquiry facilitated by Eric Hepburn. He helped us ask questions and tell stories in order to think and listen for our own core values that we personally find in our lives and that are shared in our church. We came up with three: communication, interconnectedness and acceptance. Leaders must forge agreement around the common values and ideals of the group being led.

A friend of mine works as a leadership consultant and he tells of his initial meeting of with a company president The CEO briefly outlined their history, mission, current goals, personnel problems and the situation he wanted help with. My friend listened and then asked the president what he valued more than anything else. The president asked for clarification. My friend asked him again to declare the single thing that motivated his life. He got up and closed the door and asked if that meant for work or life in general. My friend said there was no difference; that there was only life.

He finally answered, I guess that would be love. The consultant asked how many were on his executive team and he said 8 and that most of them had been with him for 5 years. The consultant remarked that probably all of them knew that love was is most cherished value. He answered probably not. 6? No. 3? No. My friend said: “How many of these people with whom you’ve worked closely for 10 hours a day, 5 days a week for 5 years, would know that love is your most important value?” He answered, “Probably none.”

Makes you wonder if that leader was lying to himself about his personal values. How do your leader’s modeling of their personal values impact their ability to represent your congregation’s values?

A second virtue is that leaders must also inspire a shared vision. You all — this church — has done a lot of work on this these past few years with your core values and development of vision and mission. The idea here is that when we get as excited about our future as we do about our present, we will allow that vision to pull us forward into it. Our vision is the force that directs our future. Leaders gaze across the horizon of time and imagine the exciting and ennobling opportunities that are in store for their organization. Leaders have a desire to make things happen that no one else has ever done. Do you have any interest in your future as a church community? Do you have any images to share of how we might be making a difference? Then you are a visionary leader and I hope you will step up and act, so that we all can support these ideas.

A note of caution: Be careful about surrendering your own authority and initiative to a charismatic leader. Remember we are about creating a future that is bigger than any leader.

This is what the world wants and the basis of today’s revolutions–the chance for the people to author their own lives and destiny. Facilitating this is the work of leadership. How well is your church doing in raising up leadership? George Bancroft, a notable early 19th century historian wrote: “The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force; in other words, the measure of the progress of civilization is the progress of the people.” Sounds like our recently-departed contemporary historian Howard Zinn.

That brings us to the third virtue of leadership the ability to challenge the process. Whatever the challenge: growth, change, mission, expansion, innovation, all cases involve a change from the status quo. This is challenging for us to hear. Yet the fact is not one leader who has ever achieved something of great importance did it by keeping things the same. All leaders challenge the process.

Leaders venture out. They invite others into challenging conversations. They are pioneers searching for opportunities to make things better, to integrate the best of the past with the burgeoning future. They listen within and without in order to check the timing, take risks and create the atmosphere for experimentation, the implementation of new ideas and the willingness to innovate. Risk and change are scary. Not everyone is comfortable with uncertainty. Yet small steps and small wins build confidence so that bigger challenges can be met. My view is that this happens best when it happens in increments. We must feel safe first, then we can begin to take the risks necessary to lead by challenging the process.

There’s a difference between managing and leading. Managers use their authority by making decisions, decisions that get things done; leaders exceed this kind of authority by causing others to ponder troubling questions; questions like how can we be more relevant or more transparent or inclusive or more compassionate? Managers calm people by resolving ambiguity; leaders often frustrate people by refusing to decide quickly what can only be solved slowly and digested by a greater number than one or a few. You see, the most important challenges are too big for individual decision-makers to address alone. That’s where leaders come in to bring the whole group’s gifts to bear. Anyone, from any seat in here, can lead.

Which situations call for management and which for leadership? One factor is the nature of the challenge to be faced. For example, if the central air malfunctions, it must be repaired. Our congregation has authorized our Building and Grounds Committee to pick a contractor and spend money pronto. On the other hand, hypothetically a once-successful program that no longer attracts participation may need a cross-section of good heads to take whatever time they need to cook up a fresh vision of this activity.

Leadership is not a personal trait, but the ability to take action: like getting a whole group of us to address our most important challenges. Leadership is measured not by whether leaders get their way, but by how well the resources of the congregation come to bear on crucial questions.

That’s a picture of the next virtue of good leadership: Leaders enable others to act. They build trust and foster collaboration. The single test most used to detect whether or not someone is on the road to becoming a leader is the use of the word “we.” They use it nearly 3X more than the word “I.” Leaders make it possible for others to do good work. They empower others. They delegate. Like the reading for the Tao Te Ching, they give the work back to the people.

Finally leaders encourage the heart with genuine acts of caring that uplift the spirit and draw people forward. Personal thank you notes, phone calls, visits to the home, then following up with an email. These are old-fashioned but timeless signs of encouragement. Recognizing contributions and celebrating shared values and victories are also helpful, as are empathy and sympathy when things are tough.

Before closing I’ll paraphrase Gordon McKeeman, former President of our UU Starr King School of Ministry and a parish minister of 22 years in Akron, Ohio.

There are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people. Beckoning them forth is the task of leadership. As leaders we have the responsibility to lead our institution – in our case our church – in becoming a source of power of making a difference. We are called to do this in the midst of a group of people overwhelmingly devoted to individualism, and who are consequently suspicious of institutions.

Each individual is a locus of power, actual and potential. A purpose of having any institution is to link the separate powers of individuals into one larger, more committed, more powerful community. … The maturing self struggles to embrace more and more … to grow toward a larger self that is always learning to love one more person, forgiving one more person, understanding that his or her well-being is inextricably bound to that of others. … It then realizes that the glorification of the small, narrow I is the source of what we call evil.

The errand on which we are bent is this: the realization of exalted human possibilities through self-growth from narcissism to encompassing wholeness. Let’s become “we” speaking people.

Fortunately, anyone can lead. While it is far from the ideal solution, when official leaders fail, then leadership can still emerge from the periphery: from ad hoc planning teams, from voices crying in the wilderness, even from the mouths of babes. Maybe you feel like a voice in the wilderness or even a baby to your community. This message is to encourage you to consider serving in leadership on a working committee. Your Board would be interested in hearing from you about your concerns and interests regarding your church and if you are interested in serving on a committee. You know, serving this congregation on its board or a committee, your board and committees, is a very good learning opportunity.

After hearing this, I leave you with these questions about your own beloved Church’s leadership: Considering the virtues of leadership we have just explored, what do you feel you are doing well and where could you use some improvement?

With acknowledgment to the authors of Leadership Challenge: Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner for material reiterated in this sermon.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of What?

July 3, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Brian Ferguson, Guest Speakers

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Brian Ferguson

July 3, 2011

Reading

Excerpt from A Treatise on Atonement by the 19th Century Universalist leader Hosea Ballou.

