Protected on the Journey

October 14, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 13, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

With the help of some folks at the church with Judaism in their heritage, we will have a traditional “booth” in the courtyard that reminds us of the story about how the people were protected on their long journey through the desert. What protects us on our journey?

Lighting the Chalice

May the flame we now kindle light the path back to our center, back to that place of belonging again to our deepest self. And may our chalice remind us that we are held and welcomed whole, without the need to hide a single piece or part of who we are.

Call to Worship

John O’Donohue

You travel certainly, in every sense of the word. But you take with you everything that you have been, just as the landscape stores up its own past. Because you were once at home somewhere, you are never an alien anywhere.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

A NEW HEART
Chaim Stern

Who can say: I have purified my heart, and I am free from sin?

There are none on earth so righteous that they never sin.

Cast away all the evil you have done, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.

A new heart will I give you, a new spirit put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and give you a heart that feels.

For thus says the Eternal God: I, Myself, will search for My sheep, and seek them out.

As a shepherd seeks them out when any of the flock go astray, so will I seek out My sheep.

I will put My spirit within you, and teach you to live by My laws.

For I desire love and not sacrifices, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

Sermon

SUKKOT Protection in the Desert

Tonight at sundown those among and around us who are of Jewish heritage begin to celebrate Sukkot, a festival of returning to temporary shelter to remind yourself of how you were protected in times of being lost, in times of wandering, of transition. Those whose holiday this is to celebrate build a hut, a sukkah outside. It has to have three walls and a roof made of natural materials that used to be growing in the ground. You have to be able to see the stars through it, so you have some shade and some openness to the sun and rain. It’s a temporary shelter. Obviously not ideal. Some of our congregation with ties to the Jewish tradition have made a Sukkah out in the courtyard. The sukkah is decorated with fruits and vegetables. The family eats meals out there for seven days.

The layers of symbolism range from “this is the kind of hut the harvest workers used out in the field, so they didn’t have to go all the way home when night felL” To “this is the kind of thing we built in the desert while we were wandering for 40 years.”

Rosh Hashannah, the birthday of the world, comes first. Then, on the tenth day of the new year, comes Yom Kippur, a day of fasting and confession.

Sukkot always comes 5 days after Yom Kippur, when the community has fasted for a day and thought about wrongs they’ve done. They’ve made an apology where it’s needed.

Maybe there is a connection. When you strip yourself out of your routine, let something else drive other than your ego, doing ritual with your people, when you confess, face your wrongs, when you do a “searching and fearless moral inventory,” you can start again, in a way. You might want a ritual that reminds you of how your people started. Maybe the holiday comes right after Yom Kippur because you have fasted and stepped out of the regular day to day, and maybe that gives you a lightness of being. This festival of Sukkot embodies this lightness of being, this acknowledgement that you only need a few things.

It can also remind you that your body is a tiny fragile shelter. Sometimes you are temporarily strong. Other times you get sick, and we all get old.

The Jews are reminded by these sukkot that they were at one time a wandering people, looking for their place to settle and grow things. They were migrants. What they had they carried with them. They didn’t belong back in Egypt where they had been enslaved. They didn’t have a land of their own (although their faith story says God had promised them a land, but it already had people on it, and they killed some of those people and took the land. This is a whole other sermon) If you remind yourself of the story of your people, that leads to a sense that you don’t belong to one place, but rather you belong to the people with this story.

Many of our families have stories about the family: the story of when we came over through Ellis Island. The story that this is the land we’ve been on and fought for for the past 600 years, remember when our great grandparents owned all of that over there. Remember when the dust blew and the whole family got in the old car and moved to Bakersfield, and they called us Okies even though we were from Arkansas? Remember our grandfather and his three sisters who had a band that played at all the dance halls. Unitarians have stories of our people too. Remember when a minister in SF did a civil union between two men in 1957. Remember when our press, Beacon Press, at great risk, published the Pentagon Papers. Remember John Quincy Adams and John C Calhoun, both Unitarians but with bitter political differences, built All Souls Unitarian Church in DC ? Remember Elliot Richardson, the AG who refused to fire Archibald Cox, the Watergate Prosecutor, was a Unitarian Universalist. We tell the stories of our people and feel those stories resonate within our spirits.

For the Jews, building the Sukkah outdoors, near your sturdy house or apartment, eating meals out there for 7 days, interrupts your daily routine enough to invite thoughts like “What is enough? What do we really need in life? How grateful I am for the sturdy walls where I can have books and be dry and cool or warm and watch TV, but life at its most basic can still exist, and it is the people who are in the sukkah with you who are part of your heart, you support and sustain one another, just eating outside together, that is enough.

The sukkah reminds us of how fragile our shelter, our bodies, our life plans, our mores and institutions are, and how vulnerable others may be, and what it feels like to be vulnerable. Knowing how little you need can help you be brave, to stand up, even though it means you might get fired in the Saturday Night massacre, to resign, even though it means there might be a mean tweet coming your way. Knowing the fragility of shelter, having just a kind and gentle reminder of what people have lived with and without, makes you strong in the world. That is what makes a mighty spirit.

Let’s turn it around, too. Maybe we are meant to be shelter for one another when we’re see our siblings wandering. This church is now being a shelter for our guest in Sanctuary. Maybe this week your heart, your voice, your stories have been a shelter for someone who is lost. Maybe at a time when you were lost, you felt a protection come from the Mystery, by whatever name you call it. This is a day to be grateful for the protections and the shelter in our lives, and to look for ways to be shelter for one another.

Dr. Brene Brown says people who have the deepest sense of true belonging are those who also have the courage to stand alone when called to do that. They are willing to maintain their integrity and risk disconnection in order to stand up for what they believe in.

Most sermons during the past 19 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below 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.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

The Concord Genius Cluster

October 7, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 6, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

A Juicy Slice of Unitarian History: Transcendentalism & the Concord ‘Genius Cluster’ We sometimes forget that our forebears in this faith were human. Thoreau, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne. How were they all in relationship to one another?

Chalice Lighting

We light the fire of Truth and ask to be clear, wise, and humble enough to admit when we don’t know. We kindle the warmth of community and ask for open heartedness and patience. We are grateful to the Spirit of Life and ask to learn the secret to loving and being loved.

Call to Worship
Black Elk

That which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

THE OVERSOUL
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us learn the revelation of all nature and thought; that the Highest dwells within us, that the sources of nature are in our own minds.

As there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so there is no bar or wall in the soul where we, the effect, cease, and God, the cause, begins.

I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.

There is deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is accessible to us.

Every moment when the individual feels invaded by it is memorable.

It comes to the lowly and simple; it comes to whosoever will put off what is foreign and proud; it comes as insight; it comes as serenity and grandeur.

The soul’s health consists in the fullness of its reception.

For ever and ever the influx of this better and more universal self is new and unsearchable.

Within us is the soul of the whole; the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One.

When it breaks through our intelect, it is genius; when it breathes through our will, it is virtue. when it flows through our affections, it is love.

Sermon

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 heartbroken, 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.

Then there was 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.

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.

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.

“All the Gossip from Concord”
Roses reading by Emerson
Readings all from the Friends in Concord
From Margaret Fuller. Rock star, radical thinker
From the Hymn book
A new manifestation is at hand

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

This Apple

October 7, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above. Text of this service is not available.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
September 29, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We hold an apple and talk about how apples developed. Were they developed by humans or did they develop themselves in order to appeal more to humans, insects, birds, and animals so their DNA would be spread far and wide? How smart is this apple?

Chalice Lighting

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading
THE BOTANY OF DESIRE
by Michael Pollan

We’re prone to overestimate our own agency in nature. Many of these activities humans think they take for their own good puposes in agriculture (outlawing certain plants, fighting bugs, and replacing other) are mere contingencies as far as nature is concerned. Our grammar might teach us to divide the world into active subjects and passive objects but in a coevolutionary relationship every subject is also an object, every object a subject. That’s why it makes just as much sense to think of agriculture as something the grasses did as a way to conquer the trees.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Celebration Sunday

October 7, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Text of the sermon is not available. Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
September 22, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

It’s Celebration Sunday. This is our 65th birthday as a congregation. We kick it off with a celebration of faithful giving, dedicated leadership, and maybe just a bit of cake.

Chalice Lighting

Call to Worship
from Book of Micah in the Hebrew Bible

How shall I enter the Eternal’s presence. Shall I come with sacrifices of yearling calves to offer. Would the Eternal care for lambs in the thousands or for oil flowing in myriad streams. What does the eternal ask of you but to be Just, Kind, and live in quiet fellowship with your God.

Affirming Our Mission

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

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Faithful Expectation

September 16, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
September 15, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our religious values are aspirational expressions of our highest expectations for ourselves. Expectations can provide powerful inspiration and help us live out our Unitarian Universalist faith and reach for our best selves. So too though, sometimes the unexpected and letting go of expectations that are not serving us well can also bring enrichment to our lives. We will explore the intricacies and paradoxical nature of expectation.

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice, the flame of our heritage, in solidarity with Unitarian Universalists and all the peoples of the world lighting candles of planetary hope. May it ignite a spirit of solidarity and enthusiasm for the new world we can create, together.

