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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

October 16, 2011

The third in the series on the seven UU Principles. We talk about acceptance, spiritual growth, encouraging one another. What is “spiritual” for Unitarian Universalists?

“Come into the circle of love and justice

Come into the community of mercy, holiness and health

Come and you shall know peace and joy.”

Reading:

The words of Maria Mitchell (pronounced with a long “i”) Nineteenth century Unitarian astronomer and educator

Small as is our whole system compared

with the infinitude of creation, brief as is

our life compared with the cycles of time,

we are so tethered to all the beautiful

dependencies of law, that not only the

sparrow’s fall is felt to the uttermost bound

but the vibrations set in motion by the

words that we utter reach through all space

and the tremor is felt through all time

Sermon

I’m in the middle of a series of sermons on our seven Unitarian Universalist principles. We’re up to the third one now, which says that we covenant (promise) together to affirm and promote: “Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.”

Let me start with “acceptance of one another. That is Unitarian Universalism 101. We come in the door of a UU congregation and we feel that maybe here is a place we can be who we are. All of who we are. What a relief! What a blessing! So it comes with some reciprocity where we are called upon to accept others the way they are as well… it’s still great.

Our church not only accepted but celebrated differences yesterday afternoon on the Capital steps when you all turned out to bless a mass wedding service where around 20 same-sex couples said their vows to one another to make commitments to become life-partners. One woman came up to me after the ceremony to say “The support your faith community showed for us here has renewed my faith.” We sometimes focus too much on whether we feel accepted. I urge you to understand what your acceptance means to others. You lived your mission yesterday.

So acceptance is UU 101, but it’s never over. We work theoretically and practically on acceptance of groups and categories of people. When it gets down to it, it’s about individuals. Some people are easier to accept than others. We’re just talking about within our congregation here. We have astronomers sitting next to astrologers, Libertarians next to Democrats, those who pray next to those who only make wishes. One way of accepting one another is to ignore differences, keep everything on a superficial level, and be sweet. Another way is to engage with a person you’re having trouble with, be curious about your differences, ask questions.

The second part of the principle is “encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.” The word “spiritual” comes from the base “spirare”, to breathe. Spiritus, the noun that most recently has given us spirit and spiritual, means “a breathing, the breath of life.” My definition of spiritual growth has to do with a bit of Christian scripture I memorized as a child. It’s a list of what the author calls “The fruits of the spirit.” If these things are growing, your spirit is being well fed and watered. If they are not growing, your spirit needs some attention. Here is the list: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control are increasing. Given the etymology of the word, maybe you could say it is whatever gives you room inside to breathe deeply, and whatever helps people breathe when they are around you.

I’m going to talk to you about a few ways of growing spiritually as members of this congregation. People talk about church growth all the time, and what they often mean is getting more people in the door. I’m interested in that, in being hospitable to all the people in Austin who need this church, but I’m more interested in the growth of the people who are here right now: growth in spirit, growth in engagement, growth in generosity with time and talent here and elsewhere in life, growth in wisdom, and growth in enjoyment of life. Here are some ways to grow here.

1. Stretch yourself to say good, blessing things to other people. Blessing doesn’t have to be formal and scriptural sounding; it can just be “I like hearing your laugh.” “It’s good to see you this morning.” Blessing can be a question about your family. Saying “I’m sorry for your loss.”

2. Stretching yourself to serve people you don’t know. Making sack lunches for the working homeless, building houses for low-income families, serving meals at a soup kitchen, lobbying legislators for changes that will make those problems less severe. You could start serving people you don’t know right here. There are a good number of people around here that you don’t know. You serve them by blessing them, by having respectful conversation, teaching their children, inviting them to take another step into the center of this congregation.

4. A spirit deepens when a person practices gratitude. Focus on things you are grateful for, and open your heart in gratitude as much as you can.

