Kermit T. Frog’s famous ballad, “The Rainbow Connection,” has had a profound impact on my life, my theology, and my call to ministry. As I age, I have begun to recognize that Jim Henson’s words and characters have helped form so many of us in similar ways. This sermon will celebrate the wisdom of this unexpectedly prophetic man, who together with his puppets, continues to help change the world more than 20 years after his death.
Text of this sermon is not yet available. Click the play button to listen.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
One of the spiritual practices I enjoy is the practice of gratitude. I don’t always remember to do it, but it’s easy and, in my experience, it changes things immediately.
This is what I wrote when I was at the beginning of this practice. “Thank you, I’m Going Downhill” from Waking Up the Karma Fairy
I have told you all that I have found a spiritual practice that works for me — when I remember to do it. It is simple, you don’t need equipment, it’s easy to learn, and I feel its effects right away. If I were really clever, I would string this out, singing the praises of this practice, and make you feel lots of suspense before I told you what it was, but it’s Thanksgiving this week, so you can guess I’m going to talk about gratitude.
To start: why have a spiritual practice? To become a deeper and richer person, to handle life’s twists and spins better, to be better to live with and work with, to have a happier life. Some people want to know “what do you mean by ‘spiritual?'” The answer I’m working with these past few years comes from the Christian scriptures, where the fruits of the Spirit are listed in the Christian Scriptures as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. If those are increasing, deepening, my spirit is thriving. If I can’t find my peace or my kindness, something is off kilter and I need to pay it some attention. You are, of course, welcome to figure out your own definition, or you are welcome to use mine for a while to see how it works for you.
A practice of gratitude starts with habits of attention. Habits of attention shape your experience of your life. What you pay attention to fills your life. Gratitude begins with a habit of noticing the good things in your life and being grateful for them. You might say “thank you, Spirit of Life, Higher Power, God, or Spirit, or Force, or Universe, Ground of Being or Soul Of All Things. Meister Eckhart says if you only ever said “thank you” as a prayer, it would be a good prayer life.
Cicero, born about a century before Rabbi Jesus, wrote : “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others,” he said. By the 18th century, the free-market thinker Adam Smith, in his “Theory of Moral Sentiments,” supposed that people who did not feel gratitude were only cheating themselves out of happiness in life. And in the 19th century, Immanuel Kant described ingratitude with “the essence of vileness.”
The poet Rumi said “Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.”
I’m still in the stage where I am just grateful for the good things. Just in all of life’s joys? In its blessings? Those who are farther along than I am in this practice say not. They say have a heart of gratitude in the midst of everything. Well, surely not everything. We all know Anne Frank’s diary, but there were others recovered after the Holocaust. I want to introduce to you Etty Hillesum, a Jewish woman who lived in Amsterdam. Etty Hillesum wrote in her diary: “Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on earth, my eyes raised towards heaven, tears run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude.” The camp she speaks of is a Nazi death camp.
Her entry for July 3, 1942, reads:
“I must admit a new insight in my life and find a place for it: what is at stake is our impending destruction and annihilation…. They are out to destroy us completely, we must accept that and go on from there…. Very well then … I accept it…. I work and continue to live with the same conviction and I find life meaningful…. 1 wish I could live for a long time so that one day I may know how to explain it, and if I am not granted that wish, well, then somebody else will perhaps do it, carry on from where my life has been cut short.” In the midst of suffering and injustice, she believed, the effort to preserve in one’s heart a spirit of love and forgiveness was the greatest task that any person could perform.
On September 7, 1943, Hillesum and her family were placed on a transport train to Poland. From a window of the train she tossed out a card that read, “We have left the camp singing.” She died in Auschwitz on November 30. She was twenty-nine.
[From Robert Ellsberg’s book All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses From Our Time.
See Also: An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943 (New York: Pantheon, 1983). ]
I don’t know if I could be like that in a concentration camp. You never know about that kind of situation until you’re there. When I think about her, I have the feeling that it is misguided to try to be grateful and open in the midst of a situation like that. But then I think “how could it make things worse? Why not be present and open? Wouldn’t that stance make any situation better?” When I lived in Israel, the people had a well grounded sense of gratitude, a grounded appreciation for life, which could be taken away at any moment. The bus blows up. The army shells the men, women and children in Gaza mercilessly in retaliation. There is pain all around. Is this the reality of things, and all joys are temporary, or is war and affliction temporary and joy and love are what outlast everything? The religions of the world ask us to trust that this is the case, and that the molten flow of love is at the heart of it all, and that we can feel it if we decide to do so. Maybe this is what Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, in the mid-1800s, meant when he said “The arc of the universe bends toward justice.” Is everything going to come closer to justice? Can we trust the universe? Is everything going to be okay in some way? Are we part of that? I think we can be. Gratitude seems easier if you are willing to believe that love is the most real, the most lasting thing. Believing that just means choosing to act as if it is true. To see what happens.
All will be well
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
Wynton Marsalis writes: “To improvise means to find your own way of intelligently using what you have in order to improve your environment; to swing means to maintain equilibrium with elegance, to be resilient; and to play the blues means that no matter how tragic a situation may be you have the capacity to conquer it with style.” UU theology and practice is very much like jazz.
Text of this sermon is not yet available. Click the play button to listen.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
Albert Einstein was one of the great thinkers of the 20th century and knew a lot but said “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Our Unitarian Universalist religious tradition places great emphasis on the use of reason to interpret our experience to derive meaning in life. But the solutions to some of the most difficult intractable problems in our lives seem to lie beyond our experience and reason. This worship service will explore what possibilities could be open to us if we make imagination a bigger part of our religious life.
Rev. Brian Ferguson is currently serving in his third year as the Consulting Minister to the San Marcos Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Prior to serving at San Marcos, Brian completed a year of chaplaincy training at Seton Family of Hospitals in Austin, specializing in the areas of Intensive Care, Trauma, and Mental Health. He was honored to serve as the ministerial intern here, at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin, in 2008 and also the Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church in Cedar Park. Brian earned a Masters of Divinity degree from Starr King School for the Ministry, the Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley, California. His ministry is driven by the desire to explore and improve the human condition in an interdisciplinary and holistic way.
He is a native of Scotland but has lived in California since 1986 prior to moving to Austin in August, 2008. In his previous life, before attending seminary, he earned an applied physics degree from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, and worked for 24 years as an electronic design engineer and project manager. Brian is joined on life’s journey by his partner and our office manager, Natalie Freeburg, and nine year old daughter, Isla Ferguson.
Text of this sermon is not yet available. Click the play button to listen.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
The Day of the Dead (El Dia de los Muertos) is a Mexican holiday that celebrates the lives and personalities of our loved ones who have died. In this inter-generational worship service we celebrate and remember loved ones (pets included) who have died. A congregational ofrenda (altar) honors their memory. We briefly share the name of the deceased and our relationship to them. We bring items to place on our ofrenda, such as a favorite food, drink, photograph or another item that represents who they were and what they loved in life.
Text of this sermon is not yet available. Click the play button to listen.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
Using a story from an ancient Hindu text, we’ll talk about how a faithful bitterness toward a person, a place or a religious tradition can keep you as connected as you would be if you loved that person, place or tradition.