Call to Worship

Now let us celebrate our highest values. Now let us worship together.

Transcendence
To connect with wonder and awe of the unity of life

Community
To connect with joy, sorrow, and service with those whose lives we touch

Compassion
To treat ourselves and others with love

Courage
To live lives of honesty, vulnerability, and beauty

Transformation
To pursue the growth that changes our lives and heals our world

Now we raise up that which we hold as ultimate and larger than ourselves. Now we worship, together.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

TRUST YOURSELF TO THE WATER
By Alan Watts

Faith is a state of openness or trust. To have faith is like when you trust yourself to the water.

You don’t grab hold of the water when you swim, because if you do, you will become stiff and tight in the water, and sink.

You have to relax, and the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging and holding on.

In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe becomes a person who has no faith at all. Instead they are holding tight.

But the attitude of faith is to let go and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

Sermon

All of this month, our religious education classes and activities are exploring expectation as a spiritual topic, so today, we will also spend some time considering expectation as it relates to our Unitarian Universalist faith.

To begin this morning, I thought we would start with a reflection on expectation taken from one of our great Unitarian Universalist sacred scriptures, National Public Radio.

Power of Expectations video

I loved that chapter from our NPR sacred texts because it captures so many of the conundrums we encounter when we examine our expectations, especially from a spiritual or faith-based perspective.

So, for example, we set expectations for ourselves, and yet, as the video demonstrated, other folks also place expectations upon us. On top of that, we quite often internalize the expectations placed upon us by others without even realizing that we are doing it, and so they become unconscious self-expectations.

Our expectations and those of others toward us can be greatly beneficial to us.

Studies have shown that positive expectations can beneficially influence everything from health outcomes to psychological well-being to career and sports performance, and on and on.

Yet, expectations can also limit us when they are set so high as to be unachievable, or our life situation changes such that what was once possible for us can no longer remain a reasonable expectation.

Conversely, expectations that are too low can also adversely influence us. For example, many studies have shown that teachers having lower expectations towards students of color or with disabilities greatly disadvantages such students.

So sometimes we have to learn to let go of unreasonable or harmful expectations, and sometimes we try to defy expectations that would otherwise limit us.

Interestingly, our expectations not only impact our behavior and that of others toward us, as pointed out in the video, now research indicates that expectations can have actual physiological effects upon us.

My favorite study I found about this involved drinking beer.

The researchers randomized people into two groups. Both groups were asked to taste test two different beer samples. One sample was just plain beer. The other was the same beer to which the researchers had secretly added balsamic vinegar.

The researchers did not tell the first group the difference between the two beer samples.

The folks in this group overwhelming preferred the taste of the balsamic vinaigrette infused beer.

The researchers told the second group the difference between the two beer samples before they tasted them.

Almost to a person, the second group hated the beer with the vinaigrette in it – many going so far as to spit it out and exclaim something like, “this is terrible.”

The expectation that adding the vinaigrette to beer would ruin the taste caused them to experience exactly that.

Subsequent tests showed that it was not just mental perception. Telling the second group up front about the balsamic poisoning of their beer had subtly altered the physiology of the second group’s taste buds compared to that of the first group.

Other research has identified physiological effects from our expectations that are much more potentially life altering than the tase of our beer.

Other research has also found that our expectations can draw our attention and focus so strongly that we may miss other important information.

This probably had a survival advantage at one time by, for instance, allowing us to focus on what we expected a potential predator might do and not get distracted by less life threatening things.

Today though, that focus itself can sometimes become the distraction.

Let’s watch an example of this phenomenon.

As you watch the next video, following the instructions at the beginning of it, please try not to express any verbal reactions so as not to break the concentration of your fellow congregants.

Ball Passing Video

How many of you saw the man in the gorilla suit before they played it back a second time?

This is probably an experiment that is better done in an individual versus group setting because those who see the gorilla may give off subtle reactions that clue others in the group to then see it also.

I watched it alone the first time and did not see the gorilla. The researchers have found that well over 50% of people who watch it do not see the gorilla because we are focusing so intently on our expectation about being able to correctly count how many times the folks in white pass the ball.

And I did get the count right, by the way, even if I did miss the damn gorilla.

Next, I want to introduce you to Daniel Kish, whose story I think so embodies the power of letting go of unhelpful expectations, defying expectations that limit us – keep us from claiming our full potential and humanity.

Daniel Kish Video

Daniel was born with a form of ocular cancer. His doctors had to remove one of his eyes when he was 7 months old and the other eye when he was 13 months old.

The first thing he did after waking up after his second surgery was to climb out of the crib and crawl around the nursery they had put him in at the hospital.

For whatever reason, his mother decided not to try to hold him back, even though she feared he might get hurt.

And he did a few times, but he says it was worth it.

Daniel learned to echolocate that clicking noise you heard him making in the video allows him to listen to how the noise bounces off things and determine shapes and motions around him.

It is much that same way that bats use sonar to navigate when they fly.

As you saw in the video, Daniel learned to ride a bike. By the time he entered elementary school, we was able to walk to school on his own and pretty much take care of himself through out the day.

Because his mother never enrolled him in an assistance program for the blind and let him go to a regular school, Daniel did not encounter other blind people until he got older.

He was dismayed to discover that so many blind folks he met were unable to take care of themselves in so many of the ways that he was capable.

Daniel came to believe that the well intentioned efforts of loved ones and non-profit services to help blind folks with so many aspects of daily living was creating expectations well below their potential.

So, he started the non-profit organization he discusses in the video. Through it, he teaches echolocation to others and sets expectations allowing folks to live more fully and more independently.

Researchers using MRI scans have found that people using echolocation light up the brain in the same patterns of those of us with ocular vision.

They can correctly identify and describe the shape of objects placed in front of them, as well as the direction of motion.

So, in a real since, by raising expectations through teaching echolocation, Daniel Kish is giving people of form of vision.

With that, I want to close by talking briefly about how I think expectation is such a large part of our Unitarian Universalist faith.

As Unitarian Universalists, we share 7 principals that we affirm and promote.

The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

It is likely we will be adding an 8th principle regarding dismantling racism. At this church, we also have a set of religious values that you all read together earlier with Elizabeth.

Our faith principals, our religious values, they are our aspirations, the expectations we have set for ourselves concerning how we will be in our world – how we will be with each other – how we will live our lives.

And we are reaching for those expectations all of the time, in so many ways through the many ministries and programs of this church, as well as our our larger denomination.

Next Sunday, we will have the chance to live our values when we celebrate this religious community and all pledge together to support it into the future.

Our green sanctuary ministry team has been living our principle about respect for the interdependent web in so many ways, including getting the Austin City Council and the Travis County Commissioner’s Court to pass resolutions that require our city and county governments to put into high gear actions across their departments to fight the climate crises.

And this Friday, September 20, Unitarian Universalists from across the country will live out the expectations of our faith by joining in a world-wide climate strike.

Led by our youth, people from across the world will join together to demand urgent action on the climate crisis before it is too late.

And folks we do not have long. A few years at most.

Some links where you can get more information are posted on the church website.

Here in Austin, the climate strike will begin with rallies at the state capital at 10 a.m. and again at noon on Friday.

I hope as many of us who can will live our religious values by participating. Our youth are expecting us to leave them a world that is at least livable.

Our youth are expecting us to act as if our house is on fire.

Because it is.

As Unitarian Universalists, our faith has always been one of hopeful expectation.

For Unitarian Universalists, our faith expectation is that there is meaning and beauty in our world that has yet to be fully revealed.

As Unitarian Universalists, our faith tells us that we are the ones who must unveil those revelations yet to become.

May we make it so.

Amen.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

How to Change Minds

September 9, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
September 8, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

How to Change Minds: Notes from the FBI Hostage Negotiators Handbook
Continuing last week’s glimpse into the satisfactions and challenges of relationships, we’ll talk about loving and being loved by people with very different beliefs, sacred tenets, and styles from our own.

Chalice Lighting

Call to Worship
Lao-Tse

If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors.
If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading
Thich N’hat Hanh

Let us be at peace with our bodies and our minds. Let us return to ourselves and become wholly ourselves.

Let us be aware of the source of being, common to us all and to all living things.

Evoking the presence of the Great Compassion, let us fill our hearts with our own compassion – towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

Let us pray that we ourselves cease to be the cause of suffering to each other.

With humility, with awareness of the existence of life, and of the sufferings that are going on around us, let us practice the establishment of peace in our hearts and on earth.

Amen.

Meta Meditation

May I be free from danger.
May I be mentally happy.
May I be physically happy.
May I have ease of well-being.

Sermon

HOW TO CHANGE MINDS:
NOTES FROM THE FBI HOSTAGE NEGOTIATORS HANDBOOK

This is a question I hear over and over. “How do I talk to my fundamentalist family about being a unitarian universalist?”

We all have family members who think very differently from the ways we do. This sermon is a series of suggestions and some crucial bits of information about how liberals can talk to conservatives. We not only have family whose religious beliefs are more conservative than ours might be, we have family whose politics are more conservative. How can we talk to them? How can we listen, love, and stand our ground?

