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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 16, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

The spiral, one of the most ancient of human symbols, indicates a path which travels to the center and then back out again.

Call to Worship

“Life again”
by John Banister Tabb

“Out of the dusk a shadow
Then, a spark.
Out of the cloud a silence,
Then, a lark.
Out of the heart a rapture,
Then, a pain.
Out of the dead cold ashes,
life again.”

Reading

exerpt from The Painted Drum
by Louise Erdrich

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

Sermon

Happy Easter Sunday! I told a dear church member this week that I was planning to talk about Jesus this Sunday. ”I’m not coming, then,” she said. “Been there, done that!” I told her I’d been here six years now and had preached five Easter sermons without telling the Christian faith-story, and that it was time. Some among you are going to have a sinking feeling, hearing this. I ask for your trust. I’m not going to suddenly tell you what you need to believe and I’m going to remind you up front that we don’t believe in a supernatural place called hell.

Some of you may wonder why I’m being so careful, hedging the beginning of this telling with so many reassurances. Others, easily triggered by any talk of Rabbi Jesus, will wonder why I just don’t preach about something else for a sixth year.

As I’ve said before, the way I approach faith stories of all religions is the same way I would approach a dream. Whether from the Hindu Upanishads, the Buddhist Sutras, or the Jewish or Christian Scriptures, faith stories often express a truth from the deep ocean of gathered human wisdom. Carl Jung would have called it the “collective unconscious.” When I was studying Jung at Duke, in seminary, with my Aunt Ruth, who was a Jungian psychiatrist, and then later with Polly Telford, a retired Zurich-trained Jungian analyst living in the hills of Appalachia, I was asked to picture the Collective Unconscious as a great sea, and our individual consciousness as an island in that sea. The deep truths wash up on the shore, or seep up through the ground and show up in a culture’s folk tales and fairy stories. They also come up in a culture’s faith stories. Some adherents to some religions insist that the stories are historical, in the way that a reporter would write about what is happening. We know that even history is not historical, but is written with a point of view, with an agenda, and that many important things are left out by those with the power of print and publishing.

So we have the very true (but probably not historical) story of Rabbi Jesus, who serves Western culture, Jung said, as a symbol of the Self. Deeper than the Ego, the Self is your Soul place, the place where you are most who you are, your Inner Wisdom. For this element of Jesus, the syllables by which the Roman culture made his actual name Jeshua easier to pronounce, for this deep more eternal element of who he is in the faith story, Christians use the word “Christ.” Jeshua was his name, and the Christ is his role.

The story of this past week is that the Teacher knew he was in trouble with the authorities, both Roman and religious. He had said things that made people think unsafe thoughts toward both kinds of authority. Even though he was in trouble, he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. This disappointed many of his fans, because they thought he was going to ride in on a horse like a military conqueror to sweep out the Roman occupation forces who had made a colony of their country most people prefer a satisfying show of force to dealing with things in a more radical way, “radical” meaning getting at the root of the problem. He gathered with his disciples for a meal and then went out into the garden. One of his disciples had sold him out, told the authorities where to come pick him up. They put him on trial, and the puppet ruler, Pontius Pilate, under pressure to keep peace by appeasing all the factions that were upset, turned him over to the soldiers who beat him, made him carry his own cross, the instrument of his execution, to the place made to carry it by the soldiers. Pressed into service rather than volunteering. Catholic church tradition, not the Bible, says that a woman named Veronica came out of the crowd and gave Jesus her veil to wipe his face. The soldiers of the Roman Supremacy system crucified him alongside two criminals, tormented and humiliated him for their amusement, and left him to die. He was buried in a tomb, a cave-like opening that was then sealed, probably with a rectangular stone, if it was like almost all of the other burial caves of that period. The story continues that, on the third day, two women who were his followers came to visit the grave and found the stone moved from blocking the entrance and the tomb empty. The stories continue by telling about people having mystical and/or physical experiences of him after the empty tomb was discovered.

We have an intense story of the journey of courage, of facing fear and death, abandonment and debasement. The journey in this faith story parallels the story of Innana’s descent into the underworld, where she is stripped of her finery, then her clothes, then hung on a hook for three days before she revives and returns to life. This is a Sumerian poem (modern day Iraq and Kuwait) from about 1600 BCE. The story of a divine being dying and rising again is told in many faith traditions, and many times the journey is represented by a spiral or a labyrinth. On one level it parallels the journey of a seed, which falls from a plant into the earth, is dormant until it is cracked open in the darkness and its new shoots find their way to the light and life. On another level it parallels a journey that most human lives take at least once, but more often in many small ways. We have all been through the experience of being stripped of what matters to us: a relationship, a job, a place, our health, our capacity, until it feels that there is nothing left. Marianne Williamson speaks of her nervous breakdown this way, saying that a nervous breakdown is a highly underrated way to reach enlightenment. Many of us have felt that what is important to us has been stripped away by the political and/or the religious authorities. Sometimes there are helpers, people who carry our burden with us because they are forced to by the same authorities stripping us of our powers, and some are volunteers who could be safe but choose to emerge with a touch of sympathy or compassion.

The point of the story is not what “churchianity” makes it, that an angry God killed his own son for sinful humanity. That is child abuse, and we know that. We are not better parents than God.