Text of this sermon is not yet available. Click the play button to listen.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
Another part of our Covenant of Healthy Relations says that we promise “to make our church a safe place to express our deepest fears and our greatest joys.” What makes a place safe? How do you know abuse if you see it? What are its patterns and methods? How do you stop it?
Sermon: A Safe Place
The organization that is featured this morning that receives support from First UU is Front Steps. There are a lot of reasons why people end up on the street. For families who are homeless, it’s often the economy. For people who are on the streets by themselves, the reasons often include mental illness and substance abuse. Around two thirds of the adults on the street are there because of mental illness or substance abuse or some combination of those. Other reasons are domestic violence or being a gay teenager. The issues are tangled together. Some mental illness is triggered by substance abuse. Some is triggered by having been abused or neglected as a child. Some substance abuse is itself triggered by childhood abuse or neglect. Not everyone who was abused or neglected as a child struggles with mental illness or substance abuse, and not everyone who struggles with mental illness or substance abuse was abused or neglected as a child. I’m saying that in studies of homelessness, there is a significant overlap.
About 40 percent of the young people on the street are lesbian or gay. Other young people are on the street because they are abused physically or sexually at home. Some of that abuse is because the parents are substance abusers. This month is domestic violence awareness month, and we have just had national coming out day. It feels like a good time to touch on this tangle of issues, so we will not be ignorant of these things. And maybe we can figure out what to do about some of the roots of the problem.
One of the ways we help is by supporting the shelters for homeless people, for abused women and children. Another is to know about abuse so we can recognize it in our own lives and in the lives of our friends and family. I learned a lot about abuse when I helped start the shelter for battered women in Spartanburg. We didn’t do it exactly right. I realized that as I drove fast down the road with a woman in the passenger seat and her angry husband in the family station wagon with a rifle just a few cars behind us. We had asked the police to help, but they had said no. Now, of course, they work hand in hand with the shelter, but not at the beginning. But that is another sermon. We had a lot to learn really fast.
There is nothing simple about abuse. Most of it comes from people you love, people upon whom you depend for your life. Imagine for a moment that at some given moment this afternoon, the person you love most in the world attacks and hurts you. You have to leave. Where do you go? What do you take with you? What do you live on? They apologize and say it will never happen again, that they would rather lose their right arm than do that to you again. You forgive them, and everything is great. What a relief. Then the tension starts to build. You can feel it coming. It happens again.
If you are a kid, or if you were abused as a kid, your first thought is that you did something to deserve it. You ask yourself what you could do to be good enough so that it doesn’t happen again. If you were abused as a young child, it becomes more complicated in that your very wiring is affected so that your adrenaline pumps into your bloodstream at a lower threshold than people with less violent childhood experiences. It becomes even more complicated in that, for some who experience violence, the chaos and danger begin to feel familiar, sometimes more real than when things are peaceful.
Physical violence does not have to be in the picture for emotional or verbal abuse or neglect to be present. Emotional abuse most commonly consists of constant put-downs, belittling, explosions of rage, long days of silence, isolating you from friends and family, preventing you from doing what you want to do, either with intimidation or emotional blackmail. Emotional blackmail goes like this: “if you don’t do as I say, you don’t love me, or I will rage, there will be high drama, or I will hurt myself, or I will hurt things you love.
If you live with that, you might begin to feel that you are not good for anything, that you are just a burden, that you are unwanted wherever you are. It can make you feel ashamed inside, like there is something wrong with you.
Why am I talking about this here at church? Because I’m doing a sermon series on the covenant of healthy relations, which is our agreement on how we want to interact with one another, how we want to disagree, how we want to get things talked about, how we want to conduct ourselves. The section we’re looking at this morning says we want “to make our church a safe place to express our deepest fears and our greatest joys.”
The first sermon was about the word “covenant,” and all it implies. The second one, last Sunday, was about generously supporting the church with our time, treasure and talent.
We do a lot of things as a congregation, but if all we did was create a safe place for people to express their deepest fears and greatest joys, that would almost be enough. It would make one more safe public place in a world where there aren’t very many.
In order to be a safe place, it has to be somewhere a person won’t be attacked physically or verbally. A safe place should be free of outbursts of rage, it should be free of physical fear. Your sexual boundaries should be respected.
It should be a place where you can have your view and speak about it, even when others have a different view, a place where you will be listened to with respect, where when people disagree with one another they disagree with passion and with respect. Safety does not mean everyone agrees and everyone is sweet. During a discussion in another church far from here, a woman raised her hand and said “I’m not feeling heard.” The facilitator said, gently, “The gentleman who just spoke seemed to hear and understand your point very well. Could it be that you simply aren’t being agreed with?” In fact, when you disagree deeply with someone, it takes a lot of respect to engage with them and talk about your disagreement. When there is no respect, you don’t even have the will to engage, because it’s useless, so you are nice. And silent.
In churches that have felt unsafe, members have had very different experiences of the atmosphere and the events. In families where there is abuse, often it is directed at just one kid, not all of them, so the people in the family have very different experiences of life in that family. They tend to blame the person at whom the rage was directed. If those to whom it is not directed see it happening, they feel confused about what to do. If they can’t figure out how to make it stop, they may feel powerless or ashamed that they couldn’t make it stop. They blame themselves.
What is needed in order to live into a feeling of safety? Gentle interactions, acknowledgement of people’s right to their views and their feelings. Dependability, good structure, transparency, fun, allowance for disagreement, especially good strong disagreements where you learn that disagreement is not attack. The assumption of good intentions, where you hold on to the knowledge that people feel they are making the best decisions for the group, even though you feel they are absolutely wrong.
We make a safe place here not only so that we have a place to spread out wings and grow. We spread our wings so that we can help homeless people. We spread our wings so we can figure out how to reach out to gay teens to let them know they’re not going to hell, to let their parents know they don’t have to kick them out of the house. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but we’ve made a good start.
Stewardship Moment
Marisol Caballero
Last time I was in this pulpit I spoke to you all about coming home to UUism and being vocal enough to help others do the same thing. Many of you have heard me speak several times about my joy in joining the staff here as Interim Director of Lifespan Religious Education, especially in light of the fact that I started my ministerial journey here many, many years ago. It was the people within this church who helped me to discover my call to ministry and encouraged me to pursue this path. So, when Meg called me up over the summer and asked if I could come in and help you all with Religious Education for a bit, I was thrilled at the chance to come home and even more thrilled to be asked to stay a bit longer, as I have!
After completing my undergraduate degree at St. Edward’s, I headed to New York to attend Union Theological Seminary, all the while intending to someday return to Austin and do ministry in some form or another. I wasn’t sure of the particulars, only about Austin. I knew that I wanted to live and work in the place and community I had loved and that had nurtured my call. I moved right back here after I graduated seminary and worked with kids in a day care and as a substitute schoolteacher while I took some time to figure out next steps. While doing so, I surprised myself by gaining admission to a prestigious 12-month chaplaincy residency at the Medical Center of the University of California, San Francisco. From there, I was invited to apply and was later accepted to become the shared Ministerial Intern of Throop and Neighborhood UU Churches in Pasadena, CA.
