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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
May 28, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We need our most creative spirits to manifest the holy in our world. Indeed, becoming, changing, engaging in constant acts of creation and re-creation are the essence of our growth and spirituality, And we are at our most transformative and transformed when we co-create in communion with one another and the web of existence.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

The universe buries strange jewels deep within all of us and then stands back to see if we can find them. The hunt to discover those jewels, that’s creative living.

– Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic, Creative living Beyond Fear

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Meditation Reading

CREATION IS MESSY
Rev. Laurel Mendes

Creation is messy,
Inconvenient,
And often uncooperative.

Take a look at the cosmos.

Go ahead, close your eyes and imagine the stars.

When you do, forget the Franz Josef Haydn “spacious firmament” bit. His images are far too tidy.

See the real mess the universe made of itself 14 BILLION years ago.

All of creation is still trying to clean THAT up.

It’s called the Big Bang,
Not the Grand Coalescence,

For a reason.

Mistakes were made (probably),
And incorporated into the whole anyway.

And wonders never cease, here we still are muddling along 14 billion years after the fact.

Now open your eyes and look around you.
You are surrounded by the most astounding miraculous wonder of all:
Each other,
Community,
Life ongoing caring about life ongoing.
So it is.
So it shall be, because we do care

Sermon

VIDEO

Our reading earlier was about how creation is messy.

So, I thought the Blob Opera exercise from “Google Arts and Culture” made a great metaphor for this.

The video you just saw was from my experimenting with it. You just go to Blob Opera online.

Then, you use your pointing device to to drag the blobs in different directions, which allows you to create different voice types and melodies.

You literally create a musical “opera” out of some blobs. And our creative process is so often like that.

Our creativity emerges out of the “blobiness”.

It seems science and philosophy have both begun to posit that our greatest creativity most often comes out of messiness, when we are blocked, confused, unsure.

Creativity arises from uncertainty; our unknowing.

Mystery holds almost infinite creative potential.

Chaplains, hospice workers and artists will tell you that there is even, or maybe especially, creativity bound up with our grief also.

So, as we examine creativity, our spiritual topic this morning, we do so with some humility, knowing that so often we owe our creative spirit to the uncertainty, sometimes even the great challenges or difficulties in our lives.

Here is an example from our own Unitarian Universalist history. II Each Sunday morning, we begin and end our worship services by lighting and then extinguishing our chalice, which is a symbol of our faith.

SLIDE

In fact, this is the current logo of our Unitarian Universalist Association.

Well, Unitarian Universalist minister and historian Susan Ritchie describes how this symbol of our faith came to be.

During World War II, the Unitarians formed the Unitarian Service Committee, which operated a rescue and relief operation helping folks escape the Nazis in Europe.

Its director, Rev. Charles Joy, began to feel that the operation needed a symbol of hope that both refugees and those trying to assist them could carry on paperwork to denote that they could be trusted, as German informants were widespread across Europe at the time.

Rev. Joy turned to an artist who was himself a refugee from the Nazis, Hans Deutsch, to create a symbol that would represent the spirit of their work.

Deutsch created the flaming chalice design.

Eventually, sympathizers would also begin to draw the symbol in the dirt outside their home, as a signal to those in need of a safe place to stay: a light in the darkness.

Deutsch’s flaming chalice, ensconced in a circle representing unity, would become the symbol of the American Unitarian Association.

When the Unitarians and the Universalist merged in 1961, the Universalists had a similar symbol that “featured a large, open circle with a very small, off-centered cross inside … that … signified how Universalism had grown out of the Christian tradition but was still held open to a world of other possibilities … “

Out of the two, the newly formed Unitarian Universalism adopted the flaming chalice with two overarching circles.

As to how this two dimensional symbol developed into the three dimensional actual chalice we light to mark our services today, Ritchie says we are not entirely sure.

However, she writes, “All evidence, though, suggests that the path leads through our children’s religious education programs.” Beginning in the 70s, our religious educations programs started teaching children about the chalice and encouraging them to make chalices using different media.

They eventually created objects which could be lit.

The first documented uses of lighting a chalice in the main sanctuary occurred when children and youth led worship and demonstrated the practice to the adults.

How wonderful then, that it seems children may have taken a symbol of hope, created out of the worst of situations, and turned it into a symbol of faith for our entire denomination.

There is something very spiritual about that.

And indeed, for all of recorded history, we humans have associated creation, creativity, the creative process with spirituality. I’ll share just a few current examples with you.

The first is a concept called ontological design.

VIDEO

Here is a brief explanation. So, what we create then directs what we become.

We create language and then that language creates us. It defines the parameters of our becoming.

Our technology, these smart phones, social media, scientific experimentation, and on and on, they come out of our seemingly almost endless creativity AND they are creating who we are becoming.