Hard Wired

The news from science about changing a person’s mind through rational discourse is this: When someone feels something strongly, you can talk yourself blue in the face and not make a dent. You can post the wittiest and most cogent memes on Facebook, you can email jokes and facts and charts and not make a dent. You won’t make a dent in them and their memes won’t make a dent in you. We almost can’t help it. Study after study is showing that the very brains of liberals, conservatives and moderates are wired differently. In a study at University of Nebraska, the scientists follow people’s involuntary responses, including eye movements, when they are shown scary, neutral, pleasant or disgusting photos. It turns out that conservatives react more strongly to the pictures which might create fear or disgust. John Hibbing, of the University of Nebraska, says conservatives are more attuned to fearful or negative stimuli. So the conservative focus on a strong military, tough law enforcement, resistance to immigration, and wanting the widespread availability of guns may go with an underlying threat-oriented biology. I heard a white woman on tv say the other day, in a frantic tone “I’m not living without guns!”

John Jost from NYU drew a lot of backlash from conservatives when his studies seemed to show in 2003 that conservatives have a greater need for certainty and an intolerance of ambiguity. Their funding was looked into, but so many peers were finding the same results that it makes everyone safer. The correlations between the body’s reactivity and political ideology are so striking that they can predict a person’s political views from simply watching the eye movements they make when seeing the aversive photographs. There is a common sense evolutionary imperative for threat-oriented wiring. Conservatives also tend to be happier, more emotionally stable. Liberals a bit more neurotic. Being sure of things, having strong ideas of what’s familiar and an aversion to what’s strange or icky keeps you happier, apparently, than being open to new experiences, being bothered by inequality and fretting about the suffering of others. I’m not saying conservatives don’t fret about the suffering of others. They just have a more certain, rule oriented plan for what should be done. I think, since there seem to be almost even numbers of those on the right and left, that nature decided we need people with their foot on the gas and people with their foot on the brake, in terms of social change or systems of belief.

Moral Code

It’s hardwired. The only way to change someone’s mind is to show them that their behavior or practice is counter to their own moral code. Not counter to your moral code, their own. But other studies show that the moral codes used are different. In a study by Jesse Graham, Jonathan Haidt, and Brian A. Nosek University of Virginia, liberals cared more about fairness and compassion. Conservatives cared about those two sets of moral imperatives too, but also measured things in terms of respect for authority, the purity and sanctity of ideas and institutions and in-group loyalty. Those last three were less important to liberal’s thinking, although I think liberals could give conservatives a run for their money in the purity/sanctity section if they had talked about boycotts. We like to be pure in where we get our chocolate and consumer goods. I am flummoxed because Target is on the list of “good on guns” but it’s also on the list of companies implicated somehow in the burning of the rain forest. Purity is hard to achieve. We are also purity nuts about recycling. In Berkeley, where we were in an Air BNB for a month, there were five bins. One for yard waste, one for clean paper, one for dirty paper, one for glass and one for plastic. The host finally just said, “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ll sort it when you leave.”

Steps to Change

Talk about the FBI hostage negotiators about this. What they know is that arguments are emotional. It is rare that someone you’re arguing with will change their mind due to a rational argument. Negotiators have diagramed what they call the Path to Behavioral Change.

Behavioral Change Stairway
Listening is the foundation that supports each step.

				5. Behavorial Change
			4. Influence
		3. Rapport
	2. Empathy
1. Active Listening

The first step is active listening. When a Republican is talking to a crazy liberal, or a liberal is talking to your wacky uncle who listens to Rush, the first step in changing someone’s mind is active listening. So you would say “tell me more.” You would say “How did you come to this view?” As they talk, you don’t evaluate: “hm, that’s a good point,” or “I’m not sure your facts are straight….” You just say small encouraging things. “hm.” Or “I hear you.” You might ask open ended questions, like I mentioned before “How did you come to that view?” “What do you think about the front runners?” “What policies really feel important to you?” You can also just, without being weird about it, repeat the last phrase they said. If they say “I just think this is the stupidest group of leaders we’ve ever had.” You could say “the stupidest we’ve ever had?” Using pauses can be extremely effective. When the Moonies and I were talking about their beliefs, sometimes all I would need to do was stay quiet after they had said something and let their words hang in the air. “You say Mr. Moon takes away your sins before he marries you? How does he do that, exactly? By dabbing some wine on your photographs Hm.” It also can help to name the emotions you hear. “That sounds like it was upsetting.” “That makes you mad.” “It doesn’t seem fair to you.”

It’s hard for even the most passionate and committed person to carry on a one-sided argument. You are listening, and not only that, you are showing them that you are listening. This is a rare enough experience for anyone to being to open things up between you.

Empathy is the second step of the ladder to change. This doesn’t mean making understanding noises or saying an understanding phrase. This means really having empathy, emotionally relating, to the other person’s perspective. This is what the active listening is for, partially. To actually ask the questions which will help you get to a place of understanding.

Rapport, when the other person feels in their body, their mind and their spirit, that you understand, when they begin to actually feel you with them, is the next step. See, this is hard. I rebel at this point. I don’t want to look at the places in me that actually relate to their fears, phobias, suspicion of the stranger, “disasterizing” about the future, cruelty to the suffering, what I see as lack of communitarian spirit. Without getting in touch with those places in you, conversation is not going to be fruitful. If you are a conservative talking to a crazy liberal, you may need to get in touch with the places in you that feel for other people, that want to help, that can face suffering and the reality that it isn’t always the person’s fault who is suffering, the idea that the world is big and overwhelming and our country might not be the greatest country there ever was, that we might have bad decisions, greed and cruelty in our history, that some of us are victimized by others, that security is an illusion, etc.

After rapport is established, then comes influence. It is at this point that you might be able to influence the thinking and feeling of another person. Since empathy, though, you are open to their influence as well. Our mistake is that we try to jump right into influencing other people. Things seem so clear to us. The facts seem to make our conclusion so obvious. One problem is that it seems everyone has different facts.

It used to be that people thought facts were supposed to be – you know, factual. When JFK debated Nixon, though, he later confessed that he just made up the statistics he cited. Made them up. They sounded great. Now it seems that people will say things with great authority whether they are true or not.

It used to be that media outlets had to give both sides of an argument. They had to seek out viewpoints on all sides, facts which supported all sides, present them to people so they could decide. During the Reagan administration, the Fairness Doctrine was abolished. I think that was 1987. In 1988 Rush Limbaugh started his radio show. These days, most people watch Fox news or MSNBC. They get red facts and blue facts. They hear about red issues and blue issues. You have to really work to hear both sides. Reasoned and civil discussions are not the style. It is easier and more fun for people to mock one another, to imagine that the people on the other side are ridiculous, crazy, clowns! All this does is to make you feel energized and good in a nasty way about your own side. I’m not asking us to stop that, but you have to understand that we can’t ask those who feel differently to stop their emails, jokes and memes either. It sounds like a lot of listening is recommended. And love even though they may not be able to see how right you are.

Your religious conservatives have a scripture they rely on. They are in a paradigm that is like a train track. They can see you here, where they are, or over there, wrong within the paradigm. You are in the field beside the track, waving from wild territory. My father says, “But, Meg, the Bible says….” I nod and say “yes it does.” He’s not wrong. I say “I don’t go by what the Bible says all the time.” “But it’s bread, it’s the word, it’s the authority,” he says. I smile with as much love as I have in my heart and say “I know you believe that.”

“In terms of their personalities, liberals and conservatives have long been said to differ in ways that correspond to their conflicting visions. Liberals on average are more open to experience, more inclined to seek out change and novelty both personally and politically (McCrae, 1996). Conservatives, in contrast, have a stronger preference for things that are familiar, stable, and predictable (Jost, Nosek, & Gosling, 2008; McCrae, 1996). Conservatives – at least, the subset prone to authoritarianism-also show a stronger emotional sensitivity to threats to the social order, which motivates them to limit liberties in defense of that order (Altemeyer, 1996; McCann, 2008; Stenner, 2005). Jost, Glaser, Sulloway, and Kruglanski (2003) concluded from a meta-analysis of this literature that the two core aspects of conservative ideology are resistance to change and acceptance of inequality. How can these various but complementary depictions of ideological and personality differences be translated into specific predictions about moral differences? First, we must examine and revise the definition of the moral domain.”

“Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations
Jesse Graham, Jonathan Haidt, and Brian A. Nosek University of Virginia
How and why do moral judgments vary across the political spectrum?

To test moral foundations theory (J. Haidt & J. Graham, 2007; J. Haidt & C. Joseph, 2004), the authors developed several ways to measure people’s use of 5 sets of moral intuitions:

Harm/care
Fairness/reciprocity
Ingroup/loyalty
Authority/ respect
Purity/sanctity

Across 4 studies using multiple methods, liberals consistently showed greater endorsement and use of the Harm/care and Fairness/reciprocity foundations compared to the other 3 foundations, whereas conservatives endorsed and used the 5 foundations more equally.”