These experiences were invaluable, yet all the while; I pined for Austin, Texas. I wanted to journey with and serve UU’s who understood better that as a Chicana and a Tejana, I have no confusion about whether I’m Mexican or American or Unitarian Universalist or Lesbian. In Texas and in this church, we create room for everyone to be their whole selves and we work together to celebrate those differences! Many UU’s I met in other states often didn’t understand my love for this place and its people and wondered why liberal religious folk would ever stick around such a place. I longed to journey with and to serve those Austin UU’s who look injustice and the face and say, “we will stand on the side oflove (not move aside) and see love prevail!”
I came back as fast as I could. And yes, I am overjoyed to be back home with you all. But, the journey here was a long one wrought with many hardships along the way. Preparation for UU ministry is a very involved and very expensive endeavor, especially when your family is not able to contribute anything. I worked and borrowed my way through both of my degrees only to find my household a fast statistic of the Great Recession, as they are now calling it. When we must operate from a place of scarcity for so long, it becomes so difficult to imagine abundance. So many of us, including this church, are standing in that same place- having operated through a narrative of scarcity, we must re-teach ourselves to recognize our multitude of blessings and begin to embody the wildest imaginings of our highest potential. This year, I am personally digging myself out of a hole; playing “catch-up” with my personal finances and grateful for the privilege to do so. I am not yet able to give to this church as much as I would like to. But, I’ll be as generous as I am able and I urge you all to do the same in your pledges. Let’s imagine, together, and then become the wildest imaginings of our highest potential. It is, after all our mission. Thank you.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
The Springsteen song ends “Well this train carries saints and sinners… losers and winners….” Can First UU be that kind of train? What would it look like for our faith to be rewarded? What does it take for the bells of freedom to ring?
Crazy, but that’s how it goes
Millions of people living as foes
Maybe it’s not too late
To learn how to love
And forget how to hate
THIS TRAIN
The theme of the stewardship campaign this fall is “All Aboard for the Long Haul!” Pledge 1-2-3! There are pictures of trains here and there, and we’re singing train songs. My sermon text for this morning said “This train carries saints and sinners, this train carries losers and winners. This train carries hussies and gamblers, this train carries lost souls. This train, dreams will not be thwarted, this train, faith will be rewarded. This train, hear the steel rails singing, this train, bells of freedom ringing! Meet me in the land of hope and dreams.”
I love that image of us all going somewhere together, getting on a different stations, hanging out the windows to greet the people we pass, handing food to them, trading snippets of conversation.
Is that something you feel like being part of?
One of the ways we do it is by supporting the mission of this church with our time, our talents and our money. We ask that you be generous within your means, and that is usually difficult. It’s necessary if we want to build the foundation under our dream of the future. This year, we are asking you to consider making a 1-2-3 pledge, a three year commitment. Why? Because it is good for us to feel one another on board. It would feel wonderful to stand up here and announce that over half of the congregation had made the vote for a long term, stable foundation for this church, that they were in it for the duration, that they were betting on the future, betting on this train and where it’s going. I am making a three-year pledge that increases each year. I’m going to try the adventure of giving a little more than is comfortable for me, of trying the spiritual discipline of letting money flow out to support something I believe in passionately.
The stewardship season is also the time when the leadership of the congregation gets input from the members, so when you pledge you are asked a few questions about what you think a really hospitable congregation would look like, what you think a congregation that was fulfilling its mission would look like, how we could be a significant presence in Austin. I am so looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feelings about First UU.
This is an important train. The reason we’re going is expressed by our mission: “We gather in community to nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice.” The direction we’re going is expressed in the ends, or the goals set by the board, which can change depending on input from the congregation. We’ll talk about where the train is going, but first I’d like to remind you where these tracks originate.
Our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors are the monotheists from Abraham on, the heretics of the fourth century, the liberal Christians and heretics of the Reformation, during the 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 (it contains no mistakes, and it is 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 till real good news around these parts! The Universalist strengths of community, spiritual inclusiveness and love made a good balance for the Unitarian strengths of reason, rationality, individuality and democratic process. Is that something you feel like being part of?
Work for social justice has always been a part of what we do. Susan B Anthony and Clarence Darrow were Unitarians. Clara Barton, who founded the American Red Cross, was a Universalist. e.e. cummings, PT Barnum, Dorothea Dix, Roger Baldwin, who founded the ACLU, Christopher Reeve. Working to make things better through working in politics has always been part of what we do. People we claim as Unitarians either because of church membership or their writings were Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, John C Calhoun (not all of them had good politics), Millard Filmore.
We are scientists and artists: Linus Pauling, Ray Bradbury, Tim Berners-Lee, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Fannie Farmer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Horatio Alger, Charles Darwin, Bela Bartok, Florence Nightingale, Frank Llloyd Wright, Beatrix Potter and Melissa Harris-Perry… now I’m just mixing categories, because who stays with their own category of people on a train like this?
Is the something you would like to be part of?
Dale’s question: I have been asking people this week why they go to church. To belong, to have a chosen family, to build a community, to have people to talk to, to have a chance to do work that makes a difference, to be somewhere you can hear your name called with affection, to have people who will ask you good questions, to think about things together, to grow into a better person in the world, to give gifts of courage, attention, affection, challenge surprise, experience strength and hope to one another. We are building community. That doesn’t mean we do it perfectly all the time.
We have worthy opponents: world views we see as destructive or fear-based, the apathy and exhaustion that marks many lives, our consumer culture that tells us to work more to buy more things, and life itself with its struggle and suffering.
Where is this train going? We are guided by our mission and by the ends/goals the board created from conversations with you.
Transcendence – To connect with wonder and awe of the unity of life
Community – To connect with joy, sorrow, and service with those whose lives we touch
Compassion – To treat ourselves and others with love
Courage – To live lives of honesty, vulnerability, and beauty
Transformation – To pursue the growth that changes our lives and heals our world
Our Mission
At First UU Church of Austin, we gather in community to
nourish souls
transform lives
and do justice.
Ends
First UU Church of Austin is an intentionally hospitable community where:
All people are treated with respect and dignity
All people of goodwill are welcomed
People are supported in times of joy and need
People find connection with one another in fellowship
We are fully engaged and generous with time, treasure and talent
We invite people of goodwill to find a spiritual home with us
We engage as UUs in public life
First UU Church of Austin nourishes souls and transforms lives by:
Engaging and supporting members in spiritual practice and growth
Providing worship, programs and activities that awaken meaning and transcendence
Ensuring that members have a caring, supportive and safe place to rekindle the spirit
First UU Church of Austin witnesses to justice in our personal lives and beyond, by:
Practicing liberal religious values in the public arena
Empowering all people to access the richness of life
Providing leadership to the greater UUA community to expand the reach of our movement
Partnering with the interfaith community to live our shared values
Having listened to the church for a year now, and in studying the goals by which we steer into the future, I have a sense of where we would like to be:
Could we be a congregation with a reputation for generosity, a church that gives away 5-10 percent of its budget to efforts for justice? This includes giving away the (non-pledge) collection plate every week.
Could we be a congregation where the youth and adults have many experiences of hands-on justice work, from demonstrating on the steps of the Capitol to going on service trips?