5. You grow spiritually by giving when you don’t have that much stored up. One writer, Victor M. Parachin, put it this way. “Be a stream, not a swamp. Remember, it is the mountain stream that carries fresh, life-giving water because it flows out. However, the swamp is stagnant. A swamp collects and retains water that comes its way. Don’t be the kind of person who seeks to accumulate much before allowing a little to flow through. “If you own things you don’t use, clothes, furniture, houses, spiritual teachers will say that those things don’t belong to you. They need to be let go of to find their rightful owners. Now, some of you may be saying “she’s stopped preaching and gone to meddling’.” Just consider. What is enough? It is a sickness of the spirit that most of us share, to lose track of what enough is.

We are in the middle of our stewardship season now, when we ask one another for money. You visitors, close you ears now, because giving is a right and a privilege of membership. You members, this is a blessed time in a way, because we have to look at our money situation and ask “What is enough to keep for my family? What is enough to give away?” This congregation needs you to look at your money as green energy that fuels the mission of this church. You are needed. Yes you. It’s healthiest when we have each person, each little family, giving its fair percentage. It’s not up to someone else. We are all grateful to those among us who have promised their support for next year. The amount is not as important as becoming generous within your means in your support of this faith. Be a stream, not a swamp!

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

October 9, 2011

It is exciting to live in the state capital. This weekend the “Occupy Austin” demonstration is starting, and it will go into early December. The people are angry about Wall St. bailouts with no gratitude or humility forthcoming from the folks who had to be rescued. We’re angry about credit card companies moving the due date of our payments to make us late, we’re angry about home foreclosures and predatory lending practices, we’re angry about out-of-control health care costs and the unavailability of health insurance for even middle-class citizens, we’re angry that people are not taken into account with as much near-religious fervor as is the bottom line dollar amount of the profit. We can stand on the capital steps and show the world that the people’s anger has been awakened, and change must come. This sermon is not about anger, though. This sermon is about love.

On the Capital steps next Saturday afternoon, there’s going to be a wedding. Or two. In the crowd will be Unitarian Universalists with our denominational banner, which reads “Standing on the Side of Love.” What’s that all about? It’s about some members of this community wanting to come out as straight allies to the cause of civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens. It takes courage to come out as a straight ally. Heterosexual privilege not to think about it. To be one of the in crowd. To fit in well. Not to be seen as hell-bound. To bother with civil rights. To brave the scorn. To have your neighbors look at you askance.

This congregation has expressed a desire to be hospitable. Not just warmly hospitable, but radically hospitable. Let’s talk about that… this will not be the only conversation we have about it. I want to talk about it in a context in which I can hear from you as well, but here’s a start. Let’s just talk about being welcoming to GLBT folks.

There are many layers of welcome. The first is just saying “I don’t care who you are or what you do, you may sit next to me in worship on Sunday and I won’t imagine you’re going to hell or anything.”

The problem with that layer of “welcome” is that it’s not all that friendly or informed. And it’s easily irritated. It doesn’t want to think about the issues. It doesn’t want to get on a bus, register voters, get fire hosed, be called names, or have to hear too much about your struggle to adopt kids. If you are one of the “others,” you’re still on your own. Studies show that if the percentage of “others” gets to 20 percent, the main group begins to feel overrun, like “they’re taking over.”

A middle layer is a warmer, more aware welcome. People know the history of your struggle. They know the situation. Concerning GLBT issues, these folks know what Stonewall was, know who Harvey Milk was, they know what people who come out give up, and what they get. What do I mean “What people give up?”

In life we have privileges of which we are not even aware. That in itself is a privilege, the privilege of being able to choose whether to think about these things or not. In our racist society, if you are white European American, you don’t have to think about the privileges granted to you by being white. You may think about them if you choose to, but it is rarely forced upon you. As a heterosexual person, you are in the same situation. You have the freedom to conduct your life publicly without scrutiny or repercussion. You don’t have to explain yourself. People don’t get upset about your life partner….. Well, they might say “honey, you could do better,”, but they don’t usually go “eeeuw, gross, I could never even be in the room with one of those.”