The point I would take from it is that if you are a disruptor of the system that benefits the powers that be, they will try to kill you, and sometimes they will succeed. That is the reason he died. The deeper point is that love knows that life will break you, and that the Great Love doesn’t stand apart from us, looking at us in pity, but joins us in brokenness. The Easter part of the message is that Great Love then brings life from the brokenness, and leads us again toward the light, toward life. Over and over again.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 2, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

This sermon, a response to an invitation from our auction winner, is about welcome.

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
March 5, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The sixth principle urges us to promote peace, liberty and justice. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the rights the nations of the UN agreed should be held by all men, women and children.

What I hear from so many of you in the past several months is that there is such a feeling of overwhelm. Quotations abound about never giving up, and the only people who accomplish great things are those who keep working when there is no hope, and that giving up is not an option, there is too much to be done. Yet there is too much to be done. Our sixth principle is overwhelming.

It says that we, as UUs, agree to affirm (say yes to,) and promote (try to get more people to say yes to) the goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all. That’s really big. It makes a person think the framers of the principles were getting tired at the end there, and that they just wrote one that was the equivalent of “well, we want the whole world to be okay, everything else plus that big freezer in the garage.” What do you do with a principle that large and unwieldy?

There is a funny short film on youtube with the title “The Man Who Ate a Car”, and it opens with him talking in his kitchen.

“A car is just the sum of its parts, and a lot of the parts aren’t that big, just a couple of inches across. 75% of the parts of an automobile are a couple of inches across and half an inch deep. That’s the size of an Oreo cookie. And the ones that are too big, you just machine down, smooth out.”

Most of us don’t have time, in the biggest part of our lifespan, to do much for the world. We are busy making a living, raising children, maintaining the relationships we choose, taking care of our health and strength or adjusting to its loss. It’s hard to find time and energy for leaving the world a better place. Ralph Waldo Emerson said a successful life was to leave the world ” a little bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you live…” Many of us do that. I am beginning to know some of the stories of a good number of people in this room and I can tell you there are many people here who will leave the world a little better than they found it. Lives have breathed easier because you have lived. What will you be known for when you are gone? What will be the elements of your legacy? I love how Emerson speaks so hopefully of “a redeemed social condition.” Just one?

Unitarians and Universalists have thrown their life energies in with the forces of change over the centuries. Unitarian Horace Mann organized the public school system Universalist Clara Barton founded the Red Cross. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was led by his liberal faith to a much more inclusive interpretation of the law. Thomas Starr King (after whom one of the UU seminaries, the one in Berkley, is named) was inspired to fight the California legislature for continued land rights of Mexicans. Jane Hull founded Hull House in Chicago, and began to professionalize social workers; moving caring for the poor from religious institutions that often pressured you to convert to get care, to non-religiously affiliated professionals. Roger Baldwin was led to establish the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). May Sarton wrote poetry inspiring her readers with truth and beauty. Susan B Anthony worked her whole adult life to get the vote for women.

Social action, politics and art are some ways we can make the world a better place. Most of us, in the ordinary course of our lives, are doing it by being loving family members, teaching our children strong values of usefulness, tolerance, open minded curiosity, kindness, knowledge, wisdom, and love. We teach the children in the church, we care for our grandchildren, we cook for people and visit them when they need company. We make the world a better place by being good friends, by trying to behave correctly and do the right things. Do those actions bring about world community with peace, liberty and justice for all? We can barely make justice within our own church, our own families. How can we heal the whole world?

This principle is over-large, and it sits there, parked in the driveway of every UU who is resolving to live the faith.

“This is a long term activity,” says the man who ate the car. “Look, it took five years. I ate my first two lug nuts on Dec 30, 1990 — finished the last piece of the clutch housing on Feb 14 1995.” Compared to a task with no beginning, no middle and no end, eating a car sounds almost easy.

World community, with peace, liberty and justice for all is too big a goal. It tells us that we are global thinkers, though. We are not “America First-ers.” That doesn’t fit our principle. We don’t say “I’m okay and my family is okay, so let the other people take care of themselves.” We have a big calling, we are called to world community with peace, liberty and justice for all. We are not individually called to that, though. We are called as a community. We’re not alone, We get to rest. We get to be ill, we get to fall back from the front lines when we are battle weary. We’re on a team. A big team with hundreds of thousands of UUs all over the world all holding this same goal.

Overwhelm burns us out. When we can’t get anywhere, when the things we do accomplish seem so insignificant compared to what we are supposed to be accomplishing that we feel they are nothing. We don’t want the sixth principle to make us feel that all our small efforts are insignificant. What I learned about setting goals is that you are supposed to make a goal from something you can control. Instead of saying “I’m going to be a catalyst for change like Barbara Jordan was!” you might say “I’m going to change one thing — about myself — this week.” That you can do, usually. Instead of saying, “My goal is to be a millionaire,” you make a goal of saving a certain amount of your income, or of living within your means day by day, or just or writing down what you spend. Goals should be measurable. Did I do it or not? They should be attainable. We can say that we have a goal to do some action every day to make the world a better place. Most of us are doing that just by living the principles, making our phone calls, supporting the lawmakers of our choice, running for office ourselves, and trying every day to do the next right thing, supporting those who are on the forefront of the work for justice.

