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Bis Thornton
August 30, 2026
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
Do you know the tale of the sorceress Ceridwen and the boy who stole from her Cauldron of Inspiration? Join Bis Thornton for a dive into Welsh mythology as we consider our own call to nimble transformations amidst the cycles of life.
Welcome
Prelude: “Sonatina Op 27, No 18” (Kavalebsky) – Valeria Diaz, piano
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 we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.
Call to Worship
FROM THE SEA TO STARS
Lóre Stevens
Our ancestry arose in the ancient seas, first lifeforms drinking light.
Our family evolved: senses, roots, limbs, scales, minds.
We raced across the world in glorious green,
stretched aloft the canopy, spread wings to take the skies.
We made simple tools to shape the world,
befriended our enemy, fire,
and painted horses on the cave wall.
We sang, we loved, we gazed up at the mysterious stars.
We tried to understand what had created us, why we were here,
why we suffered and how to keep what was precious.
Once again we raced across the world,
changed colors, befriended the field and the wolf.
We built shelters which grew to palaces.
We fought and died
yet still we sang. Still we mapped the constellations.
Our ancestry arose in the ancient sea
of stars.
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Anthem
“Hanky Panky Nohow” (John Cale) – Brent Baldwin, vocals & guitar; Jill Csekitz, drums; Efrain Davila, bass guitar; Valeria Diaz, piano
If the sacheting of gentlemen
Gives you grievance now and then
What’s needed are some memories of planing lakes
Those planing lakes will surely calm you down
Nothing frightens me more
Than religion at my door
I never answer panic knocking, falling
Down the stairs upon the law
What law?
There’s a law for everything
And for elephants that sing to keep
The cows that agriculture won’t allow
Hanky Panky Nohow
Hanky Panky Nohow
Hanky Panky Nohow oh
There’s a name for everything
And for elephants that sing to feed
The cows that agriculture won’t allow
Hanky Panky Nohow
Hanky Panky Nohow
Hanky Panky Nohow oh
Reading
TRUTH SERUM
Naomi Shihab Nye
We made it from the ground-up corn in the old back pasture.
Pinched a scent of night jasmine billowing off the fence,
popped it right in.
That frog song wanting nothing but echo?
We used that.
Stirred it widely. Noticed the clouds while stirring.
Called upon our ancient great aunts and their long slow eyes
of summer. Dropped in their names.
Added a mint leaf now and then
to hearten the broth. Added a note of cheer and worry.
Orange butterfly between the claps of thunder?
Perfect. And once we had it,
had smelled and tasted the fragrant syrup,
placing the pan on a back burner for keeping,
the sorrow lifted in small ways.
We boiled down the lies in another pan till they disappeared.
We washed that pan.
Centering
Music for Meditation: “Coat of Many Colors” (Dolly Parton)
SermonCERIDWEN, TALIESIN, AND NIMBLE TRANSFORMATIONS
Bis Thornton
NOTE: This is a AI generated (edited) transcript.
Please forgive any omissions or errors.
We’ve had a lot of storytelling today. Let’s have another one, yeah? Once upon a time, in Penhien, which is in the Vale of Glomorgan, which is a place that we in English might call Wales, there lived a man and a woman in a house in the middle of a lake.
The man was named Teged, and the woman was named Ceridwen. and together they had three children. Their eldest was a boy named Morvrin, about whom I don’t know one single thing and can’t tell you anything about him.
Their second child was a girl named Kheri, about whom I know one thing, which is that she was immensely beautiful, the most beautiful girl in the world.
And their third child was named Avagdhu, about whom I know the most.
I suppose that all of the beauty that Ceridwen could create was given to her daughter, and there was none left for her third child, for Avagdhu was his sister’s opposite. All who met him, I would not say this about a child myself, but apparently all who met him found him to be the ugliest boy they had ever seen in their lives.
And Ceridwen, yet at all, Ceridwen was saddened for her boy Avagdhu. She loved him and wanted the best for him.
And luckily, Ceridwen was a formidable sorceress, and she planned to aid her son with her magical powers. She could not change his appearance, but she could give him gifts.
Ceridwen began to boil a cauldron of magical wisdom for her son in the hopes that he would be treated well if he had knowledge of all the mysteries of the world. She set her cauldron on a flame and filled it with its beginning ingredients.
This is the part where I kind of imagine she’s caramelizing the onions, which always takes longer than you think it will. She prepared, like caramelizing onions, she prepared this cauldron to boil for one year and one day, the same amount of time it takes to caramelize onions properly.
After a year and a day, three blessed drops of this massive brew would give the gift of inspiration.