Let me read you a partial list of things gay people give up when they come out. In most states you can’t get married. More than that, you don’t have much public support for your relationship. It is rare for a family to send anniversary cards. It’s a big deal for your friends and family to ask how your partner is, to send them a present at Christmas. In groups of my straight friends, if one of them is dating, there are enthusiastic questions about how the relationship is going. When I was dating, they would try — it would be “So, how’s — um –….” Not ever “what’s she like? How did you meet? What did she say when you did THAT?” At most workplaces it would be more trouble than it’s worth to have a picture of your family on your desk.

All of that is emotionally discouraging. It’s not as bad as the legal things you give up: paid leave from work at the death of a spouse (not to mention being able to grieve publicly without being accused of being blatant) And those are not as bad as the danger of losing your job, your apartment, or your life because of hostility toward your sexuality.

You give up:

The right to inherit automatically at the death of a spouse. The right to immediate access to a spouse in case of a medical emergency where only family is allowed.

Gay people give up the privilege of learning about relationships from a wide variety of fiction, movies, TV. They don’t have too many media images of folks with whom to identify

It can be dangerous to express affection in public. This is getting better, but there are still hate crimes against GLBT folks. If you, god forbid, have to be in the criminal justice system, you do have to worry about being mistreated or victimized because of your sexuality.

If you come out, you give up being able to:

. join the military and be open about your sexuality

. expect that your children will be given books in school that implicitly support your kind of family and that they will not be taught that your sexuality is a “perversion”

. approach the legal system, social service organizations, and government agencies without fearing discrimination because of your sexuality

. raise, adopt, and teach children without people believing that you will molest them or force them into your sexuality. Moreover, people generally will not try to take away your children because of your sexuality

. belong to the religious denomination of your choice and know that your sexuality will not be denounced by its religious leaders

. expect to be around others of your sexuality most of the time. You do not have to worry about being the only one of your sexuality in a class, on a job, or in a social situation.

In giving up these things, a GLBT person gains the sense of living truthfully and authentically, you gain a group of people to whom you belong, at some level, automatically. If you meet another GLBT person, you have an instant sense of some of what this person has gone through in their life so far.

What is the next level, beyond the kind of welcoming that understands all of that? The next level is being an ally. To want to stand shoulder to shoulder with by our GLBT friends by imagining what it would be like to let go of some of your heterosexual privileges for a span of time. I’m not suggesting that you give up getting married, but you may try acting for a week as if you have to be careful about touching one another in public, talking about your partner in gender-neutral language, imagining the vulnerability of your child custody arrangements. Refer to your doctor as “you know, that straight doctor I go to,” tell jokes about “there was this straight guy who went into a bar…” Speak up when someone is telling hateful jokes or assuming that everyone in the room, because they are straight, thinks being gay is weird and wrong, One way to speak up is to say something like “My daddy is gay,” if you don’t know the people.

Here is what the folks in the Spartanburg congregation did. They started a “Coming Out Coffeehouse,” where the church advertised in the paper that GLBT and straight allies were invited to a dance party. About 70 people came, three years running. Straight couples from the church danced next to and with GLBT members, and we had a great time. On Sunday, the adult program was “Ask a gay person anything you want to ask,” and a panel of volunteers fielded written questions from the floor. Whereas most UU congregations across the country are about 10% GLBT, that southern congregation is about 30% GLBT. There is still some ignorance. Two lesbian partners were on the Board at one time because the person from the committee who was supposed to ask the one to be on the Board got mixed up and asked the other one. Two middle ages women with salt-and-pepper hair and sensible shoes looked exactly alike to him, even though one is 5’4 and the other is nearly six feet tall. The wrong one said “yes,” so then he had to ask the right one too, and they served on the Board together.