Certainly, our architecture, our urban design, our energy production and use (and our pollution), all products of human creativity, also form the environment in which we live and therefore the manner in which our continuing evolution will turn.

I think this is true of the the cultures and societies we envision and create also.

Will we dream ourselves into ever more powerful ways of creating the Beloved Community?

Will our ontological designing create liberation for all?

Rev. Dr. Martin King, Jr. once said, “Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

Given our current status quo, that creative maladjustment is still a necessary component of dismantling that status quo and designing something new that will in turn create us anew.

And it doesn’t get much more spiritual than that.

Author Elizabeth Gilbert, best known for writing, “Eat Pray Love”, has another spiritual concept about our creativity.

In another book, “Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear“, she writes that we might think of our creative impulses coming to us from these sorts of spirits she calls “geniuses”.

These spirits can be tricksters, ornery and demanding.

This is actually an ancient idea. The concept of a Genie was related to this.

These geniuses are the source of our creativity if we remain open to them, find them, pay attention to them.

If we don’t, they may well move on to someone else.

Gilbert tells the story of this happening after she met and became friends with another author, Ann Patchett.

Gilbert had been neglecting a genius that wanted her to create a novel set in the Amazon jungle.

In letters they were exchanging, Gilbert learned that Patchett had also begun working on a novel set in the Amazon jungle, though it was too early at the time to know exactly what it would be about.

Here is how Gilbert describe what happened the next time they met.

Ann told me that she was now deep into the writing of her new book …

I said, “Okay, now you really do have to tell me what your Amazon novel is about. I’ve been dying to know.”

“You go first,” she said, “since your book was first. You tell me what your Amazon jungle novel was about – the one that got away.”

I tried to summarize my ex-novel as concisely as possible. “It was about this middle-aged spinster from Minnesota who’s been quietly in love with her married boss for many years. He gets involved in a harebrained business scheme down in the Amazon jungle. A bunch of money and a person go missing, and my character gets sent down there to solve things, at which point her quiet life is completely turned into chaos.

Also, it’s a love story.”

“You have got to be” … (word that rhymes with trucking) … “kidding me.” (said Ann)

“Why?” I asked. “What’s your novel about?”

She replied, “It’s about a spinster from Minnesota who’s been quietly in love with her married boss for many years. He gets involved in a harebrained business scheme down in the Amazon jungle. A bunch of money and a person go missing, and my character is sent down there to solve things. At which point her quiet life is completely turned into chaos.

Also, it’s a love story.”

Now, whether you completely buy Gilbert’s tale and her theory about “genius spirits”, many, many other people have also described this experience of what they create coming from something outside of themselves.

Something that often feels greater than themselves.

Author, artist, poet and playwright, Julia Cameron in her book, “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity” writes, “The creative process is a process of surrender … In dance, in composition, in sculpture, the experience is the same: we are more the conduit than the creator of what we express.”

Theologian, Martin Buber said, “Creation happens to us, burns into us, changes us. We tremble and swoon. We submit.”

I have (only too occasionally) experienced this with writing poetry or sermons.

Every once and a while, not nearly always, I will sit down to write and will lose all track of time and my sense of self.

Not always – sometimes writing for me is more like pushing a boulder up a hill with lots of grunting, straining, occasional cursing and many, many stops, starts and rolling backwards.

But just occasionally, I will find myself sitting there, staring at a screen filled with words I don’t remember creating, and wonder, “Who wrote this?”

I shared this experience many years back, with our now Minister Emerita, Meg Barnhouse, and she replied with her best southern accent, “Oh, loooove it when that happens. That’s the holy spirit workin’ right there”

Anyway, Elizabeth Gilbert believes we made a huge mistake during the renaissance when we began to think of creativity coming from the self of the individual human genius, rather than from genius spirits.

Here is how she describes that mistake.

VIDEO

Perhaps, these “spirits” are actually the creative potential that arises within us when we glimpse the vastness of our true interconnectedness.

Research, has begun to find that our creativity is rarely a solo, individual act. Even the great artists produced their work out of creative interplay with others and their environment.

In an article titled “The End of ‘Genius”, the New York Times describes how creativity arises out of innovative networks, often creative pairs.

And many studies have found that we are the most creative when we work together with people whose life experiences are different than our own – whose world views differ from our ours.”

Diverse groups in terms of race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation and the like produce more creative outcomes.

And this idea meshes well with two theologies that support the values and principles of our UU faith.

For collective liberation theology, opportunity for each of us is bound together with liberation for all of us. Only together can we all reach for our greatest creative potential.

Likewise, process relational theology views each of us as processes of becoming, in every moment evolving into something new, all of us always and constantly changing.

Because processes by their very nature are relational, again, each of us can only become our fullest self when we answer the call to enhance the creative possibilities for all.

For this theology, the divine is the ultimate process, which holds all of us within and lures us toward our most creative potentiality.