One good purpose that can be served by an extra-large, unattainable goal, though, is that it is a measuring stick we can hold up to the various situations and decisions we face as we move through our lives. “Is this going to be more or less like world community?” You might ask yourself. “Will this make more peace, more liberty, more justice, or less?” A good large measuring stick can help as choices come up. Sometimes you still don’t know what to do. You make mistakes. That’s ok. Life is long, and there must be room for mistakes.

Let’s take that sixth principle little by little, and let’s take our time. Take a big important stand or do something small every day, or both. Just hold the goal in mind. Look at your home, your work, your church through its windshield. Machine those pieces down until they are the size of an Oreo cookie.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
February 26, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Some people are harder to be comfortable with than others. How do we deal kindly with people who are difficult?

Call to Worship
– Albert Schweitzer

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

Reading
– Rabindranath Tagore

“When the heart is hard and parched up, come upon me with a shower of mercy.

When grace is lost from life, come with a burst of song.

When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest.

When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner, break open the door, my king, and come with the ceremony of a king.

When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O thou holy one, thou wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder.”

Skit by the Healthy Relations team

Two actors face one another with coffee mugs.

Penelope: talking on and on

Dorothy: nodding, eye contact. She says something that is encouraging, like “Oh, my,” or “Is that so?”

Narrator claps to freeze the action: Penelope and Dorothy are talking at coffee hour. Penelope is what we call “A Talker!” Right now, Dorothy is giving listening cues. She’s making eye contact and nodding.

Claps to start action again

Penelope: resumes talking on and on

Dorothy tries to respond a couple of times to no avail, then deflates.

Narrator claps to freeze action:

After a couple of failed attempts to engage, Dorothy realizes that this is going to be more of a monologue than a dialogue. Notice how her enthusiasm for this encounter fizzles.

Claps to start action again.

Penelope keeps talking.

Dorothy looks at her watch. She drops her eyes, looks at the floor, looks around.

Narrator claps to freeze the action: Dorothy looks at her watch. She ends eye contact. These are cues that should let Penelope know that listening is coming to an end.

Now, Penelope is going to keep talking. Look, she’s closed her eyes so she can keep talking without seeing the cues Dorothy is trying to give. But Dorothy has some skills for just this situation. What would you do?

Claps to start action again

Dorothy looks up, puts her arm on Penelope’s arm, (Penelope is still talking) and says, over Penelope’s talking “You’ll have to excuse me, I have to go ask my husband something.” Smiling, she walks away.

Narrator: Many of us have been taught not to interrupt, but in situations like this, it’s actually okay. Have you met a Penelope? Have you been a Penelope? What might you do differently next time?

Sermon

People, huh? Some of us have been in this situation as the listener, some as the talker, and some of us have been on both sides. To paraphrase the Quakers, “Everyone’s a little difficult except me and Thee, and even thee’s a little difficult.” I’m talk about how to deal with difficult people this morning, and I want you to know that, like a Freshman Psychology major, I find myself a little bit in each example of difficult people.

The over talker is difficult, especially for people who are wired more toward wanting to consider their own words before talking. By the time there is a break in the conversation, if there ever is, the time for them to say what they wanted to contribute to the dialogue has passed. There are people who control a situation by filling up the space with their own thoughts. They are out of balance. Most people who are difficult for us are difficult for everyone, and usually it’s because they are out of balance internally, or they were raised in an environment which was out of balance, and they had to adapt to that in order to survive.

If over talking happens in a meeting or at work we might wait for the person who is the facilitator to say something to them, like “thank you. Let’s hear from someone who hasn’t spoken yet.” If you are with them and feeling taken advantage of, you might do as Dorothy did, make the social signals that you are ready to be done, and if those don’t work, tough the person’s arm and say you need to go. If that feels rude, consider that, by holding you against your will, they were being rude first. The Buddhist teaching to do no harm comes into play here. Do no harm to others, or to yourself. If someone is taking more of your time or your energy than you are willing to give, they are doing you harm, and you do them harm by allowing them to do wrong.

We make those cultural signals, but some people are difficult because they don’t share your culture’s signals. When I was the Chaplain at a women’s college in SC, at least once or twice every September I’d have a nice young women in tears in my office. “My roommate hates me!” she’d say. I would ask for examples. “She doesn’t smile at me, she’s rude, she talks mean to me, and she doesn’t help me when I ask her to.”

In Southern culture, girls smile. When you see each other, you say hey. You have little chats about nothing much, to establish connection. When someone says “my this is heavy,” you recognize that as a request for help. When you have something to say about someone, you don’t say it directly, you find some slantwise way to say it that feels gentler to you.

Her roommate wasn’t doing any of that. Finally I learned to ask “Where is your roommate from?”

“B-B-B-Boston…” Different culture.

Some difficulties are caused by us not reading one another’s cultural signals. The cure for this is talking about it, and most therapist type people will recommend and “I statement” format. “When you do ______ I feel _______” “When you don’t look up at me and smile when I come into the room, I feel like you wish I weren’t there.”