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Many Rivers to Cross

September 2, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
September 1, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Annual Water Ceremony: We bring water from a place that has fed our souls and spirits over the summer months and mingle these waters together to remind us of our connection to one another. In connections with friends, family, work mates and church members there is both joy and learning. How do we find ease and joy as we cross the rivers that present themselves?

Chalice Lighting

Call to Worship

WATER
Phillip Larkin

If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench!

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

WATER
Wendell Berry

I was born in the drought year. That summer my mother waited in the house, enclosed in the sun and the dry ceaseless wind, for the men to come back in the evenings, bringing water from a distant spring. Veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank.

And all my life I have dreaded the return of that year, sure that it is still somewhere like a dead enemy’s soul. Fear of dust in my mouth is always with me, and I am the faithful husband of the rain. I love the water of the wells and the springs, and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns.

I am a dry man whose thirst is praise of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup. My sweetness is to wake in the night after days of dry heat, hearing the rain.

Sermon

Water Ceremony: Many Rivers to Cross

Many rivers to cross describes a feeling of defeat and despair, in what feels like a foreign land. Sometimes we are at home in this place and sometimes we feel like we are in a foreign land. This is one of the reasons we gather here. We need one another, more at some times in life than others.

In UU congregations across the country we have Ingathering services this time of year. In the old days UU churches shut down in the summertime. In September the “church year” started up again, and people would bring water from their summer travels. We go through the summer here, and we bring water from places that have nourished our spirits, which can be from far flung places or from the tap in the kitchen. The places are important, because we learn a little more about the people around us, but what’s most important is seeing the waters coming together. You can’t tell which water is from Brazil and which is from the Brazos. More of us are becoming more and more aware of how precious water is, and some cultures are putting into law their understanding of water as a being with rights of its own.

Lake Erie, last February, was granted the right to flourish without being polluted, and citizens of OH can now sue polluters on behalf of the lake. In the past decade the nature rights movement has grown, with rivers and forests winning legal rights in Ecuador, Colombia, India and New Zealand.

Living near Appalachia, it never made sense to me that someone upstream from your land could dump poison into the water, hurting your crops and your livestock, and that not be against the law. In our Western philosophy so far, humans have “dominion” over the land, and can take anything from it they want to. They take whole tops off of mountains, and that’s not against the law. This water is a precious resource, and clean water should be a human right, not just the right of someone with the money to buy water that Nestle has drawn from Florida springs or one of the great lakes.

This water also can be a teacher. What properties does water have that we might want to study? It’s very flexible in its liquid state. It runs around barriers, it sinks through soil, it flows down roof gutters into the rain barrel, down streets to the drains, down the sewers to the treatment plant, etc. Can we wonder, in a difficult situation, “I wonder what this moment would be like if I were like water?”

Water is also persistent. It trickles over rock and carves grooves, then canyons.

Can we wonder, as we struggle with despair over cruelty and injustice “I wonder what would happen if we were as persistent as water?”

I say “we” because one little drop of water is not going to make any kind of a groove, much less a canyon. These are our waters together, and they teach us that if enough drops get together they will have to work harder to evaporate us, to mop us up, to make us go away. Remember the story of King Canute, who ruled England long ago. Walking by the shore, his followers, sycophants and so called advisors praised him, the way some rulers like to be praised. “O King, you are the greatest man in the world, all bow before you. None would dare disobey you. You shall have anything you want, and your will shapes the universe.” Canute was a man of good sense, and he grew tired of this foolish talk.

“Bring me my chair and I will command the waves.” He sat and held up his hand, commanding the waves . “Very well. Sea,” cried Canute, “I command you to come no further! Waves, stop your rolling!. Surf, stop your pounding! Do not dare touch my feet!”

He waited a moment, quietly, and a tiny wave rushed up the sand and lapped at his feet.

“How dare you!” Canute shouted. “Ocean, turn back now! I have ordered you to retreat before me, and now you must obey! Go back!”

No ruler on earth, no company boss, no President can hold back the people forever if they demand justice. Hong Kong, Moscow, in myriad US towns, the people move. Like water. Flexible, persistent, together.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Ever Emergent

August 25, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
Ausust 25, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

This month’s Soul Matters is Emergence. We will explore how we might keep ourselves open to unexpected and creative possibilities and the potential for transformation.

Chalice Lighting

As we light the chalice may our souls become its hearth. We join our hearts to the one great flame of bright compassion, Beloved Community, and fervent justice. May our sparks become a wildfire in the world, lighting the way for all.

Call to Worship

“MERE CHRISTIANITY”
by C.S. Lewis

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg.

We are like eggs. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

“YOU CAN’T BE NEUTRAL ON A MOVING TRAIN”
by Howard Zinn

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – Where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future; The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Sermon

Janine Shepard had dreams of competing in cross-country skying at the Olympics for her home country of Australia.

She was on a training bike ride with some of her fellow teammates headed toward the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney.

They had reached the foothills, her favorite part of the ride. She stood on her bike to allow her to pedal more strongly.

She felt the cold mountain air in her breath.

She reveled in the morning sun on her face and basked in the beautiful morning sunlight in her eyes.

And then everything went dark.

A speeding utility truck had hit her, knocking her unconscious, breaking her neck and back in six places, fracturing five ribs on her left side, crushing her right arm and leaving her with internal bleeding and a number of other life-threatening injuries.

Medics airlifted her to a hospital with a specialized spinal unit in Sydney. When she arrived at the hospital, her blood pressure was forty over zero.

As Janine Shepard herself puts it, “I was having a REALLY bad day.”

She was paralyzed from the waist down.

She spent ten days in the lCU before the internal bleeding stopped, and her doctors could do surgery on her back.

Her lower back was crushed. The surgeon spent hours removing fragments of bone from her spinal cord. They removed some of her ribs and used them to rebuild her back.

The surgery was a success in that she regained slight feeling and movement in parts of her lower body; however, she was told she would never ski again and might not ever walk again.

After some time, they were finally able to move Janine to the acute spinal unit, which would be the first step in her long attempt at rehabilitation and recovery.

Here is Janine Shepard herself, describing life in that acute spinal unit.

VIDEO

After six months, Janine’s parents were finally able to take her home, in a wheelchair, still wrapped in a plaster body cast.

Janine was depressed. She wanted her body back. She wanted her life back.

Then, she remembered her friends in the spinal ward, the connections, the hope, the courage of those fellow human beings in circumstances so like her own.

And she knew she could accept her new circumstances.

She began to think about how she might build a new life. She says, “I stopped asking myself, ‘why me’ and realized, ‘why not me’. I thought, ‘maybe rock bottom is the perfect place to start. ‘”

And in that uncertainty, she found a new creative freedom to begin imagining a new life, such that one day when she heard a plane flying overhead, she looked up through her bedroom window and thought, “Well, if I can’t walk, I might as well learn to fly.”

“Mom”, she cried out, I’m going to learn to fly.”

“That’s nice, dear,” replied her mom.

And Janine did learn to fly. She booked flight training with a nearby school. They lifted her into a plane, body cast and all, and once in the air, the instructor gave her control of the plane, as she could use her hands and arms. He pointed toward the Blue Mountains and said to fly toward them.

And so her new life began right above where her tragic accident had happened.

She eventually learned to walk again.

She eventually got, first a single engine plane license, and then several other types of licenses, leading up to her commercial license and even an aerobatics license – you know where people fly upside down and in loops and such.

Just less than 18 months after Janine Shepard left the spinal unit, she began her new calling, teaching other people to fly at the very same school where she had first learned how to take a small plane out over the Blue Mountains.

The theme we have been exploring this month in our religious education program is the spiritual theme of “emergence”. Emergence is defined as to become manifest, to rise from, the process of becoming.

I wanted to share Janine’s story with you this morning because I think it so powerfully illustrates so much of how the emergent, how transformation and change happen in our individual lives, even when it is on a much less dramatic basis than hers.

Her story demonstrates how so often, something new arises out of change that has been forced upon us, even sometimes difficult or even tragic circumstances.

Now, I want to be careful to state clearly, we are not talking about cliches such as: “God works in strange and mysterious ways,” to somehow justify tragedy as being ultimately good.

What happened to Janine was random and terrible and not part of some master plan.

It was how she responded to it that allowed the emergence of her new passion.

Janine’s story also shows how so often in order to say yes to something new, we have to let go of something else that is no longer healthy and sometimes no longer even possible for us.

And often, for transformation to emerge in our lives, we have to learn a new perspective. We gain a more complex understanding about life.

Later in her Ted Talk that I showed you a segment from earlier, Janine Shepard says, “I learned that I am not body and you are not yours.”

And so she says that if we learn to look beyond the superficial and help each other to try to live vulnerable, authentic lives, allow the ultimate, creative expression of who we really are to emerge, our collective liberation and bliss might just become emergent also.

We need relationship. We need belonging for beneficial emergence to occur.

After all, like the folks in that acute spinal unit, we are all interconnected by millions or billions of metaphorical straws. Non-plastic, metaphorical straws, no doubt.

That brings me to the scientific theory of emergence.