In this way, we co-design the divine together, even as we are being guided in our own becoming.

Whew, that’s some heady stuff.

Perhaps Julia Cameron expresses the idea that the divine beckons us toward our most creative selves more simply when she says, “I would say that as we become more spiritual we automatically become more creative, and as we become more creative we automatically become more spiritual. I’m not sure why that is. It just seems to me to be a fact … And to be facile I might say it’s God’s will for us to be creative.”

Italian-American psychologist, art therapist, and writer, Lucia Capacchione goes further and says, “The person who says ‘I’m not creative’ is uttering blasphemy.”

And psychologist Dan Gilbert adds, “Human beings are a work in progress that mistakenly think they are finished.”

We are all artists then, even if we’re not painters, sculptors, musicians, poets, authors or any of the things we commonly think of us the creative.

Our lives are our art; our great creative endeavor. So, together, let’s:
Compose life as a great concerto.
Imagine it as a Pulitzer-Prize winning play,
Paint it as a magnificent painting,
Carve it into a breathtaking sculpture
Choreograph it as a dance in which all humanity moves in communion with one another and with all that is.

May we live life as if we are creating God together.

Because perhaps we are.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson and Kelly Stokes
May 21, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

One of our church ends (goals) states, “We embody the principals of Unitarian Universalism and invite people of goodwill to find a spiritual home with us.” Our church is growing in both numbers and multiculturally. This both provides all of us greater creative potential and requires greater creative efforts and openness from each of us.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Anthem

DREAM ON
Steven Tyler

Every time that I look in the mirror
All these lines on my face getting clearer
The past is gone
Oh, it went by like dusk to dawn
Isn’t that the way?

Everybody’s got their dues in life to pay, oh, oh, oh
I know nobody knows
Where it comes and where it goes
I know it’s everybody’s sin
You got to lose to know how to win

Half my life’s in books’ written pages
Storing facts learned from fools and from sages
You view the earth

Oh, sing with me, this mournful dub
Sing with me, sing for a year
Sing for the laughter, and sing for the tear
Sing with me, if it’s just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away

Dream on
Dream on
I dream on
Dream a little, I’ll dream on
Dream on
I dream on
I dream on

Dream a little, I’ll dream on
Dream on
Dream on
Dream on
I’ll dream on
Dream on
Dream on
I dream on

Oh, sing with me, sing for the year
Sing for the laughter, and sing for the tear
Sing it with me, if it’s just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away

Reading

THIS GRACE THAT SCORCHES US
Jan Richardson.

Here’s one thing you must understand about this blessing:

it is not for you alone.
It is stubborn about this.

Do not even try to lay hold of it if you are by yourself, thinking you can carry it on your own.

To bear this blessing, you must first take yourself to a place where everyone does not look like you or think like you,

a place where they do not believe precisely as you believe, where their thoughts and ideas and gestures are not exact echoes of your own.

Bring your sorrow.
Bring your grief.
Bring your fear.
Bring your weariness, your pain,

your disgust at how broken the world is, how fractured,
how fragmented by its fighting,
its wars,
its hungers,
its penchant for power,

its ceaseless repetition of the history it refuses to rise above.

I will not tell you this blessing will fix all that.

But in this place where you have gathered,

wait.
Watch.
Listen.

Lay aside your inability to be surprised,
your resistance to what you do not understand.

See then whether this blessing turns to flame on your tongue,
sets you to speaking what you cannot fathom

or opens your ear to a language beyond your imagining that comes as a knowing in your bones,

a clarity in your heart
that tells you this is the reason we were made:

for this ache that finally opens us,

for this struggle, this grace that scorches us toward one another and into the blazing day.

Sermon

– Kelly Stokes’ homily may be heard on the audio but the text is not available.

– Chris Jimmerson

OK, let’s have a moment of communal releasing of guilt or shame if we were sitting here thinking, “Geez, I have some of those scripts Kelly just described”.

We all do.

These scripts come out of our life experiences; The culture in which we grew up; The culture in which exist now; The very societal waters in which we swim.

We take them on without even realizing it.

Sometimes though, they are unhelpful or just plain wrong.

Sometimes they can harm others, even when that is not at all our intent.

Left unchecked, these scripts can arise out of what social scientists call, “implicit bias” – when we hold attitudes or stereotypes towards people without our conscious knowledge.

Importantly, we don’t have to hold any explicit prejudice for implicit bias to be lurking about outside our awareness.

So conveniently, you can uncover them by taking an implicit bias test online at projectimplicit.net.

And, there is good reason to do so, because research shows that unearthing such biases can be a first step toward changing these unconscious scripts.

Now, a few warnings:

First, It can be disconcerting or even upsetting to get a test result that says, “I’m biased”.

Second, our level of implicit bias can change depending on our social environment.

Here’s an example.