Could we be a congregation whose strength in the arts is well-known in Central Texas, and where we weave art into worship, into justice work, into intergenerational projects and outreach projects?
Could we be a congregation whose people give and receive skilled pastoral care, where we teach one another, where we pass on our faith and our traditions from generation to generation?
Could we be a congregation with enough space to welcome all who need us, and that space reflects our pride and our joy in the gifts our church brings to our lives and the lives of others?
Could a church so skillfully and effectively run, where our staff and financial practices reflect our values, that other churches look to us as a model?
Could we be a congregation where people experience transcendence and deep connection, whether in worship, in chalice circle conversations, in justice work, in doing art, in teaching or fellowship?
Does this sound like something you would like to be part of? Let’s do it!
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
We pride ourselves in being open and affirming toward all, yet it seems many people still do not know of our existence. Why are UUs so shy about talking about where we attend church? This sermon challenges us to be more willing to share our faith.
Text of this sermon is not yet available. Click the play button to listen.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
Years ago, Berkeley professor Robert Bellah wrote about the beliefs at the center of U.S. culture. These stories and symbols are a mixture of Puritanism, positive thinking, “the American Dream,” and capitalism. With the upcoming election, we can see all of this is high dudgeon.
The Presidential election is coming up fast, and one of the big kerfuffels during the conventions was that the Democrats took God language out of their platform and then put it back in. Why would you have to say something about God in your political platform? Why does every speech have to end with “God bless you and God bless America?” It’s because there is an American religion that has little to do with any church in particular. It has strong beliefs that you will hear described over and over. It requires that they be spoken of in broad sweeping language that sounds vaguely Biblical, but is not really Biblical. In fact, some of the tenets of this American religion are almost opposite to Biblical teachings.
UC Berkeley Sociologist Robert Bellah wrote an article back in the sixties, nearly fifty years ago, that gave language to something many people noticed but hadn’t studied. He called it “American Civil Religion,” and it described a system of beliefs, looking and acting like a religion, underlying the American cultural intersection of religion, culture, identity and politics. Those descriptions were rooted in Rousseau and deToqueville, but Bellah laid it out in a way that helped people see more clearly what has been happening in this country. American Civil Religion is made up of collectively believed stories that are deeply and sentimentally held that shape our identity as a culture. These myths orient us in the world and give us an understanding of ourselves in the history of the world. In election years they provide images for political rhetoric and they guide a majority of voters in choosing candidates. When you say something that contradicts these myths, you know you have breached some kind of deep societal taboo. You are met with hurt and outrage.
There is no church or institution involved in civil religion. It’s in the air we breathe. Some Protestant churches feed it by having the American flag in their sanctuaries, by praying for the government in their communal prayers, by teaching their folks that the elected officials are there because God put them in office. The culture feeds it with rituals and celebrations around the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Veterans Day and Inaugurals. These are the holy days of the American religion.
What is expected of us as Americans? Honesty, sacrifice, hard work, and loyalty to the tenets of the American Way. The chief of these tenets is that anyone can make it in the USA with a little luck and a lot of hard work. We are a God-fearing people, like the Founders of this nation. We are champions of religions liberty, a nation that God has mandated to carry out a special mission in the world. We have a classless society. Capitalism is God’s favorite economic plan. Anyone can strike it rich. Our way of life is the best. America is God’s chosen and blessed nation. Please look at the picture on the front of your bulletin. Imagine Jesus holding any other flag, the flag of India or Mexico, Sweden or Nepal. Intellectually, I think most Christian people would say Jesus loves all the little children, not just the Christian ones. But in American Civil Religion, the USA is the favorite, and Christianity is tolerated as long as it doesn’t contradict the American Way. Another such tenet is that we have a God-given responsibility in the world because we’ve been blessed. There is no reason for Anti-American sentiment except jealousy of how blessed we are. The President’s authority is from God. There can be no morality without religion – moral principles are based on scripture.
Another largely unspoken tenet of American Civil religion is from the Puritans. Wealth and power are seen as a sign of God’s blessing, so the wealthy are not just lucky in business or birth, not just hard-working or smart, but blessed by God – favored. The corollary, which is completely opposite to the Christianity of Rabbi Jesus, is that the poor are somehow un-blessed and un-favored. America’s wealth and power are the divinely given resources for carrying out this important task. It will be interesting to see how this view shifts as it sinks in to the collective consciousness that the vast oil resources are sitting underneath Muslim countries. Are they the blessed ones now? Do they now have a mandate to win the world for their way of life?
One reason why the Occupy Movement is irritating to people, eating at us with the 1% language, is that it is contradicting the American Way by forcing people to see that a large number of people aren’t making it. Corporations are being subsidized and banks are being bailed out, and whether that should happen or shouldn’t, people are feeling resentful. Anyone should be able to make it here, and when the curtain is pulled back for a moment, it causes dismay and unrest. When a candidate is out of touch with those average people and our average lives, they lose points. Harking back to a safer candidate to talk about, remember when we were told that George HW Bush had no idea how to be in a grocery store? He appeared to be amazed by the scanners at the cash registers. That story has turned out not to be true, but it made him lose points, because we want our leaders to be regular people. Of course, we also don’t.
Civil religion will be preached in every speech this year. Some will describe the view of justice which is based more on the principles of English Puritanism than the Bible. “If you don’t work, you don’t eat,” “God helps those who help themselves.” That’s Ben Franklin, not the Bible, but most Americans don’t know it. You may hear some justice talk, and some peace talk. Studies show that most Americans say they want a just society, and 90 percent of us say we wish there were fewer hungry people in the world. Religious tolerance is always a waffle-y area, though. It’s not a Biblical or a Christian value, you know. It was a value upon which this nation was founded.
Most of them will stick to saying that our way is the best way, that other people would be better off if they did things our way, that our system works best. No one could be elected who pointed out the wrongs we have done in the world, that Denmark rates highest in citizen happiness, that the French have internet that is way faster than ours, that German phones have 300 hours of battery life (at least that’s what a German guy told me) They won’t make it if they say that some people can’t make it in America no matter how hard they work, that some people just need help and can’t contribute, like the 2/3 of welfare recipients who are children, that freedom of religion in the US should also include the option of freedom from religion, and that teen pregnancy rates are low in countries where sex education is comprehensive in the schools. Those truths would be death to a candidate because they violate the tenets of American civil religion.
I’m talking to you about this topic because Unitarian Universalism values clarity and consciousness. We have a deeply rooted faith in the democratic process, and knowing what’s going on, in my opinion, makes our engagement with that process more fruitful. Let’s be on the lookout for American civil religion this year, in all its forms, as American values and the American self-understanding meets the political process. God bless us all, and God bless the USA.
Text of this sermon is not yet available. Click the play button to listen.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
In this first in a series of sermons on the First UU Convenant of Healthy Relations, Rev. Barnhouse talks about being a “covenant community,” and how to nuture one another’s spiritual growth.