She hired two people to tend to the cauldron. One was a young boy named Guyan Bak, and the other was a blind man named Morda. Guyan Bak was to stir the cauldron, and Morda was to tend to the fire beneath it.
Each day, Ceridwen brought sprigs of charmed herbs that she had gathered according to the placement of the stars throughout the year. And so a year passed in this manner.
When the year was very nearly finished, Ceridwen arrived once more to deliver the necessary herbs and to recite their proper incantations over the cauldron. But as she dropped in a particularly large and heavy sprig, three drops splashed out, landing on the thumb of Guyan Bak as he stirred. The drops were blisteringly hot from having been boiled for an entire year, and so Guyan Bak acted without thinking. He stuck his thumb in his mouth to cool it off.
In that instant, all that is and was and ever shall be was revealed to him in a flash. From a wider perspective, I am sure he was gripped with wonder and awe by the interdependent web of existence, by the revelation of the existence of dinosaurs, by the brilliant simplicity of the invisible atoms that make up our lives, by the unbelievable future of humanity’s journey to the surface of the moon and beyond. But some other part of his mind also understood. a more immediate matter of concern. Ceridwen would surely kill him for this. And so he fled, knocking over the cauldron in his haste.
Ooh. Ceridwen saw all the toil of her year brought to nothing as the poisonous remains of the brew flooded out into the world, and she was indeed enraged, and so she gave chase.
The boy ran into a field, and Ceridwen followed on foot. When he saw her over his shoulder, he turned into a hare for its speed, but Ceridwen became a greyhound, and she was soon nipping at his heels.
The boy came upon a river, and so he dove in and turned into a fish to hide in its racing depths, but Ceridwen became an otter, and she chased him down by the flashing of his scales.
The boy saw the open sky above the river, and so he leapt out of the water and turned into a bird to fly away, but Ceridwen leapt out too and became a hawk, and she gave him no rest in the sky.
The boy was terrified, but in the distance he saw a barn, and he planned his final escape. He flew through the barn doors and became a single grain of wheat on the floor, one grain among a thousand others.
Ceridwen followed him into the barn and saw no living creature within, only the great heap of winnowed wheat. And so she became a high-crested black hen, and she scratched at the dust and the grains until she came upon her target, the grain of wheat, who was a boy. And she ate it.
Ceridwen went home victorious and returned to her human form. At which point she realized she was pregnant. She was, I know, it’s wild. Don’t eat strange wheat when you’re a chicken. I know all of you can use this advice in your daily lives.
She was certain that she was pregnant with this boy, that she would bear the boy she had pursued, and so she resolved to wait nine months and then kill him as soon as he was born. A lot of these old Celtic tales are like this, by the way.
But after the nine months came and went, and once Ceridwen had given birth to this strange son, she found she could not kill him, and so she did not. But she could not bear to be near him either, for he had stolen the gift that she had meant for her other son. And so she cast him into the sea, wrapped in leather bunting, praying that God would have mercy upon him.
I kind of imagine she understood that his gift would keep him safe, because I think saying, well, I’m not going to kill you, but I will throw you in the ocean. It’s a little intense.
Eventually, the bundle washed onto shore, where a king retrieved it. And when he opened it, as he was peeling, you know, opened the leather, he saw the boy’s shining forehead first and he exclaimed, behold, a radiant brow. And so he named the boy for his beautiful head and the baby’s name was Taliesin.
You may recognize this name or maybe not, but he grew up to be the most legendary bard in all the world who sang for many kings over 1400 years ago.
This story is relatively new to me. I’m usually up here to talk about the Bible or Greek mythology, things that I’m deeply familiar with. This one’s new to me. And as soon as I read it, I knew I had to share it.
I’m going to be really honest. I have a second half of this sermon, but the thing I felt charged to do was tell you that story today. So if nothing else sticks, that’s fine. You can get up and light candles, whatever.
But I had to share it. What a tale. And what captured me the most was that shape-shifting.
Boy turns to hair, turns to fish, turns to bird, turns into grain, and turns into a baby all over again.
A sorceress turns into a greyhound, turns into an otter, turns into a hawk, turns into a hen, turns into a new mother again for another child.
This is the time of year when church programs start coming back to life, and so I figured it’s a good time to talk about new beginnings.
But whatever is new? Every new thing brings with itself a sense of the context which birthed it.
Babies look like the people they’re related to. Wildflowers respond to the year’s conditions of rain and temperature. A new piece of art depends on the experience of the artist, the manufacture of the tools and their wear over time, the specific texture of the canvas or the wood or the paper.
And yet, the newness of these things is also real. Much like the characters in this story, they return in an odd mirror image of where they began.
