There are many things we do to shape our lives that we don’t realize are choices. How can we make better ones?
I’m going to talk about choosing to enjoy your life by talking about techniques some people use for being miserable.
The first way to be miserable is to try to make other people do right. Your uncle is always going to drink too much at family gatherings and start talking about how terrible the president is. Your parents are always going to bail your big brother out of the financial “adventures” he gets embroiled in. Your sister is going to keep giving that guy another chance, even though he is clearly bad for her, and anyone could see it, and you could say something but it wouldn’t do any good. Even though you know that later she’s going to say “why didn’t you say something?” and you’re going to have to just stare her down.
So you can’t make people do the right thing. You can influence. Sometimes. Occasionally the window of influence is open, and you can say one or two things, then it closes again and your voice bounces off of shiny glass. If you say too much, or lean into the situation too often, you become a voice in the other person’s head that they set up resistances to. I call it “waking up the inner mule.” Then you’re sunk. They can’t even hear their own inner voice of health because now it’s got your voice and they don’t recognize it as belonging to themselves.
Sometimes it comes down to this: when a person in your life is behaving incorrectly you have to withdraw from them until they begin behaving correctly again. That’s advice from the ancient Chinese book of wisdom, the I Ching. Sometimes this can be accomplished and sometimes it can’t.
When I’ve said these things to clients when I was a therapist, they responded “So you just want me to give up? You want me not to care?” No. Care. Don’t give up. Just be quiet. My Aunt Ruth, psychiatrist and mother of seven, used to say “When you can’t do anything about it, just say your prayers and watch it like TV.” Care. Just don’t control. Or give up. The I Ching calls this “bringing a lawsuit,” when you decide someone is hopeless and will never change. It warns against this. So you have to keep some hope but don’t let your hope make you stupid. Don’t let your hope put you in danger. Yoga teaching calls this “idiot compassion,” when, out of compassion for someone, you put yourself or others at reckless risk.
You can’t make other people be happy. Number one, some people don’t want to be happy. It’s not comfortable for them. It’s not familiar. Happiness feels stupid to some people. Others are wired as systems analysts, and they don’t like to be in a situation without cataloging all the things that could be done better, put together better, and giving a report of their findings. I find those folks very useful, because they see real flaws, but they can come off as negative.
You can’t control what people think of you or how they respond to you. The 12 step program has a saying “What you think of me is none of my business.” You can practice some conversations just to see how you think they will go, and those inner conversations can be fruitful, but so many of us try to practice strategies that will make someone respond the way we want them to. We either get lost in our heads, having conversations with them that turn into fights (that they don’t know about) or we polish and polish our confrontation with the thought that this, surely, will make the person who did wrong stop short, have a realization like the dawning of the first day, turn to us with liquid eyes and say “I’m so sorry. You were so right, and I was so wrong. How can I ever make it up to you?”
You have to be aware, when having these inner conversations (one of my clients called it “watching skull cinema”) that you remember the other person has not been part of the conversation. You may think you know what they are going to say. You may actually know what they are going to say, but it’s always good to give them a chance to surprise you.
Another technique for misery is to try to help when your help wasn’t asked for. Just as people won’t be interested in your answer to their question before they’ve asked or even formulated their question, people don’t want your help (usually) until they’ve asked for it. Even sometimes when they ask for help they don’t really want it. I had a great mother-in-law when I was married to her son for 17 years. When she came to help with the babies, I would ask her how to burp them the best or how to lay them down the best, and she would just shrug and tell me I was doing fine. If I asked her three times, she would finally tell me a little something. If you find yourself being snapped at by people around you, and you say “I was just trying to help!” Maybe you are helping without being asked. It’s helpful to people to allow others to figure things out, to allow them the struggle, to encourage their sense of agency. When they come to you in a state, instead of putting down what you are doing, heaving a sigh, getting up and fixing it, you can first try saying “That sure is a problem. What are you going to do?” Some people like the “Bet You Can’t Help Me” game, where you suggest one thing after another and they tell you why that won’t work. It’s fun for them but not for you. Other people have become convinced that they can’t do it, and if you keep doing it for them you underscore their conviction that they are incompetent. I knew a woman whose husband left her for another woman, moved into that other woman’s house a few blocks away, and the wife kept fixing him a plate for dinner and taking it down there. I’m not sure what all she was underscoring with that behavior, but you know that wasn’t right.
When you offer help, think about being a good steward of your time and energy. Are you using it well? Some folks in our lives, you could give them all your money and all your time and they would still need more. It wouldn’t help them. Other people are trying hard, doing what they can, they have a plan, they just need something. They will benefit most from your help. Think about where your help will do the most good. So many times we pour our help into the most pitiful person in our lives, and then we don’t have anything left when someone who is mostly doing ok needs a little something that will make a big difference. This is an insight from family systems theory, which says you help the family most by helping the healthiest members of the family most. Then that ripples out through the family.
This brings us to a corollary of the first bit of wisdom (you can’t make people do right), which is the common cold of techniques to have a miserable life. Trying to control things that can’t be controlled.
I am a big believer in control. First born, Virgo, raised Presbyterian, grammar aficionado, minister (did I say that out loud?) You should control what you can. Trying, however, to control things like other people or the weather or Ð well, here my imagination fails because I can’t think of anything else which can’t be controlled, or at least influenced Ð that is a sure way to be miserable. I’m sure this week I will be faced with hundreds more examples of things I can’t control, and I’ll say “Oh, yeah, that should have been on the list.”
When you are breaking your brain or your heart or your spirit on something, just gently enquire of your inner wisdom whether this is something which can be controlled, and if it’s not, point your feet downstream and wait for slower water.
Another technique for being miserable is not to know what you want and what you need. It’s amazing that many of us don’t know. It’s worth a little inner inquiry. I’m not saying that you always should do what you want and damn the torpedoes, but you should at least know what you want and what you need, whether you go after those things or not. Ask for what you want is a corollary of this. If the people around you don’t know what you want and what you need, you will be less happy than you might be. Some clients have said “If they love me they should just know what I need.” Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. Often they are using 99 percent of their attention just to make it through their days, inward and outward, and they don’t have the capacity to notice your signals. It’s not that they don’t love you. They’re just tired. Or overwhelmed. Or reading a really good book.
If you can do the things you want to do and not do things you don’t want to do, that’s a way to be happier. If you have a choice of whether to do something or not, simply ask yourself whether you want to do it. If there’s not a big YES, then the answer is no. If it’s something for work, and you don’t really want to do it, ask yourself if you really want to have a job. Maybe that will inform your choice. If you don’t really want a job, ask whether you like to be able to buy food and go to the doctor. That might get you the guidance you need. I hope you understand by this overcomplicated backpedaling that I’m not recommending an irresponsible and hedonistic life. I’m just saying it can be insight producing to ask yourself whether or not you want to do this thing you are thinking of doing it. Just because you are good at something doesn’t mean you have to do it. Just because someone else wants you to doesn’t mean you have to. Just because it will make you the most money doesn’t mean you have to do it. Just because your mom and dad think you should do it doesn’t mean you have to do it. Martha Beck, a brilliant, funny and wise life coach with two Harvard PhDs, says to ask yourself, when facing a choice “Does this choice feel shackles on or shackles off?”
To enjoy your life, it’s important to put more focus on the things that are going well. This is sometimes called a practice of gratitude, or counting your blessings. Whatever you pay attention to is what fills your mind.
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 15 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.
What do people do when someone starts acting differently? How did it feel to be the first person to eat a tomato? Who first thought of cooking and eating an artichoke? How do we treat people who try something new?
Reading: The First One to Try From the Boston Globe, December 28, 2005
Japanese macaque monkeys relaxed yesterday in the hot springs in Jigokudani, Japan, which has been hit by record snowfall. Japanese macaques,(MKACKS) also known as snow monkeys, are the most northerly nonhuman primates in the world. It is said that in 1963, a female macaque ventured into the hot springs to retrieve some soybeans. Other macaques copied her, and eventually the entire troop was making regular visits to the springs to escape the cold. And then a reflection on this story by Jane Rzepka (jhepka), a UU writer:
Thanks go to the first one to try – not just to swanky spa-inclined monkeys, but to human beings, too. Someone out there ate that first preposterous artichoke. Some first person braved a trapeze. A top hat was modeled for the first time, and someone debuted the hula. Snorkeling, yodeling, and trusting a strapless bra had to be notable firsts at a given point in time. Someone, before anyone else thought to do it, looked at a clam and exclaimed, “I’ll eat that!”
Although I can imagine a yodeling, snorkeling, straplessly brassiered, hula dancer wearing a top hat while flying on a trapeze, I don’t mean to give credit to only one game soul who eagerly awaited a clam and artichoke snack. Not at all.
I’m just trying to say that I’m glad we have so many little heroes around who instigate the wows and the aahs that we have come to enjoy. So hooray for the hot-tubbing monkeys. Hooray for all those who take the plunge. Hooray for everyone among us who makes our own days glad.
Sermon: The First One to Try
Japanese macaque monkeys relaxed yesterday in the hot springs in Jigokudani, Japan, which has been hit by record snowfall. Japanese macaques, also known as snow monkeys, are the most northerly nonhuman primates in the world. It is said that in 1963, a female macaque ventured into the hot springs to retrieve some soybeans. Other macaques copied her, and eventually the entire troop was making regular visits to the springs to escape the cold.