What are some other techniques people use for being difficult? They don’t listen, or if they hear your words, they don’t seem to comprehend them. Some folks are out of balance in a way that makes their inner mind very noisy, and they can barely hear you over all the lists, resentments, fears, plans, obsessions, and worries inside their own minds. Sometimes it can be effective to stop the conversation periodically and ask the other person to repeat back to you their understanding of what you said. Then you repeat to them your understanding and memory of what they said, and when you’re on solid ground together then you go on. I used to trust this method more than I do now, having had experiences with a couple of folks long ago and far away where they repeated what I said and they told me I was understanding them correctly, and a couple of days after the conversation that understanding seemed to have evaporated. It still is useful, even if it’s not infallible. I did have a friend who said he and his wife had stopped fighting because all the rules their marriage counselor gave them about communicating just made it too much trouble.

Some people are difficult because their head is full of assumptions about you. Some folks truly believe that lesbians hate men, and that could skew their perceptions of me. Those of us who are people of color have had many experiences with assumptions and stereotypes. So your mama says you have to be twice as good as white people, you must be exceptional. And we make movies about exceptional People of Color, but we won’t be in a just world until a mediocre person of color can get as far as a mediocre white person.

Some people are difficult for me because they are chaos people. Their plans are always done at the last minute, their hair is always on fire, they only know the answers to the questions about what’s happening, where things are, how it will go, , so every part of the event has to go through them personally. Or they want to decide everything on a case by case basis rather than going by the book, so things feel unfair and subjective, and the whole operation rests on their shoulders alone. They don’t delegate and they don’t communicate, so people around them get exhausted and burned out trying to be part of their show. It might work well for them, but not as well for people who are on their crew. I try not to be on projects with this kind of person. If I am, I try to be the boss of the project so I can lay out guidelines and deadlines.

Some people’s technique for being difficult is what writer Julia Cameron calls the “wet-blanket matadors.” You have nice forward motion, you and the rest of the crew are going places, and this person slows it all down. “Let’s think about this some more, let’s ask three more agencies’ thoughts on the matter, we tried this before and it didn’t work twenty years ago in 1996.”

Some trainers recommend that you just avoid these folks who are difficult for you if you can avoid them. “Fly like an eagle,” one advises, rise above the fray. That can work. If the person is your boss you can try to transfer or find another job. Many of you have changed jobs for that reason. Sometimes you just can’t avoid the person. They are your parent or your child, your sister or your spouse. Michelle Obama couldn’t avoid all the people who made cruel and racist comments about her. “When they go low, we go high,” she said. Sometimes we can rise above, but sometimes it feels impossible.

Many people are difficult because they are out of balance, and others are difficult because they just don’t share the values we hold dear. They want us to do things we feel uncomfortable with, or things we think are wrong. We can’t change them, usually. We only have ourselves to work with. Sometimes we can change the environment, leak their secrets to the press or let the boss’s boss know what’s going on. There are risks involved with trying to change the status quo.

Most teachers will tell us that people who are difficult for us are our best teachers in life. How would we know what we need to work on next in ourselves if it weren’t for that boss driving us crazy or that sister who makes us paralyzed with resentment?

One of my teachers, a woman named Byron Katie, has a series of questions she asks you to ask yourself as you investigate a resentful thought you have. She offers a “Judge Your Neighbor” worksheet that you fill out, letting yourself say the truest most judgmental things possible. I found a video this week of her working with a young woman. Sweetie, she said, “Thought appears, what’s your thought?” The woman read from the sheet. “My mother is manipulative, controlling and deceitful. She won’t let me be who I am, and she’s trying to make me exactly like her.” Katie asked for an example. The woman looked blank for a minute. “Well, she thinks I’m wrong about everything.”

“That controls you how?” Young woman looks blank. “So your mom wants to control you, is that true?”

Yes, the woman says. “Are you sure that’s true?” The woman looks a little uncertain, then thinks of another example.

“I made a scrap book of my values, and showed it to her. She said she thought all my values were wrong.” Katie nodded.

“You asked her what she thought and she told you. How does that control or manipulate you?” “How do you act when you think that thought, that your mother is trying to control and manipulate you?” The woman said she acted angry, and withheld conversation and company from her mother. She just wanted her mom to love and respect her for who she was.

Let’s turn this thought around, Katie suggested. The famous turn-around. I’m controlling and manipulative?” The woman tried. K nodded. Yes, sweetie, you’re trying everything you can to make your mother respect your values. Who should respect you and your values?

Me? K nodded. “You make a book of your values and asked her what she thought. She was honest with you but you don’t respect and love her for who she is. You want her to change. Her values are her values and your values are your values. If you respect yours and you love her without trying to manipulate and control her, she won’t be able to hurt you.

So your mother is manipulating and tries to control you. “Who would you be without that thought?” Katie asked. The young woman thought she’d be much happier without thinking her mother was deceitful and controlling. She’d be able to have a nice life and be around her mom.

The fourth question: “Can you think of a non-stressful reason to hold onto that thought? I’m not asking you to let it go, I’m just asking if there is a sane reason to hold on to it.” The woman shook her head.

She calls this form of inquiry “The Work,” and you can get everything free on her web site. Her techniques are not infallible or universally applicable, but they can be very helpful.