Sermon:
I’m going to talk to you today about the covenant of healthy relations that you all put together and voted on a couple of years ago. There is a Healthy Relations Team this year that is going to be asking you what you think of what’s included, whether it’s something you feel is reasonable, or whether it’s just too hard, whether it could be something we could take home with us and try on as a spiritual discipline. First, though, there is that word “covenant.” I want to talk a little about what covenant is all about. Unitarian Universalism is a denomination with deep historical roots, and we are going back to the 1600’s today as we explore the concept of covenant. We could go all the way back to Abraham and the covenant or promises God made to him and his family, but I think going back almost 500 years is enough for today. You may know that UUs, along with Quakers, do not have a creed. A creed is a series of statements of belief that the people recite together to affirm their faith. We do not have a statement of belief. We, instead, rely on covenant to be the center that holds us together. “Covenant” is a word that means something we promise, something we agree to do, rather than believe.
In the 1630’s, around 20,000 English Puritans had immigrated to New England. In 1637-38, a group of them began meeting in order to create a different kind of church. They did not want a hierarchy of bishops telling members what to do, as was the Anglican arrangement. They wanted a freer church, where the members could vote on the minister they got, and have a say in the way things were done. As they met in one another’s homes on Thursday evenings, they would talk about a topic chosen at the previous meeting. The host would speak first, and then everyone else could speak by turns. They wrote down how they wanted to speak within the group. Each one could, as they chose, speak to the question, or raise a closely related question and speak to that, or state any objections or doubts concerning what any others had said, “so it were humbly & with a teachable hart not with any mind of cavilling or contradicting.” The record reports that all their “reasonings” were “very peaceable, loving, & tender, much to edification.”
We are standing in the same tradition, almost 500 years later, holding as our ideal those same “peacable reasonings.”
(The quotations and history are from Alice Blair Wesley’s 6 part 2001 Minns Lectures. )
One question for the group in 1637 was: if we can meet like this, just as neighbors, just to talk, isn’t this enough? Maybe we don’t need a church. Their answer: This is not structured enough. The less structure you have, the more it can be easily taken over by noisy and dominant personalities, and then it’s not fair for everyone. If we really want to walk in the ways of the spirit of love, then we must intentionally form a much deeper community where the spirit of love is what guides us and demands our strongest loyalties. In addition to this, we need to speak out for and support a just and “civill society,” and that will take a concentration of care and visibility that we will have as a church. I am quoting Rev. Wesley’s lecture now:
“Free churches are made up of people who have covenanted to “walk together” – live together or meet often – in patterned ways, or “in order,” in the spirit of mutual love. People have covenanted to do this, over a great stretch of time, in the Hebrew Scriptures God makes a covenant with families, beginning with Sarah and Abraham; then with the nation of ancient Israel, beginning with Moses. This organizational pattern is the one element of our ancestors’ doctrine we liberals have most consistently kept in our liberal free churches
Historically, we religious liberals forget and then we remember again that no free church organization can work very well if it is not consciously, explicitly grounded in the spirit of love. We are now in a period of remembering. The Covenant you all voted on begins like this:
A Covenant of Healthy Relations
As a religious community, we promise:
To nurture the spiritual growth of people of all ages in our church.
To keep communications with one another direct, honest, and respectful in a spirit of compassion, love, and trust.
To support our church with generous gifts of time, talent, and money in gratitude for the fellowship, joy, and inspiration we receive.
To be present with others through life’s inevitable transitions.
To make our church a safe place to express our deepest fears and our greatest joys.
To forgive ourselves and others when we fall short of expectations, showing good humor and the optimism required for moving forward and calling ourselves back into covenant.
To engage with the larger world to promote justice and peace.
We acknowledge and commit ourselves to the work of sustaining our beloved community, welcoming all in good faith, and ministering to each other.
Thus do we covenant with one another.
It starts with a promise and ends with “thus do we covenant with one another” What we are after with our covenant is the exposition, the “unpacking” of the question “What does it look like to ground our community in the spirit of love, and what might it mean to influence the world, not with shouting at the world about how wrong it is, but with the love we can show it, our families and one another? Along with brilliant, clear, loving and well-reasoned conversation with the world too, I would add.
The first thing you all put into your covenant is :
To nurture the spiritual growth of people of all ages in our church.
Spiritual growth is what makes you a more loving person, more kind, patient, compassionate, joyful, peaceful, self-aware and self-controlled. A spiritual person (this is my take on it – you are welcome to your own) is able to be open to awe, able to be grateful, have perspective, concerned for others. A spiritual person eventually will know when to speak and when to be quiet, they will hear wisdom coming out of them from an unknown place, they will be fun to be around, not self-righteous, curious and interested in others more than in themselves.
We promise to nurture one another’s spiritual growth, and that of the children of our church. My friends, it’s not the parents of young children alone who are responsible for teaching. It’s all of us. You are the ones who carry the identity and traditions from generation to generation, who listen to the kids and learn their names and talk to them as if they were interesting humans and learn what they are interested in. You will be enriched and challenged and supported by the staff. We still have openings for teacher helpers, and you can find Mari, our Interim DLRE, in the Gallery to answer your questions about it.
Another way we invite spiritual development is with small group ministry. Being in a small group is one of the ways members get deeper conversations and experiences of connection and growth. Here is how they work. If you would like to sign up for one, they are in the Gallery.
The Gallery not only has interesting art to look at, it has gateways into experiences of connection and fun in the life of this congregation.
Ours is a covenantal church. We join by promising one another that we will be a beloved community, meeting together often to find the ways of love, as best we can see to do. We have found there’s always more to learn about how love really works, and could work, in our lives and in the world. It’s a hard path, but it’s a good one, and we’ve been following it for nearly 500 years.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
Magellan, Verrazano and Columbus were European explorers with three very different mixes of courage and caution, attention to detail and big-picture overview. So often a quality in a person that is useful in most situations is their downfall in others. What can we learn from these three?
Text of this sermon is not yet available. Click the play button to listen.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
As we come together for the start of First UU’s program year, each of us brings to the service a small container of water from a place that refreshed our spirits this summer. We pour our waters together in a common bowl as we mingle our spirits in a common effort to nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice.
Reading: Drops of God
Tess Baumberger
God, God is water sleeping
in high-piled clouds.
She is gentle drink of rain,
pooling lake, rounding pond,
angry flooding river.
She is frothy horse-maned geyser.
She is glacier on mountains and polar ice cap,
and breath-taking crystalline ideas of snowflakes.
She is frost-dance on trees.
And we, we are drops of God,
her tears of joy or sorrow,
ice crystals
and raindrops
in the ocean of her.
God, God is air wallowing
all about us,
She is thin blue atmosphere embracing
our planet, gentle breeze.
She is wind and fiercesome gale
centrifugal force of tornado and hurricane,
flurry of duststorm.
She is breath, spirit, life.
She is thought, intellect, vision and voice.
And we, we are breaths of God,
steady and soft,
changeable and destructive.
We are her laughter and her sighs,
atomic movements,
(sardines schooling)
in the firmament of her.
God, God is fire burning,
day and night.
She is sting of passion,
blinking candle,
heat that cooks our food.
She is fury forest fire
and flow of lava which destroys and creates, transforms.
She is home fire and house fire.
She is giving light of sun and
solemn mirror-face of moon,
and tiny hopes of stars.
And we, we are little licking flames
flickering in her heart,
in the conflagratory furnace of her.