“Man’s major goal, in all he does, is happiness; and were it not for that, he never could have any other particular goal. What would induce men to form societies; to be at the expense of supporting government; to acquire knowledge; to learn the sciences, or till the earth, if they believed they could be as happy without as with?

The fact is, man would not be the thing that he now is, as there would not be any stimulus to action; Men are never without this grand goal, so they are never without their wants, which render such a goal desirable. But their minor goals vary, and their passions differ. Then, says the objector, there is no such thing as disinterested benevolence.

The objector will say, to admit that our happiness is the grand goal of all we do destroys the purity of religion, and reduces the whole to nothing but selfishness.

To which, I reply a man acting for his own happiness, if he seek it in the heavenly system of universal benevolence, knowing that his own happiness is connected with the happiness of his fellow-men, which induces him to do justly and to deal mercifully with all men, he is not more selfish than he ought to be. But a man acting for his own happiness, if he seek it in the narrow circle of partiality and covetousness, his selfishness is irreligious and wicked.”

Sermon

I find it interesting that on this July 4th Independence Weekend that you invited a worship leader who is British. I am reminded of the Romans, who would parade their captured enemies through the street then have the defeated leaders give speeches praising the Great Roman Empire. I wondered if this is why you invited me back? Those of you who remember my eventful Internship here two years ago probably realize that is not what I will be doing. What I do want to do is congratulate this religious community for the hard work you have done over the last two years and your selection of a fabulous Minister in the Rev. Meg Barnhouse. Congratulations, I am sure you must be very happy.

Now happiness is something I want to explore today. Happiness is a strange idea when you think about it. It is one of the most common wishes we make for others. This weekend we will be wishing each other a Happy 4th July, even to British people. Last Fall I even saw a sign saying Happy Veterans Day. I was taken aback and a little unsettled by this, Happy Veterans Day. Veterans Day has always been a day I recognized as a solemn day of remembrance for those who lost their lives in wars. Wishing someone a Happy Veterans Day seems to have missed the point of the day. Not everything in life is happy – in fact even our wishing of each other happiness on holidays implies that most of the time we are not happy.

Now being from Britain, happiness is not something that comes easily to me. I grew up Presbyterian which with its emphasis on human depravity seems much more grounded in reality than any foolish optimism about happiness. Human history seems to have plenty of examples where humanity has taken the low road in the treatment of each other. Reviewing human history with its seeming constant violence and injustice usually stirs in me emotions of sadness or anger and often both. History or our current news rarely stirs emotions of happiness in me.

Now perhaps I’m overly negative about this but to show that I’m not alone in this view, there was a proposal by a British psychologist to have happiness classified as a psychiatric disorder. I originally thought this was a joke from a satirical newspaper like the Onion but it was in the Journal of Medical Ethics1 which is not usually a barrel of laughs. Here is what the abstract to the proposal says:

“It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains — that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant.” So there you have it to be happy is abnormal – at least in Britain. We British can be a miserable bunch. Perhaps that is why the American colonies wanted their independence from Britain -they wanted to be happy or at least the opportunity to pursue happiness. At the very founding of the United States in the Declaration of Independence there is talk about happiness. One of the most famous sentences from the Declaration says “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This is considered a powerful statement of individual human rights and has been called one of the best-known sentences in the English language.2 As a powerful statement of human rights it is great shame that it talked about all men rather than all people being created equal. If it had said all people then women might not have had to wait another 140 years for the vote. Alas like the reading from Hosea Ballou earlier, it’s sexist language was a product of its time.

Thomas Jefferson was the main author of the declaration and acknowledged that most of the ideas in it were not original. Scholars recognize multiple influences on the document. One of the major influences was somewhat ironically the British political philosopher, John Locke, who was one of the most influential thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries. He wrote extensively about the just use of power by governments and about 100 years before the Declaration of Independence he said people had the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of property.” Lock believed that property rights were fundamental to human rights both of which should be protected by the government. It is interesting that Jefferson changed this aspect of Locke’s work to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The pursuit of property seems much more in line with our lives in the consumer culture of the U.S. today.

The modern American and British views of individual property rights are by no means a Universal view. Many of the indigenous Native American groups to New England struggled to understand the early American colonists’ ideas of ownership of land. A common view among the Native American groups was “The land does not belong to us, we belong to the land.” This in many ways is a radical interpretation of our 7th Unitarian Universalist principle of the respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are part. Many Native American saw humans as part of the environment, part of something larger than themselves, with no sense of ownership by them. That is a radically different world view and makes a clash of cultures inevitable as soon as the early colonists started claiming ownership of land. What did the Native Americans make of the first “No Trespassing” signs?

Many indigenous groups throughout the world struggle with the dominant western ideas of individual property rights. Even, in my home country of Scotland, the native non-English language Gaelic, did not have a word for individual ownership, it only had language for community ownership by family or clan. The language had no way of saying that I own this, a person could only talk about how we own this. This is a remarkably different approach to living than we have in most of our modern society. Yet think about how we talk about ownership within this religious community.

In our religious tradition ownership and responsibility does not lie with some centralized power or with the minister, blame may lie with the minister but not ownership and responsibility. The ownership and responsibility lies with the members of this religious community, with each of us. We talk about our church, our religious education program, our members, our minister, the land that we own, and in the modern world we live – our webpage and our facebook page. As individuals of this religious community we own none of it but together with each other we own all of it.

The idea of individual property rights is so fundamental to how British and American societies operate that we forget it is a choice we make as a society. I find it interesting that the individual pursuit of property was down-played by Jefferson in the declaration of independence and replaced with the pursuit of happiness. There are many benefits to individual ownership since as individuals we often take better care of what we own individually rather than what we own in common with others. The desire for ownership, be it a house, car, or other item, can be the primary motivator for many of our actions.

Now the exact relation of ownership to happiness is a complex one. The material wealth of most Americans has increased enormously since the 1950’s but the surveys of happiness suggest most Americans are slightly less happy than the 1950’s. The pursuit of property may be a major motivator of our actions but does not seem to make us happier. This makes sense to me since pursuing property to a certain level of comfort such as having a safe place to live and ample food to eat will reduce our fear and insecurity therefore increase our happiness. Beyond these basic comforts the continual pursuit of property and goods which is encouraged by our economic system I believe can result in more dissatisfaction. As our expectations are continually raised then the likelihood of happiness or even just contentment can diminish. Perhaps Jefferson was on to something when he replaced the Pursuit of Property with the Pursuit of Happiness.

Some historians believed that Jefferson de-emphasized protection of property by the government to allow taxation but most historians believed that Jefferson wanted a more virtuous ideal to go along with life and liberty. Happiness was a very important concept in the 18th century since many liberal philosophers like Jefferson and Locke were justifying the curbing of the powers by Kings and Tyrants – often the same thing. The justification defined the role of government to serve the people by seeking the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.3 Judging by this standard it would seem that our present government in America is failing badly since no-one seems happy with it.