In science, emergence theory is the study of how creative and complex systems arise that are greater than the sum of their constituent parts. The system comes to hold properties that none of its individual components alone do.

Examples include how life itself first arose on our planet and then evolved from single cell entities into ever more complex life forms.

How energy transitions into matter.

How fish school and birds flock together, moving as one with such grace and coordination without an apparent leader.

And the examples go on and on.

Scientists are studying whether the natural laws, the rules by which each of the individual components of these systems adaptively interact in such ways that create something more complex and creative.

Scientist Harold J. Morowitz takes this even a step further and applies it to human social systems. Morowitz even describes a spiritual/ theological aspect of this.

For Morowitz, our ethics, the rules we follow in our interactions with each other and all that is, make us partners with the immanence of, the continuing emergence of God in our world.

Now whether we agree with Morowitz’s version of theism, it does seem that emergence theory supports Janine Shepard’s idea that our individual and communal emergences are linked and together might have the potential to result in something even greater.

I recently saw a video featuring Michelle Alexander, the author of the book, “The New Jim Crow”. Unitarian Universalists across the country read, studied and discussed her book together a few years back, as the source material for our annual “Unitarian Universalist common Read”.

In the video, she reminded me of another aspect of emergence.

We most often do not know exactly what is emerging until the full emergence has happened.

I want to share that video with you now.

VIDEO

I am intrigued by her idea that we may be the revolution – that those of us who want to struggle together with compassion and love to build the Beloved community and secure our collective liberation are creating the new emergence and that the forces of bigotry and hate are the resistance against that new emergence.

And yet, as I said before, we can’t know what will actually emerge while it is still happening, so we have to make sure that the ethical and spiritual rules we are following, our own emergence, contributes to that greater system – that Beloved community about which we dream.

I don’t know about you all, but for me that can be difficult sometimes. With the barrage of negativity and hate and half-truths and outright lies that are coming at us constantly these days – with the images of people, including children, in cages, with no where to sleep except on a concrete floors without even enough room to stretch out – with children dying while in the custody of our government – with two mass shootings in less than 24 hours recently – with almost daily reports of authorities apprehending one or more young white men with multiple weapons of war who have threatened synagogues, churches, schools, retail stores, gay bars – it can be difficult sometimes to act and feel in healthy, constructive ways.

It can be far too easy for me to want to lash back out, for anger, fear and even rage to emerge within me.

I keep wondering when one of those young guys will avoid apprehension until it is too late, and they commit the next mass killing.

So I think we have to honestly acknowledge that we are living in a time of extraordinarily elevated anxiety. We are experiencing social trauma.

No matter which side of the political spectrum one is on, to reach for our best selves, for our best selves to have any chance of emerging, we have to acknowledge these feelings. We have to find ways to talk about them with other people.

Not talking about it is not really an option, at least not a healthy, life giving option.

I believe this church is a place where we can have such honest and vulnerable conversations.

We can be there for one another. certainly, I want you to know your ministers are here for you during these times.

This church, this congregation is a place where we can both find respite and seek the emergence of our best and truest selves, the people we are called to be, both individually and communally.

I want to close by telling you how fortunate I feel, how grateful I am to get to do ministry with this congregation and with our extraordinary and just plain fun senior minister, Meg.

I am moved by what we have already become and by the church that is still emergent.

You heard earlier about the new ways of doing religious education that are emerging. Our religious education ministries are brimming with potential and filled with fantastic people.

I have no doubt that wonderful new ways of being and understanding will emerge for both our religious education learners and those leading the programs and classes.

With our beautiful new renovations and expansion, so much can now emerge that we cannot yet even fully imagine the potentialities.

New ministries are already emerging, such as a visitation program for older church members who can no longer attend church on a regular basis.

So much is already happening. So much is yet to become.

I can’t wait to witness and be a part of the emergence of all that we have only begun to dream.

Much love. All blessings. Amen.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

What does that pin on your backpack mean?

August 21, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above. Text of this sermon is not available.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
August 18, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

All-Ages Service. Who are we as UU’s? Our children in schools need to know who we are. In their classes we say the 7 principles and the classroom covenants they wrote at the very beginning. This is not a non-denominational church. It is a church with strong roots in Central Europe and in New England. Unitarians shaped this country in mostly good ways. How did Unitarianism take shape?

Chalice Lighting

Call to worship

THE INWARD JOURNEY
Howard Thurman

In the quietness of this place
surrounded by the all pervading presence of the holy
my heart whispers

Keep fresh before me the memories of my high resolve,
that in fair weather or foul, in good times or tempest,
in the days when the foes are nameless or familiar,
that I may not forget that which my life is committed.

Keep fresh before me the moments of my high resolve.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Backpack Blessing

GOT ROOM FOR LOVE?
By Erika A. Hewitt

We carry bags with us throughout the week for many reasons. If you have a bag with you, and you want to have it blessed, please bring it forward, send it forward with a helper, or lift up your bag.

Some of us take books and homework to school
Some of us bring our lunches to school or to work
Some of us take computers and other supplies to the places where we work
Some kids carry overnight bags from one parent’s house to their other parent’s house, and back again
Some people bring things like books or yarn and knitting needles to places where they might need to wait patiently
and some people even have special bags for their dogs and other animals!

Are your bags already full of things? Do you imagine that it might get full one day? Maybe. For this blessing, then, we’re going to add something to your bag – but don’t worry! It won’t add any weight, and it won’t take up any room.

Would any of you like to have some of our congregation’s love to take with you to school, or to work, or on your travels? If you feel love here on Sundays, wouldn’t you like to know that our love is with you on the other days?

To the congregation: Let’s do that. Please bundle some love up from wherever you’re storing it. You might rummage through your pockets or look up your sleeves and make a nice little pillow of love. … are you ready?

Those of you with your bags, make sure they’re open and hold them up to catch the love!

That was fun, so let’s add some more to your bags. Sometimes we get nervous when we go to school or work. Sometimes we wish we felt braver. I think it would be nice to know that our courage is with you on other days when you need it.

To the congregation: Let’s bundle up some courage to put in someone’s open bag.

What do you wish we could put in your bag, to take with you? Name it, and we’ll take it from our heart-supply, and we’ll toss it into your bag!

bravery
peace of mind
friendliness
confidence
sense of being loved
memory
sense of fairness
humor
kindness
forgiveness

Your bag might not look any different or feel any different, but the next time you use your bag I hope you’ll remember that we’ve added our blessings. Remember that:

The Spirit of Life is with you at school or at work.
This congregation cares about what happens to you at school or work.
If you need more love or courage, you can ask us for more.

Reading

Eusebius

May I be an enemy to no one and the friend of what abides eternally.
May I never quarrel with those nearest me, and be reconciled quickly if I should.
May I never plot evil against others, and if anyone plot evil against me,
may I escape unharmed and without the need to hurt anyone else.
May I love, seek and attain only what is good.
May I desire happiness for all and harbor envy for none.
May I never find joy in the misfortune of one who has wronged me.
May I never wait for the rebuke of others, but always rebuke myself until I make reparation.
May I gain no victory that harms me or my opponent.
May I reconcile friends who are mad at each other.
May I, insofar as I can, give all necessary help to my friends and to all who are in need.
May I never fail a friend in trouble.
May I be able to soften the pain of the
grief stricken and give them comforting words.
May I respect myself.
May I always maintain control of my emotions.
May I habituate myself to be gentle, and never angry with others because of circumstances.
May I never discuss the wicked or what they have done, but know good people and
follow in their footsteps.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Walking Toward the Deep End

August 14, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Text of this sermon is not yet available. Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
August 11, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

It’s hard to feel belonging, but that is something we are thirsty for. What are some ways to build community here at First UU? How can deeper conversations happen?

Chalice Lighting

Affirming Our Mission

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

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

In My Life

August 5, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above. Text of this sermon is not available.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
August 4, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

What are some things to know in order to be a good ally to LGBTQ people? What are the answers to some questions about being gay you might have been scared to ask.

Chalice Lighting

We illuminate the chalice as a symbol of the flicker and flame within each of us. Let us take this bright promise into the world and set the lanterns of humanity alight.

Call to Worship

LOVE IS NOT CONCERNED
Alice Walker

love is not concerned
with whom you pray
or where you slept
the night you ran away
from home
love is concerned
that the beating of your heart
should kill no one

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

THE STREAM OF LIFE
Rabindranath Tagore

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death,
in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood
this moment.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Prophecy, Power, and Potter

July 28, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above. Text of the sermon is not available.

Lee Legault
July 28, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Ministerial Intern Lee Legault asks what wisdom can we glean from the Harry Potter books on how to partner with our youth. The Harry Potter myth offers insight into the role of youth in social justice movements. How has Unitarian Universalism supported the unique charisma of our young people?

Chalice Lighting

As we light the chalice may our souls become its hearth. We join our hearts to the one great flame of bright compassion, Beloved community, and fervent justice. May our sparks become a wildfire in the world, lighting the way for all.