– Boston Globe, December 28, 2005
Thanks go to the first one to try – not just to swanky spa-inclined monkeys, but to human beings, too. Someone out there ate that first preposterous artichoke. Some first person braved a trapeze. A top hat was modeled for the first time, and someone debuted the hula. Snorkeling, yodeling, and trusting a strapless bra had to be notable firsts at a given point in time. Someone, before anyone else thought to do it, looked at a clam and exclaimed, “I’ll eat that!”
Although I can imagine a yodeling, snorkeling, straplessly brassiered, hula dancer wearing a top hat while flying on a trapeze, I don’t mean to give credit to only one game soul who eagerly awaited a clam and artichoke snack. Not at all.
I’m just trying to say that I’m glad we have so many little heroes around who instigate the wows and the aahs that we have come to enjoy. So hooray for the hot-tubbing monkeys. Hooray for all those who take the plunge. Hooray for everyone among us who makes our own days glad.
I love how the Boston Globe says simply: “the other monkeys copied her. ” Do you want to know the untold story? I have not made the acquaintance of any Japanese monkeys, but I know the monkeys in my own life, and how different could they be? What they don’t tell you is that when she first went into the hot springs they were crossing their fingers for her, hoping she wouldn’t get burned or disappear into the steam forever. When she actually seemed to like it, when she lolled around in the hot water popping the soybeans into her mouth, they ignored her, as if doing that unexpected a thing were a social gaffe from which she might recover soon, a phase she was going through, like painting your living room lavender or eating only raw food or being an artist. When ignoring her didn’t get her out of the water and back in the snow where she belonged, they made fun of her. Gently, for her own good –to get her back to normal. When that didn’t work, and she was lounging back relaxed in the steamy water for the third or fourth time, with her mate and children in there with her, looking happier than they had all winter, having a little picnic, maybe some more soybeans and a couple of Lone Star beers, then someone got mad and started muttering about how they couldn’t be perfectly sure, but all that moist heat in the winter time was kind of unpatriotic and a little sissified, it was bound to get those babies sick, or make them aggressive, and who knew, they could just all end up in hell for it. After enough monkeys became regulars in the hot springs, all the monkeys claimed it was their idea all along, and they’d been thinking of doing it for months before that one monkey got in. In fact, they were just about to go in when she took the plunge.
Trying something new takes courage, but it’s not always a choice. Sometimes what you have been doing starts to wear out; it doesn’t work any more, it feels uncomfortable. You don’t know what’s next, but you know things are changing. I wrote a song about that, called Chrysalis. Chrysalis There is no denying that the cocoon is a safe place. The song goes: “They said the walls were there for protection.” It’s true. It’s restful in there. Nobody bothers you. You feel like you have it together. Listening to the music in your own head, you can think your own thoughts. Sooner or later, though, the food runs out. Sooner or later you start feeling a little peaked, a little grumbly. There comes a time in life when the effectiveness of what you have been doing so far fades. The way you have gone about things wears out. The creative energy wanes. The music in your head gets repetitive. You need something. Some people describe a restlessness, others, more poetically call it “divine discontent.” (That phrase is attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, but he hated quotations, so it feels a tad ironic to quote him. I’m always ambivalent about it). It’s that divine discontent that keeps your soul from starving to death. You have to start tearing up the safe cocoon to get to what you’re hungry for.
I wonder if the butterflies feel afraid, becoming aware of their hunger, their discontent, their longing? Do they think they might lose everything? They will. They have to lose all that caterpillar-ness, all that cocoon-ness, in order to get wings, in order to take to the sky. I imagine there is some panic that is part of the process. How have you felt when you tore it up, when you make a leap, when you took the plunge?
It takes some courage, some confidence, and hunger in your heart to be the first one to leave the fold. Becoming a Unitarian Universalist can be like that. Some among us were born into families of this free religion, but most of us had to endure the grief, the silence, the concern, the mocking or arguing that accompanies making a change.
Hunger drove that monkey into the hot springs after those soybeans. She was braveÑshe overcame her fear of going into the steam and the bubbling to get the soybeans back. Hunger drives us: hunger for juicy spirituality, hunger for something that makes sense and people we can talk to. The poet from New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen, said “Everybody has a hungry heart.” Something drove you to reach out to this church. Maybe being a UU puts you in hot water with your family or your friends. Maybe your ideas are different from the other folks in your town. Someone has to take the plunge, talking about how God’s not going to send anyone to hell. Someone has to take the plunge and stand up for civil rights for GLBT folk, for Black lives, for immigrant families, stand up for diplomacy before war, for justice before respectability. This congregation took the plunge and became the first church in Texas to be a sanctuary church since the sanctuary movement in the 1980’s. Being the first to try something takes hunger for hands-on justice. It takes a willingness to make a mistake, to not know what you are doing. I think we could do it because we had a mission that is clear. I think we could do it because we were feeling pretty confident, because we knew that we have a smart and capable group and good allies and that, even if we made a mistake, it would be ok. And we will make mistakes. This time we and our allies had a success! That’s the way to start. We will celebrate that success with cake at coffee hour, and we’ll get a chance to congratulate Sulma in person. I’m so proud of you. So moved by your hunger for justice. So soul satisfied with your willingness to jump in and be the first to try.
Are you hungry for the truth? For an authentic faith? Come on in, the water’s fine.
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 15 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.
Which God don’t you believe in? There are so many pictures of God that don’t make any sense. Are there any that do?
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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 15 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.
Stories matter. Remembering matters. Black Lives Matter. “We Gather: Another kind of worship” service at which we experience a few of the stories that have become a rallying cry for a new civil rights movement.
This is a “We Gather” Alternative Service
Welcome to First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin. We are an intentionally hospitable religious community. All are welcome to join us in our free search for spiritual truth, meaning and beauty. If you are a visitor with us today, I want to especially welcome you and invite you to join us after the service, when I am happy to answer any questions you might have about this church and/or Unitarian Universalism.
Last Sunday marked one year since a police officer shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Today, we will pause to remember just a small part of the stories of just a few unarmed African Americans who police have killed since then. We will close out each story with the speaker saying the name three times and asking you to respond after each time by saying, “Black Live Matter.”
Because stories matter. Remembering matters. Black Lives Matter.
In between some of the stories, we will have music, reflection and prayer. We cannot possibly tell all of the stories today because there have been over 100 unarmed African Americans killed by police that we know of in the past year. So we will close by projecting each of their names, while our wonderful musical artist, Annabeth, sings a song originally written by a Jewish man in New York to stand in solidarity with black Americans and made iconic by the singer Billy Holiday. Called “Strange Fruit”, it is a powerful reminder that the lynching of Black Americans has not really ever ended. Instead, it has taken on a systemic form within our criminal justice system.
These are extremely difficult stories – I know. As a white male who tries to stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Movement, I find them terribly painful. I can only begin to imagine the pain of those with whom I stand in solidarity. But the stories are real, and remember we must, if we are ever to end this staggering, enraging and heartbreaking institutionalized racism.
We will gather after the service for food, further conversation and reflection, and I will be available to anyone who might want to talk with me. Let us begin by lighting our chalice as is our tradition within Unitarian Universalism and saying together the words projected on our screen, “In the light of truth and the warmth of love, we gather to seek, to find and to share.
Please also join with me in saying together our mission statement, so relevant to today’s service: “We gather in community to nourish souls, transform lives and do justice.”
Michael Brown. Son. Grandson. Stepson. Brother. Cousin. Nephew. He was 18 years old and had recently graduated from high school. He planned to start college soon.
A police officer in Ferguson, Missouri shot him and killed him on August 9, 2014. Michael Brown was unarmed at the time.
The police claimed that he had attacked the officer. Some eye- witness accounts claimed this was untrue.
The police left his body bleeding on the ground for four and one half hours. A grand jury failed to indict the officer who shot him.
Call and response 3 times:
Michael Brown
Black Lives Matter.
John Crawford III. An only son. A father of two. He was thinking about going to college to study something in the sciences. His dad thought he might have become a meteorologist.
On August 5, 2014, he was shopping in a Walmart near Dayton, Ohio. A white mail customer called 911 to say that he had a gun and was pointing it at other customers. The gun turned out to be a toy. The caller later retracted his claim that John had pointed it at other people.
Two police officers shot and killed him inside the store, claiming that he had failed to obey their commands to drop his weapon and that he made a sudden move. Video that appeared later contradicts their claims, and it appears they may have shot him with little or no warning.
He was on the phone with the mother of his two children when he was shot. His father, who happened to be visiting at the time, heard his son’s last gasps of breath through her cell phone.
He was 22 years old. Ohio is an open carry state, so it would have been legal for him to have a gun, even if it had been real, rather than a toy. A grand jury failed to indict the officers involved
Call and response 3 times:
John Crawford III
Black Lives Matter
Tamir Rice. Son. Grandson. Brother.
On November 12, 2014, 12 year old Tamir Rice was playing with a toy pistol in a city park in Cleveland, Ohio. Someone reported him pointing a pistol at other people but also said that it was “probably fake” and that he was “probably a juvenile.
Two police officers shot and killed him, stating that they had warned him and that it looked as if he was reaching for a pistol in his waistband. In video footage released later, it appears that the office who shot him began firing immediately. It was later revealed that the officer who shot Tamir had been dismissed from a prior policing job for emotional instability.
The officers failed to provide first aide to Tamir. When his 14 year old sister ran up to the scene, they tackled her, handcuffed her and put her in the back of a patrol car. They also threatened his mother.
The Chief of Police later repeatedly referred to 12-yeard-old, 5′,7″ Tamir Rice as “that young man.” No decision about the fate of the officers has been made yet.
Call and response 3 times:
Tamir Rice.
Black Lives Matter.
Akai Gurley. Father. Partner. Brother. Son.