At the time of the writing of the Declaration of Independence Happiness was considered the supreme determiner of a person’s actions. This idea was mentioned in the earlier reading by Hosea Ballou, considered the father of the Universalist side our tradition. He stated: “Man’s major goal, in all he does, is happiness; and were it not for that, he never could have any other particular goal.”4 Hosea Ballou was writing just 30 years after the Declaration of Independence and still reflects that period’s belief in the pursuit of happiness as the major motivation of a person’s actions. The Declaration has a strong religious context emphasizing rights endowed by one’s Creator meaning God. Ballou likewise believed we had a God-given right to be happy and we were created to be fulfilled and happy. Jefferson from a political point of view stated the pursuit of happiness is a right and Ballou from our own Universalist religious tradition stated that happiness is our main stimulus to noble action. It seems like happiness is a very important idea but is the pursuit of happiness an appropriate religious goal?

In the earlier reading Ballou warned that acting only for our own individual happiness is irreligious and wicked5. The focus on one’s own individual happiness can easily slip into narcissism and selfishness. Ballou believed true happiness would come when we acted justly on the behalf of others and dealt mercifully with them – a universal system of benevolence. Over the last 200 years we have increasingly become a more individualistic culture and many in our society do not think in terms of the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

As well as the overemphasis on individual happiness, the idea of happiness as a goal to be pursued seems problematic to me since it implies we can reach some stable state of happiness. I don’t think life is like that. Given the constant change in our world and the finite nature of human life then any expectation of a lasting state of happiness seems doomed to disappointment. Our lives are filled with challenges such as illness, loss of loved ones, disappointments in relationships, financial uncertainty, and injustice in its many forms. Now being happy through all the struggles of life may not be a psychiatric disorder as was claimed earlier but may not be a meaningful response to life’s challenges. Having expectations of lasting happiness can lead to a sense of disappointment and despair. I heard it said that expectations are just premeditated resentments therefore I treat life with high hopes and low expectations. So what are my expectations and hopes about happiness?

I think we have brief moments of happiness rather than lasting periods of happiness. These moments often come when reflecting on our past, often our immediate past. These reflections can be on some great time of connection with family or friends, or a great event we worked hard on that felt successful, or time we took for ourselves to reflect on our growth as people through skills acquired or changes of behavior. Happiness for me has a reflective quality where some past event gives us satisfaction and I think that happiness is more often the consequence of what we do not the motivation for what we do. Take some of the life’s struggles I just mentioned – with illness I seek care, for loss of loved ones I seek comfort, for disappointments with relationships I seek understanding, for financial struggles I seek support, and for injustice I seek to work for justice.

Mainly what I seek with life’s struggle is the compassion and understanding of others to help me cope. This is where I think religious communities can play an important role in our lives. Many people seek religious community to help them cope with life’s sorrows and celebrate life’s joys. The congregation I serve in San Marcos has a shared joys and concerns portion of our weekly worship service which is a ritualized form of that. But the sharing of joys and concerns amongst us does not just happen in worship, it happens in the fellowship hour after service, and through the friendships we have with fellow congregants. This is a vital part of the fabric of a healthy religious community.

Through this sharing and reflection on the struggles and joys of life we create the meaning in our lives. This sharing and reflection in community can allow us to feel cared for, comforted, supported, and understood which, in time, may leads us to moments of happiness as we reflect on how we are valued by other people. And the sharing of joys is important because if we can learn to truly find joy in another person’s joy then this can help increase the moments of happiness in our own lives.

In closing, I think Jefferson did get it right in pursuing happiness rather than property as one of our rights but happiness is not a goal to be achieved but moments of satisfaction to be savored in our lives. Aristotle said “happiness is the only thing that humans desire for its own sake, unlike riches, honor, health or friendship, which are sought not for their own sake but cause people to be happier.” I would add that people may desire happiness but life will place obstacles in the way of our happiness. How we choose between riches, honor, health, and friendship will determine the depth and frequency of those moments of our happiness. We do well to choose wisely.

Ballou, Hosea. A Treatise on Atonement Edited and introduced by Ernest Cassara (Boston, MA: Skinner House Books, 1986) p.33-34

i Bentall, Richard P. Journal of Medical Ethics Volume 18, Issue 2 (BMJ Group, 1992) p.94-98

ii Lucas, Stephen E. Justifying America: The Declaration of Independence as a Rhetorical Document in American Rhetoric: Context and Criticism Thomas W Benson ed. (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press,1989) p.85

iii Willis, Gary. Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence ( New York, NY: Doubleday, 1978) p.259

iv Ballou, Hosea. A Treatise on Atonement Edited and introduced by Ernest Cassara (Boston, MA: Skinner House Books, 1986) p.33-34v Ballou, Hosea. A Treatise on Atonement Edited and introduced by Ernest Cassara (Boston, MA: Skinner House Books, 1986) p.33-34

The importance of ritual

June 26, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers

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Stephanie Canada Gill

Sandra Ries

June 26, 2011

Stephanie Canada Gill

It’s always fun; when preparing a sermon, to look up the dictionary definition for your topic. So I went to www.dictionary.com; which gives me some choices from a variety of dictionaries, and the one which I found the most amusing, was this one from “The World English Dictionary”:

Ritual – (noun)

1. the prescribed or established form of a religious or other ceremony

2. stereotyped activity or behavior

3. [psychological] any repetitive behavior, such as hand-washing, performed by a person with a compulsive personality disorder

With that in mind, I am happy to be here with you this morning, so that we can enjoy our compulsive, repetitive behavior together.

It’s worth noting that some in this church don’t necessarily qualify what we do here together each Sunday as ritualistic or ceremonial. Yet each aspect of our worship service has a meaning, a context, and a reason why it is performed in the way that it is, and the manner and order in which we perform it are vitally important to us.

If you doubt that; I urge you to have a chat with any of the “old timers” here such as myself about our discussions; as a congregation, about any changes in our worship services. For those of you who have been here a while, please take a moment and cast your memories back to the time we added “Joys and Concerns” to the service… and when we removed it later. Or our discussions about how, when, and in what manner we would be including our children within the worship services.

Yes, I don’t believe that “Vitally Important” is too strong a phrase.

Ritual can be seen in terms of a structure, a template. There is something repetitive in the nature of ritual, but it is the way we each conceptualize ritual that is important. So let me share an experience I had about that, many years ago.

I had a period of time during my teens where I was still attending church, but no longer felt a deep connection to the faith of my childhood. And during that time, I had an experience worth sharing.