I was in a seminary class on racial justice in Chicago. The class was very diverse, so our discussions were rich and included perspectives from folks of a variety of different races and ethnicities.

During the class, we each took the implicit bias test on race. I was all proud of myself because my test showed no racial bias whatsoever.

And then three weeks after I got back to Austin, I took it again, and it showed a slight bias. I was pretty upset with myself.

And then, I got to thinking, “What was I was a seeing when I watched television? Who were most often the bad guys? How often did all the protagonists look just like me?”

That’s when I stopped watching network TV.

Though I will admit to streaming Ted Lasso religiously these days. Anyway, after a few weeks of cutting out network television, the implicit bias began to disappear again.

Finally, because of the potential for internalized oppression, when folks from historically marginalized groups take the test, it can sometimes show that we have a negative bias toward, well, ourselves. Not fun!

So, while I encourage you to explore these implicit biases and tests, please also know that I am available to you if you find yourself troubled by the results.

And exploring them is important, because implicit biases too often get expressed in behaviors that unintentionally marginalize other people.

These are often called “micro-aggressions”.

Please be aware though, that term can be problematic because the impact of such behaviors is often anything but “micro” for those on the receiving end of them.

Better descriptions include “exclusionary behaviors” or “unaware othering”.

For now though, if you want to delve into this more, you will still need to search the term “microaggressions”, as it is what has been used in most of the research.

And I am going to send you to a website – microaggressions.com where people have submitted their own experiences of these, exclusionary behaviors, because these experiences provide such a powerful way to truly grasp the impact of them.

And exclusionary behaviors can happen here at our church, as Kelly noted, even when our intent is to welcome and create connections with one another.

Let me give you just a couple more examples.

One exclusionary question can be asking, “What do you do?” For many other cultures, ones work is not as central to personal identity as it can be among white professionals.

In fact, I grew up in a blue-collar culture, where career and self- identity are far less bound together, so when I was younger and got asked this question, I was often confused by it.

“I hike? Go to movies? Read? Breathe? I dunno!”

Another example of potentially “unaware othering” is to assume someone was not born in the U.S. because of how they look or sound to us and then ask, “So, where are you from?”

A friend of mine, who was born in the U.S. to parents who had lmmigrated from Korea, told me she always wants to answer that question with, “Beaumont, TX. What’s your God-forsaken place of birth”.

Apologies to Beaumont and my family who still live in the area. So, let’s uproot implicit bias.

Let’s work hard to become more aware of our scripts and get creative about ways we might engage one another to avoid this unaware othering and instead create welcoming, connection, Beloved Community.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
April 30, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

With all that is going on in our social and political environment these days, it can feel overwhelming. How do we resist so many assaults on human worth and dignity? How do we sustain resistance long-term? We will look at how spiritual practices such as opening to joy, celebrating our bodies, embracing joy and humor, immersing ourselves in relationship and more can help us resist simply going into survival mode and instead thrive, even amongst so many challenges.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

Joy is a revolutionary force. We need it as much as we need anger. It is joy that will keep using these bodies long enough to enact justice.

– Evette Dionne (Free Black Girl)

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Reading

BREATHE
Lynn Ungar

Breathe, said the wind
How can I breathe at a time like this,
when the air is full of the smoke
of burning tires, burning lives!
Just breathe, the wind insisted.
Easy for you to say, if the weight of
injustice is not wrapped around your throat,
cutting off all air.
I need you to breathe.

I need you to breathe.

Don’t tell me to be calm
when there are so many reasons
to be angry, so much cause for despair!
I didn’t say to be calm, said the wind,
I said to breathe.
We’re going to need a lot of air
to make this hurricane together.

Sermon

The Texas Senate just passed a bill that would authorize the construction of an anti-abortion monument on the grounds of the state capitol. They also passed a bill requiring every classroom in a public school to display a copy of the Christian 10 commandments.

Here, and across the country, various forms of “don’t say gay” bills have been passed or proposed, limiting or outright banning the discussion ofLGBTQ issues in public schools.

Measures trampling upon Trans rights, such as prohibiting access access to life-affirming, life-saving healthcare and so many other punitive measures are being passed or considered. As are various ways of criminalizing drag performances. II

As is forbidding telling students the truth about the history of slavery, racism and other forms of oppression in this country, along with measures banning books, eliminating tenure in higher education, turning our schools into militarized zones, targeting funding for public schools by shifting it to private, often religiously indoctrinating, private schools … It keeps going …

Fees on environmentally friendly ways of producing energy, as well as such ways of consuming energy, such as an additional tax on owners of electric vehicles. Various ways of suppressing voting rights, particularly targeted toward BIPOC folks and young people.

Other proposals would take away regulatory authority from municipalities, curtail workers rights, ban diversity initiatives, punish businesses that assist their workers with obtaining abortions out of state or that promote clean energy.