Spartanburg SC had never had a pride march, and some community people and two straight women in the UU congregation organized the town’s first pride march. These two straight women went to the police and got protection for the marchers, went to the mayor and told him what was going to happen. Everyone was worried that there would be mayhem and violence. There were about thirty protesters, and about between three and four hundred marchers, both GLBT folks and their allies. I’m proud of that church too. Becoming an ally is what some of you straight folks here may be called to be.

We UUs are in the middle of a national campaign against hate, whether it is against immigrants, mixed-race couples, or GLBT folks. We call it “Standing on the Side of Love.” Many congregations are hanging big “Standing on the Side of Love” banners on the outside of their church buildings or on their church’s street side signs

Song: “The beauty in you.”

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

October 2, 2011

During this time of shortening days, our Jewish brothers and sisters are celebrating the “Days of Awe,” Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. This is a good time for us to talk about a Unitarian Universalist understanding of guilt and repentance, making amends, turning to more “right action,” forgiving ourselves and others.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

September 18, 2011

In the early days of Unitarianism, a group of friends formed what historians have called “a genius cluster” in Concord, Massachusetts. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, the Alcott family, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller were giants in forming American culture and thought. How did this explosion of growth and influence take place? This is one of the stories of our heritage.

“All the Gossip from Concord”

Sometimes there is a cluster of people who make things happen, who influence one another, build on one another, challenge and inspire and complement one another until each is greater than they could have been alone. In the eighteen thirties, forties and fifties such a group of people lived in Concord MA. It could not have happened without Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson was born to a Unitarian minister and his wife in Boston MA in 1803, as Beethoven was writing the Eroica Symphony, as Napoleon was considering invading England, and the Louisiana Purchase is made, doubling the size of the United States. Emerson’s father died when he was almost eight, and his mother struggled to make ends meet. His aunt Mary Moody Emerson became the one who paid for Waldo’s education at the Boston Latin School, then Harvard, where his academic career was undistinguished. He was class poet his senior year, but only after six others had turned down the offer. Mary Moody is said to have been a curmudgeon, having the questionable gift of being able to say more unpleasant things in half an hour than anyone else living.

Waldo became a Unitarian minister and fell in love with a delicate young woman named Ellen Tucker. They married as soon as she turned eighteen. She was from a wealthy family, and had a great deal of money coming to her when she turned twenty-one. Unfortunately she died before that birthday, leaving Emerson heart-broken, crazed with grief. He visited her grave often, even opening her casket a year after she died because he missed her so terribly. His belief in God began to fall apart, or it began to evolve, from my perspective. The members of his congregation were not so supportive of these changes. He finally quit the church because he couldn’t stand the ceremony of communion any more. People should pay attention to living their principles during the week instead of focusing on having communion on the weekend to make everything okay. He began writing and lecturing, making his living through his stirring speaking style, which drew enthusiastic crowds.

He was asked to give the graduation address at Harvard, where a class of ministers was graduating, and he came down so hard on the local churches, talking about how dull they were, how rule-bound, how frozen and intellectual their ministers’ sermons that it was impossible for their people to get nourishment for their souls at church. Harvard did not appreciate the alternative vision he painted of finding the divine in nature, in the oneness of all things, of following your inner wisdom, respecting the knowledge that comes fresh to you from your experience rather than quoting people whose wisdom may have been good for their own times but might have nothing to do with the now. The people at Harvard asked him not to come back, and he did not, until he was an old man and they asked him to help with the memorial service for those killed in the Civil War.

At the time of the obscure little lawsuit that changed everything Waldo was a young man, grieving over his beloved wife. Emerson’s brother-in-law felt he should not get the money that had been coming to Ellen, but an angry Waldo sued the family and was granted the inheritance. This money made all the difference. The money made all the difference for him. It made all the difference for Thoreau. It made the difference for the Alcott family and for many men and women escaping from being enslaved in the South. Interest on the money granted to him by the courts paid him as much per year as he was making as a minister.