Akai entered the stairwell of the building where he lived with his girlfriend and their two-year-old daughter. Two New York Police Department officers were patrolling the stairwell of the building from top to bottom, even though they had been ordered not to do so. One of the officers while fumbling with his gun and a flashlight accidently fired a shot. The shot ricocheted off a wall and struck Akai Gurley in the chest. He later died from the wound.
In the critical moments after the shooting, instead of calling for help for the dying young man, the officers left the scene and began texting their police union representative.
The officer who fired the fatal shot was indicted by a grand jury on charges of second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, and two counts of official misconduct. He was freed without paying a bond and his trial has yet to commence. Akai Gurley was 28 years old.
Call and response 3 times:
Akai Gurley.
Black Lives Matter.
Rumain Brisbon. Husband. Son. of four. On December 2, 2014, police officers responded to calls regarding loud music and a potential drug deal at an apartment complex in Phoenix, Arizona. What then transpired was a subject of disagreement between police and differing eyewitnesses. Police claimed that Rumain Brisbon took something out of the back of his SUV, yelled at them and ran into the apartment complex. The officer who pursued him claimed that they got into a physical scuffle and that he thought an object in Rumain’s pocket was a gun. It turned out to be a pill bottle only after the officer had shot and killed him.
The other person who had been in the SUV later said that Rumain had been bringing fast food to his children in the apartment complex, and later, strewn french fries still littered the front porch of the site of the incident. No charges were brought against the officer who shot and killed Rumain Brisbon. He was 34 years old.
Call and response 3 times:
Romaine Brisbon.
Black Lives Matter
Matthew Ajibade. Son. Brother. College Student.
Originally from Nigeria, Matt was a 22-year-old college student in Savannah Georgia. He suffered from bipolar disorder. He scuffled with police who had responded to a call about a domestic disturbance. As they handcuffed and took him to jail, his girlfriend, who did appear to have bruises on her face told them that he suffered from a mental disorder and needed to be taken to a hospital. She gave them a bottle of pills for treating his bipolarism.
On January 1, 2015, Matt was found dead, strapped to a restraining chair in an isolation cell in the jail. Police and jail staff said that he had been “combative” and injured an officer during booking. A corner ruled his death a homicide caused by blunt force trauma to his head.
Nine people from the jail were fired and three face criminal indictments in his death.
Matt was an artist who owned a print design company and was working with his brother to start a new company called “Made in Africa”
Call and response 3 times:
Matthew Ajibade.
Black Lives Matter
Natasha McKenna, Daughter, Sister
Natasha suffered from schizophrenia, and was being held in the Fairfax Virginia jail for reportedly having assaulted an officer. She was 5′ 3 inches tall and very thin.
While in the jail, an officer claimed she refused an order and physically resisted them. They used a taser on her four times for being non-compliant with deputies. She later went into cardiac arrest due to a combination of the tasering, psychoactive medications and what the medical examiner controversially termed ‘excited delirium’. She died on February 8, 2015
Several experts on the use of tasers testified about the inappropriateness of the use of tasers on the mentally ill and about the danger of cardiac arrest from such a large number of uses in a short time period No charges where filed and her death was ruled an accident, though the jail did ban the use of tasers on mentally ill people. Natasha McKenna was 37 years old.
Call and response 3 times:
Natasha McKenna.
Black Lives Matter
Calvin Reid. Son. Sometimes homeless. Also possibly mentally ill. On February 22, 2015, in Coconut Creek, Florida, police fired tasers at Calvin Reid multiple times. Witnesses say that they fired tasers at him even after handcuffing him. They reported up two volleys of four taser firings each occurred, and that Calvin cried out, “They are trying to kill me. I can’t breathe!” as police jumped on top of him.
Reid was 39 and had been working as a meat salesman. He had been discovered in the parking lot of a retirement community, bleeding, clothing torn, likely having some sort of psychological episode. He had refused treatment from paramedics and behaved aggressively.
Police tried to cover up the incident until reports by eye-witnesses through local news media began to appear. The coroner ruled his death homicide by electrocution.
The police chief resigned but no charges against any officers have yet been brought, though investigations continue.
Call and response 3 times:
Calvin Reid.
Black Lives Matter
Time for Centering and Lighting Candles
I invite you now to join together in a time of centering and reflection. Breathing together, breathing in and breathing out, together we each find that spark of the divine within us, that vulnerable place that paradoxically gives us strength and sustains against the forces of sorrow and injustice. Breathing together, breathing in and out, in and out, we enter a time of silence together. When the music begins, feel free to light candles in our window. Candles of sorrow and joy, hope and remembrance.
Bernard Moore. Father. Grandfather. Beloved community member.
On March 6, 2015, 62 year-old Atlanta resident Bernard Moore began to cross a street he had crossed as a pedestrian many times before. As soon as he started across, however, a police car hit him, knocking him into the air. He died shortly thereafter.
Video from a surveillance camera contradicts the account of what had happened given by the Atlanta Police Department, which claimed Bernard had walked out in front of the car. The video shows that he stopped before crossing, looking both ways and watching several cars go by. It shows that the officer driving the car was going much faster than the other traffic, seeming to come out of nowhere. Eye witnesses testified that the car was going up to twice the posted speed limit and that its lights and siren were not on.
No action against the officer has yet been taken. The county district attorney says an investigation is still ongoing, and the family has filed a law suit.
Call and response three times:
Bernard Moore
Black Lives Matter
Walter Scott. Father. Son. Brother.
North Charleston police officer Michael Slager pulled 50-year-old-Walter Scott over for a minor traffic infraction. During the stop, Walter Scott fled on foot. It is not known why he did so, and he was unarmed.
Slager pursued him on foot, eventually firing 8 shots, five of which struck Walter Scott, killing him. Slager reported that he had feared for his life because Walter Scott had taken his taser.
However, video taken by a witness and released later shows that Walter was at least 15 to 20 feet and running away when Slager fired at him 8 times. Walter did not have the taser. After Walter fell, Slager handcuffed his hand behind his back. Slager then appeared to have dropped something near Walter’s body.
A grand jury brought a murder indictment against Slager for the killing. The trial has not yet begun.
Call and response three times:
Walter Scott.
Black Lives Matter.
Freddie Gray. Son and brother.
On April 12, 2015, Baltimore, Maryland police officers reported arresting Freddie Gray after he had seen them and begun running away. They reported arresting him “without the use of fore or incidence”. Witnesses and video released later contradicted this, claiming that officers beat Freddie with batons and pinned him down using a “folding technique” wherein one officer bended his legs backward while another hhel him down by pressing a knee against his neck.
In the video, Freddie appears to already be injured when police put him the back of a police van, handcuffed and shackled. They did not secure him inside the van, and he could not control his motion because of being handcuffed and shackled.
Sometime during the van ride, which included four stops, Freddie spinal cord injuries that resulted in his death several days later.
Six officers have been indicted in the case. Their trials have not yet begun. Freddie was 25 years old.
Call and response three times:
Freddie Gray.
Black Lives Matter.
Brendon Glenn. Son, father, called “an adventurous soul” by his many friends.
Brendon got into a scuffle with a bouncer outside of a Venice Beach, California nightclub on May 6, 2015. Two police officers got involved. One of the officers shot and killed Brandon during the scuffle. He was unarmed.
The Los Angeles police officer who fatally shot him was a seven-year department veteran who was the subject of a criminal investigation for omitting witness statements in police reports.
A security camera on a nearby building recorded the shooting. After reviewing it, the Los Angeles Chief of police stated that the situation did not seem to justify the use of deadly force. An investigation is ongoing.
Brendon Glenn was 29 years old. He had sometimes been homeless but had been working part-time for the city as a lifeguard and seasonal helper.
Call and response three times:
Brendon Glenn.
Black Lives Matter
Spencer McCain, Father, Brother, Son
Forty one year old, Spencer McCain had threatened violence at a home where he was not supposed to be due to a protective order that had been issued against him. Police responding to a domestic violence call shot and killed him, even though he was unarmed and made no move toward them or to run away from them. After breaking into the Owen Mills Maryland apartment on June 25, 2015, Police claimed that they found him standing in a “defensive position” and began firing at him. They did not go on to describe exactly what that might mean. Nineteen shell casings were found on the floor in the area where the officers shot him. The case is still under investigation, but no charges have yet been brought against the officers.
Spencer’s children, ages 2 and five were present in the apartment when the police shot and killed their father.
Call and response three times:
Spencer McCain
Black Lives Matter
Jonathan Sanders. Father. Husband. Son.
Jonathan Sanders was exercising his horse using a street legal horse and buggy in Stonewall, Mississippi on July 8, 2015. Police officer, Kevin Herrington pulled up behind him, startling the horse. According to witnesses, when Jonathan, not knowing what was happening, chased after his horse, Herrington pursued him on foot. Another witness heard Herrington say that he was “going to get that N***er” before pulling up behind him.
Herrington caught Jonathan Sanders and grabbed him in a chokehold. Jonathan repeatedly cried out, “I can’t breathe”. When one of the witnesses, who was an in-law of Jonathan Sanders and a correctional officer himself, approached Herrington and asked him to release the chokehold, this witness says that Herrington pulled his gun and tightened his grip.
Jonathan Sanders died from being held in chokehold for over 20 minutes. He was thirty-nine years old. The officer is still under investigation.
Call and response three times:
Jonathan Sanders.
Black Lives Matter
Samuel Dubose. Father, Husband. Son. Brother.
Samuel Dubose was shot and killed by a white police office on July 19, 2015 after the officer had pulled him over for a minor traffic violation.