Well, the list of legislative atrocities goes on and on and on. In April, we’ve been exploring the spiritual topic of resistance. With all of these seemingly never-ending assaults upon our religious values and principles though, it can sometimes feel like this:

VIDEO

Now, I’m not saying there is Star Trek Borg-like crusade afoot that wants to force us all into a white supremacy culture, hetero-cispatriarchal, radical capitalistic, caste-structured, fundamentalist Christian-centered hive mind way of being. – Oh, maybe I am.

Anyway, given the bombardment we are witnessing upon the very foundations of human dignity, the question becomes, how do we sustain resistance over the long-term – find new and innovative ways to engage in such resistance?

Well, fundamentally, we steadfastly refuse to accept the framing being foisted upon us.

So, for instance, when LGTBTQ+ folks and our loved ones and supporters get accused of “grooming children”, we do not respond with, “Nuh, uh. We don’t either.” That centers the argument on the frame being imposed by those with whom we disagree. Instead, we reject the frame altogether.

Or perhaps, we turn it upside down by asking something like, “Well, who is that is trying to indoctrinate our school children with a white supremacy culture, hetero-cis-patriarchal, radical-capitalistic, caste-structured, fundamentalist Christian-centered worldview.”

“Who is it that would deny our children an understanding of the history of slavery, racism and other forms of oppression in this country and the brave folks who have successfully fought against them.” “Who would deny them knowing of the metaphorical truths to be gleaned from all of the world’s wisdom traditions and the myriad beautiful forms of human flourishing?” “Just who is doing the grooming?”

And, activists and movement leaders have identified several ways we can sustain and our resistance while often at the same time flipping the frame like this.

First, don’t forget smaller acts of resistance. We often think of resistance as huge marches and the like. But speaking out through what we buy, what we eat, where we show up (or do not), for instance, can be powerful forms of resistance.

Author and activist Adrienne Marie Brown, writes as follows:

“small resistance historically has looked like a wrench in the gears, a slowing things down, a rancid ingredient in master’s food, enslaved people teaching each other to read and write … “small resistance these days looks like turning people who are supporting and promoting racist, transphobic and inhumane policies away from your door. it looks like stopping next to police cars that have pulled people over and filming them until the person stopped is allowed to leave … “

The Dalai Lama simply says, “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”

Number two: open ourselves to joy and pleasure and infuse them into our activism.

In her book, “Pleasure Activism; The Politics of Feeling Good”, Adrienne Renee Brown writes, “Feeling good is not frivolous, it is freedom,” that pleasure is the way we know, “… I belong, I’m safe … I have decolonized. I have returned to myself.”

Journalist and activist Evette Dionne, also known as @freeblackgirl, says it this way, “Joy is a revolutionary force. We need It as much as we need anger because it is joy that will help keep us in these bodies long enough to enact justice.”

Designer and author Ingrid Fetell Lee argues that autocrats throughout the world have attempted to stifle Joy because it is a “propulsive force”.

Joy is a sustaining source of energy for change.
Shared joy creates unity.
Pleasure reclaims our humanity.
It disrupts biases that separate us.
Joy is a form of care that allows us to move past trauma and reclaim our resilience and hope.

Inviting one another to enter, rejoice and come in can be a powerful form of resistance.

Number 2a: Remember that music is a powerful source of joy within our resistance. Our music can both provide us with nourishment for our social justice struggles and a powerful voice for proclaiming them.

In fact, the group Resistance Revival Chorus is one such powerful voice for justice. I want you to let you hear them and their music just a bit.

VIDEO

Singing, chanting, drumming, protests songs, popular artists releasing songs of justice – these tap into the emotional and metaphorical parts of our consciousness, making them formidable ways to inspire action and bring about lasting change.

2b.: Humor is a wellspring of joy and a remarkably effective way to deliver our message. The United States Institute of Peace outlines several ways humor can radically benefit non-violent social movements. A well targeted joke can upend power dynamics.

Each joke can become a tiny revolution. For instance, during the “Arab Spring”, as Mubarak in Egypt refused to announce his resignation, one protestor took to social media, saying: “He’s watching Egyptian state TV … He doesn’t know it’s his last day in office.” This snowballed on social media with a multitude of jokes portraying Mubarak as clueless – as someone to laugh at rather than fear.

The Institute also notes that humor can be nearly impossible for regimes to stamp out. It serves as a healing sort of pressure relief valve for activists and can attract more people to a movement. I found so many of examples of moments utilizing humor that I cannot possibly tell you about all of them. Have some fun and search it online sometime though.

A couple of favorites. The folks who decked themselves out as clowns to attend a Klan rally and informed the klans people that they were the ones who looked silly. And, how could I leave out the Raging Grannies?

VIDEO

Number 3: Relearning to love our bodies and ourselves is a radical act of resistance.