Call to Worship

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS
J.K. Rowling

The words of are by Professor Dumbledore who is Hogwarts’ Headmaster in the Harry Potter series. Harry fears that he and Lord Voldemort may be alike in some ways and wonders whether he too may become an evil wizard, Professor Dumbledore tells him:

“It is our choices … that show us what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

Reading

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE
J.K. Rowling

Professor Dumbledore: I say to you all, once again–in the light of Lord Voldemort’s return, we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. Lord Voldemort’s gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust. Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.

It is my belief–and never have I so hoped that I am mistaken–that we are all facing dark and difficult times. Some of you in this Hall have already suffered at the hands of Lord Voldemort. Many of your families have been torn asunder.

A week ago, a student was taken from our midst. Remember [that student]. Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort.

Remember [him].

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Learning through Joy

July 22, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 21, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In our religious education department, we are experimenting with teaching our children UU values through guided, joyful, playful games and activities. Many of our church groups are also engaging in more opportunities, for fun, fellowship, humor, and connection. We’ll take a look at how joy, fun, and connection can enhance our spiritual learning, build resilience and enhance our overall wellbeing.

Call to Worship

MINDFUL
by Mary Oliver

Everyday
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.

Reading

WELCOME MORNING
by Anne Sexton

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared,
I’ve heard, dies young.

Sermon

“BE MORE DOG” VIDEO

OK, it is not my intention to inflame a cat lovers versus dog lovers war by starting with that video this morning.

I love both.

I think the “Be More Dog” metaphor is about being less aloof and allowing ourselves to experience and engage in more fun and joy.

Though, of course, if you have ever engaged in cat cohabitation you know that they have their own ways of playing and playing pranks. Evil pranks.

As you may have heard already, there at the church, we are experimenting with help our children and youth learn our Unitarian Universalist history and value, engage in spiritual development and learning through games, play and joyful, fun activities.

And this is not just limited to our children and youth activities.

We will be infusing our adult religious education programs with this same sense of humor, play and joyfulness.

In addition their other activities, many of our church groups and ministries are also trying to add opportunities for connection, joy and fun, such as lunching together, holding potlucks, watching video and films together and other types of social activities.

Examples include our People of Color group, White Allies for Racial Equity group, our Alphabet Soup group and some of our Chalice Circles.

The same is being practiced more and more in our own and in other social justice movements. More and more, it is becoming clear that for such movements to be maximally effective, for folks to have resilience and avoid burnout, opportunities for social connection, play, humor and joy are absolutely vital.

And of course we have a fellowship team that creates such opportunities for the church as a whole.

Another group has started a game night here at the church.

All of next week, the church will be teaming with young witches and wizards attending our annual Hogwarts Camp UU.

The halls will be filled with laughter, fun, play and joy, while at the same time much learning about our faith will be happening.

Now, shhhh, don’t tell them I told you this, but I suspect that the adult volunteers, who make Hogwarts happen each year, experience as much, if not more, fun and joy as our children and youth they are serving do.

And all of this attention we are paying to fun and joy is for good reason.

More and more, we are discovering that fun and joy are key contributors to our learning and wellbeing.

More and more, science is finding that joyfulness and joyful play stimulate neurological patterns and neuro-chemical transmitters that improve our ability to learn and retain information.

Joy helps us lay down more complex and contextual memory and to retain such learnings and memories longer because they get associated with pleasure centers in the brain.

As one researcher puts it, “nothing lights up the brain like joy and play.”

Games and play also teach social skills and allow for a more creative perspective on the subject matter involved.

This is partially why many educational programs in general have begun to move away from strictly transmission models of teaching to more generative and even transformation models.

Within Unitarian Universalism there is even a model that is called “spirit play” (and in Christian traditions, “God Play”).

To over generalize a little, folks are moving away from the banking education model, wherein the teacher stands at the front of the classroom and deposits information into the passive minds of the students, to more like this (show Child Play Slide) wherein learning occurs through a sense of joy, play, games, humor, fun activities and social interconnectedness.

And, it is important to note that joyful play is not just rehearsal for adult challenges, as we oftentimes tend to think of it. For instance, if you prevent a kitten from playing, as an adult cat it will still know how to stalk, hunt and kill prey.

Humans and cats and dogs know instinctively know how to engage in play with each other simply for the joy of the playing.

In fact, all mammal species have been observed to engage in play at all ages of their lives.

The researcher I quoted earlier has found that play seems to have some vital biological role, just as sleep and dreaming do.

Joy, fun, play seem to be beneficial to us both psychologically and physically.

The opposite is true also. As adults, a lack of joyful play has been associated with depression. Children who are deprived of play often develop serious psychological issues as adults.

This was found to be a factor with Charles Whitman, the U.T. tower sniper who killed 16 people and injured 31 others here in Austin back in 1966.

I would propose that joy and play are also vital to our spiritual development and that a lack of joy damages our very souls.

In fact, there is a theory that church, along with its associated religious rituals, is in truth “deep play”. It is helping us understand deep and complex life issues in metaphorical ways at least partially through experiences of spiritual ecstasy (otherwise known as joy or bliss).

I want to share with you a story that I think illustrates both how we learn through our experiences of joy and how being open to joyfulness can be so good for us.

The guy in the video I am about to show you is a farmer and goat rancher from upstate New York named Jay Lavery. The video has become known as “The Barn Dance”.

Now, since our subject matter today is “Learning Through Joy”, and one of the ways we experience joy is dancing, I encourage you to get up and dance along with Jay if you are so moved – or at least to groove in place on your chair or pew if not.

VIDEO

I got a little worried when he started the stripper moves there (actually, he keeps his remaining clothes on through the rest of the video).

Mr. Lavery posted his video for his Facebook friends, partially because he had serious back problems, and he wanted them to know he was doing OK.

He says never expected that his joyful video would go viral, with over 7 million views in less than a year.

Fifteen years prior to making that video, Mr. Lavery had a traumatic back injury that required several surgeries including a discectomy and a spinal fusion.

His dancing, along with practicing yoga and meditation, are how he overcomes the back pain he would otherwise have and how he avoids having to take pain medications.

Now there could be some physical aspects to this, but I have little doubt that his joyfulness in his dancing has helped him learn how to move through the pain.

As he puts it, he hopes his video inspires “anyone to move in spite of pain and I hope this puts a smile on your face … ” Avery even got to go on the Ellen Degeneres show, where he expressed his great amusement over many aspects of what he calls his” 15 minutes of fame”, including several marriage proposals he has received from several women smitten by his silky moves.

“What they didn’t realize,” he says, “is I’m gay.”

So, if, as is apparent from Jay Lavery’s story, joy is so good for us.

If joy helps us learn more readily and in more complex and complete ways, why don’t we infuse more joy, fun, humor and play into our our educational institutions, our workplaces, indeed our lives?

Why has the banking model of education persisted for so long and why does it still continue to be the primary model throughout so much of our current educational system?

Well, I am not sure I know all of the answers to those questions.

I suspect though, that it could have something to do with our protectant work ethic and more broadly our puritan ancestry.

Work, school, and church are not supposed to be fun!

On a more individual level, I think we may sometimes not allow ourselves to fully experience joy because of what social science researcher Bene Brown calls, “foreboding joy”.

Now some of you may have heard me talk about Dr. Brown’s concept of foreboding joy before, so this time I thought I would let her tell you about it herself.

BRENE BROWN VIDEO

So, we do not get to experience true joy, the fullness of joy without vulnerability.

Joy requires a sense of belonging and connection, and we do not get these unless we risk being our authentic selves. We don’t get these unless we allow ourselves to also experience the inevitable sorrow and loss that goes along with living and loving fully.

Joy requires us to have the courage to be be vulnerable.

One of the religious values we have defined for ourselves here at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin is this:

“Courage – To live lives of honesty, vulnerability, and beauty.”

May we live that value together so that we may experience a full and vibrant joy together.

And let’s remember to dance, laugh, play and have a little fun while we are at it!

I would like to leave you with the words of Steve Garnaas Holmes, who is a Methodist Minister and author. He comes from a Christian perspective, so I invite you to translate with your own understanding of that which is ultimate as you listen to his words.

They are titled, simply, “Joy”. “Who says God has to be so serious all the time? That God can’t have some fun, go on a lark, crack a good one?

Who says God can’t evolve a platypus instead of a woodchuck, or a flightless bird just as a joke?

Or give you a gorgeous sunset just to see the expression on your face? Or invent laughter?

Who says God’s passion is reasonable and not unrestrained celebration?

Jesus’ first miracle was a party trick. Pure. fun. Wine from water. And really good stuff, too. And at a wedding, no less. It’s a parable of covenant faithfulness, and love, and an ironic reverse-foreshadowing of the Last Supper.

It’s a parable of abundance and beauty and mystery and needless splendor.

It’s about life, and about blessing, and about joy-way too much and too good, way more and better than we need. Ridiculous. Over the top joy.

So raise a glass! Drink deep.”

And amen to that.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Abundance is Already Ours

July 14, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 14, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We live in an economic system that perpetuates itself by creating a culture of scarcity. What if we stopped to appreciate and express gratitude for all that we already have? What if we worked toward a culture of abundance?

I recently bought this iPhone. It’s the latest and the greatest technology.