God, God is power of earth,
in and under us.
She is steady, staying,
fertile loam, body, matter, tree.
She is crumbling limestone and shifting sand,
multi-colored marble.
She is rugged boulder and water-smoothed agate,
she is gold and diamond, gemstone.
She is tectonic plates and their motion,
mountains rising over us,
rumble-snap of earthquake,
tantrum of volcano.
She is turning of our day,
root of being.
And we, we are pebbles
and sand grains,
and tiny landmarks,
in the endless terrain of her.
God, God is journal of time marching
through eternity.
She is waking of seasons, phases of moon,
movements of stars.
She is grandmother, mother, daughter.
She is transcending spiral of ages
whose every turn encompasses the rest,
history a mere babe balanced on her hip.
She is spinning of universes
and ancestress of infinence.
She is memory, she is presence, she is dream.
And we, we are brief instants,
intersections, nanoseconds,
flashing gold-hoped moments in the eons of her.
God, God is.
And we, we are.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. They can be found here.
There has been much dialogue within our congregations and within our movement about working to become a more welcoming and a more multicultural/multiethnic faith. This is both exciting and challenging work that grows the humanity of all those who venture to undertake it with an open mind and in humility. What will this work require of those of us who are already here, in order to better welcome those who we’d like to join us? What will we gain and what must we sacrifice? What does it truly mean to be an ally to those who live as members of less dominant groups?
Sermon:
Good morning. I cannot express how thrilling it is to be in this pulpit! Each time I stand here, I remember standing here and delivering my first sermon as a twenty-year-old member of this congregation. It was part of a lay-led gay pride service that focused on the coming out process as a means of celebrating one’s authentic self. I remember using the then-recently released film, Pleasantville, as my text, of sorts, and compared shamefully hiding away parts of ourselves that we should be proud of to living in a black-and-white world, rather than in Technicolor. Through this experience, and with the encouragement of this congregation, I was able to listen to that still, small voice within me and uncover my call to ministry.
I first heard that whisper many months before, when I attended my first service here. One of the two Interim Co-Ministers, the late Rev. Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley, was leading service that day. Having grown up in conservative northern West Texas, I had never before laid eyes on a woman minister, let alone a woman of color minister! In fact, my little fellowship was too small to even have a minister, so I had no idea that Unitarian Universalists ordained anyone, and before me stood a role model whose existence was proof that I could bring my whole self into service of this faith that I love in a way I had never before imagined.
As I got to know Marjorie better over the years and she took me under her wing, she told stories of her difficult journey as a UU minister of color. She experienced sexism and racism within our ranks, most often in the form of the less tangible microagressions, than the easy-to-recognize acts of bigotry that make levelheaded, compassionate people recoil.
Microagressions are small acts that are done, often without thought or malicious intent, which serve to remind others that they exist outside of what is considered normal or acceptable. We have all born witness to various microagressions and, most likely, have uttered them ourselves without realizing it. A boy is told, “Stop being such a girl!” A woman, “Wow, who knew you could fix a flat tire!” A plus sized woman, “You know, you have a very pretty face.” A lesbian couple, “So, I guess she’s more of the man, right? And you’re the woman?” Or, “that’s funny, I couldn’t tell you were Chinese on the phone!” Or, “It’s so rude when you say things in Spanish with others when you’re hanging out with me.”
We would be hard-pressed to find a soul in this room that hasn’t had such an experience that made them feel diminished in some way, which made them feel as if they did not matter. When someone fails to see us as an individual person of worth, it has the effect of isolating everyone involved from recognizing our inherent connectedness. Just as we all can recall feeling diminished, we all have experienced pain. We all yearn to feel loved. We’ve known the joy of friendship and the agony of loss. We’ve all had hard days that we cannot wait to close the door on with a good night’s sleep. We all have known what it feels like to laugh so hard or to worry so much about someone that it hurts.
And yet, we have all been enculturated since birth to fear and judge those who are different from ourselves. I become so frustrated when I hear otherwise progressive folks lifting up the word “tolerance.” In my youth, I was so proud to be a member of the UU Fellowship of Odessa, TX, as its sign read “Freedom, Reason, and Tolerance.” But, as I grew into adulthood, & I began to notice more & more that the majority of Unitarian Universalists don’t look like me, tolerance sounded less and less appealing. Those who are tolerated do not fully have a place. Sure, blatant name-calling and the like are frowned upon with tolerance, but does that mean that tongues are being bitten? Maybe, maybe not. One who is tolerated is never certain.
As the “good liberals” who we are, we would like to think that we have moved beyond tolerance to acceptance. But have we, truly? It may be safe to say that many if not most or all of us would like to have greater diversity in our UU congregations. Most congregations, this one not withstanding, have a smattering of ethnic, gender, ability, and sexual diversity, but by and large, ours is still a predominantly a White, heterosexual, upper middle class, highly educated denomination. If we are accepting, why is this the case? Why are we not more diverse?
Acceptance is a tough place to come to. It requires intention and deep soul work to become a reality. We do not simply become accepting because we wish ourselves to be or because we believe ourselves to be. Because we are all taught racism, to varying degrees, (either by our families of origin and/or by our society that values as the norm European influence and culture and Whiteness as the standard of beauty and intelligence) as well as all of the other “isms” (sexism, heterosexism, ableism, ageism, classism, etc.) it takes deliberate time and energy to unlearn all that we have been taught, much of which has been buried deep in our wiring, where we keep the less cute parts of ourselves. We don’t usually expose these parts to the light of day for fear of judgment by ourselves & by others. Without taking the risk and doing this work in faithful community, of engaging in a remedial education of love, an increase of diversity will be a faade and we will be engaging in tokenism. We may gain the appearance of an accepting denomination but we will, in essence, be merely tolerant of difference.
Robert W. Karnan, UU minister to a church in Portmouth, New Hampshire that was able to grow in diversity through multiculturalism, writes similarly about the experience, “Inclusive Congregational membership means intentionally opening the doors and pews with a genuine welcome to all who come in goodwill. It means a natural concomitant fear among the existing members about the many unknown people who begin to sit next to and join them in worship with those who have been there a long time. We found that this is the frontier for confrontation with racism, class phobia, ageism, genderism, homophobia, and all other prejudices that we hold mostly privately just under the surface of our daily lives…”
How will we go about achieving an authentic celebration of difference? The answer must begin by stating that diversity, in and of itself, cannot be the ultimate goal absent from working toward ending oppression and becoming allies to one another. We have a spiritual imperative to end racism and other forms of oppression, to become allies to the marginalized. Doing this work helps us to grow more fully into our humanity. It recognizes the worth and dignity of every person and embraces our interconnectedness. Anti-racism and anti-oppression work, in general, requires us to look directly at ourselves and at others and do away with rhetoric which values “colorblindness” and ignoring difference. Joo Young Choi, a lifelong UU and friend I met through DRUUMM, a UU people of color organization, once addressed a 2005 UU youth conference with the following,
“Friend, if you wish to love me, do not be blind to my color, my sexuality, my abilities, my class. If you wish to love me, do not be blind to systemic oppression, and do not be blind to the oppression that has affected me. My color is beautiful.”