One of the places he spoke was on Cape Cod, where, at the post-lecture reception he met a slender woman named Lydia. They had a nice conversation, and several months later he wrote her a letter proposing marriage. He apologized for not having time to ask her in person. She wrote him a letter accepting his proposal. He asked that she change her name to Lydian, and she did. They bought the big house by the road in Concord and started a family.

Emerson made a practice of inviting people who interested him to come to Concord. Bronson Alcott’s Temple School in Boston had just gone broke due to his not being a very practical headmaster and because they believed that there was no original sin, that the children were basically good and their spirits did not need to be broken. They believed the children should move around a lot during the day and have various experiences as they learned, rather than sitting still and reciting the knowledge the teachers were imparting, and also perhaps because there was a slight scandal as they believed in teaching the children frankly about procreation. Emerson wrote and invited the Alcotts to come to Concord. He found a house for them to rent. They came and stayed.

Mostly it was Emerson who paid their rent, another neighbor who paid their taxes while Bronson taught his daughters and expounded his theories about vegetarian eating and proper education. His daughter Louisa May Alcott was a wild pony of a girl, always pretending she was a horse. She told her parents she’d been a horse in a former life. She was outspoken and had dark eyes and dark hair, unlike his blonder daughters, and he felt there was a correlation between having a divine nature and being blond. As you know, Louisa May came through for the family, and when Emerson wasn’t around to support them any more, she did it with her writing.

Another friend in Concord was David Henry Thoreau, who changed his name to Henry David Thoreau. He was another Harvard graduate whose family owned a pencil factory in Concord. He was a green man, always in the woods or on the river, with strong views on simplicity of living, on the divine being found in nature, of living without getting drunk – drinking only water. He had a child like spirit, scorning nice clothes, baths and haircuts in favor of befriending the foxes and trees, and knowing the call of every bird and the name of every plant. Emerson and his family found him delightful. He became a teacher for their two sons, who adored him.

For a while he courted Lydian’s sister Lucy, who was staying with the family. He was in his twenties and she was nearly forty, but he thought she was elegant and sophisticated. Mostly though, as the years went on, he loved Lydian. When Emerson went on speaking tours he stayed at the house to look after everything. He planted the garden, fixed the porch, built Lydian a secret compartment under one of the dining room chairs to store her good gloves. The Emerson children loved him. Did Lydian? We don’t know. The Emersons supported Thoreau, and when he wanted to move to the woods, they gave him use of a woodlot they owned by Walden Pond, where he built a tiny shack in which he lived for a time to write a book about his boat trip up the river with his brother John. John had died of Lockjaw the same year the Emersons’ young son Waldo died of Scarlet Fever, and the community was bonded in sorrow over these two terrible losses.

Another frequent house guest was the brilliant, beautiful and radical Margaret Fuller. Lydian took to her bed when Margaret was in the house. The way Emerson looked at her, the letters they wrote back and forth across the hall from his study to Margaret’s bedroom, the long walks they took in the woods together, all were too much for Lydian to endure. Margaret’s father had educated her well beyond the limits normally observed by young women of the day. She had studied Latin and Greek, astronomy and history, theology and literature. She was the first women allowed access to the sacred halls of the Harvard Library. In a time when women were forbidden to get paid for speaking in public, she made her living by hosting “Conversations” at the Boston bookstore run by Elizabeth Peabody. Women would come from far and wide to hear these conversations on marriage, the role of women, sexuality and all manner of topics challenging the commonly held mores and values of the culture. She was a challenging woman, who would “break her sword on your shield,” and the men loved to engage with her. It helped that she had large beautiful eyes, abundant hair and a lovely figure, and that she was as well educated as any of them.