Performance and theatre artist, poet and activist Trisha Hershey says, “Loving ourselves and each other deepens our disruption of the dominant systems. They want us unwell, fearful, exhausted, and without deep self-love because you are easier to manipulate when you are distracted … “

So many of our systems of oppression exert their power and control by separating us from our bodies – assaulting our bodily autonomy.

Renee Taylor, who says it so much more powerfully in her poem, “Bodies of Resistance”.

VIDEO

BODIES OF RESISTANCE
Sonya Renee Taylor

It is Monday afternoon and Roberta watches her sons
spout laughter from their geyser throats;
sunchoked and full of joy when she brings them to the beach.
All family members a sanctuary slightly out of reach,
a raft against the lash of constant waves.
But undertow will be too savage for her to save them.
Today, the ocean is a tyrant appointed to swallow them all.
Until 80 Samaritans build a wall in the Gulf of Mexico,
single-mindedly summoned to ferry Roberta’s drowning family to shore.
Humans who intuitively know that every wall needs at least one door.
Today, 80 disparate strangers became bodies of resistance
Today, 80 people rebelled against an apathetic ocean’s insistence on a sacrifice,

And is life y’all, In these bodies. Breathless and beleaguered,
we coax one another to survive. We are alive
despite even our bones’ dissent. The slack-Jawed mutter that says
these bodies were not for delight. Who are we to smile
as the world spins in entropy, a hula hoop at our feet?
What right have we to meet this day with anything but fear?
We right now but out ther …
wails the tiny bloom of child
we hush from inside. And I know
she is, he is, they you are afraid,
convinced we beware and hide, …

… We saw no “they” in we, knew solidarity
was a word that must spring like water
forever beside a standing rock. The clock of justice
will not tarry while you question
whether you are worthy of the fight.

Forget all you have been told.
Resistance is an everyday act,
the work of excavating each artifact
of the oppressor that lives in you.
Your call to be a balm to every self~inflicted wound
is how movements are birthed.
In a world content to bid you endless slumber
waking unrepentant in your skin is a hero’s journey.
The only way we collectively prevail. Only then can we celebrate
in the words of the great poet Lucille Clifton,
that every day something has tried to kill us
And has failed.
And has failed.
And will fail.

Renee Taylor also says that allowing ourselves to rest, to slow down even within our struggles for justice, lets us dream and develop vision. She writes, “Today more than ever, I know that we need quiet, rest, and sacred, unapologetic community to most powerfully manifest the full possibilities of living in radical self love.”

And that brings us finally to number 4: Connection and Community are vital for successful social action.

We are most powerful when we are resisting together. We cannot sustain ourselves for the long haul without community. Movement building means building power. Building power requires building Beloved Community.

I’ll close by mentioning that with so many threats to our fundamental values going on in our world, we can easily slip into the survival part of our brain unconsciously – our flight, fight, freeze, or fawn responses.

• • Flight mode is when we kind of go, “Danger! Danger! Run away! Run away!”

• • Fight mode is “Danger! Danger! I kill it.”

• • Flee mode is “Danger! Danger. Maybe if I am very, very quiet and very, very still, it won’t notice me.”

• And fawn is when we go, “Danger! Danger! Maybe if I am very, very nice to it, it won’t try to kill me.”

We have to resist staying in that mode though, because it automatically shuts down the creative and thinking parts off our brains, and our bodies produce lots of chemicals that can be useful in the moment of danger but harmful if they continue unabated. We have to pull ourselves out of this mode if we are to not only to survive longer term but to flourish.

All that we have talked about today are practices that help us do that – have helped this church do exactly that!

Poet Maya Angelou said, “The question is not how to survive, but how to thrive with passion, compassion, humor and style.”

This religious community has answered that question, even while facing so many challenges in the past few years. Out of loss and a pandemic, we have built a new way. We have resisted merely surviving and instead chosen thriving. II And so, we are growing in numbers and in spiritual maturity – in passion, compassion, humor and style.

Small, simple acts, joy, music, humor, loving our bodies and ourselves, connection and community – these will continue to keep our faith alive, our resistance strong and our spirits flourishing.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
April 16, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

As we approach Earth Day, what is the current status of the climate crisis? We will examine what we can do to make a difference and how viewing the climate crisis as a spiritual and personal issue might help sustain us for the sacred journey ahead.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.

– Lokota Proverb

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Meditation Reading

The rivers are the veins of God, the ocean is His blood, and the trees the hairs of His body. The air is His breath, the earth His flesh, the sky His abdomen, the hills and mountains are His bones, and the passing ages are His movements.

– Hindu Srimad-Bhagavatam

Sermon

When I was in my 20s, I lived for a while in Denver, Colorado.

I loved it there, primarily because it was so close to the Rockies. My family had brought me to those mountains as a child, and, over time, several areas in them had become holy to me.