The officer, Ray Tensing, originally claimed that there had been an altercation and that he shot and killed Samuel only after Samuel began to drag him with his car. A video that was released later showed that this never happened, that Samuel appeared to be compliant with the officers orders and that Tensing shot Samuel without warning as he set non-violently in his car.
The officer has been charged with murder; however, no charges have been brought against two other officers who were present at the scene and that backed up the false story that Tensing had originally reported.
Samuel Dubose was 43 years old and well loved in his community.
Call and response three times:
Samuel Dubose
Black Lives Matter
Christian Taylor. Son. Brother. Grandson. Nephew. College student. Football Player.
On August 7, 2015, Brad Miller, a recent graduate of the police academy and new to the Arlington, Texas police department shot and killed Christian, who was unarmed.
Police have claimed that Christian had broken into a car dealership to steal a car and that the shooting occurred during an altercation with him.
Family members have questioned this claim, stating that Christian had no need to steal a vehicle and that he was looking forward to the new college year and playing football.
Just a little over a week before he was killed by them, Christian had tweeted about his fear of the police, saying in one of his postings, “I don’t want to die too young.”
Christian was 19 years old and about to enter his sophomore year of college.
Call and response three times:
Christian Taylor.
Black Lives Matter.
Prayer
Please join me in a spirit of prayer. Spirit of love and life, great holder of all stories, power of remembrance, breathe into us the courage and fortitude to rise together in solidarity and demand justice. Sustain us for the long and difficult arc that we must sometimes travel to do justice, and yet fill us with the courage and the urgency that the horrendous and continuous extinguishing of black lives demands.
Remind those of us who would be allies that most often our best way to offer solidarity is to follow.
Comfort the many who are feeling great anguish. Direct our rage toward dismantling murderous systems of oppression.
Fill us with a love and compassion that will never allow us to stop until justice and beloved community have been fully realized.
We ask these things in the name of all that is good, all that is holy.
Amen
Extinguishing the chalice
Please join with me in saying our words for extinguishing our chalice. We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.
Now as we close our service, I again invite you to stay for further conversation, as we share a meal together afterwards. Know that you, each of you, have the power to make a difference. Know that I am available to you, today, now after the service and in the future. Know that love really is more powerful than greed and hatred.
Know that here at First UU Austin, we host both a Unitarian Universalist People of Color group and a white allies group, and we partner with many others doing the work of racial justice, including our local Black Lives Matter group. If you have not already, I invite you to get involved.
As we remember the names, I invite you to rise up and demand: Not. One. More.
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 15 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.
U.S. asylum-seekers and refugees have their faces pressed up against the glass of something they want with every cell of their being. When we remember the times of alienation and longing in our own lives, we begin to have compassion for ourselves and to understand the heartfelt joy of listening to and welcoming strangers.
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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 15 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.
We’ll sing that we need to “Do when the Spirit says Do,” but what about all those other moments in life when spirit or Spirit is not a big factor in our decision making or dinner making? This Sunday we’ll take a short tour of the history of our concept of “spirit” and examine the ambivalent ways that spirit might move or remain inert in our daily living.
Sermon: Spiritual Ambivalence
Spiritual Ambivalence… How’s that for a provocative sermon title? As I remember it, I had previously committed to writing about spirituality and there was a newsletter deadline looming but I was feeling tired or cranky, and groused to a colleague that at that moment I didn’t really care one way or the other about Spirituality. “Oh, so you’re experiencing Spiritual Ambivalence?” he asked. And really that was a better title than something like “Spiritual Indifference” or “Spiritual Apathy” because those sermons would get too grim too quickly. So let’s give thanks that he offered Ambivalence.
Valence has several different usages, all rooted back to the same Latin root as “value”. Ambivalence has both antique and contemporary uses. The “ambi” refers to being able to go in at least two different directions. So being ambivalent don’t mean simply not really caring one way or the other, it’s more about being able to consider the value of two different things or ideas. So, as I talk about Ambivalence, it’s not to say that I don’t really have much interest in something, it’s that I am willing to consider the value, the upside and downsides of multiple competing, and exclusive ideas.
So, what am I ambivalent over? Spirit. Spiritual. Eternal and everlasting spirit. Soul. Unseen and unmeasurable. Maybe that spark of the divine that animates us and connects us to something. And, when it comes time to really consider the concept, I wind up ambivalent. I suppose, compared to some folks, I’m a fairly spiritual person. At times it seems like a very important aspect of my life, well worth placing at the center of things. But other times, I really figure that my spirit probably knows what it’s up to and to just to trust that it’s fine wherever it is or isn’t without my mind trying to micro-manage and scrutinize and fuss over what or where or if spirit is a valid construct to work with.
So what do I mean when I’m talking about “spirit”? We’ve all heard the term and we probably share some common assumptions of what we all mean with the concept. The word we use is rooted in the Latin for “breath”, but the concept itself needs a little unpacking.
The concepts of spirit go back well before Socrates and Plato, but we’ll start with the Greek’s take on an unseen human soul and the notion of a world of the eternal spirit – separate from the physical world. Plato was explicit in his dualism – the body is of the physical world, material, and finite, while the soul is on loan from the unseen spirit world, to which it returns upon death to face judgment. So, according to Plato, in one person is the temporary flesh and the eternal spirit. And, as he saw it, education involved coming to recognize that the spirit was superior to the flesh and that this fleshy life should be spent preparing the soul for its eternal destiny.
Yes. If all that sounds familiar, Jesus and his followers picked up that construct, merged it with some of the Jewish theology and ran with it – partly to make their ideas easier for the average Greek to recognize and adopt. Because, thanks to Alexander the Great, common Greek was the lingua franca of the early Christian era, so if you wanted to spread the word you did it in Greek.
Now, to contrast Plato’s notion of spirit, we should look at another Greek who came along shortly after Plato. Epicurus modified the whole dualistic view of humans and took the stance that flesh AND soul were physical and both ended with death – and both body and soul dissolved back into nothingness upon death. Life was for living; it wasn’t just a preamble to eternity.
It was this dissolving into nothingness that fit nicely with the atomic theory of the philosopher Democritus. He was the first who theorized that all things are made up of tiny particles that bounce around temporarily forming things, disintegrating, and reforming things. When you mashed together Democritus and Epicurus, you wind up with a universe where humans are merely a chance collection of atoms, destined to arrange, dissolve, and rearrange. Because human life and souls were temporary, Epicurus felt that reason should be used to live well and lie low and not draw too much stress into one’s life. It wasn’t so much that he felt you should eat dessert first, but he would have recommended that you avoid politics and heated arguments that could turn nasty.
Perhaps folks didn’t like the idea of dissolving into nothingness, or perhaps the Christians really got some traction with their emphasis on souls, but either way, we all have a shared understanding of spirit and/or soul and it generally is understood to be ongoing, eternal, not-of-this world. We’ve all heard of your everlasting soul, and some of us have even picked up on the Hindu notion of a soul that is reincarnated over and over before finally being reunited with the eternal. But very few of us have a common, shared idea of soul or spirit as something compostable, something that might degrade and have its bits rearranged. And Epicurus is now known more for his appreciation of a good meal rather than for his finite soul.
Is it ego or the love of self that makes us prefer the idea that some part of us will go on indefinitely? Perhaps. In any case, one version of “spirit” is more popular, than the other. When people say they don’t really believe in souls, they typically are referring to Plato’s and not Epicurus’.
And plenty of folks have rejected Plato’s separate, unseen, and eternal version of soul. Because why would a universe have two sets of books with two sets of physics- one for the material and physical and one unseen and unmeasurable? Just to keep us on our toes? That’s the kind confounding that prompts some of us to just quit worrying about spirit, souls, and anything else that is unmeasurable. It’s hard to fix dinner while contemplating the eternal. Water gets burnt that way. It’s just easier to get like Epicurus and focus on the living of the here and now and live fully and well. Avoid politics and loud arguments. Just fix a nice simple supper and eat it slowly and with appreciation for the way your body takes those atoms and rearranges them into energy and tenderness.
But, perhaps you have had a moment where you could sense the largeness and interconnectedness of all things. Maybe you’ve had a sense of transcendence – that which transcends time and body and even the laws of physics. Those are the moments when the spirit seems to be saying Pay Attention. And when the spirit says “do”…. It’s hard to ignore such a commandment.
So where does that leave us? Well… if you’re ambivalent, or uncertain which approach to follow, let me assure you that it’s okay. Our religious tradition doesn’t insist on a belief in an unseen soul or eternal spirit, and even when we do recognize a soul or spirit, we aren’t asked to make it the most important part of ourselves. We’re cool with bodies here. Some of my best friends have bodies…
I’ll even offer that this ambivalence towards spirit is actually a legitimate theological response, steeped in history, and reflective of our values.
If we are ambivalent on spirit, it’s because we refuse to be certain. We know that with certainty comes complacency and a tendency to be smug. When it comes to the most vital details, like if we have an eternal soul or are simply a random collection of atoms, we’d rather be uncertain and open to see new truths, than to be stubbornly fixed and unresponsive. If we are ambivalent, it means that we feel that revelation is not sealed, it is ongoing.
Can you see how that is a different theology from one that tells us that everything is fixed and predetermined? We’d rather have a messy uncertainty that might bring us to something new than a certainty that will keep us pinned in place, unable to respond to change.
To wrap all this up, what is my advice to the Spiritually Ambivalent and those of us who tend more towards certainty?
Well if you truly don’t hold with notion of soul or spirit, please know that you have plenty of company. But I would invite you to do some honest examination of what you’ve thought about spirit, spirituality, soul, and anything eternal, and figure out where you learned to think like that, and be able to state clearly what it is that you might be uninterested in.