Within a few months, a newer model with even later and greater features will come out – a model that was already planned when I bought this one.

We live in an economy that is designed to keep us at first thrilled with our new purchases and then quickly disillusioned with them and craving their replacement.

We exist in a culture where we are told that what we have is never enough. We exist in a culture that by design creates a myth of scarcity.

How often have you gone to reserve a hotel room or a flight online and gotten the little flashing message that only two more are available at this price.

Or “there are 30 people currently looking at this hotel.”

How many ads do we see that contain a not so implicit message that we are never successful enough; we never have enough; we are never good enough; attractive enough; thin enough; sexy enough; smart enough, etc.

Some other car is always newer and nicer than ours; our dishwasher is too slow and too loud; our clothing is already passe; our hairstyle is no longer the style.

Scarcity. Scarcity. More scarcity.

This morning as we have gathered for worship, the Trump administration has threatened to round up, detain and then deport thousands of immigrant families – a move which will:

worsen the conditions at already overcrowded and inhumane detention camps,
separate families, including taking even more children away from their parents,
and send folks who have been contributing to our society to countries where they will often face threats to their wellbeing and sometimes even their very lives.

And this too is also at least partially a fear-based tactic rooted in that mythology of scarcity.

Now there is a lot going on with this, including not so subtle racism and xenophobia, but these too arise at least partially out of the scarcity myth.

Trump himself has stated that we do not “have room for these people” – that somehow if we allow asylum seekers into our country it will mean taking jobs and resources away from the folks who are already here.

And yet study after study has found that this is simply not the case. We have plenty of wealth to go around. Immigrants are net contributors to our society. We have the food, housing, economic and other resources to more than support our population plus many more.

And when it comes to basic human rights, I like this meme that has been going around lately.

“EQUAL RIGHTS FOR OTHERS DOES NOT MEAN LESS RIGHTS FOR YOU. IT’S NOT PIE.”

The scarcity myth drives inequality and human rights abuses.

It drives radically capitalistic, consumerism.

The scarcity Myth is one of the major lies that has been used to excuse a vast transfer of power and wealth from the many to the very few that has been going on for decades now.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not against economic development and technology advancements that can enhance our lives and wellbeing. I love my iPhone.

I just think we can choose a different narrative that would eventually drive a different kind of economy and society.

I believe that rather than scarcity, we can choose abundance, not just for the few but for all.

We can adopt a narrative that we are, there is ENOUGH.

VIDEO CLIP

That’s Kevin Cavenaugh, an architect by training and now a commercial real estate developer in Portland, Oregon. The flowery pants he is wearing in the video were made for him one of his children out of fabric recycled from their old couch.

Cavenaugh goes onto explain that as they began to recover from the recession, and he rebuilt his business, he kept asking himself this question about enoughness – how much is enough?

Doing so has changed how he lives and how he does business.

He asked himself how much is enough wealth and discovered that while he was making a percentage of the profits from his building developments, the members of his small staff were not. So, he created a program in which they could become vested in a percentage of the profits also the longer they worked with him.

He also asked himself how much equality is enough because the inequity in pay between men and women in our country bothered him.

He then redesigned the pay pyramid for his company so that instead of him making more than everyone else, everyone gets paid exactly the same, including himself.

It turns out, he discovered, that companies that treat their employees better and equally have better long-term stock valuations. They attract the best talent. As he puts it, not paying equally was stepping over dollars to pick up dimes.

Finally, he was disturbed by the rising level of homelessness in Portland. Rent in the area has grown 20 times faster than wages, so that even folks with a college degree and who are working can find themselves living out of a tent in one of the city’s parks.

He asked himself and a group of investors for one of his buildings, how much would be enough rent? They did the calculations and discovered they could make enough return from their investment if they developed a building that would provide simple rooms with a bed and washbasin, shared showers and restrooms and a communal kitchen and living area. By doing so, they could rent the rooms out for $290 a month each.

So now, a number of formerly homeless folks have simple but adequate shelter. It is enough.

And this defining and redefining of “enough” it turns out is one of the strongest ways in which we can resist the cultural myth of scarcity. It is one of the ways we can find greater life satisfaction.

All over the country, people are engaging in this counter cultural idea and redefining for themselves what “enough” means.

People are embracing minimalism. You can learn more at theminimalists.com, but basically minimalists are discovering a new sense of freedom by living with far less stuff.

One common way that people get started is by jettisoning at least one material possession each day for at least a month by asking each day of one item, “does this have value to me? Does it have utility in some way or bring me joy?”

If the answer is no, it goes – sell it, donate it to charity where someone else might find value with it, just get rid of it.

Many folks have found they got rid of more than one item per day and continued the practice for several months.

I’m pretty sure it would take me at least a year to clear our whatever all that stuff in our garage is.

Other families with children have determined what the minimal salary they need is to feel life satisfaction and provide adequately for their children. They then live off of that and donate anything they earn above it to benefit others.

We have all witnessed the movement toward smaller or even tiny houses that has been growing.

What folks have discovered when they have done some of these things is that it freed them to pursue their desires and goals in life more easily. Many found they did not need to make us much money and could take a job that left them time to travel, go back to school for their Master’s degree or pursue a passion such music or an art, as examples.

Now, I am not suggesting that everyone here has to become a minimalist, give all their money to charity (but if you do please consider your church) or sell their house and all their stuff to move into a 600 square foot box.

I just offer some of these trends as an example of how it is possible to define and redefine “enough” for ourselves. I am suggesting that by periodically asking ourselves the question, “What is enough to me” we may begin to find ways to experience a greater sense of abundance.

In addition to thinking about what enough means to you, here are a few other ways that we may also develop a greater sense of abundance in our lives and that have thereby been shown to increase life satisfaction.

Invest more of your time and resources in your relationships with others.

Whether it is our spouses, partners, children, other family members, friends, our fellow church goers, the stranger we just met or some folks in need we may never meet, study after study have shown that belonging and connection, love and doing for others are vital to our satisfaction in life.

Also, invest more of your time and resources on experiences rather than things. Traveling, attending a play or concert, learning to play the guitar or speak a new language, taking the children to an amusement park or to go camping, whatever the experiences may be, a wealth of studies have shown that we place higher value on experiences rather than things. Experiences bring us greater happiness than possessing material items.

Next, practice gratitude every day.

Practicing gratitude has been shown to be one of the strongest ways to develop a sense of abundant life and is continually associated with greater life satisfaction.

The key is that it has to be a practice something you do. It is the active practice of gratitude that brings abundance. Here is a little more about the science of it and some potential gratitude practices.

VIDEO

Finally, whether it is through attending worship, cultivating a spiritual practice such as meditating, gardening, working for justice in our world, making art or music, whatever it is for you, finding ways to connect with something larger than ourselves, to experience the holy, to know truth meaning and beauty within our connection and experience of that something larger than ourselves lies abundant living.

These are just a few of the ways we can develop a sense of abundance in our lives.

I’d like to close today by inviting you to engage with me in a spoken and sung meditative ritual on abundance. Please repeat after me:

I am grateful for life.

I am grateful for loving and being loved.

I am grateful for the adventures and experiences of my life.

I am a part of something larger than myself.

I experience truth, meaning and beauty.

There is enough.

I am enough.

Please sing after me:

What we need is here.

Now please sing with me:

What we need is here.

My beloveds you are enough. Abundance is already ours.

Amen

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Pausing for Perseverance

July 7, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
Bear Qolezcua
July 7, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We often think of perseverance as being strong, having grit, to keep pushing forward even against difficult obstacles. Perhaps though, perseverance also requires a time for rest and spiritual renewal, being vulnerable enough to acknowledge that we need help sometimes and need others to carry the burden for a bit while we do the things that restore us.

Call to Worship

STILL I RISE
by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise.

Reading

– Aimee Van Ausdall

This morning I have been pondering a nearly forgotten lesson I learned in high school music. Sometimes in band or choir, music requires players or singers to hold a note longer than they actually can hold a note. In those cases, we were taught to mindfully stagger when we took a breath so the sound appeared uninterrupted. Everyone got to breathe, and the music stayed strong and vibrant… So let’s remember the advice of music: Take a breath. The rest of the chorus will sing. The rest of the band will play. Rejoin so others can breathe. Together, we can sustain a very long, beautiful song for a very, very long time. You don’t have to do it all, but you must add your voice to the song.

Bear Qolezcua

THE LIGHTHOUSE AND THE LITTLE BLUE BOAT

Once upon a time there was a mighty lighthouse. The tower had a broad base and a bright pink stripe spiraled up its body. The house that sat beneath it was always warm and inviting, its furnishings roughhewn but cosy. The smell of lemons, cinnamon, and vanilla swarmed around its great hearth.

The lighthouse sat on a very old bay. For many years it oversaw the sea and swells as storms came and went, crashing over the shore and snarling at the tower with great blows. The lighthouse survived each one but even though sometimes a window might be broken or the tower would be scarred and chipped, it continued to be a beacon of safety and strength.