One such area has always been a drive that begins right outside of Boulder and follows the winding course of a crystal clear river through jagged, spectacular rock formations, soaring to miraculous heights above the roadside.

Along the river, aspen trees and a dazzling variety of forest life thrive, then around other curves, great pine forests climb up the mountainsides, green and lush.

I have been on that trek many times, the last just a little less than a year ago.

As an adult, I have always felt compelled to stop quite often to absorb the shear beauty and experience the sense of transcendence such beauty can awaken. It had become a spiritual journey for me.

So my spirit was shattered the last time I went, because as I rounded the first curve where one of the great pine forests had been, what was formerly green and lush was barren and brown.

All of the pine trees were dead.

And this is happening all over the Rocky mountains.

According to the Colorado Forest Service, there are now close to one billion dead, standing trees in Colorado, due mostly to the climate crisis.

Average temperatures have risen by several degrees, leading to extreme heat during summers and an ongoing drought.

These two factors alone have killed many of the trees and severely weakened others.

A beetle that attacks the trees has also killed many more of them. At one time, a symbiosis of sorts had existed. The beetles would kill off older, weaker trees, clearing space for new growth.

However, long periods of extreme cold would kill the beetle off during the winter, keeping it from multiplying to the point that it could overwhelm even healthy trees.

Now though, the trees are already weakened by heat and drought. The winters are shorter and less cold. Now, the beetle is killing trees in 3.4 million acres of forest. All that dead wood provides ready fuel for wildfires, which not only kill more trees, but spew more carbon into the atmosphere, escalating a vicious cycle.

Next Saturday is Earth Day, so we are centering this Sunday on how we can spring into action regarding the climate crisis.

And my beloveds, it is a crisis.

As young climate activist Greta Thunberg said it, “Can we all now please stop saying ‘climate change’ and instead call it what it is: climate breakdown, climate crisis, climate emergency…?”

Now, I want to acknowledge that words like “crisis” and “emergency”, especially when it is on a global scale, can seem so big and overwhelming that we want to just avoid it.

We can feel stuck – like we can’t possibly do anything to make a meaningful difference.

So to resist falling into what is being called “climate doomerism”, know that in a few moments, we will talk about actions we can take.

And I began with that personal story, our readings today came from religious texts, because if we can begin to see the climate crisis as a personal and a spiritual issue, we may also develop a fortitude that sustains such actions.

And it is a personal and a spiritual issue.

In fact, all of the world’s major religions emphasize responsible environmental stewardship.

The Muslim Quran reminds us not to shirk this responsibility: “Corruption has appeared on land and sea Because of what people’s own hands have wrought, So may they taste something of what they have done; So that hopefully they will turn back.”

An existential corruption has appeared upon on our land and sea. The United Nations recently issued a report stating that “The chance to secure a livable future for everyone on earth is slipping away.”

“The climate time-bomb is ticking,” said Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, adding “Humanity is on thin ice – and that ice is melting fast.” Literally.

As polar ice sheets, as well as other fresh water ice sources, melt, sea levels are rising.

So much so, that repeated flooding in cities like Miami had led to “climate gentrification”, where wealthier folks are buying up property on higher ground, making it too expensive for folks with less resources.

Here is a projection for what happens to the gulf coast, depending on how much ice melts and sea levels rise.

VIDEO – “SeaLevels”

The video goes on to show the state of Florida completely disappearing under water if all the ice sheets melt.

And just as these rising sea levels threaten entire habitats, the climate crisis more generally is destroying many others.

Hundreds upon hundreds of animal species are threatened with extinction, including those pictured in this slide.

SLIDE – “Extinct”

And, I suppose, human beings should be up there too. While scientists encounter more difficulty determining the threats as precisely, we know that a great many plant species are threatened also, including many of the crops upon which we depend.

These include potatoes, avocados, vanilla, cotton, beans, squash, chili pepper, husk tomato, bananas, apples, prunes, and ginger, to list just a few.

In Austin, we have shifted from a Zone 8 to a Zone 9 habitat, meaning that when we look at our church grounds, which plants are native or adaptive has changed since some of our existing foliage was planted.

Worse yet, it is getting much harder to even classify habitats.

Extreme weather events are defying what had been normative climate ranges – think our recent snow-then ice-pacolypses, separated by sustained days of triple digit heat.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Goes the climate crisis time-bomb.

OK, enough of crisis caterwauling though. Lest we fall into that climate doomerism, let’s about how we take action. And for this, we return to the personal and the spiritual.

The Buddhist Metta Suttra says, “Even as a mother protects with her life Her child, So with a boundless heart Should one cherish all living beings, Radiating kindness over the entire world, Spreading upward to the skies, And downward to the depths…”

That’s so beautiful, because it centers our personal commitment to our planet in a love for all that is.

And we can put that love into action in our individual lives.