And, if you’ve had a sense of soul, a presence of spirit, here’s what I’ll invite you to consider: look at what you know verrrry closely. Are you keeping the idea of an eternal spirit as simply an extension of the self through eternity, or are you willing to consider that it might follow the same laws as atoms and redistribute over time? What if the soul is not about the self, not about your acts or actions, not about judgement, but entirely about your letting go and reuniting with the All That Is? What I’m asking you to consider is a totally non-self version of spirit. No ego, no personality, no person at all. Quite simply, what if it is a spark of the divine that is returned to the source when you’re done with it? That follows closer to the laws of physics AND the teachings of the mystics.
This is a tough order because really, right now we’re pretty busy just living and learning and loving and leaving in these bodies. It’s a full-time job – this being alive. So, it’s hard to think about not being alive, even if it is trying to contemplate something eternal.
But, perhaps after you’ve had a simple supper, you can reflect on the eternal Now of a life well-lived.
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 15 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.
In many liberal activist circles, we hear the term “creating safe space” casually thrown about. Is “safe space” truly ever possible or is the notion a popular fiction of progressive rhetoric? Is being safe what will ultimately transform our world?
Call to Worship by Angela Herrera
Don’t leave your broken heart at the door;
bring it to the altar of life.
Don’t leave your anger behind;
it has high standards and the world needs vision.
Bring them with you, and your joy
and your passion.
Bring your loving,
and your courage
and your conviction.
Bring your need for healing,
and your power to heal
There is work to do
and you have all that you need to do it
right here in this room.
Sermon: “Being Safe”
I’ll never forget a story that Meg once told me about how she tried to explain male privilege to a man who, despite her best efforts, still didn’t get it. She said, “Women live with various levels of fear 100% of the time. Men don’t have to.” I had never heard it put that way before and had never even considered it in those terms, but yes! I don’t walk around looking over my shoulder, in a constant state of panic, but it’s nonetheless true. I think that, in our heart of hearts, it’s true for most women. I think that a certain level of naivete can be expected from those women who don’t carry around a healthy dose of such fear. History and experience have taught us this. The annual statistics of rape and sexual assault in this country, alone, are staggering- and that’s only counting the women who muster the courage and, more importantly have the support systems in place, to come forward and report these crimes. Margaret Atwood once said, “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
Understanding how tenuous safety is for women, I was shocked when I heard the term used in a starkly different manner by a young Latina activist at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health’s Summit in D.C. this past spring. At the outset of the lobbying workshop, the day before we would lobby on Capital Hill, two presenters made their apologies, “Lunch ran long and we have a ton of material to cover, but everything we are going to cover and more is included in your binders for your perusal on your own time before we get to the Hill tomorrow. That being said, we are going to go quickly to cover as much material as we can in the time we have.” Midway through the session, a young woman raised her hand and interrupted, “I need to say that I am feeling very unsafe right now…” “Can you tell me more about what you mean?” asked one of the presenters, patiently. (I’m learning that patience and a high threshold for foolishness are skills required of professional activist/lobbyists.) “Yeah, you are presenting a lot of information very, very quickly – too quickly for my brain to process it all. I feel like this format isn’t providing a safe space for every learning style. My learning style isn’t being respected and I just needed to say something about that.”
The presenters reiterated their earlier disclaimer about time constraints, apologized, and attempted to slow down the presentation. As a result, less material was covered than originally hoped for and there was less time for questions. The workshop had been high-jacked in the name of safety.
I have been engaged in liberation movements and have run in activist circles for many, many years now, and have heard the phrase “safe space” used ad nauseam. In the late 90’s, the term was so refreshing. When facilitators of dialogue, professors, and organizers introduced a conversation as intentional “safe space,” it meant that bigotry and disrespect would not be tolerated. That historically marginalized identities would be celebrated and openly acknowledged. Slowly, over time, I have watched this prevalent term morph into a perversion of what it once was.
Curious by its mis-usage by a young woman of color (a first for me), I approached the woman during the break and told her that I was curious about her use of the word “unsafe.” Did she truly feel her safety was threatened? Did she feel like the presenters’ admitted lack of adequate time was somehow an affront to her, personally? Did she truly have the expectation that all learning styles and speeds would be catered to in every setting, at all times? She was defensive in her response, as expected. I was hoping that her defensiveness signaled that she simply hadn’t given enough careful consideration to her word choice. Who knows?
This interaction disturbed me. Obviously, it did. Here I stand, talking about it, months later. It didn’t just annoy me, it disturbed me. I saw it as a symptom of a quickly-spreading illness among progressives that conflates comfort with safety and upholds conflict avoidance as a virtue of doing social justice organizing and education. The sheer entitlement that is presumed by using the term “safety” or “safe space” is enough to get my suspicious side-eye out on anyone who uses it. Though I understand the continued need for and will continue to advocate for spaces and occasions for historically marginalized people and communities to know that they are in the presence of allies, think the mutation of the understanding of “safety” and “safe space” point to deeper, more systemic problems within progressive organizing and get in the way of true growth and hopes of peace.
In the early 70’s, when Paul Simon penned, “American Tune,” he identified the time as “the age’s most uncertain hour.” Little did her know that uncertainty, war, and violent hatred of difference would not be questions that only his generation would have to grapple with.
I had the pleasure of meeting Rev. Osagyefo Sekou at the UU Association’s General Assembly this year. His talk had me on my feet and his humor at a mutual friend’s cookout gave equal levels of profound insight. Sekou, as he’s called, is a Baptist minister from the St. Louis area (and hails from my alma mater, Union Theological Seminary! Woot, woot!) who has become a leading prophetic voice in the Black Lives Matter movement from the ground in Ferguson. He was recently interviewed in Yes!Magazine about how the nature of this movement has some on the outside, looking in a bit squeamish:
“Martin Luther King ain’t coming back. Get over it,” said Rev. Sekou “It won’t look like the civil rights movement. It’s angry. It’s profane. If you’re more concerned about young people using profanity than about the profane conditions they live in, there’s something wrong with you.” He notes how the leadership in this new civil rights movement is different, “Now the leadership that is emerging are the folks who have been in the street, who have been tear-gassed. The leadership is black, poor, queer, women. It presents in a different way. It’s a revolutionary aesthetic. It’s black women, queer women, single mothers, poor black boys with records, kids with tattoos on their faces who sag their pants.” When asked about the lack of ethnic diversity in most churches and how that affects this movement, he quotes Chris Crass, one of Unitarian Universalism’s baddest (I mean that in the best possible way!) white, anti-racist writers and organizers, “Chris Crass says that the task of white churches is not about how many people of color they have. It’s what blow are they striking at white supremacy.”
On Thursday, I was asked to give an opening prayer at a silent march and vigil for Sandra Bland, the black woman killed in police custody this past week, right here in Texas. I was pleased to see several of you turn out for the last-minute event. Before we began marching, the organizer announced to the crowd that we would be marching in a particular order, “Black people in the front, Latinos behind them, all other varieties of brown bodies behind them, and behind them – everybody else.” She made the crowd repeat this to make sure it was clear. I was standing next to a member of our congregation who has shown up to stand against injustice many-a-time. They asked if I had seen “what just happened.” “They just segregated the march!” “It’s great!,” I said. “What?” “That’s what allyship is about. It’s about listening for and not presuming how to be of help, about knowing when to lead and when to follow.” “Fair enough.” I was so moved by how this short exchange could move someone from discomfort, from possibly feeling hurt and excluded, to considering a different narrative; from considering that, “okay, maybe it’s not about me.”
We live in a world where, increasingly, those who are afforded unearned privileges, have unwittingly grown accustomed to an expectation of personal physical and emotional comfort. We saw this in the confusion around the name of this new civil rights movement. Many white people, and those people of color who felt a bit tasked with caring for the comfort of white people, didn’t like the movement being called, “Black Lives Matter.” “Why not, “all lives matter?” they asked and sometimes demanded. Saw a great twitter post that summed up “why not,” “What is the impulse behind changing Black Lives Matter to All Lives Matter? Do you crash strangers’ funerals, screaming I TOO HAVE FELT LOSS? Do you run through a cancer fundraiser going THERE ARE OTHER DISEASES TOO?”
Let’s stop expecting personal “safety” in our justice work. This expectation is the ultimate expression of unchecked privilege – which is not to say that those who catch themselves with their ganglia hanging loose are bad people or even bad allies, it’s just to say that when we realize that we can survive getting it stomped on, we may realize that is was us who dangled it all out before the world, in the first place. Friedman, of Friedman’s Fables, once wrote that, “all organisms that lack self-regulation will be perpetually invading the space of their neighbors.”
The notion of “brave space,” as an alternative to the expectation of “safe space” is creeping its way into activist communities. It presumes that learning requires levels of risk, vulnerability, and personal transformation. In truth, courage is what we need. After all, if safety is to be conflated with personal comfort, how can any group or individual ever be responsible for the personal comfort of another? “Agreeing to disagree,” is usually a means of avoiding such growth and learning from one another. Instead, we should venture into conflict and controversy with civil, yet challenging discourse, taking responsibility for both the intention and the impact of our words, understanding that these may sometimes be incongruent.
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 15 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.
First UU has become a sanctuary church for an immigrant facing deportation to a country where her life would be in danger should she be returned to it. We will explore the tradition and the current state of the sanctuary movement. How might it transform her and our religious community?