So how to deal with difficult people? Avoid if you can. “Take your sails out of their wind,” the 12 step people say. What might that mean in your situation? Ask yourself what would it mean for me to take my sails out of their wind? I bet some kind of answer will come to you. Sometimes you change your environment and sometimes you change yourself. Talk to them directly, with love, if you can. Make your position clear. Be clear and loving in what you ask them to do instead of what they’re doing. “I will be able to stay in the conversation with you much better if you speak to me respectfully and with kindness.” “We will be able to have a much more productive work life if you tell me the truth/don’t lay claim to my ideas/etc.

So: avoid, take your sails out of their wind, talk directly to them. Other ideas: Pema Chodron, a renowned Buddhist teacher, says “Take the target off your back.” She means by this that we can get caught up in the fire of aggression, and that if we have an inner quiet, if we are strong inside, we can refuse to respond to aggression with aggression, and its fires will die out, or find some other target to hit. Rabbi Jesus said that too “Don’t return evil for evil, but return good for evil.” It’s a way to drive your enemies crazy, he said.

I have seen good luck and bad luck with this. For two years after a friend divorced her husband, he was so angry when they talked on the phone, it felt abusive. She was a good Buddhist and kept her aggression low, speaking kindly and with respect. It got worse and worse. She wrote him that he had lost his privilege of talking to her on the phone, and that they would communicate about the children by email only from then on. The emails were so terrible, they were hard to read. She wrote back kindly and with respect, but they got worse and worse. Finally she asked her friend Charlie at work to read them for her, pick out the information she needed, where he would pick up the children, etc. and delete the rest. They kept being terrible until the day she wrote “the person who reads your emails for me said you were going to pick the boys up at 5, and that’s fine with me.” I call that technique letting the sun shine on reality. I don’t know why, but some people who want to treat you badly count on you for some reason to protect them and their reputation. Why is that?

I could go on for an hour describing various different ways to be a difficult person, and suggesting strategies for dealing with each different way, and that’s fun, but the main way to deal with irritating, annoying people (not the evil ones or the ones who are out to destroy you) is by changing yourself. There is the metta prayer, where you pray for them everything you want for yourself. I’ve spoken to you about this before. The 12 step folks call it the Resentment Prayer.

There is doing a little research to see if you can get to an understanding of why they are the way they are, and then your stance toward them will be as it is toward a broken person, with somewhat more compassion.

There is research into their culture to see if you can read their actions differently, in the context of their own ways.

There is asking yourself whether they are really trying to drive you crazy by being so awful. Is it true? How do you feel when you think that thought? Can you think of a sane reason to keep that thought? What happens if you turn your complaint about them around? Is there truth in it when the finger is pointing your way?

The Chinese book of wisdom, the I Ching, says you have to build your own good character. You have to be soft on the outside and hard on the inside. Most people are the opposite. Soft on the outside and hard on the inside means you have begun and continue to shape your good character. The point of doing that is to be able to see more and more clearly what is the next right thing to do.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
February 12, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In discussing this element of the Buddhist Eightfold Path, we look at what is an effective way to try to do things. How do we focus our efforts toward justice?

Call to Worship
By Octavia E. Butler

All that you touch — You Change.

All that you Change — Changes you.

The only lasting truth — is Change.

God is Change.

Reading:
by Kamand Kojouri

The guilt you felt
when you were smiling
and others were suffering,
the guilt you felt
when you were petty with friends
and impatient with your parents,
when you were rude to your teachers
and didn’t stand up for strangers,
that guilt
is marvellous.
It proves that you are human,
that you want to be better.
Thank this guilt for teaching you,
for making you aware.
And now endeavour to better yourself.
It is a lifelong work to become
the person we want to be.

We’re in the midst of a series on the Buddhist 8 fold path. This morning’s element of the path is “Right Effort.” You try, you try with your heart and mind and spirit, but not too much. The Middle Way was where the Buddha recommended we live, having been an indulged prince, then a starving holy man. He taught that both indulgence and asceticism made you spend too much attention on yourself. Try, but not in a way that wastes energy, persist, rest, don’t give up. I had an indelible lesson in this concept on the New River one summer. We were learning to paddle canoes. The summer had been droughty, and the water was low. The teacher beckoned me to paddle to where she was. I paddled. Faster, faster, but there was no water to catch my paddle. She cocked an eyebrow at me and said “Why don’t you just get out and walk it over here?” She had the grace not to laugh. So I was trying hard and not getting anywhere.

Teacher Eric Kolvig says you can sum up this aspect of the path by saying “Try to do your practice, but don’t try too hard, and never give up.” Try, don’t try too hard, and don’t give up.

Now this might sound like I’m veering off the path, but I’ll bring it back around.

There were many great moments in the movie Hidden Figures. The Atlas Rocket was part of the launching system for the first manned space rockets. NASA, in the early 60’s, had human computers, men and women who would spend their days doing mathematical calculations. The movie follows three Black women who work as human computers at NASA. One of the most striking moments in the movie is a quiet one, but it’s a turning point. Katherine Johnson was promoted to work directly with the men who were trying to engineer the rocket to go up, and then to come down again in a way that would keep its pilot alive. She worked in the building with the white male engineers, but the only “Colored” bathroom was half a mile away, on the other side of the campus. Every time she needed to relieve herself, she took an armful of papers and trotted half a mile there and then half a mile back. Finally the man in charge of the program, needing to ask her a question and unable to find her, snapped at her about her long 40 minute breaks. Just what in the world was she doing for that length of time in the middle of the day?