It happened on one of those many, nameless mornings, just as my mind was waking up in response to the communion plate being passed around. Ah, the sharpness of unsweetened grape juice, and its contrast to the tasteless little wafer squares. For me, it meant that the service was nearly over and my freedom was within sight.

But then I noticed something; one of my fellow congregants, who was sitting in the pew in front of me. I saw her face light up as she put the wafer in her mouth. I was captivated. I watched carefully, and I then I turned to look at others across the aisle, and in the pews behind me. It happened again and again, there, and then there! Somehow in that sad little square; people were tasting something I didn’t, and whatever it was, it was not something inherent in the wafer itself. It had touched their hearts.

I remember sitting back in the pew; almost light-headed, and thinking about what I had just seen. And then I realized that it wasn’t that the rituals of that church were meaningless, it was that they had become meaningless to me.

They felt something, something very profound.

It may seem obvious to you all now; but I tell you it shook me, and it made my heart clench. I was excluded from what I had witnessed, and I came to realize later that it was because they were experiencing the spiritual expression of their god, a god with whom I no longer felt contact.

Although it came to me much later, that day was the start of a personal quest. I began a search for rituals which did have meaning for me. I did not find meaningful expressions of ritual again until I came to THIS church. And it was here that I began to open up to Paganism. Until that time, I did not know that creating our own rituals was an option until I came to this church.

What was I missing? Well, let’s start by considering this concept:

Ritual is a way to make non-observable reality manifest.

I’ll say that again, a little slower:

Ritual is a way…to make non-observable reality…manifest.

Ritual touches something in our core, something significant and deep in us which has existed at least as far back as the painted caves, and likely before that. It touches our emotions, but it also appeals to our minds. Ritual speaks to the part of us which is so often beyond words.

In fact, we are going to perform something ritualistic together today after this sermon. Words give a clearness of direction; it is a way of expressly stating our sacred intent, if you will. But the non-verbal part is key. The non-verbal portions of ritual give us the opportunity to digest the words, and allow them to touch us on an emotional level. So here is an opportunity to transmute words into emotions. Later in the service, we are going to smudge this sanctuary.

So let’s look at smudging. This is a sacred act, which revolves around some similar concepts world-wide. It’s an ancient rite, we really have no idea how far it goes back in any of the cultures which use it.

Smudging has an element of purification, and of defining sacred space via scent. The two are intertwined, because in essence it sweeps away whatever is mundane, in order to make room for the sacred. Distracting thoughts, impurities from outside the circle of the holy space – smudging pushes those things out in order to create a void which the sacred can fill. It recognizes that in order for something new to be born, something old must give way. The smoke fills the room, and then fades. Now a new space is created.

Within that context; smudging has a symbolic connection to planting, to rededicating, to preparing the way for something new to begin. The way is made clear. What will we plant once the weeds have been plowed under? What are the furrows waiting for? These are decisions which are planted in our hearts, and later will bloom into words and actions

I believe we are accustomed to thinking of sacred space as someplace where the sacred somehow simply happens. But; in fact, the sacred consists of what we bring to the space, what we do while we are there, and how we take it and apply to our lives both within the ritual context and beyond. A ritual can be seen as a temporary construct, but in truth no ritual is successful if it does not in some way impact our lives on an ongoing basis.

The ancients understood this. They understood the core aspect of ritual construction – intention. Ritual takes the reality we envision; but cannot yet see except with the eyes of our heart, and ignites the process through which it will become our reality in time yet to come. So it’s important to know what our intentions are.

Ritual is a way to connect our emotions with our thoughts. This happens; in the case of smudging, through our sense of smell. The only way we have to begin the process of connecting with the unseen; or inexpressible, is by using one (or more) of our five senses.

The sense of smell is tied to memory. Scientific research has shown this. As such, it has the ability to create a strong memory, to create a path way in our brains; if you will, so that the repeated use of a given smell, over and over in a particular context will naturally take us more and more quickly in our minds back to that context. And that context was designed intentionally and so is supported by that smell. As such, it is absolutely ideal for religious ritual.

Nor is the sense of smell the only sense ritual can use to great effect. Our sense of hearing can be used both actively and passively. Passively, we had have music sung to us or played for us by a variety of amazingly talented people over the course of time. It lifts our spirits, it opens our hearts.

I sometimes refer to ritual as storytelling, as it is within ritual that we tell the story of who we are. Like a story, our ritual has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In our worship services, we begin the process of creating sacred space by the introductory music, which alerts us that we are entering the place where we create the sacred together. This space is infused with sacred sounds, unlike our day to day lives.

Just as a storyteller might set the stage by saying, “Once upon a time…”; our opening music says that we are stepping into a place where our ordinary reality takes a backseat to a magical sort of reality, where we are both the best of who we can be and; at the same time, the seekers who hope to learn more about the connections we long to feel, the connections to each other, and to the sacred within each of ourselves, In the most effective rituals, we meld heart and mind together to guide us on the next step of our journey.

We feel connected to the sacred, when we listen.

Our intention can be touched actively when we sing together. The hymns we sing together are an expression of our roots as a Christian denomination, in many ways. Singing is universal, but hymns are associated with Christianity. We join in aural communion via the sense of sound, when we stand together and sing a hymn from our hymnal. We’ve worked very hard to be more egalitarian, non-sexist, and so on with our hymnal, but that in no way changes these facts. Singing is a way to affirm our unity over our differences.

And our emotions are connected to our senses. We feel bonded as we sing. That bonding is intentional and deliberate.

Ask a Buddhist sometime about the importance of “breath”. He or she will tell you that the Universe was created via “the breath”. A Buddhist would say “Breath is the beginning of all things, and the crux of awakening”. Turn that over in your mind after the sermon. Oh, and breathe deeply when you do.

Now, I did mention that ritual context was designed and supported by our senses to bring our sacred intentions manifest. So what is our sacred intent? Our church mission statement reflects it as does our invocation of the chalice and the flame. This is not a church of sinners trembling before an angry god, this is a church of seekers!

This is our sanctuary, we designed and paid for it together, we collectively decided (or at least delegated) the decision of who will stand where I am standing each Sunday. Standing before a podium emphasizes something different about me and my purpose here than how I would be seen sitting at the edge of a circle. We have had active and; let’s say brisk and intense discussions about any ongoing changes about our rituals which take place here. Our emotions are very much involved, whether we like to admit to them or not.

It feels a little odd to say that Unitarian Universalists are emotional about ritual, doesn’t it?

But there’s no question that we are. And that is because ritual is the key to our intentions; as a congregation, and as a faith. There may words involved in the UU approach to ritual, actually with UU’s there are always words involved. Lots and lots of words. Let us never forget however that a vital part of our lives is happening between the words.