Call to Worship
Rev. Marilyn Chilcote from “The Public Sanctuary Movement, An Historic Basis of Hope: Oral Histories”
Sanctuary was a loving and mutual relationship. It’s much more than us giving to them. They gave to us a sense of what it means to be a people of faith. Everybody predicted our churches were going to lose members over this. Our churches grew because people started coming back, looking for a place where faithfulness meant something.
Reading
Rev. Robert McKenzie from “The Public Sanctuary Movement, An Historic Basis of Hope: Oral Histories”
It was in every way a conversion experience. I mean, awakening me to the true issues of the gospel.
I read the bible very differently than I used to. I see the world very differently. I read the bible, and I see God’s concern for the poor…
That was the same purpose for which we were struggling in EI Salvador, for justice and a better world, an equitable distribution of the world’s goods and equitable opportunities for life in this world. And those are the controlling ideas as I read a scripture. I used to read other stuff. Now I read this stuff. And I get impatient with speculation, with non concrete flirtation of ideas. I just don’t have any time for that. It used to be very big in my agenda, you know, sort of the abstract theological reflection.
Now, all of that means nothing much to me, and the concrete, hands on, dealing with people, entering their anguish, dealing with their poverty, with their hopes and their expectations, all of that now means everything as I read scripture, as I deal with the community of faith, as I engage myself with the world ….
Then also the whole business of listening to people whose life experience are so deep. It’s just come to me that people who are struggling with life and death issues are people to be listened to, are people who have an uncommon wisdom, are people who ought to be setting the agenda. It’s that kind of solidarity with the poor. I’m not there to minister to them. They minister to me.
Sermon
Ingrid and Omar, a young couple from EI Salvador, came to the United States right out of college. They decided to make the treacherous journey after witnessing several of their fellow students being shot down in an attack on their campus due to student protests in which they had also participated. Omar remembers lying on the ground as the shots whizzed by overhead and the bodies of his friends fell all around him.
Ingrid was pregnant.
They knew they had to escape. Omar came first, traveling much of the way strapped to the bottom of a pick up truck. Ingrid came later, seven months pregnant and hiding in the trunk of car. They came with only a few pieces of clothing and Omar’s violin. They came because their lives and the new life Ingrid carried with her were at stake.
And despite the threat of persecution and even death in their country of origin, our government refused to grant them asylum and would have deported them, had not St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California offered them sanctuary.
That was in 1982. A small number of churches were beginning to form what would become a much larger church sanctuary movement for Central America refugees fleeing human rights violations, even death squads, in their home countries.
And today, over 30 years later, we find ourselves in a situation that is eerily reminiscent of that time. And, once again, a handful of churches, including this one, are offering sanctuary to refugees from many of these same countries.
As most of you know, last month, we began providing sanctuary for Sulma Franco, a woman from Guatemala who had been a leader in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and transgender rights activism. She fled her country and fears going back because LGBT persons in Guatemala are routinely murdered or physically abused. The Guatemalan government does nothing to protect them, implicitly supporting these abuses. Any yet, like with Ingrid and Omar in the 1980s, our own government has refused Sulma’s request for asylum. It has failed to offer her refuge, so First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin has.
In doing so, we assumed the mantle of “prophetic church”, along with a tradition and set of responsibilities that go with it.
Now, we’ve been using that term, “prophetic” a lot lately, and a number of folks have come up to me and asked some version of, “What does that mean?”
I think we can get hung up with the word “prophetic” because many of us learned that it has to do with predicting the future. And indeed, the biblical prophets in our Judeo-Christian tradition were described as conveying messages they had received from God about what the future would be like – and it was pretty often a terribly bleak future because the people and their leaders had been behaving quite badly and their God was preparing to throw a rather ill-tempered fit about it.
The ancient prophets though were also offering a critique of the injustices they were witnessing – a vision of how their world could be made better. It is this meaning of prophetic that we use today to describe a church that is bold enough to confront the injustices of its time, creating beloved community both in its midst and out in its world.
Likewise, the church providing sanctuary as both a safe-haven for victims of injustice and as prophetic witness against larger systemic injustices also goes all the way back to those ancient times. We stand in a long history and tradition regarding this meaning of prophetic church.
In the ancient Israelite culture of the Hebrew Bible, their tabernacles, and later the temples and even entire towns could serve as refuge for a person accused of a crime, particularly if what they had done had been an accident.
You see, the laws of the time contained a system of retributive justice – what we often hear described as, “a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, an arm for an arm, etc.” Now, this system of retribution applied whether the offense was intentional or not. So, if you accidently poked your neighbor’s eye out while wagging your finger in their face for forgetting to recycle, they could turn around and poke your eye out for being overly sanctimonious.
A bigger problem though was that the ancient Israelites were even more tribal and cliquish than we are now, so if my brother dropped his axe and accidently cut off your third cousin’s left foot, then someone from your tribe could cut off my brothers foot, but then I could take retribution by cutting off their foot and pretty soon our tribes would be at battle, hacking off body parts right and left, like some Monte Python sketch.
That didn’t seem very just in the long run and was a real impediment to passing on the gene pool, so the availability of sanctuary served to help interrupt this chain of events.
It also provided those wrongfully accused of a crime a means to escape immediate and harsh retribution and a refuge from which injustices could be critiqued.
During the early decades of Christianity, house churches sometimes offered a safe haven from oppression under the Roman Empire. In the middle ages, churches in England were legally recognized as temporary sanctuaries, where persons accused of wrongdoing could gain time to allow for their case to be made.
During the Protestant Reformation, reform churches and the cities in which they were located, such as John Calvin’s Geneva, sometimes provided refuge for protestant exiles from the Catholic church – though not always, as our Unitarian forbearer Michael Servetus found out when John Calvin arranged for him to be burnt at the stake, greatly irritating the Catholics, who wanted to do it themselves.
In the U.S., churches provided sanctuary along the Underground Railroad for slaves fleeing the South to seek freedom. Later, churches sometimes provided shelter for women’s and civil rights leaders.
It was in the early 1970’s though, that our sanctuary movement in its current form really took root. Responding to the prolonged, casualty heavy Vietnam War, peace activists and clergy in San Diego and Berkeley, CA, offered church sanctuary to soldiers agonizing over whether to return to the war. This combination of providing safe haven to people in desperate need and at the same time issuing a public declaration against unjust governmental policy and actions became the foundation upon which the immigration sanctuary movement would arise.
As Eileen Purcell, an early activist in the sanctuary movement puts it, “What distinguished sanctuary … was the educational and decision-making process that engaged entire faith communities and led to a corporate and public declaration of sanctuary.”
In the mid-1970s, religious organizations like Church World Services, Catholic Charities and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, with the support of the U.S. government, began assisting refuges escaping abuse in Chile and Argentina, but then in the 1980s and 90s, civil war and political turmoil broke out in Nicaragua, EI Salvador and Guatemala. Our government was often involved in supporting, sometimes covertly, the forces that were inflecting wide-scale human rights abuses in these countries. Because of this, the government refused to establish the legal framework regarding human rights conditions in these countries that would have allowed refugees pouring out of them to receive asylum and argued instead that they were coming for economic reasons. Sound familiar?
The church sanctuary movement arose to again both provide much needed support for folks like Ingrid and Omar and to shine a light on the injustices being perpetrated both here in the U.S. and in these Central American countries.
People from across different denominations, classes, political parties and races came together in this fight often both working in the sanctuary movement in the U.S. and traveling to Central America at their own personal risk to bear witness.
Our own Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (or UUSC), our congregations and our religious movement as a whole were intensely involved in these efforts, and we sent delegations to Central America. The UUSC provided education and advocacy, as well as a study guide on how to become a sanctuary church.
The government responded by infiltrating sanctuary churches with paid informants. One pastor recalls answering the door one morning to find someone who said they said they were there to repair the phone lines. A few minutes later, he answered another knock at the door, only to find another uniformed man, who also claimed to be from the phone company.
Both of them were government informants in disguise, who had somehow gotten their wires crossed. Awkward. And pardon the terrible pun.
Eventually the government charged a group of clergy and lay leaders in Texas and Tucson, AZ with a number of counts, including harboring and transporting illegal aliens. In the Tucson trial though, the government blocked the defense from making any mention of conditions in Central America, refugee stories, applicable international treaties, the U.S. Refugee Act of 1980, religious convictions or U.S. Foreign Policy. The resultant “kangaroo court”, while obtaining some convictions, backfired against the government in the court of public opinion. Those convicted received suspended sentence or a very short period of house arrest.
Eventually, in a negotiated settlement of a legal case called American Baptist Churches versus Thornburgh, the government agreed to reopen previously denied asylum cases and to accept new applications from those who had been afraid to apply before. Later, Congress passed legislation providing temporary protected status, allowing many more refugees from these countries to avoid deportation and to obtain work permits.
Today, a new sanctuary movement has arisen out of this history and tradition – responding to the needs of people fleeing these same countries and calling attention once again to our government’s mistreatment of these refugees. It is a movement that is again pointing out the U.S. role in creating such terrible conditions in their countries of origin in the first place – this time due at least in part to our failed war on drugs and the activities of our multinational corporations.
This sanctuary movement is the prophetic legacy into which First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin has stepped.
It’s important that you know this about legacy, because your board of Trustees will soon be engaging the congregation in a discussion about whether we want to become a sanctuary church for the longer term.
Under our system of governance, called policy-based governance, the board works with the congregation to establish the church’s values, mission and ends. The ends are kind of the goals we will pursue in order to live out our values and mission. Our senior minister, Meg, then determines the means, or the things that we will do and the ways in which we will pursue those goals. The board also sets limitations for the senior minister, specifying what she may not do in trying to achieve our ends, mainly things that are illegal, unethical or just plain mean and un-ministerial-like.