Embarrassed, she has to confess that she’s going to the bathroom, and that her bathroom is half a mile away. One of the movies best moments was seeing the face of this man as he realized what she’d been up against, and then, a second later, realized he’d never even thought about it, never wondered, that it really couldn’t have occurred to him. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t – couldn’t think about it. As a man, he had more than likely drawn a velvet curtain over any thoughts of lady bathroom activities. You know how you just don’t think about certain things… you don’t even know you’re not thinking of them. In a blog post called “If America Were a Game of Monopoly,” the writer postulates four playing pieces, colored white, yellow, black and red. Using 2008 statistics on population, family income, and net worth, they describe the rules.

“If America were a game of Monopoly the rules would be a bit different. The following example considers race only to keep it simple. Adding class would be interesting too, but for now I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

RULES:

1. There are four players: one white, one red, one black and one yellow.

2. The white player is the banker.

3. Starting amounts: Before play begins give each player the following amounts to start with:

• $1500 white
• $1085 yellow
• $105 black
• $75 red

(Based on median household net worth in 2000.)

4. When passing Go: Each player will get the following amounts when passing Go:

• $200 white
• $170 yellow
• $140 black
• $120 red

(Based on median personal income for 2000.)

5. Settling disputes: If there is a dispute between players, it is put to a vote. (See Voting below).

6. Changing rules: If a player asks for a rule change, it is put to a vote (See Voting below).

7. Voting: To win a vote a motion must get at least 5.1 votes. Each player gets the following number of votes:

• 8.2 white
• 1.3 black
• 0.4 yellow
• 0.1 red

(Based on those reporting one race on the 2000 census.)

8. Speaking: The white player can speak at any time. Other players speak only when spoken to. They are allowed to raise their hand to try to get the attention of the white player to ask a question.
(Based on media ownership.)

9. Jail:
Going to jail: Red and black players go to jail if they land on any corner square except for the Just Visiting Jail square.
(Blacks are three times more likely to be stopped by the police and have their car searched. Both blacks and Native Americans are way more likely to wind up in prison than whites.)

Getting out of jail: To get out of a jail you must pay $1000 or wait five turns.
(Prison is way more damaging than in Monopoly. Also, it is way easier for the rich to avoid prison altogether.)

10. The red player: Decisions to build or sell houses must be approved by the white player. The white player can build on any of the red player’s squares and keep all income for himself.
(Based on the government’s management of remaining Native lands.)

11. All other rules are the same.

Advice to white players:
If the other players complain that the rules are unfair, say “Get over it!” Point out that the game is fair and democratic: they can always ask for a rule change and put it to a vote. Also point out that the white player does not always win, so if they lose it is their own fault.

Personal observations:
Most white players act as if the same rules and conditions apply to everyone, as if everyone starts with $1500 and gets $200 for passing Go, etc. If anything, they think yellow players get more for passing Go, that black players get more turns and that red players are too noble to care about winning.”

So, we are in a political situation where a white nationalist is the President’s main strategist and advisor. Their policies seem to be to make sure the Monopoly rules stay as they are, or advantage the white piece just a bit more. As people of justice, while we may not be able to fix everything, we have a responsibility to see the system the way it is. We have a responsibility to wrestle with our blind spots. Those among us who are white are not wrong for being white. But it makes for some big blind spots. Those among us who are men are not wrong for being men, It makes for some blind spots. Those among us who are able bodied are not wrong for being able. It makes for some big blind spots.

Most of us are trying to stand for UU values of justice and democracy. We are trying to learn where our power lies and how to influence those who can change and enforce laws. Justice is a practice for many among us. We stand with our Muslim neighbors. We want to protect our undocumented neighbors from the aggressive enforcement tactics ICE is using in Travis County in the past few days. How do we do that? We learn what our rights are as citizens and what our rights are as undocumented residents. We learn what ICE’s powers are. We learn how to interrupt unjust interactions so that we can live to interrupt another day. We try, we persist, we rest, we don’t waste energy, and we don’t give up.

I’m the head of a department at NASA. I want to do the right thing. I want to be a good person. I’ve got my disadvantages I’m dealing with. I’m trying to build a rocket here, I can’t be thinking about what happens when someone I work with needs to go to the bathroom. I can’t be thinking about what citizen schoolchildren fear about their undocumented parents. When my mom was late picking me up from school I worried that she’d forgotten me, not that she was handcuffed in a van on her way to a detention center.

I can’t be thinking about what it’s like to be preparing my black daughter to drive across Texas to her new job, worrying her along through every mile, knowing she’s got a mouth on her and that she’s not scared enough. I can’t see all the things I can’t see.