This weekly Worship service IS our ritual. We may draw from Christian traditions, we may draw from other faith traditions; for example today we will be drawing from traditions which use smudging darn near globally across the face of this planet. We have a multitude of influences throughout our hymnal, and I could go on and on, picking apart our ritual; piece by piece to show you the where and why each aspect of our “Order of Service” is done how it is done, why it is done, and the reason in this order, but I would prefer to get you started wondering; as I did so many years ago. Does it have meaning for you?

What about the smudging? I urge you to “push your envelope” a little and stay here for it, unless your allergies prevent it. Does it feel too “out there” for you? Or is there something some how satisfying about sitting through a brief few minutes in within our ritual which are strange, yet comforting in their own way. And in either case, why do you feel what you feel? What is your heart saying to you about this experience?

Let me return to the concept that smudging clears the way. Now we have a new minister coming. But have we thought about what we are willing to give up, in order to make space for what we hope to put in the place of what went before? What are the comfortable old ways we have done things in this church, which need to be set aside for the new? What are the outdated visions of how we see this congregation, which now need to be plowed into the furrows, so that they can fertilize and support new growth? I encourage you to consider those questions in depth over the coming weeks.

Change is uncomfortable. But change is the only truth which is inevitable in life. Resisting change is difficult, but embracing change will transform you.

Here is our opportunity to transform ourselves.

Ritual is a way to make non-observable reality manifest. Who we hope to become in our spiritual journey can’t be seen. The emotions which are summoned up in ritual, their power, our connections with the divine are invisible which which are summoned forth in ritual are not tangible. But these are the seeds of something which can compel us to express then beyond the confines of ritual. They grow day by day and if we nurture them, they bloom in the actions we take in the world to express ourselves as the best of who we can they be, and take those first steps in the process of making our world the best it can be. They change us, and they change our world, casting their seeds in turn to everyone who is touched by what we do. They become manifest.

Feel the new wind which is blowing through this congregation. Be ready to plant the seeds of your choice within your heart. Embrace the wind, and be transformed!

Sandra Ries

To continue the theme of change and transformation, I share with you some words from Unitarian and from Universalist leaders from our history.

For an expression of our hope, we look to Clara Barton:

“I have an almost complete disregard of precedent, and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I go for anything new that might improve the past.”

For an expression of our determination in days to come, we look to Henry David Thoreau:

“All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight-to-the-finish spirit is the one characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers.”

For inspiration, we look to Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

Responsive Reading

The Spirit of those leaders who have walked this path before us, calls to us

We recognize their work, and its legacy.

They have joined people together in common purpose

Or have written in solitude and contemplation.

They have labored to bring justice and compassion to the world

And we are their heirs.

Each of us is human, each of us has stumbled and fallen

And yet we have risen, and we are gathered today.

With hope in our hearts, with joy in our vision

I seek to be nourished, I seek to nourish others.

Ready for new beginnings

I wish to be transformed, I wish to transform others.

Ready to help create a better world

I want to do justice, I want to join with others to do justice.

And so we set out on this journey together,

to participate in building a community of souls,

bringing our diverse perspectives together

To manifest the light within us, and around us

In this congregation, and in our lives

So May It Be!

As Stephanie said during the sermon, in a ritual, intent is important. In the group ritual we are about to perform, our shared intent makes it even more powerful. As Stephanie performs the smudging, I invite you to envision what “sacred space” means to you as an individual as well as to our congregation as a whole. And I invite you to reaffirm our sanctuary as a sacred space.

Endings and Beginnings

June 20, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Ed Brock, Guest Speakers

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Nell Newton

Chris Jimmerson

Eric Hepburn

Brendan Sterne

Susan Thomson

Rev. Ed Brock

June 19, 2011

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Tribute to Ed Brock

Nell Newton

As Mick and Keith have already told us, “You can’t always get what you want, but you’ll get what you need.”

That is exactly what we got when we called Ed Brock and asked if he would consider serving as our interim minister for this past year. We didn’t know this at the time, but let me back up.

The process by which churches obtain interim ministers is much more streamlined than the search for settled ministers. While a settled search takes nine people about 18 months, an interim search can be done by five people in three months with the UUA serving as matchmaker.

Last spring we were wrapping up a successful and soothing year of interim ministry with Rev. Janet Newman. We knew we still had some work to do before we’d be ready to call a settled minister, and we’d heard stories about other interim ministers who specialize in shaking up the status quo. These are the SWAT ministers who come in swinging their brooms, with a critical eye for bad habits, and who cut no slack for sentimental tradition if it stands in the way of progress. Perhaps that’s what we should look for – a no-nonsense interim who would make us stand up straight, straighten our tie, and do things their way. It would be good for us. We knew we had some bad habits, and we were ready to be humbled, if necessary.

As the president of the congregation, I was kept apprised of the progress and would be the one to make any formal offers. The search team was sent four names of possible interims – and two had the reputation of being stem-to-stern change up specialists. Oooh! Perfect!

But nothing went as planned. For assorted reasons, none of those four names answered when we called to inquire. Oh dear. Perhaps we weren’t challenging enough for them? Or worse — maybe we were we too far gone…

I called the office at the UUA and tried not to let them hear the rising worry in my voice. Uh… could we maybe, uh… well, you see… we need more names… Of course, we’ll send more names. Not to worry, this happens all the time. Trust the process. You’ll get the right minister.

Four more names arrived, and immediately the search team pushed one name ahead of the others: Rev. Ed Brock. A minister trained in family systems theory – Oh! We’ve heard about family systems theory! And he’s a trained counselor – Oh! We could use some counseling! I was a little nervous when we called him. Would you? Could you? Consider us? Yes? Wonderful. Thank you. Yes! Yes! Yes!

When Ed first arrived, he didn’t kick in the doors, he didn’t tell us we were doing things all wrong, and he was nice. He was the kind of guy who would pull you over to the side and quietly tell you if you had spinach stuck in your front teeth. And during his first visit with the board, he gave us the nicest gift. He told us that during this year, we would be busy at work searching for our next settled minister, but that one thing we should always remember is that we already have our settled ministry in the form of our lay leadership and our community. We are the enduring ministry of this church.

Oh, my heart just melted then and there! Instead of telling us we were a lost cause, he had held up a mirror and showed us how strong, and lively, and beautiful we are.

Instead of marching ahead, he walked alongside us during a year of heavy work. He pointed out dusty places, and held a flashlight steady as we went into some dark spaces. He kept us company and encouraged us to keep going as we cleaned the windows, overhauled the by-laws, and learned to trust ourselves to do good work.

Ed’s ministry showed us that, No, you don’t always get what you think you want, but if you do the work, trust the process, and say “yes, yes, yes!” you’ll get what you need.

Chris Jimmerson

In the past year, I have had the opportunity to work with Rev. Brock, Ed, in a variety of ways and on a nearly weekly basis. After spending all of this time with him, I can tell you one thing for certain – The Reverend Edward L. Brock is …not normative.