So when the question of offering sanctuary in this one case came up, doing so was a means for pursuing our ends. Likewise it didn’t seem to involve going up against any of those limitations. So Meg, after consultation with the board, decided to seize the prophetic moment and offer sanctuary to Sulma.
By contrast, the larger decision about whether to become a sanctuary beyond this individual case, potentially involves a redefinition of our ends or at least a redistribution of our priorities within them. As such, Meg and the board believe that it deserves a larger, congregational discussion.
In that discussion, you will have to consider the costs and risks associated with becoming a sanctuary church longer-term. You have heard something of the potential risks today. We have already experienced something of the potential costs in terms of resources and ministerial, staff and volunteer time needed to support providing sanctuary.
So too though, will you consider the potential for transformation. Certainly, we hope that providing sanctuary will be transformative for those who come among us. Sulma has told me that she feels a sense of safety and protection here, as well as a renewed sense of hope, knowing that there is an entire community behind her. Our wish is also that publicly declaring ourselves a sanctuary church will contribute to changes for the better in our immigration system and in our role in the world.
I hope though, you will also consider the potential for transformation within the church itself. I have already sensed in the church a more tangible sense of common purpose, a renewed commitment and passion for our mission.
I’ll close by letting you know that your response to welcoming Sulma among us has already made a big difference for me personally. Just before Sulma moved on campus, I was having a pretty tough time of it. As many of you know, my stepdad had died only a few months before. In the time since, my spouse Wayne had been battling some pretty serious health challenges, and his insurance company was refusing to pay for a procedure he badly needed: the evils of our still for profit healthcare system – but that’s another sermon.
Then, I got a call that my mom was also in the hospital. Both Wayne and Mom are doing much better now, but that was a real low point.
I’m a humanist to the extent that I have an overall faith in the ultimate goodness of humanity.
I’m a theist to the extent that I normally have a sense of connection to something much larger than myself and yet that I am a part of and hold a part of within me.
I have to admit though, at that point, I was loosing that faith in humanity. That connection to something larger than myself seemed far away and in danger of slipping completely out of reach.
And then we put out an email announcement with a list of items we needed folks to donate in order to make a welcoming home for Sulma. That evening, I went to bed exhausted, without checking to see who might have responded.
I got up the next morning to an email inbox full of new messages from church members offering to help. We had several offers for every single item we had listed. We had offers of things that we hadn’t even thought about. People wrote me to say, “I don’t have any of that stuff, but let me know what you need and I’ll go out and buy it.”
Then, we put out another message saying that we needed a bed for Sulma. Almost immediately, two email messages appeared in my inbox at the same time. One of them said, “I have a very nice queen-sized mattress but I don’t have box springs to go with it. The other said, “I have queen sized box springs but no mattress.”
Now, I’m a dyed in the wool Unitarian, but I could have sworn something I’m not allowed to call the Holy Spirit was moving through my email inbox about then.
This church’s outpouring of generosity and compassion renewed my faith and reconnected me with that wonderful and sustaining sense of being a part of something so much larger than myself.
I think that’s what truly living out a shared mission can do for a religious community. I think that’s the transformative potential of putting on that ancient mantle of prophetic church.
Not that I have much of an opinion about which way I hope our discussions may go.
Benediction
May you go forth today carrying with you a sense of awe and wonder that makes transcendence in our world seem possible.
May you carry with you the sense of beloved community we share here, so that you may create more of it in your world.
May you freely give and receive compassion.
May you know the courage to live honestly and vulnerably, seeing all of life’s beauty.
May possibilities for transformation be ever present before you.
May the congregation say, “Amen” and “Blessed be.” Go in peace.
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 15 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.
The dying give us many lessons and infinite wisdom about living. Rev. Marisol brings stories from film, literature, and her experience as a chaplain in reflecting on this topic.
Call to Worship By Jane Maudlin
For our community gathered here, for the spirit that called us together and drew us to this place:
We give thanks this day.
For moments we have shared with others; for times when we have reached out across barriers of distance and fear; for times when others have reached out to us; for moments when we have discovered another along our path:
We give thanks this day.
For this community of celebration and growth, introspection and solitude, and for those moments of “that peace which passes all understanding”:
We give thanks this day.
For our gathering together out of distant places; for our weaving together out of many separate selves this hour of celebration and worship:
We give thanks this day.
Reading: A Night in the Hospital Room, by Vanessa Rush Southern
A couple of years ago, I flew to Michigan in the midst of December snowstorms and holiday preparations to be with my aunt Nancy. I had spent almost all the summers of my life with Nancy from age nine onward, over time she became another mother to me. She was an aunt by marriage, but made room for me as if I were her own. Before long I was leaving home the day after school got out and spending the whole summer with her and my uncle and my two cousins, returning home just in time for the next year to begin.
This time, however, I was headed to see her under the worst of circumstances. She was at the end of a long struggle with cancer she would not survive. When I arrived she was in particularly rough shape. The pain management team at the hospital had not quite gotten her symptoms under control, so she was sick to her stomach and in pain. I offered to stay the night.
Nancy and I had become somewhat distant in the few years before I came to the hospital. She and my uncle had divorced, and somehow keeping me close must have felt awkward to her. Her phone calls became more infrequent, and uncertain how to convince her I could love them both, I had let the space grow between us.
However, here I was in her hospital room and there were things to be done, most of them reminiscent of so much of what she had done for me over the years when I caught a summer cold or stomach virus.
I was returning the favor. I held her hair when she got sick. I pressed cold compresses to her hot forehead. I said what soothing words I could think to say.
For the first few hours that night it was all we could do just to keep up with her discomfort. Then at some point in the night a nurse changed the dosage levels of some medication, and the worst of Nancy’s symptoms quieted. I could see her body relax and take it easy for a stretch. All of a sudden, in the darkest part of the night, the room was quiet and her spirits perked up.
Not knowing how long this would last, I took the opportunity to tell my aunt what I needed her to know.
I thanked her for all the summers together and the idyllic times we had- Parcheesi late into the night, old movies with all of us curled up like a pile of puppies on the couch. I thanked her for welcoming me with her characteristic show of delight every time I entered a room. And I said what I really needed her to know: I thanked her for loving a girl she really didn’t have to love; I let her know that who she was and how she loved me shaped who I have become.
This aunt, you should know, wasn’t given to maudlin shows of emotion. She ritually ended every summer with a kiss and turning her back with an, “I’ll see you soon.” She hated goodbyes, and she knew and I knew without saying so that this was one. I knew she didn’t want to have this conversation, but she listened. When I was finished, she said, as if she were confused by the whole exchange, “How could I not love you? I loved you the moment I first saw you.”
As a child, if you are lucky, you always know you are loved, but perhaps you wonder too if you will ever lose it. How conditional is it? Do your parents love you because they have to? How lovable are you, really? So, you try to please the adults around you, behave, look cute, clean up, read the cues.
To be loved without reason, without argument or proof or hard work; to have someone powerless not to love you is almost miraculous. What a gift to imagine that two people are bound to love each other, no matter what, irrevocably, like a body pulled and held to the ground by Earth’s gravity. A life can stand forever on the knowledge it was loved like that, even just once.
Sermon
I’m not a huge fan of romantic comedies. Of all the movie genres, rom-coms are the most easily predictable, which bores me senseless. Not to mention, they are also sappy, cheesy, and super hetero-normative, for the most part. I know that fans of these movies don’t watch them for the writing or the acting, but to retreat into a simple story that doesn’t require much of them, having spent an exhausting day filled with people and obligations making all sorts of demands on them. Strange thing is, though, in real life, what happens next is usually not as predictable. On my refrigerator at home, I have a lovely magnet that was a thank-you gift from one of our recent high school grads that quotes Allen Saunders, “Life is what happens while we are making other plans.” It’s so true. That lesson smacks me in the face often and hard because if there is any truth to zodiac personality types, I am a true-to-form Virgo control freak of a life planner. I try to hide it well, but I have had an idealistic fantasy about where I’ll be and what I’ll be doing 5, 10, and even 50 years hence for as long as I can remember. Some of it has come to pass, more than I ever truly thought would, if I’m honest, but almost none of it in the way I imagined it would.
I have no idea if there is an age, please reassure me later if yes, at which hyper-planners such as myself calm down a bit and go with the flow; let go of expectation. But, my time as a chaplain taught me that those who know that they are dying, not always, but often have so much to teach the living about this sort of stuff.
Oftentimes, a chaplain becomes a sort of reverse midwife. The role of a chaplain when ministering to a person who has neared the end of their life is to hold a space for the dying to be able to speak openly and say the things that need to be said to someone who isn’t going to shut it down. Loved ones, avoiding their grief, will say things like, “Oh don’t talk like that Dad, you’re going to be alright just like you were last time.” It is a tremendous gift to be able to be the one to say, “Yes, you’re dying. What is that like for you?” Amazingly though, what I have learned is that, as cliche as it may sound, the truth is that I have often been given tremendous gifts in return. These parting gifts have come in the form of wisdom about life that the living would benefit from implementing before they find themselves in a similar place of reflection.
For those who are aware that their earthly days are numbered, it is said that there are five things that they need to say, in some way, before they die. These are: Thank you, I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, and good-bye. This makes good sense. Of course, gratitude would be up at the top of such a list, as would sorrow and regret. If a stock-taking of any life is happening, every life will contain opportunities for both. An acknowledgement of both would surely help to wrap things up neatly.
Knowing that forgiveness has been extended before death, or at least making it known that forgiveness is desired is as important as assuring others that they are loved. Very few of us reach death without having known grief, ourselves, so saying a proper goodbye to loved ones becomes extremely important if the dying person is at all able to offer that closure.