If I am a UU in 2017, I’m called to open my imagination. I can try to put myself in someone else’s shoes, as a spiritual exercise, someone who is fighting cancer or someone who is parenting a child with special needs, to put myself in the shoes of someone who walks around in this world every day playing the game of life at a much higher degree of difficulty than I am, what are their mornings like, their afternoons, their evenings? What is it like for them to find a doctor, to find friends, to deal with plumbing problems, with legal problems? What is it like for them to get an apartment, a home loan, to pick a school, join the service, to find a job?

If you have the privilege of being a citizen, find out what you can do with that privilege. If you have the privilege of being light skinned, ask yourself what you can do with that skin color. Asking to see the manager, by the way, is one of my powerful privileges.

If I’m the engineer in charge of a section of NASA, I can’t fix the whole system of white supremacy. I’m in the game. How it’s set up is not my fault, but once I notice how it’s set up, once I notice the obstacles in the way of my coworker that were invisible to me, I have to decide what to do. Can I do one thing? Do I dedicate my life to fixing the bathroom situation all over? I have a rocket to build. I had obstacles, but people helped set it up so that it would be easy for me to be an engineer and work on rockets. No one told me “boys don’t do that kind of job, honey.” I can go to the bathroom in a white or a colored bathroom. I can’t change laws, but if I wanted an appointment with senator, he would see me. Try, but don’t try too hard, rest, persist, don’t give up.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 29, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We bring our well-behaved animals to church to bless them and to recognize the blessing they are to our lives.

This is an exercise that you would go through if you were being taught to be an animal trainer. You get to play the dog, and another trainer plays the — well, the trainer. You are in a room together. No words are exchanged. You know there is something the trainer wants you to do. The trainer has something in mind, like he wants you to put your left leg up on a chair. That’s the secret training goal, and you all will work together until you figure it out . How does he get you to do it? He praises you for doing something close to it. You move your left foot, you get some praise. You move toward the chair, you get some praise. You move away from the chair, you are ignored. Nothing. Hmmmm.. What does he want me to do? You have to put it together, what do you get praised for? When you put your leg on the chair, you are praised extravagantly. Who doesn’t care about praise? Well, cats, but there you go. I have more often had cats than dogs, and, while I have loved horses, I have never had one, or a bird. I did a lot of reading this week, and I got fascinated with dogs, so I will probably end up talking more about them. And I need to say that I am no expert on anything about animals.

That training exercise shows some of what it’s like for animals living in inter-species households. They don’t know our language, and, at least at the start, they don’t know what we want, although as those who have less power, they are more aware of our language and our requirements than we are of theirs.

We sometimes act like they communicate the same way we do. We smile at the animal to say hello. I hope they understand that. For animals, baring teeth is a threat. We would be in trouble if we said “look, that cute dog is smiling at me,” when we saw a dog baring its teeth. We feel close to animals, so we attribute to them the same emotions we would have in a certain situation. If a dog comes to you with ears lowered, chin down, you may think they are sad or being pitiful. That is their non-threatening friendly look. Their excited “Hey! Let’s go!” look is easier to read. Scientists who observe animals say they do have emotions. They get excited, humiliated, threatened and confused by some things we donÔt normally think of. Some things we have in common though. We want to be touched, loved, we want food shelter, attention, territory, a purpose, loyalty, belonging, exercise and fun.

Some things that are important to them, we don’t understand. Most animals, in a group, want to know who is in charge. Is it you? Is it someone else in the family? If you aren’t in charge, then they are. That can be what some animals want. It can produce anxiety in others. I had a greyhound living with me for a while, and I took her with me to a start-up weekend for a new ministry in this district. After a few hours with the members of this church, she walked to the center of a circle we were talking in, turned to face the man who was in charge, and bowed deeply. Was he the President of the congregation? No. Was he the new minister? No. Was he talking the most? No. He was simply one of the founding members, and one of those members who, by virtue of who they are and who they have been, are chieftains in the group. She instinctively knew who was the top dog in that group, and she bowed.

This Sunday we are celebrating a Blessing of the Animals. Why would be bless animals? Because they bless us so often. We don’t talk about them very often, but animals as companions have touched almost all of us, and it is good to acknowledge that. . As children we may have fallen asleep with the purring weight of a cat on our chest. Or on our head. We watched TV in the company of the family dog. We went exploring in the woods and our parents would feel safer knowing that the dog was along with us. They comforted us when we cried, they made us laugh, they were a personality in the midst of the family. For most of us, they still do those things. Here is what people say about animal companions: they give unconditional love. They forgive you anything. They think you are the be all and end all of the universe. They are sensitive to your feelings. They don’t care what you look like, what your sexual preference is, what your skin color or your car model or your job is. They just love you because you belong to them.

Animals have been in relationship with humans for thousands of years. Often in a mutually beneficial way. Often hurting one another. Humans were traveling with jackals, helping each other hunt. The dogs hung around the campfires and ate scraps, sounded the alarm for intruders. Enjoyed some protection from the humans, and gave them protection in turn.

In ancient Egypt, they worshipped cats and dogs. By that time, people had dogs as pets. We know because they were buried, sometimes, with their favorite dogs. The god of cats was named Bast. Egypt was the first country we know of that had laws against harming dogs.