The boy has become a baby, but he is a young human again rather than an animal or a piece of wheat.
The sorceress has become a mother again, although this child is a new one.
Their relationship is transformed, and Ceridwen can no longer bear to kill him.
The two of them have come back around to being a boy and a woman, but their relationship to one another is completely different. new and old, transformation and constancy, they seem to go hand in hand despite being opposites. And this has been true forever.
And it also feels true now, which is the part of forever that we’re in. And it’s true about everything. It’s true about everything that’s nourishing and beautiful in our lives. And it’s true about the harm in the world too.
When immigrants are caged by our government, it is a new head of the old hydra, reenacting this country’s history of enslavement, internment camps, incarceration, the destruction of families.
When indigenous people are captured by ICE today, it is a new head of the old hydra, finding a new way to control and relocate and kill as it has done for hundreds of years.
When trans people are humiliated by our care providers, assaulted at airports, surveilled by our government, and named predators by society, when all of this happens, we may be shocked, horrified, dismayed, afraid.
But we do a disservice to everyone by letting the powers that be trick us into thinking we’ve never heard this song and dance before.
The forces which have made it their business to do us harm are nimble. These forces shapeshift enough at least to get the ball rolling. They interweave real fears and bigoted nonsense into weapons of immense power.
They ride the waves of progress, and as soon as we come up with a new way to resist, they recuperate it and sell it back to us for a $20 a month subscription charge or whatever.
These forces are nimble, but the good news is we can be nimble too.
Today I’m telling you something I need to hear in the hopes that it will help me live a life that I want to live. I get stuck easily.
Transitions are hard for me. All of this sounds really silly because I like to think I’m doing okay up here with the spirit of chaos that has joined us this morning. And transition is an important part of my life.
But it’s true. And when plans change, it often takes me longer than the people around me to pivot alongside them.
This is a message for me. So if that sounds like you, I am right there with you.
Forcing ourselves won’t get us moving, and neither will shame.
But this story, it showed me another way, a third door out of the room of being stuck.
When I first read the story I told you today, my mind felt like it was bursting with light, like the flame of our chalice was in me, like a jack-o’-lantern shining out of my eyes, like I could feel the burst of inspiration and action acting together. all at once to turn a boy into a hare, a sorceress into a greyhound, an otter into a hawk, a little bird into a grain of wheat.
My heart and spirit and body believed in it, the beauty and freedom of being so nimble and the power it could have. The story made me feel free, and this, I think, is the power within Ceridwen’s cauldron of inspiration.
Earlier this year, Although it feels like forever ago and yesterday, organizers in Minneapolis put out a call for religious leaders to help resist ICE.
I’m proud to say that some Texan UUs answered that call. You may remember this. Our very own Reverend Carrie joined them. Thank you, Carrie.
Other Texan UUs included Texas UU Justice Ministry organizer Michelle Venegas-Matula, as well as Reverend T.J. Fitzgerald from First Unitarian Church of Dallas.
They brought back wisdom that I have been turning over in my head and in my heart and in my spirit. They brought back wisdom that lives inside of the story that I told you today. Because in Minneapolis, they had to be nimble.
Conditions changed at a moment’s notice. Communication had to be clear and concise and thoughtful, but also had to be reacted to with speed. People had to be ready to change plans, to do what needed to be done, to say yes to some new circumstances which had only just now presented themselves.
Can we, too, learn to be nimble like they are? I believe the answer is yes.
I believe that we can with all my heart. I believe that we can shake off our locked knees and frozen hearts.
I believe that inspiration will strike and we will transform and transform and transform.
And when I pray for that continuous transformation, I see a boy running through tall grass, his heart pounding with fear and with joy, his stolen gift of inspiration glowing within him like a flame.
I feel his rush of excitement as it dawns on him that he could escape on swifter feet. He imagines the speed of a hare just as he leaps and grows long rabbit legs.
He spies the river with his rabbit eyes and instantly becomes a fish.
He sees the waving sky through the sparkling surface of the water from beneath. and leaps into it, now a soft feathered little bird, free and free and free at every turn.
That gift, it could be mine, it could be ours, it could make a whole new world. Thank you.
Extinguishing the Chalice
We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.
Benediction
Here comes the new church year. What do you think this moment asks of you, of us, of this community? Whatever it is, may the memory of Taliesin and the cauldron of Ceridwen bless you.
May the wisdom of Minneapolis and all of Texas enlighten you.
May the stories in your life inspire you. And when it is time to transform, may you take the shape required of you by love.
May it be so. Go in peace.
Postlude
“Marinera y Tondero” (Lopez Mindreau) – Valeria Diaz, piano
SERMON INDEX
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