And that’s a good thing! When it comes to large systems, oftentimes, normative is great because what has become normal practice is the result of much experience, experimentation and research to determine what works best.

In an interim minister though, normative could mean average, when what we are hoping for is excellence. Excellence is what we got in Ed Brock!

So, let me count the ways that Ed has been “not normative”.

1. Despite his self-effacing and modest disposition, Ed has dared to tell us how his experience and training might inform the opportunities and challenges we have encountered – to help up us begin to implement the covenant, governance and mission groundwork we had laid in our first year of interim ministry – even when it meant challenging prior ways of doing things and ingrained ways of thinking.

And all without disagreement or controversy!

2. He has sent us some of the wisest and most detailed email messages I have ever seen. Many of them sounded just like one of his sermons; some of them were shorter.

3. His sermons have contained a terrific mix of humor, inspiration and topical wisdom that we needed to hear. Some of them were even better than his email messages.

4. Ed gave some great stewardship speeches that helped increase pledges at a time when the church really needed it. As they said in the small Texas town where I grew up, “he can talk a dog off a piece of meat.”

5. Ed did all of this while mentoring not one but two new Unitarian Universalist ministerial aspirants. I’m so grateful for the advice and opportunities he has given me, not to mention for all of the various recommendation forms and paperwork he has had to complete for me as I applied to seminary, scholarship funds, the Unitarian Universalist Association, etc. In fact, it got to be so much extra work for Ed at one point that I took to taking previous forms he had filled out, reformatting them to fit wherever I was applying this time and giving them to Ed to sign if he was OK with what I had done.

Oh, that reminds me – (to Ed) Ed could you … (back to congregation) excuse me … (take to Ed) Ed, could you just sign and date this here. Oh, and on the second page also.

(Back to congregation) Sorry.

Suddenly I’m realizing, I can’t possibly cover all of the extraordinary gifts Ed has brought to us in the last year, so let me just close by saying this: If helping a congregation to call an exceptional settled minister by guiding us through the work necessary to chart a future filled with magnificent promise with that new settled minister is what we hope is “normative” for a second year interim ministry in UU churches, then Ed has set the new gold standard with us.

Thank you Ed, for a wonderful year.

Brenden Sterne

Our new congregational President Chris Jimmerson asked me to say a few words about this past year and the work that the church has accomplished with the help of Ed Brock. I am tempted to say a few nice things about Ed, but afraid that all the nice things that can be said about Ed have already been said, by Ed.

In all seriousness…

Early on during my first year on the Board of Trustees, a dozen or so of us sat around the tables on a hot Saturday morning in one of the classrooms, and Nell Newton, our president at the time, asked us to check-in by taking turns sharing with the group, what is was that we were giving up to be at church that Saturday

I thought it was a great idea to recognize what we sacrificing that day to do the work of governance. And that it would help us get to know each other better. There were a variety of answers. If I remember correctly I felt most keenly that I was missing time with my family – my daughter’s soccer game that morning, and maybe swimming in the afternoon.

Whenever anyone in our community, devotes some of the their time, talents or treasure in serving the mission of our church, they are giving up something too. Just to be here this morning, each of you has given up something. Maybe it’s time you could spend on your house. Or time reading. Or maybe it’s just sleep. As the parent of toddler I know how precious, precious sleep is. So we’re all giving up a little something to be here.

Ed was joking around these past two weeks as he asked us if we members of the congregation wouldn’t mind recording a brief message of support, that he could bring back with him and share with his family.

And if you reflect on that request for a moment – the human side of Ed comes out. On father’s day I think it’s particularly appropriate that we recognize that behind the professional role of Minister that Ed lives so well, there is also the role of husband and father. As many of you know Ed has a wife and children 7 and 9, in Washington state, that he has been apart from this year.

And that’s why he asked us record those videos. Because as he wants his wife and children to know why is doing what he does, and that what he is doing is important.

This shows that Ed has had to make some big sacrifices to be here with us. And what it also shows is how much faith he must have in our religion, and this church, leaving his family for a big part of this year.

Now I can’t speak for the good Reverend Ed, but I’ve come to know him a little bit, and I think that I understand why he is doing what he does. Just like most volunteers at our church – he does it for the money.

You can’t do Interim Ministry without a deep belief that what we do here at church is important. I can’t recall where I first heard the words, but they’ve stuck with me, and that is: ‘We have a life-saving message’.

Let that one sink in here for a second. ‘We have a life-saving message’. The ‘we’ in that sentence can mean Unitarian Universalism. And it can mean the First UU Church of Austin. Whatever works for you.

I know Ed really believes that we have a life-saving message, and that we can make a real difference in our community and the world.

I want to thank Ed for all his wonderful contributions to our church this year. And I want to thank the congregation for all your hard work and trust that you have placed in the board.

When I’m at church I’m always delighted to see that there is a community of people who are willing to make sacrifices – small and large – towards a higher purpose. I hope that you are, and continue to be nourished, and that you find your life being transformed, as I find mine.

I look forward to my final year on the board as your board secretary. And I’m excited about the arrival of our new Minister Meg Barnhouse.

Susan Thomson

I have been reflecting a lot lately on the state of our church 2 years ago and now. I was not excited about the prospect of an interim minister, even though I had been in congregations, including this church, with interim ministers of whom I was very fond. And perhaps that was why I was not looking forward to more as I had quickly bonded with these interim ministers only to have them move on from my congregation in a short time. So I was eager to just get on with it and hurriedly organize a search for our next settled minister. And if I had been the Grand Poobah, or the Decider, to quote a former President from Texas, that is exactly what we would have done.

I came to believe, though, in the wisdom of not only having one interim minister for one year but a second interim for the following year. Our church has been so blessed by both our interim ministers, Janet Newman and Ed Brock, who each brought different gifts at just the right time for us.

I have been struck in looking back on the past two year about how much our church has grown by doing things the right way. To have a deliberate transition from one settled minister to the next, with time for re-examination about who we are as a congregation, resulting in a beautiful new mission, values and ends-that was the right way to do things. For time to identify what needed to change to make us a better, healthier congregation as we prepare for our next settled minister-that was the right way to do things.

Joe Sullivan, a consultant with Unity Consulting, observed at our board retreat last weekend that we not only commissioned the Bridge Builders report from Peter Steinke, contrary apparently to many churches, we actually read it and actually implemented the actions called for in the report. So we have done many things the right way these past 2 years.

But what I would like to speak to today is not only the part that Rev. Brock has played in helping us do things the right way, but the courage he has demonstrated in pointing us toward the right thing to do. And there is a difference. Doing the right thing is much riskier. It involves poking more sacred cows. It is often more challenging to determine the right thing to do than to look through a rulebook or a policy manual for answers on the right way to do things. It takes more courage.