I have certainly experienced my share of racism in my life, not to mention my experiences of sexism, homophobia, and whatever the “ism” is called by which people from elsewhere negatively judge Texans. Within UU congregations, I often hear comments such as, “you don’t look like a Unitarian! You look like you’d be a Roman Catholic.” Or, “Wow! That was powerful! Do you write your sermons yourself?!” Or, “So, what part of Mexico were you born in?” (To that one I answer, “Texas- the northern part of Mexico.”) I’ve been mistaken for the Latina childcare worker after preaching and while standing in my robe! The list can go onÉ But, in doing this work, I have found that my stories are not unique. We have all been damaged by the continued existence of oppression. Our humanity has been tried and lessened. Our work begins by undoing these lessons and learning to become an ally, to be a community of allies to the historically marginalized, among us and outside of these walls.
There are many ways to begin this crucial work of becoming an ally. By increasing our awareness of culture and difference, we become more mindful- more mindful of our “attitudes, values, and assumptions.” We must examine our cultural “norms” and begin to become curious about how they came to be. I have a funny story about this from seminary: we were placing our snacks out before a Student Senate meeting when my friend, Dominique, a black woman, and I began teasing two of our white friends, Margaret and Jessica, about their dish. They had brought hummus and baby carrots. We pointed out the fact that at every meeting there was always sure to be a white girl who brought baby carrots and hummus. After the four of us had a good laugh, Margaret and Jessica gained an awareness of the reality and existence of white dominant culture and planned a seminary chapel service that explored whiteness further, calling it the “White Girls’ Chapel Service”. What began as a joke between friends, ended up bringing some healing and opening the eyes of all who attended the worship service.
So, to achieve the goal of diversity begins in anti-racism/anti-oppression but it must end in working toward multiculturalism, for diversity on its own is not sustainable without multiculturalism and multiculturalism cannot be built without the foundation of anti-oppression. The journey toward becoming truly welcoming to all, of becoming allies, is tough work, but it’s soul-feeding work. These subjects are easier not to talk about. This is work that requires courage to move beyond denial, guilt, shame, and apathy.
But, I wonder, what will our congregations look like when we arrive? How will we measure our success? Is there truly a destination, or should we view the journey as an ongoing process, forever growing our humanity? Rev. Paul Rasor says, “Liberals want to create a strong and inclusive community, but we often want to do it without giving up anything, without letting down the barriers we erect around ourselves in the name of individual autonomy.” Change can be a scary thing. But, if our church culture changes to more fully embrace multiculturalism, we need not change our core values, which is what makes us Unitarian Universalists. We won’t throw out all of the great old hymns or traditions, we will simply add to our repertoire. True multiculturalism does not recognize one culture as normative over any other, be it heterosexual culture, English-speaking, two-parent households, white, upper middle-class, gender normative, or able-bodied cultures, but it does embrace each as a rich and valuable member of the human family.
What do we have to gain? Karnan admits that, “An inclusive opening brings discomfort. The discomfort exists for those who are already members and it exists for the newcomer, tooÉ[but] the journey has meant that we speak more honestly & listen more carefully. It has meant the growth of the heart and the spirit of love to encompass more than the congregation has previously been willing to see & know. It has meant becoming a close friend to someone who ten years ago might have been avoided because of their identity or looks or presumed status. We have begun to remake our world, beginning with ourselves, and the transformation has been as liberating as it has been demanding.”
I look forward to engaging in this transformative, community building, justice ensuring; this holy work with this congregation this fall. We will laugh, cry, discover, and grow in spirit together as we strive to become better allies. May it be so.
Podcasts of sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
Sometimes we make things that are really not all that valuable more important than they really are. Paradoxically, sometimes we miss that the seemingly smallest of gestures can make all the difference. After spending this summer serving as chaplain at the largest level one trauma hospital in our area, these are among the many lessons I learned – sometimes the hard way, and sometimes through the humor and amazing resilience of others.
CALL TO WORSHIP
Come into the circle of caring,
Come into the community of gentleness, of justice and love. Come, and you shall be refreshed.
Let the healing power of this people penetrate you,
Let loving kindness and joy pass through you,
Let hope infuse you,
And peace be the law of your heart.
In this human circle,
Caring is a calling.
All of us are called.
So come into the circle of caring.
PRAYER
by Dr. Davidson Loehr
We pray to the angels of our better nature and the still small voice that can speak to us when we feel safe enough to listen.
Help us to love people and causes outside of ourselves, that we may be enlarged to include them.
Help us remember that we are never as alone or as powerless as we think. Help us remember that we can, if we will, invest ourselves in relationships, institutions and causes that transcend and expand us.
Help us guard our hearts against those relationships and activities that diminish us and weaken our life force.
And help us give our hearts to those relationships that might, with our help, expand our souls and our worlds.
We know that every day both life and death are set before us. Let us have the faith and courage to choose those involvements that can lead us toward life, toward life more abundant.
And help us find the will to serve those life-giving involvements with our heart, our mind and our spirit.
We ask that we may see more clearly in these matters, and that we have the will to hold to those relationships that demand, and cherish, the very best in us. Just that, just those.
Amen.
SERMON
Chris Jimmerson
“The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.”
That’s a quote from the Swiss Psychologist and Psychiatrist, Carl Jung. Many of the world’s wisdom traditions express similar ideas. The bible speaks of the simple treasures of the heart far exceeding in value those of the material world. Islam embraces modesty and talks of the meaning in doing for others. Many of the Eastern traditions emphasize compassion and the letting go of unnecessary attachments.
Anyway, I’ve always really liked that quote, and I had thought I understood it.
I found out this summer that I didn’t.
Not really. Not the way we understand things down deep in the gut; down in the cellular level; in the soul.
I spent this summer doing a unit of professional education for ministry students on pastoral care. I was assigned to a group of six other seminary students, 3 Episcopalians, a Presbyterian, a Catholic and a Muslim. Sounds like a setup for one of those jokes, doesn’t it? “Three Episcopalians, a Presbyterian, a Catholic, a Muslim and Unitarian Universalist are in a bar…”
Of course, since we were all ministry students that never happened. Much. OK, some of us, sometimes.
Anyway, we spent the summer learning together while serving as chaplains at local hospitals. I was assigned to Brackenridge Hospital, where I worked on a floor that provided care for people struggling with a number of illnesses. We were also required to take turns serving as the on call chaplain overnight, covering four local hospitals.
During on call shifts, our home base would be the little Chaplain’s sleep room down in the basement of Brackenridge Hospital. Some of my fellow students decided that the sleep room was haunted. Being a good, rationality-based, Unitarian Universalist, I secretly dismissed the notion, and did my best to ignore the inexplicable sounds that often startled me awake at 3 in the morning, uneasy and shivering in the little sleep room at the bottom of the hospital.
The day before my first on call shift, I was too slow to react while driving, and I a hit another car from behind. No one was hurt, but my car was damaged pretty badly and not driveable. We managed to pull the cars off the road into a parking lot and called for a police officer and a tow truck.
I was frettin’ – frettin’ about my car; frettin’ about how I was going to arrange for having something to drive for my upcoming on call shift; frettin’ about how much all of this was going to cost me!