In our country we have laws against cruelty to animals, but in animal farming and animal experimentation, we still perpetrate cruelties that are devastating to face. Some among us prefer not to eat any animal meat, others just want to work for lessening unnecessary suffering in the animals that are raised for food. That is not the purview of this sermon, though, as we are talking about animals that act as human companions. Feelings are strong enough about the animals that live in our homes. I do want to get into talking more about animal rights, just not this morning.

Animals as companions can do so much for us. A study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society in May, 1999 demonstrated that older people who have pets tend to have better physical and mental well being than those who don’t. A 1997 study showed that elderly pet owners had significantly lower blood pressure overall than their contemporaries without pets. There is an experimental residential home for the elderly called the Eden Alternative, which is filled with over 100 birds, dogs, and cats and has an outside environment with rabbits and chickens, has experienced a 15 percent lower mortality rate than traditional nursing homes over a span of five years.

Animal Assisted Therapy has been beneficial for kids recovering from abuse or other trauma. There are a few therapeutic homes for kids that use animals to calm agitated kids, to connect with autistic kids, to heal wounded kids. Mending a bird’s wings, caring for sheep and cows, sitting with cats on your lap, relating to dogs, seems to be healing for children. Helping another life through the caring of disabled or unwanted animals teaches nurturing and lets the children see beings who are surviving and relearning trust, just as they must do..

Even for ordinary families in ordinary time, there is a strong psychological and emotional attachment between people and their pets. Studies have revealed that most pet owners view their pets as both improving the quality of family life by lessening tension between family members and waking up their owner’s compassion for living things (Barker, 1993; Pet Theories, 1984; Voith, 1985).Using a projective technique to investigate owners’ closeness to their pet dogs, one study (Barker and Barker (1988, 1990) found that dog owners were as emotionally close to their dogs as to their closest family member. They reported that more than one-third of the dog owners in their study were actually closer to their dogs than to any human family member. I read a book called The Social Lives of Dogs by a classically trained anthropologist who began observing dogs instead of far off tribes. She and her husband had a dog who the husband described as “the keeper of my soul.” He and the dog were inseparable. She asked him idly one day if he had to choose, would it be her on the dog. He was quiet for a moment. “Don’t ask me that,” he answered.

Companionship helps us be healthy and happy. It is part of the art of living.

Economist John Maynard Keynes, saw the purpose of human history as our species learning to “cultivate the arts of life.”

It was in a publication called “Yoga World” that I saw a wonderful description of how to be a good companion. Sometimes an animal can be this to a human, sometimes a human can be this to an animal. Sometimes we can find this with another human. To be a good companion, it says, “You will need to be caring and concerned about his or her happiness. As a friend, you will want to share his or her concerns and labors. Naturally, you will want to make his, her, life more pleasant. You will have to know life and yourself well enough to become trustworthy, capable of keeping your agreements. To be a friend, your word must be true. A true friend, you will hold good will in your heart even when you misunderstand or distrust your gracious companion. You will refuse to indulge bad moods brought on by your inadequacies. It is not easy to be a true friend. ” May we all find a being like this is our lives. May we sometimes be able to be a friend like this ourselves, to another being. Our job here on earth is to learn how to love and be loved. As our animal companions teach us those things, we are grateful to them.

We have our animal blessing at Brigid rather than in October on St. Francis Day. We celebrate our earth-based connections by celebrating in the Spring, in the time when the earth is waking back up from its winter dormancy.

Our theology:: we are all priests and priestesses, and can channel the energy of blessing from the mystery. This is why I invite you to bless your own and one another’s animals. We can ask God to bless our animals or we can bless them just asking the Divine Spark to flow through us and grant our animals blessing We bless by wishing good things for the animals in our families, and by promising them we will love them to the best of our capacity, that we will learn from them, respect them, and that, when it’s time to let them go, we will let them go with honor.

Bless you for depending on me, for trusting me with your well being. Thankn you for all you give me in return. Companionship. Attention, your warm furry body next to me on the sofa, your tail wagging in joy at my return. Your delicious eggs for my breakfast.

You have a safe warm place in my heart and, if you leave this life before I do, I will carry your memory with me. You opened my heart. You taught me compassion and connection.

“We Give Thanks For The Animals”
by Gary Kowalski

We give thanks for the animals
Who live close to nature,
Who remind us of the sanctities of birth and death,
Who do not trouble their lives with foreboding or grief,
Who let go each moment as it passes,
And accept each new one as it comes
With serenity and grace.
Enable us to walk in beauty as they do
At one with the turning seasons,
Welcoming the sunrise and at peace with sunset.
And as we hallow the memory of good friends now departed,
Who loved abundantly and in their time were loved,
Who freely gave us their affection and loyalty,
Let us not be anxious for tomorrow
But ask only that kindness and gratitude fill our hearts,
Day by day, into the passing years.

Blessing for All”
by L. Annie Foerster (adapted)

My furry, feathered and scaled friends, I greet you. You come from the same life force of creation that I do and I greet you as a sister (brother). May your days be filled with love and whatever else you may desire. May your tummy always be full and may you always have a place to rest. May you have many days of love with your human friends. May you play together and work together in gentleness and respect for one another… My furry, feathered and scaled friends, I say farewell. I am happy to have met you. May your life be blessed.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.