Ed has worked tirelessly to help us determine the right thing to do. He has done so with our mission, our values and our ends as his compass. And as we wish Ed Godspeed with grateful hearts for his time with us and prepare to welcome Meg, we know that we now have the foundation upon which we as a congregation can work tirelessly to do the right thing at First UU, to allow our mission and our values and our ends to guide us to become the thriving congregation we want to become.

Greatest final remarks

June 12, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Ed Brock

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Greatest Final Remarks at Closure of Interim Ministry Ever Spoken

Rev. Ed Brock

June 12, 2011

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The greatest farewell speech in history

June 5, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Ed Brock

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Rev. Ed Brock

June 5, 2010

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Intergenerational Service and Flower Communion

May 29, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Ed Brock, Lena Breen

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Rev. Lena Breen and Rev. Ed Brock

May 29, 2011

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Liberty, Healing, Good News

May 29, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

May 22, 2011

Reading

UNICORN

I saw a unicorn coming at me on I-85. That’s what it looked like at first glance, anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a sensible person. I know there aren’t such things in the world, but there it was, this enormous gray ridged horn coming fast toward me southbound, and it was angled forward and up, as if pointing to the Blue Ridge Mountains and, after that, the sky. As it blew by me I saw that it was a church steeple on a flatbed truck, being shipped to its new church building.

The odd sight stuck with me. I started thinking about the church group that was getting that steeple. I wondered how much it cost, and I thought about all the things it symbolized. Most basically, the steeple symbolizes the church pointing to God. We all know that God is not literally “up there;” a lot of us Unitarian Universalists think of God as everywhere, and that’s just the beginning of all of our various thoughts on the nature of the One.

I asked myself what would be a better symbol of pointing to God. What direction(s) would it point? It might look like one of those Moravian stars with almost as many points as a chrysanthemum.

I wonder why people wanted to build one more church when there are already so many. Sometimes the reason is a growing population of people who need you, and no church of your kind is near them, so you build one. Sometimes the reason is a split in an existing church, and one unhappy, hurt, and angry group is making a new church where they can become the community they want to be. “All it takes,” someone once told me, “is a grievance and a coffee pot.”

I thought about how much hope it takes to build a church. “This time,” they might be thinking, “this time we will get it right. We will be good people and we will really point folks toward God and there won’t be politics or infighting or cliques and we won’t ever disappoint each other, and we won’t do things in a slap-dash manner, and this, finally, will be the church we have all been dreaming about. We won’t fight about silly things like carpet or moving the piano or the banners. We’ll be kind and respectful of one another, challenging one another lovingly, cleaning up our own hearts before we start trying to clean up other people’s hearts, and it will be like it’s supposed to be.”

I thought about how, from my perspective, a church like the one they may be hoping for is as mythic and elusive a creature as the unicorn. Churches cause lots of joy, but they also cause pain as they strive to improve people, as they strive to instruct people on the right and wrong ways of being a person in this world. Some say: “Don’t ever drink, but you may wear jewelry and makeup.” Some say: “Absolutely no vanity or fancy dress, but you may drink beer, as it’s one of God’s gifts.”

Some churches talk lots about hell and others don’t mention it, even though it’s there, undergirding everything. People try to be kind but often, when we feel passionately about something, it is hard to keep in mind that the other people are more important than correctness of behavior or purity of doctrine. A conviction that the loving God they worship will punish mistakes with eternal hellfire can make some people feel an urgency that comes across as meanness. Some churches are kind but ineffectual, and some are kind and powerful and they do lots of good and they function in marvelous ways.

Churches are like families. Present are the relatives who drive you nuts, the misunderstandings that hurt, and all the destructive behavior that families can have. At church you also get the warmth, growth, shared history, support and love you can find in a family. People act like people no matter where we are. We know we are supposed to be kind and loving and not jump down each other’s throats for not getting the right kind of free-trade coffee. We know we’re not supposed to fight bitterly about the best ways to work for peace. I heard a poem on the radio the other day, part of which was a prayer: “God make the bad people good and the good people nice.” Honey, we’re trying.

Sermon

HOW WE DO CHURCH

Last Sunday I talked a little bit about myself as a minister. I believe it’s good to get oriented at the beginning of an exploration by figuring out who you are, where you’ve been, and where you want to go. I told you about coming from a long family tradition of professional ministry, that I usually wear a teacher’s robe rather than a priestly robe, that I like leading in a collaborative way, thinking together with people about the joys and challenges of congregational life, and putting my energies, experience and training toward helping a congregation grow toward its vision of itself. I talked about me as a minister because that’s what I imagined you all would want to hear about, as I sat and thought about what I’d want to hear sitting in the pew, being curious. On the second Sunday I would want to hear about how the minister thinks about church. The kind of church we’re interested in is Unitarian Universalist church, so let me talk about that one in particular. Where did it come from?

To orient us in that way, I’m going to tell you about the Unitarians and the Universalists, that fascinating tradition of which this congregation is a part. I’m going to go through it very briefly, so trust that if there’s more you want to hear about, you might be able to hear about it more in upcoming years.

Our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors are the liberal Christians and heretics of the Reformation, which happened in the mid-1500’s in Europe. The Unitarians and the Universalists were both Christian denominations until the 1800’s. Unitarians proclaimed that Jesus was a great rabbi, but not God. God was to be worshipped and that was it. The Transcendentalists joined the movement, declaring (influenced by Buddhist and Hindu teachings) that God was in everything. So everything was to be worshipped, really.

Unitarians have been a mix of Christianity and Eastern religions for the past 170 years. The Humanist influence on the Unitarians began in the 30’s, as Biblical scholarship began to poke holes in claims of inerrancy (no mistakes, completely the word of God) of the scriptures. Imagining a world without religious wars, without faith-based limits put on scientific endeavor, without the anti-intellectualism of some religious conservatives, Humanism holds tremendous appeal to Unitarians. In 1961 the Unitarians merged with the Universalists, who were a Christian denomination, a Jesus-worshipping denomination, whose main message was that no one gets sent to Hell for eternity. That’s still good news around these parts, where for most people Hell is not metaphorical. The Universalist strengths of community, spiritual inclusiveness and love made a good balance for the Unitarian strengths of reason, rationality, individuality and democratic process. That’s where we came from, and I believe we are called to honor our ancestors and to stay in touch with where we came from.