But as we stood waiting together, the young guy who’s car I had hit asked me what I did for a living, and so I told him about being a seminarian. He said, “Oh, wow. Can I talk to you about something?”
And so that’s how it happened that I ended up in a parking lot off North Lamar Boulevard, standing around in 103 degree heat, leaning against my wrecked car, providing pastoral care for the guy who’s car I had just crunched.
I suppose it was the least I could do.
The funny thing was, after listening to him for that time, my wrecked car seemed the least of things to worry about.
By the way, though I have tried to keep the essence of the stories I am telling you today intact, I am changing enough details to protect the privacy and identity of those involved.
The next morning, I arrived at the hospital in my freshly acquired rental car at 8 am. My pager went off immediately, calling me to the emergency room. When I got there, a woman was lying on a stretcher, holding the body of her 21-year old daughter. The daughter had just died from injuries she sustained during a car wreck in which the mother had been driving. The mother’s sorrow filled the air and for a while it was all there was left to breathe.
Over the next five hours with her and the other family members, there were no words that would console the inconsolable. The only thing anyone could do was just to stay with them in their grief.
And yet, somehow, families hold each other; and tell their stories; and hold tightly to the love that exists between those who survived; and begin the process of honoring the memories of those who have been lost; and somehow they pick themselves up and leave the hospital and find a way to go on with their lives. Their stories continue, including those of the ones that were lost. It is a testament to courage and resilience of the human spirit that defies even the tragic – that overcomes even great loss.
Later that day, I went down to the sleep room, and I called my partner, Wayne, and I said, “I need you to stay on the phone with me while I cry.” He did. I love him so much.
You see, that little chaplain’s sleep room in the basement of the hospital is haunted. It is haunted with memories so strong, losses so profound, yet courage, love and the will to live on so boundless, that they awaken you at three in the morning and demand to be heard.
But, you know, somehow, so often, we miss the things that really matter. Instead, we make “the greatest of things” out of the stuff that is not really important at all.
In fact, some of the things to which we assign such meaning are actually almost comical if you really think about them. For example, here are just a few things we make way more important than they really are – that when you really think about how much meaning they truly have, are the least of things:
Most church budget battles;
Anything having to do with “reality” television;
What the neighbors think of our car, house, clothing, etc.
U.T football. (Don’t throw things at me. I enjoy it too.)
Most of the material things in our lives.
Don’t get me wrong; I know we love our iPads and Priuses. I do too, and to a certain extent enjoying them is great. But we also have to remember what truly brings us comfort and joy and meaning and beauty.
And that’s where a paradox about the least of things comes in. There are things that can seem so small and so unimportant, yet they can be so meaningful, so powerful, so life-giving – a kind word, a loving gesture, the friend who shows up to visit us just when we need them, prayer.
I know. I know. As UU’s, we often shy away from prayer, and yet, as a chaplain, I was often called upon to pray with people and to do so in religious language that you might never hear in a Unitarian Universalist church.
And I saw prayer calm the disturbed, bring peace and hope to families experiencing great loss and release the tears that allowed people to finally express their grief so that they could begin to reclaim hope.
Here is one example. Late one evening, I was called to the room of a woman who was too distraught to sleep. She had just made it through a protracted legal battle to regain custody of her children from an abusive husband, only to be diagnosed with leukemia.
We talked for a while, and she shared both tears and laughter. Finally, she asked if I would pray for her. I asked her what she would like me to pray for. She answered for God to be with her children.
And so, we prayed the prayer she needed, together.
At the end of the prayer, she squeezed my hand and said, “I think I can go to sleep now.” Later, she said that it was the first time she had slept through the night in months. Later, she looked at me one day and said, “You know, I’m starting to be able to laugh and tell jokes with my kids again.”
It might seem counterintuitive, but that’s another of those seemingly little things that can be so meaningful — humor. So often, humor can bring light into the darkest of situations; bring humanity to people who had been feeling as if they had become their disease.
During the summer, I got to know an older gentleman who was in for surgery to remove a non-malignant mass attached to his brain. We had talked several times before his surgery. He had expressed his fears about it and talked with me about some decisions he had made in his life that he regretted.
The afternoon after his surgery, I saw him walking around in the hallway with the help of a physical therapist. He smiled, pointed at the stitches on his head and said, “Hey look chaplain, they say I can go home tomorrow — the new brain fits just fine.”
Before I even thought about it, I laughed and said, “Well, I hope it works better than the last one did.” Luckily for me, we had formed a relationship that already included humor, so he returned the laugh!
There are so many of those little things that can matter so much, but what it seems to always come down to is loving presence. It always comes back to relationship – to love for one another and the sacred and fragile web of existence of which we are part.
One Sunday, I brought a young woman back to the Intensive Care Unit to see her younger brother. He had just died as the result of an accident at his summer. She had fought with him before he left for work that morning and needed to say her goodbyes and seek forgiveness before the rest of the family would get there. As we stood by his bed and she spoke the words she needed to say to him, she suddenly turned and placed her head on my shoulder, cupped a hand over each of my shoulders and collapsed her entire weight onto me. I hadn’t expected this, and it was as if her body had suddenly become a stone weight and her overwhelming grief was pouring into me though the tears she was shedding on my shoulder.
In that moment, I thought I would collapse too. That I didn’t have the strength, and that we were both going to fall down in great puddles of sorrow on the cold tile floor of that room in the ICU.
But we didn’t. Somehow, the experience was as if something was holding me up, so I could keep holding her up. Rebecca Ann Parker, one of our UU theologians, calls this an “upholding and sheltering presence” that is “alive and afoot in the universe”. Others might simply call this God. Still others might say that it’s some sort of a bio-psychological reserve built deeply into our DNA that helps us help others survive so that our species can go on.
I’m happy just to dwell in the wonder and awe and mystery. I am just grateful for it.
I think that it has everything to do with love.
That young woman was eventually able to go on, not because of anything I or anyone else did, but because there was love in that room that Sunday — love that transcends everything else; love that upholds us; love that we carry with us always and that is simply present. It is there, and we can find it in the least of gestures, the fewest of words, the silences we share when there is nothing to be said, and yet we stay connected with each other nonetheless. Simple, loving presence can be the least of things and yet the most meaningful of things.
It is where we find purpose — a comforting hand on the shoulder, a kind word, a meal for an ailing neighbor, just remembering to say “I love you” before leaving the house in the morning; these are where we ultimately find meaning. These are the things worth more in life.
For all I know, that loving presence with each other and within all of life and creation is the place where, in the end, we find beauty and truth and joy. For all I know, it is where God lives.
Amen.
OFFERING
We all have so many needs-
A thousand prayers-a thousand needs–
That really need only one answer:
Let the world not be indifferent.
And may we live and be with
each other in the way that
shows this truth whatever the day brings:
That neither are we indifferent to each other.
BENEDICTION
As we go forth today, I wish you love.
And even more so, I wish you the courage to love and to love deeply.
Let us live it in the smallest and the greatest of ways. Let us always be asking ourselves, “what would it look like if we were to truly live love?”
All blessings upon you and yours.
Go in peace and love.
Amen
Podcasts of sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