Another friend who came to Concord because of the people gathering there was Nathaniel Hawthorne. He had courted Elizabeth Peabody, but had ended up marrying her less challenging and sicklier sister Sophie. Emerson arranged for a friend of his to rent them a house within walking distance of his own and the Alcotts. Hawthorne was handsome and moderately successful as a writer. He was a member of the Transcendental Club that Emerson hosted, where they talked about Eastern religion and philosophy, about the oneness of everything, about the old mores and what the new ones should be. If Emerson was in love with Fuller, Hawthorne was more so. He would come take her for walks, and they would sit in the woods on a blanket and talk for hours. Sophie Hawthorne handled it the opposite way from Lydian, declaring that she adored Margaret too, maybe more than Nathaniel did. When Emerson came looking for Margaret and found her in the woods with Hawthorne, though, suddenly the man whose house the Hawthornes were renting needed his home back and they had to move to Salem. In his fever of loss he wrote a book about a sensual and lovely young woman who was made to wear a scarlet letter A after having been caught in an affair. She embroidered it with gold thread, insisting that coming together with her lover was a sacred act. Sophie hated the book, as she knew exactly who that woman was.

Horace Greely offered Margaret a job as an editor of the New York Tribune, so she left for New York to do that.

Thoreau came out of the woods and began living in Concord again. His book about the boat trip was published but it didn’t sell well. He began putting his journals from the pond together, looking for a publisher. No one wanted to touch them. He kept polishing them until they were the first American memoir, one of the books that shaped American thought and philosophy. Finally Emerson paid to have them published.

Emerson also paid the way for the runaway slaves who were on their way to Canada. The homes in Concord were a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Throughout the story of this group is the refrain “Emerson paid…” If Thoreau had had to get a job, where would American thought be? If the Alcotts had disintegrated under the grind of their poverty, where would American literature be? If the Transcendentalists hadn’t been rooted un Unitarianism, hadn’t formed the thought of a religion which could contain those who believe that everything was connected, that all was one with one soul, that wisdom comes from within, that there is a spark of the divine in everyone, that the divine can be seen and felt in nature, where would UUism be? Emerson paid for the space where all of this could happen.

In this congregation we have people who don’t make much money, people who have just enough to live on if they don’t go on vacations or send the kids to private school, and people who have enough to share. It’s sometimes hard to be one of the ones who gives more than others do. This congregation needs about two thousand dollars per family to be sturdy, to have the people it needs to hold the sacred space for us to have the indescribable and life-sustaining experiences we have here, to have the outreach that supports justice work in this state. For some, two thousand is not possible. For others, ten thousand or twenty thousand is a possibility. Some can step into the role of being the Emersons of this community. It will never be fair. Did Emerson always support the community happily and without a thought of resentment? No. Sometimes he felt he was the only grownup around. Sometimes he gave openheartedly. He always gave. Think about whether it might be your time to be an Emerson here.

Whatever happened to Margaret Fuller?

She became a journalist, and traveled overseas, the first female foreign correspondent reporting on the Roman revolution. She wrote about Garibaldi and the rebels, and news made its way back to MA that she was in love with a Count.

The Count had been disinherited because of his revolutionary activities. He was going to make her a Marquesa. She was pregnant. Had they married? She wanted to come home. There was hardly a place for her around Boston with her radical ideas, her education, her conversation. How much less would there be a place for her now, married to a foreigner. If not married, then with a child out of wedlock. It was beyond imagining.

The boat left the harbor too low in the water from all the Italian marble in the hold, including a bust of John C Calhoun bound for Cola SC. He was also a Unitarian, although not one of the angels on the abolition issue. Margaret’s friend Robert Browning begged her not to get on the boat. She herself had a sense of foreboding. She and the baby, Nino, and the Count set off. The Captain died of smallpox and was buried at sea before they’d gone very far at all. Nino, the baby, got smallpox too, but his parents nursed him back to health.

