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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
April 10, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
Many of us are engaged in a lifelong process of awakening to realities that are different than what we were taught. It is a process that can feel liberating and help us awaken to our own, full creative potential. So, why are we witnessing such a backlash against wokeness.
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
Love and Justice are not two.
Without inner change, there can be no outer change.
Without collective change, no change matters.
You make an actual vow,
hear the crys of the world
step into the experience of awakening
to the suffering of the world
and the desire to bring an end
to that suffering.– Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Meditation Reading
In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.
What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.
To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.
You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.
Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?– David Whyte
Sermon
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