Time passed and the sea changed. Parts of the surrounding bay got deeper, and others more shallow. Jagged boulders were upended in the distance to form a sea wall. They created a gentle pool beneath the watchful tower of the lighthouse. The jags were dangerous and dark, making the lighthouse’s job more important than ever.

After some years, the dry dock beneath the tower was opened and a little blue boat was taken from it and put into the water. The lighthouse loved its little blue boat. It was squeaky and small but safe and dependable.

It stayed afloat even when the ocean swelled and threatened it or when it found itself being pushed to the craggy breaks and jags out at sea. The little boat served its purpose well, no matter the gales against it, as it rescued many who were lost in the water, bringing them safely to shore without fail.

Once, the little blue boat’s oars fell off and it was swept quickly into a current, unable to find its way home. It discovered many dark places in the sea, some were far more dangerous than the jags the boat had avoided so well in its bay. A kind young woman discovered the boat, trapped in mangrove roots along a river inlet. She gave it new oars and asked nothing in return. She wished the little boat farewell and the somewhat scuffed and marred vessel made its way back home.

On a frosty winter morning, the lighthouse found it had a crack in its foundation. Many tried to mend the damage but it could not be repaired. The lighthouse resigned itself to shining brightly as long as it could. Years later the foundation broke and the light faded. The lighthouse fell.

The kerosene lantern used to light the tower spilled fuel and flame, the woodwork burned to ash, leaving only chipped, bare stones in a pile on the shore.

The little blue boat sailed off into the sea, not knowing which way to turn. It did not rescue others from the waters because it was scared of not having a safe place to take them when it had no safe place to go itself. It became so very lost in the great sea that it couldn’t find the shore at all. It stopped looking at all, fearing more jags, more fire, from any shore to which it might come.

By chance, the boat happened upon the familiar rocky breaks of the sea wall it once knew. More rocks had been upended and the bay was cut off from the outside. The little blue boat looked through whatever cracks and faults it could find and saw that the shore had changed much more. The pile of rubble still on the land, buried under a thin layer of mud and sand. The little blue boat stayed there for so long it forgot how many moons passed.

Workers with noisy machines came and cleared the fallen building, they gathered and buried the ashes of the tower’s frame. Nothing was left but the Ebenezer stone bearing the name of the original overseer. The little blue boat wished to be closer and see more but it could go no farther in the water.

The loss of the lighthouse left the boat scared to return to the open sea and so it stayed stuck along the jags for years, letting them cut at it, scuff it, and wear parts of it so thin they threatened to break open where the sea water would overtake the boat and claim it in the depths.

Some young people found the little boat while out on the water and two got into it. They asked the boat to take them back home and the boat did, having nothing else to do with its time. The boat lingered on their shore, resting from the great jags and storms. With time, many came and repaired the boat, patching weak spots, strengthening it and protecting it.

This rest ended one day when a great ship passed nearby the boat and caught itself in a shoal too shallow for the ship to make. It slowed and began to capsize. The passengers and crew were in danger as the ship yawed toward the water. Some made it to rescue boats but many were thrown dangerously into the cold dark waters out at sea. They cried for help but none seemed to come from the lifeboats surrounding the ship. Many of which had already made it to shore.

The little blue boat heard them crying out but it felt so afraid. It was unsure about the mended parts of its body, worrying if it would be strong enough and whole enough to be able to once again carry the weight of others within. It decided that with the rest it had received it must at least try and floated quickly over to passengers in the water, taking them on board and delivering them safely to the shore, many times over it did this until none were left in the water. It discovered that it saved itself by caring for others who needed only the safety of a lifeboat.

Having once again found its purpose, the little blue boat sailed off into the sea knowing the currents and sea walls would never allow it to return to its bay. Because of its time of rest and repairs, the little boat carried the strength and endurance of its lighthouse within, once again bringing hope and safety to passengers and ships in peril.

Chris Jimmerson

When my mom was 67 years old, she wrecked her Harley Davidson motorcycle.

She slid off the road on a sharp curve in the hills of the East Texas pine forest and skidded sideways across several dozen feet.

She broke her nose, scraped the skin off of both arms and broke seven vertebrae in her lower and mid back.

The emergency responders had to take her by life flight to a hospital that was over an hour and a half away from where the accident had happened.

We were not sure she would survive.

The neurosurgeon who took care of her back injuries had to use screws to attach two metal rods on each side of her spinal column.

It is still a lot of fun to go through airport security with her even today.

I asked her permission to tell you the story of her accident and her recovery from it this morning, because I think I learned about perseverance from it.

My mom survived the accident and then persevered through first a rehabilitation hospital and then outpatient physical therapy, yes, partially through her own grit and determination. She drew upon her own religious faith and spiritual practices.

Also though, she had a whole host of loved ones who stayed with her and supported her through those times.

My step-father, Ty, took care of her when she was not physically capable of caring for herself.

Her children and other family members chipped in too. Along with a whole host of friends, we brought them meals, helped with chores and errands, provided rides to where she needed to go, gave her emotional support and sounded a resounding chorus of “no” when she wanted to get back on a motorcycle again before she was even fully healed. Today at age 78, my mom no longer rides a Harley, but she does have an open air go-cart in which she zooms around her neighborhood at altogether alarming rates of speed.

So perseverance, our ability to survive and sometimes even thrive through adversity, has both an individualistic component and a communal aspect.

We persevere through our own grit and determination, yes. And science has shown that we can cultivate this tenacity and resilience through spiritual practices, religious faith, remaining open to humor beauty, joy, grief, embracing gratitude and forgiveness and practicing self-compassion. But, we also need community. We need love and support to fully develop our perseverance.

We find greater strength, power and sustenance communally.

So, our religious community here at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin can help us all maintain our spiritual perseverance.

We need each other and so many more if we are to persevere against the assaults on human rights and dignity; the degradation and potential destruction of life and our planet we are witnessing in these times.

Sometimes we have to vulnerable enough to admit that we need help and be willing ask for it.

Sometimes, to be able to persevere in the long run, we need to set the burden of our struggles down and let others carry them for a while. We just need a pause – a respite – a time to simply take care of ourselves and our nearest loved ones. We need this in order to be able to build up the resilience that is so necessary for perseverance.

And yet, it is more complicated than that even, because those of us with relative privilege can more easily retreat from the struggle than those who are being crushed under the weight of extreme oppression and maltreatment. We must not allow ourselves to fall prey to the lie that we can look away permanently, because in the end, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhereÉWhatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

This past week, we witnessed the juxtaposition of the celebration of our country’s Independence day (and all the values it is supposed to represent) with the Department of Homeland Security’s own Inspector General’s report on “Dangerous Overcrowding and Prolonged Detention of Children and Adults” at five Customs and Border Protection holding facilities here in Texas.

These are supposed to be temporary holding facilities at the border, and yet in these 5 facilities alone, the Office of the Inspector General found:

8,000 detainees in custody with almost half held greater than the time period allowed by law.
2,669 children, 826 held longer than the law allows, 50 younger than 7.
Children and adults sleeping on concrete floors with no access to showers, limited or no changes of clothing and no hot meals.
Adults held in over-crowded, sometimes standing room only conditions, some for over a month.
Adults who had gotten sick after being fed only bologna sandwiches.
Once facility was basically outdoor cages that had been constructed under a bridge in the outdoor heat of El Paso.

These are just some of the conditions that have been observed. These are only the border facilities and do not include conditions at longer term prison camps maintained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

I am dismayed that my country is doing this (AGAIN) – horrified that it is happening in my state. I can only imagine how painful witnessing this must be for those of you with small children of your own.

I struggle because no matter how many phone calls I make, emails I send, petitions I sign, contributions I give, rallies and protests I attend and on and on, still it never feels like enough.

I struggle with persevering when it would be so easy to fall into despair and helplessness.

And yet, I know the folks in those facilities have had to persevere against conditions in their home countries, perilous journeys to seek refuge and the horrifying way in which they are being treated by our government.

I know these folks have had to persevere in ways in which I never have and can only begin to grasp at understanding.

I know that I cannot claim to affirm our Unitarian Universalist principles, such as the inherent worth and dignity of each person, justice, equity and compassion – I cannot uphold this church’s mission – I cannot maintain my own humanity if I remain silent while the humanity of people seeking our help is defiled.

I know that I must act now – that waiting for the next election to act is too late, as important as that election will be in relation to ending these atrocities.

I know to persevere, to keep up the struggle in the face of such heartbreak, I will need:

this religious community,
my Unitarian Universalist faith,
the leadership of those who have experienced our broken and bigoted immigration system,
the many other folks and organizations that are joining together to cry out for an end to these atrocities.

My beloveds, I believe that our Unitarian Universalist faith, our religious values, this church’s mission, they are calling us, each of us, to do what we can to demand an end to these crimes against humanity.

Doing what we can will look different for each of us, depending upon our circumstances.

We have left a list of many different ways to get involved on the social action table in Howson Hall and have also put it on the social action page of our church website so that you can follow the hyperlinks it contains. Beloveds, we come from a long tradition of perseverance on behalf of truth, justice and human dignity.

Today, we are called to continue in that faithful tradition. We can carry each other when each of us inevitably needs respite. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Amen and blessed be.

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