The new Captain, inexperienced, overshot the NY harbor and the ship ran aground off of Fire Island at three in the morning in gale winds and high waves. The ship began to break apart. All that marble in the hull began to break through. One ship board friend jumped into the water to try to swim to shore, visible and not too far away through the pounding surf. They watched him drown. A sailor who had befriended the baby offered to take the child to shore. They strapped Nino to the man’s chest and then had to watch them both drown. Margaret was seen by folks on shore standing on the deck, her long dark hair whipping around in the wind, her white nightgown already making her a ghost , and then the ship and everyone still on it disappeared under the waves. The bust of John C Calhoun was recovered and sent to Cola. The Count’s body washed up on shore, but Margaret was never seen again.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

September 11, 2011

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, we will respectfully remember those who died and talk about the second of our seven UU principles: “Justice, equity and compassion in human relations.”

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

September 4, 2011

This is a service done in September at most UU congregations across the US, a home-coming where people renew their sense of being a community.

A large bowl is set up at the front of the sanctuary. Singly or with their partners, spouses or families, people come with water in a small container and add it to the water in the bowl. Members of the congregation share a few words about the places that feed their souls. That might be the tap in your grandmother’s kitchen, a stream behind your house, or a place you visited during the summer holiday.

Meditation – Tess Baumberger

Drops of God

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 fearsome gale

centrifugal force of tornado and hurricane,

flurry of dust storm.

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.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

August 28, 2011

The first in a series of sermons on the seven Unitarian Universalist Principles, this one is about affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of each person. What does that entail, exactly? What is confusing about it? Why does Rev. Meg sometimes wish she could still believe the old Calvinist doctrine of “the total depravity of human nature” instead?

Since the early days of Unitarianism, in the 1700’s, the Unitarians have insisted on not coming up with a set of beliefs by which to define themselves. We call that being “non-creedal.” (The Quakers are a non-creedal denomination as well.) The Universalists, on the other hand, adopted several statements of belief over the years of their history. They wanted to create a statement that defined them, which was that God, in God’s infinite goodness, would not send people to the eternal torments of hell. When, after years of discussion, originally initiated by youth groups, the two denominations decided to merge in the early 1960’s, a list of commonly held beliefs was drawn up to articulate the common ground. Twenty years later the women of the two denominations initiated a rewriting of those commonly held beliefs in the 1980’s to make their language more overtly inclusive of the female half of the population, and those are the Principles we now agree together to affirm.

Over the next seven months I’m going to preach on each of the seven principles, as they are a part of what defines us as Unitarian Universalists. The first principle is that we covenant together (a covenant is a promise, a statement of intention, an agreement between or among people.) We covenant together to affirm (that means say “yes” to) and promote (that means tell other people that we affirm this thing) the inherent worth and dignity of every person. This is one of the principles that sets Unitarian Universalism in direct opposition to the Calvinism that underlies much of American Christianity.

I was raised Presbyterian, which is a Calvinist faith. One of the things Calvin taught (and he was not the first, just the worst) was that human beings, indeed the whole creation, is broken, not as it was meant to be. They would scoff, when I was young, if someone said “Follow your heart.” The heart was fallen. It would not tell you, could not tell you the right way to go. John Calvin put it this way “We believe in the total depravity of human nature.” It’s a cheery little doctrine. No, really, it’s cheery in that when someone embezzles, cheats, or disappoints, you say to yourself “What can you expect? People break bad. It’s our innate tendency. Because we were born in sin (original sin,) we could choose to do good things or bad, but we have an inherent bent toward choosing to do bad things. It’s kind of a miracle, then, that I’m a pretty good person, that I haven’t robbed the hospital pharmacy, that I returned the money in that wallet I found. Because of the depravity and brokenness of our nature, we need redemption. The theological problem comes in trying to understand why so many people live generously, do kind things, and love each other.

Our Unitarian Universalist heritage has its roots in the hopeful eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where reason was trusted to find answers to all mysteries, where the progress of humanity was expected to continue until we create a golden age where reason rules, all truth is discovered, all injustice righted, all shadows dispersed by the light of the human mind and spirit.