In pews and chairs in UU congregations across this continent we have Christians, Jews, Pagans, Humanists, Buddhists, people who do Buddhist meditation along with practicing Christian ethics, people who honor their Jewish heritage but embrace the transcendentalist feeling for God in everything, spiritual humanists, humanists who are uncomfortable with the word “spiritual.” Astronomy professors sit next to Astrology teachers here because Unitarian Universalism has room for all of us. We worship God as we understand God, or we worship the Spirit of Life, the Spirit of Love, or we worship that amazing connection that can happen between and among humans who are focused on the same task, or who are singing together trying to be one voice, or we worship the transformation of life and the nourishment of souls that can happen when people of good will and lively mind come together and call themselves a church, even if they don’t agree on some things.

Our common ground is vast. We want transformation. We are hungry souls who want to be fed, and we see hungry souls around us and we want to create a place where they can be fed. We see a world staggering under the weight of unjust systems and we want to make that right. We want to see justice roll down like waters and like a mighty stream, and we are caught up in the glory of hoping we can be part of making that happen.

We want to be the church where gifts are given: courage, attention, affection, challenge surprise, experience strength and hope to one another. That is who we are now. We are the people who tell their children the stories of Jacob and Rebecca, Abraham and Isaac, Rachel and Deborah. We also help their children paint the face of Krishna a beautiful blue and talk about him playing the flute and partying with the cow girls.

We come to church because we are stronger together. One of you could teach your children that reason is a treasure, and that you should not believe something that injures your spirit, but with all of us teaching the children that, our light shines farther.

One of you could proclaim that it was wrong to believe in a god who did not believe in you. You would get some strange looks, but here we are enough to make that proclamation into a message folks can listen to.

We come to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We join together because many minds are often more wise and creative than one can be.

This congregations have the power to change people for the better, to send them out into the world with good news and a healing hand.

For that, we sit on committees. We clean and teach and write checks and we deal with people who are never pleased, people who voice only complaints and never satisfactions. For that we wrestle with one another over what programs are basic and which ones can be cut, we talk about money because it takes money to make it all happen.

We come together to be a part of things, to make the world a better place. To keep our kids strong against hellfire and despair, we do the small work of washing dishes and working the phones. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like lighting up the world. Sometimes it does.

Somewhere between the loftiest work and the lowliest work is the beloved community. Where we hold one another in love as we go through the chances and changes of life. We visit the sick, we light a candle. We are the hands and we are the hearts, and we work here to nourish souls, transfor lives and do justice. And the question is: What would it take to heal every one?

Where I come from is like this

May 15, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

May 15, 2011

Well, here we are!

I’m so aware of the beginning held in this moment. I’m curious about you and you’re curious about me. When I imagined myself sitting where you are, when I thought about what I would want to know if I were you, I decided to talk a little bit about being a minister and what that means to me.

First let me talk about this robe. It’s called a Geneva gown, and it’s a hardworking symbol. It’s a teacher’s black gown, not a priest’s garb. A priest can speak for God; a priest is presumed to have some special connection to the Divine, even to be able to do miraculous things. I don’t think anybody can speak for God. I do think I can sometimes do miraculous things. I think you do to. Dancing, feeding people, doing art, making music, speaking lovingly, listening deeply, those are often miraculous activities we can all do.

I think of myself as a teacher, then, in a teacher’s robe. I’ve gone to school for this, I’ve studied and stacked up years of experience and poured myself into the life of a student of church life, of people, of theology, of how to lead a congregation, how to speak of things that are hard to speak of. The robe is like the one my mother’s uncles wore in their pulpits in the Carolinas and Tennessee, and this robe reminds me that I am standing in the broad stream of history and family tradition. They preached the best way they knew how, just as I do. My mother’s grandfather, James Hearst Pressly, was the minister of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in Statesville, North Carolina for 54 years. He rode his horse to church from the home he shared with his thirteen children, his wife Mabel and one very mean rooster. Dinner time was somewhat chaotic, as they ate the food people had dropped off from their gardens or cellars, with guests who sometimes wandered in off the streets, people of various colors and socio-economic backgrounds who were always welcome without question. Everyone had to say a Bible verse before eating. That may have kept some of the riff-raff away. One evening the second-to-youngest boy Walter, who was called “Sad-Eye,” or “Sad,” for short, was being punished. He had to eat in a corner by himself. The children all said their verses. “Jesus wept,” said the youngest, David, for the fourth time that week. Sad, in the corner, piped up, saying “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” Two of those children became ministers like their daddy. The rest of the boys became doctors, no doubt having gained experience binding up the wounds inflicted by that mean rooster, who would hide and jump out at the kids and slash at their legs. My great-grandfather retired from preaching in this way: the Sunday after he turned eighty, he preached the sermon, then said “I do not think a man should preach when he is eighty. Today I’m retiring. Brother Matthews, would you have the prayer?” The surprised brother Matthews stood and asked everyone to bow their heads. While he was stumbling through the prayer, my great-grandfather walked down the aisle and went home. Me? I like parties, so that would not be the way I would do it.

The robe is like the one my father and his father didn’t wear when they preached. My grandfather Barnhouse was a famous evangelist on the radio in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. His sermons are still on the radio in some places in the country. He spoke around the world. People named their children after him, they bought his books and still do. He preached in striped trousers and a cutaway coat with tails. My father doesn’t like wearing a robe when he preaches because he worries that people will think he’s wearing it to be superior in some religious way. “I don’t want them to think that I think I’m better than they are because of some stupid robe,” he says. I say, “yeah, you want them to think you’re better than they are because you’re just better.” “Yeah.” It’s a joke. I wear the robe to signify that I went to school to learn this work. I wear it to remind myself of my link to the preachers in my mother’s family, who were journeymen preachers, and to the preachers in my father’s family, who struggled with being rock star preachers, who chafed under the idea that they were part of a larger denomination which laid demands upon them in terms of credentialing, ethics, behavior and connection. I will be part of this congregation and what it’s trying to do and be in the world. Part of something larger than myself. I always want to remind myself and my congregation of that.

“Preaching,” Mark Twain is said to have said, “is the ecstasy of presumption.” It is kind of an odd job. You’re paid to think about things, then to talk about the things you think about. In a UU congregation you are talking and thinking with people who are usually very good at both talking and thinking. You reflect on your life and the life of your congregation, you connect the congregation to the life of the community. You are called to be intellectually as well as emotionally intelligent and put both forward in perfect balance in your weekly sermons. Oh, and also in your daily life. You are called to help the people run their congregation by continuing to hold up the vision they are funding with their energy, good will, their minds and their means. You are friendly with everyone, even though you can’t be anyone’s special friend, because as soon as the minister is their special friend, they no longer really have a minister. Your job involves a lot of social interaction. I have people say “Come on, this is a party, you’re not our minister here!” Wherever church people are, I’m the minister. It’s just my luck that parties count as work! I love interruptions and stories and getting to know folks. I crave meaningful discussions and intense interactions and peaceful hanging out. I like filling a role that is larger than I am. Let me close by reading another of my stories, “Brick by Brick”