We’ve provided this flyer that outlines some of the personal ways we can reduce climate emissions through our transportation and travel, home efficiency, dietary habits, and much more.

Our Green Sanctuary Team and representatives from guest environmental groups are available to provide more information after the service.

Now, some climate activists argue against focusing on this type of individualized approach to the climate crisis.

They argue that it distracts us from the movement building we must do to demand change from the real culprits behind climate warming emissions – large corporations and the governments that do their bidding.

Climate activist Derrick Jensen even made a film about this called, “Forget Shorter Showers”.

And these worries have some legitimacy.

For a couple of decades now, British Petroleum has run an ad campaign designed to shift the public’s focus away from the much larger role oil corporations play in the climate crisis by pushing individual responsibility instead.

Yet, all of our individual efforts combined, no matter how strong and widespread, will never be enough to offset the damage being done by giant corporate polluters.

I don’t believe we can “forget shorter showers” though.

The film itself states that individual efforts could reduce our carbon emissions by 22%.

These efforts are necessary, just not sufficient. So, we need both.

We need to reduce our own, individual climate emissions, while also coming together to demand major changes in climate-related government oversight and corporate practices.

And we must try to convince others to join our advocacy efforts.

We must know that these too ARE spiritual practices.

A Baha’i sacred text states, “We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. We are organic with the world. Our inner life moulds the environment and is itself also deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in life is the result of these mutual reactions.”

And my beloveds, we can mould that environment. So much is already being done. There is so much for which we can advocate.

Scientists are developing technologies that can both help vastly reduce our emissions and remove carbon dioxide from the air.

SLIDE – air capture

Researcher Jennifer Wilcox describes advances she and others are making to create carbon capture technology that is both economically and scientifically feasible.

Scientists with an organization called Project Drawdown are proposing achievable ways that we cannot not only halt the increase of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere but actually reverse it! You can find out more about their work at drawdown.org.

I want to show you just one of their graphics.

SLIDE – “drawdown”

This shows just some ways we can begin to drastically reverse the climate crisis.

I’ll address just a few of these very quickly.

Refrigerants: Not so long ago, because of environmental advocacy, the world came together successfully to address the use of refrigerants that were destroying the ozone layer.

Regrettably, some of the chemicals that manufactures then began using have been discovered to greatly increase atmospheric warming. A new effort is underway to promote the use of even newer cooling methods that do not contribute the climate crisis.

The good news is we already have a model for such advocacy. We’ve done it before.

Education and equality: These scientists’ studies have shown that, for a multitude of reasons, if we begin to address educational, economic, social and racial inequalities throughout the world, particularly as regards girls, women and family planning, an additional benefit will be remarkably large reductions in atmospheric warming. And this work is already consistent with our Unitarian Universalist principles!

In his book Blessed Unrest, activist Paul Hawkins proposes that a global movement to demand environmental and social justice is already underway.

VIDEO – “blessed unrest”

And to build on that momentum, we have to talk about the climate crisis. We have to convince others to join this movement.

Now, how many of you have tried to engage with someone in denial about the climate crisis?

How’d that go for you? How well did throwing facts and figures at them work? Environmental scientist Katherine Hayhoe says that we must talk about the climate crisis, but that we may have greater success if we emphasize values and common ground over rehashing facts.

Here she is describing doing so at a rotary club meeting in the second most conservative U.S. city, Lubbock, TX.

VIDEO – “values”

So, whether it is rooted in a common love for the outdoors or her own Christian faith, Dr. Hayhoe’s research has led her to believe a values based approach is most likely to motivate change.

While reading her book, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing, I kept finding myself thinking about by Grandpa Leo.

SLIDE – “leo”

There he is – young Leo, and Leo as I more often remember him. After my parents divorced, my grandfather became a role model for me. He instilled in me a love for nature and those mountains in Colorado. I remember him taking us camping in the piney woods of East Texas. One of my favorite memories is walking with him during a rainfall under the pine tree canopy, shielded from the rain, saturated with the intoxicating smell of dampened pine needles.

Now the thing is, Grandpa Leo and I probably had very different ideological leanings.

He was, after all, a Deacon in a small-town-Texas Baptist Church. And yet, were he alive today, I believe we would find common ground in our shared values – a love for nature and a faith-centered call to responsible environmental stewardship.

If I told him about the dying Pines in Colorado, the glaciers disappearing in Glacier National Park, his beloved Gulf coastline slowly fading away under the rising waters – I have no doubt that Grandpa Leo would soon become a leader in the movement!

After all, it is the values he instilled in me that lead me to think of it as a spiritual journey – a sacred undertaking.

My beloveds, our time is running short, but we do still have time. Our spiritual journey begins now.

We undertake this sacred quest of resurrecting the very future of life and creation, together.

And the Grandpa Leo in me is saying, “Come on ya’ll, let’s get going.”

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776