Taking a stand for humanity’s being born just fine the first time, (I wrote a song by that title, which I will sing to you in a few minutes) in no need of redemption, we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person. This is not to say that there are no torturers, no murderers, no really bad people. We just agree that in their original state, when they were babies, they were inherently good. The temptation is to go straight to Hitler when talking about the principles. “Did Hitler have inherent worth and dignity?” I would like to suggest that we probably don’t have Hitler in this congregation, and that we make a pact that, for the next two years, the first person in any discussion who brings up Hitler loses. This is not to say that we don’t go wrong, make destructive decisions, hurt people’s feelings, or throw plastic things occasionally into the trash. We need forgiveness. I don’t mean to be flip about this. Sometimes we hit someone we love. We need forgiveness. Sometimes we scream at our kids or cheat on our partners and spouses or slice someone to pieces with our words.

What does our UU first principle ask us to do? To affirm one another’s worth and dignity has multiple ramifications: be encouraging to them, to listen to what they have to say, to believe they have the same rights you do regardless of their religion, their ethnic background, their sexual preference, gender identification, political party. You believe they have the same rights to community as anyone else, and you welcome them into your church if they have the mental and emotional capacity to enter into covenant relationship with the congregation.

It means you don’t beat people up, not if they are strangers and not if they are in your family. You don’t behave sexually with people against their will. Not with children at all. That is a sure way to insult and injure a person’s sense of their own dignity. This principle is also related to our attempt to become aware of our own learned racism and c1assism, our homophobia, our sense of superiority.

It means you don’t give up hope for people. Here is where I fall down almost every day. We violate others’ worth and dignity when we dismiss them out of hand because they love Rush Limbaugh, or because they think the right wing has some good points to make, or because they are a fundamentalist Christian. Even our Republican UUs members and UUs who identify as Christians sometimes feel attacked in their own congregations. Now, while I do think that dismissing people by saying “they just want to be told what to think,” or “what a bunch of idiots,” violates this principle, I think it’s respectful of someone else’s worth and dignity to engage them in conversation, argument, debate.

Sometimes we fail this principle because we understand it too broadly. We get confused and think that it asks us not only to affirm the dignity of everyone, but to affirm and promote the worth of every behavior and every idea. Some ideas lead to destruction and injustice, and some ideas are just stupid. We’re allowed to say “I disagree with that. Can you help me understand why you think this?”

We don’t have to tolerate bad behavior If someone is being destructive, I think it is respectful of their worth to say “Come on, you can do better than this.” If people continue with that bad behavior, you calmly withdraw from interaction with them until, as the I Ching says, they begin behaving correctly. Mostly, we pay attention to our own behavior, even though it’s a lot more fun to focus on others.

I could be wrong, though. Listen to this teaching story: A young Japanese man was riding on a crowded train when a belligerent drunk made his way through the train car and began to insult passengers. The young man had studied martial arts for many years, and he felt his blood begin to boil. He stood up, blocked the drunk’s path, and opened his mouth to challenge him. Suddenly he felt a hand on his arm. It was a frail old man. “Let me handle this,” the elder said mildly. The old man invited the drunk to have a seat next to him. He began to talk to the man, asking him questions about his life, looking him in the eye with kindness. After a while the thug confessed that his wife had just died and he was in great pain; he had gone out and gotten drunk to numb his agony. The old man placed a comforting hand on the fellow’s shoulder, and he began to weep. Before the young man’s eyes the thug was transformed from a villain to a suffering human being. If we look at one another through what the poet Rainer Maria Rilke calls “soft eyes,” we will grow in our understanding of one another, and we will grow in compassion.

Some of us are awful to ourselves, using words like loser, failure, idiot. I don’t have to tell you that is not respectful of your own worth and dignity. When you are feeling down remember your own inborn worth.

“Born Just Fine the First Time.”

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

August 21, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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