I really loved Jim Burson. He was a member here longer than I’ve been alive and he died this past year. I went to see him less than a couple of weeks before he did and we had a nice, long talk. He struggled to catch his breath, but that didn’t stop him reminiscing with me about his years with this church, his theologies, or his ongoing concern for and curiosity about present-day struggles against injustice. We chatted until he was thoroughly wiped out from the strain of it all, but he made it clear he would go on talking for hours, if he could. I asked him how often he would like for me to come visit him. IfOh, about every two weeks,” he replied. “You would like a visit from me in two weeks’ time?” I clarified. He and I both knew then and there that he would not be alive in two weeks’ time. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Yes. I would like that.” He was saying goodbye. He was doing so in a way that retained his dignity and was in line with his personality. He wasn’t one for a fuss to be made on his account. Without taking no for an answer, he had me help him out of his chair so that he could give me a hug while standing. He was so exhausted, he nearly fell back into his chair if not for my help. He had the gentility, or the nerve – however you choose to see it – to apologize for not walking me to the front door.
Jim had lots left to do. He had no death wish. Even in his eighties, he expressed wanting more time, but life had other plans.
As a chaplain in San Francisco, I met a man I’ll call “Bob” on my first overnight on-call shift. I was called to bring communion to a Catholic patient. That’s all I knew: Catholic and wanted to take communion. I mentioned to the nurse that the Eucharistic ministers would make their rounds the following morning, but I was told that wouldn’t do, the patient wanted communion now. I was irritated. I shimmied out of my pajamas in the on-call room and headed upstairs. That visit changed my life and my understanding of chaplaincy.
Upon arrival, I noticed that the skin-and-bones patient had a tracheotomy, a hole in his throat, and a big sign above the bed that read, “NPO” an abbreviation of the Latin, nil per os, meaning nothing by the mouth. How was he going to take communion, I thought? I introduced myself and found that he communicated by scribbling notes on a legal pad. We chatted some and I found out that he was a huge fan of Thomas Merton, Trappist monk, writer, and pacifist, he was a gay, hugely liberal and largely mystical Catholic, and that he had lived a life filled with progressive activism.
I was nervous. I had never given communion before and had to wing it. In the elevator I had found a passage from the gospel of Matthew to read. I asked him how he was hoping to take communion and he pointed to me and wrote, “I want YOU to take it on my behalf.” Now, I am very deliberate not to take Christian communion. I feel it is inauthentic and disrespectful for me to. After all, I was known in seminary for saying, “I love Jesus, but I just don’t want to eat him.” But, this wasn’t about me, so I ate the wafer and drank the juice and felt completely spiritually nourished. He then wrote, “I feel as if I have taken it quite bodily. Thank you.”
I got to know Bob quite well over the next twelve months. He remains one of the kindest, most compassionate souls I have ever met. In our last conversation, we spoke our good byes very openly and hugged. He wrote, “I’m dying.” I said, “I know. How does it feel?” He wrote, “I’m scared.” I said, “What scares you most about it?” “I’ve never done it before,” he wrote. “But, I’ve always wanted to be a saint.” He looked up and managed a smile at me. “I get the feeling you aren’t talking about the politics of the Roman Catholic canonization process, are you?” He mouthed a big, “NO,” and wrote, I have worked to do all I can for justice down here. I am excited to know all that I can do from up there.”
As a hospice chaplain, I had the pleasure of meeting an elderly woman I’ll call “Alice.” Alice was very elegant and joyful, despite the pain of her advancing cancer. I looked forward to our regular visits, even though I knew every story she told and re-told by heart. She would tear up when talking about the husband who had been deceased for fifty years. She spoke of her regrets and gave my amazing advice that served to boost my personal gratitude in unexpected amounts. Once, when she was speaking about the depths of depression to which she sunk in her grief, she told me about her love of quilting and attributed her healing from the brink to despair to sitting and quilting every night for at least a year. “You can just about solve all of the problems of the world with a needle and thread” she said.
I had no idea what Alice meant by that at the time, but I remember how it felt to hear. It felt like she knew that she wasn’t much longer for this world and had just imparted onto me the summation of her wisdom in one simple phrase. Of course the repetitive act of sewing didn’t take her grief away. Here she was, fifty years later, shedding tears for her love. Alice was reminding me that we are stronger beings than we know, that spending time alone with debilitating grief is the only real way to ever the other side again, and that calm and focused creativity can being about peacefulness.
I always say that I have the coolest job in the world right now – and I do, but being a chaplain is a pretty sweet gig, too. Imagine getting paid to sit and listen to amazing, sometime scandalously shocking stories and priceless nuggets of wisdom and get paid to do it! Above all, the most important gift that the dying impart on the living is not some obvious, yet true version of, “seize the day!” or “life is short,” but the notion of letting go of the best laid plans, as they say, because this life requires it of us. Yes, let’s use this precious gift of time, this life wisely, but what doing so requires of us is flexibility, fortitude, and the faith that no matter how much the reigns of our own destinies slip out of our imagined grip, all will be well. That healing, peace, and even happiness may be found in the direst of circumstances – not because of some half-baked theology that causes people to say such things as, “everything happens for a reason,” and, If God never gives you more than you can handle in a day.” The gaping holes in this thinking are apparent in the face of tragedy, stark injustice, and disease.
Not all of us get the heartbreaking-yet-glorious privilege of sitting at the bedside of the dying. Not all of us are afforded the opportunity to receive the spoken or silent wisdom that can land upon those with one foot in this world and one foot beyond that great mystery of death. But, for those of us that receive that great present of such time, let’s share their message, by living it in the time we have.
Benediction – Kenneth Collier
I do not know where we go when we die;
And I do not know what the soul is
Or what death is or when or why.
What I know is that
The song once sung cannot be unsung,
And the life once lived cannot be unlived,
And the love once loved cannot be unloved.
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 15 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.
The beginning of our Declaration of Independence lays out a set of values to which we aspire but have not always fulfilled. As our “Standing on the Side of Love” campaign and the recent Supreme Court decision establishing marriage equality demonstrate, our Unitarian and Universalist religious traditions have always been and continue to be intertwined with our social mores and our political system. Celebrate equality and contemplate our nation’s progress with Rev. Chris Jimmerson in “Independence and Interdependence.”
So, all three of your ministers here at First UU Austin were in Portland, Oregon week before last, including last Sunday, to attend the annual Unitarian Universalist General Assembly.
As the first of us to be back in the pulpit, I thought I should start by asking, “Anything very significant happen while we were out?”
Oh yeah, the whole Supreme Court legalizing same sex marriage across the country thing happened.
And let me tell you, there was some celebrating going on in Portland (and that was in addition to their annual nude bicycling festival).
When the news came out, it electrified the atmosphere where thousands of Unitarian Universalists from across the country had gathered for our assembly, and I think rightly so. I think we can rightly claim that, though small in number, we have long been strong advocates for LGBT persons, culminating in our Standing on the Side of Love advocacy campaign, which has publicly and vocally supported marriage equality.
Love won, we were a part of making it happen, and that is certainly worth celebrating.
Once again this year, a theme that emerged repeatedly at general Assembly was how storytelling can both help us work for social change and nourish our own spirits. Telling our own stories and hearing those of others, sharing our stories, can be such a powerful way of reaching across borders and lines of otherness, raising social consciousness and creating religious experence.
So, in the light of all this, 1’d like to shift a little from what had planned for this Sunday and share with you a part of my own marriage equality story. I call it, “The New X-Files: Chris and Wayne Got Married.”
Wayne and I have been together 24 years now, and several years back, we decided to get legally married. Back then, only a small handful of states in the U.S. recognized same sex marriage. We decided to go to Vancouver, Canada instead because, well, it’s a fun place.
I was fairly new to lay leadership here at First UU Church of Austin, and my call to ministry was then a very faint voice only beginning to emerge (or actually reemerge, but more on that later). Having left the Southern Baptist religion of my childhood far behind and embraced a very rationalistic, science-based worldview, I was, at the time, struggling with how or even whether I could find a way to redefine and re-embrace terms like God, even metaphorically.
On the Friday we were supposed to start our trip to Canada, Wayne got a call that his sister, who we have since lost, was in the hospital with heart failure. We decided to go ahead and go to the airport not knowing whether we would get on the plane or have to cancel our flights. Wayne was on and off his cell phone the whole time we were making our way their. As we got to the airport, he got a call. She had stabilized.
We boarded our plane and started on our journey to get married. Surely, nothing could stop us now.
We made a connecting flight in Denver, but shortly after taking off for Vancouver, the smell of something electrical burning filled the plane and it started getting very hot in the cabin.
The pilot came over the P.A. system and told us that the plane was going to return to the Denver airport due to an electrical malfunction in the air-conditioning and heating system.
In other words, it was on fire or at least about to be.
A young woman named Tiffany, who was sitting in the seat between us, gave me a very worried look, and downed the vodka-seven she had just ordered.
And then, the pilot came back on and announced that we were going to make an emergency landing in Cheyenne, Wyoming instead. By now, it had gotten so hot in the cabin that a woman near the front of the plane had passed out and fallen into the aisle way.
I thought, “So, I was right along. There is no God, and we’re never going to get married. Instead, we’re about to die in a fiery crash in some cornfield in Wyoming.”
I’m not even sure there are cornfields in Wyoming but that was the vivid image that sprang into my mind.
We started a very bumpy and very scary descent. Tiffany asked if I would hold her hand. I did. She gripped my hand so hard that the pain at least temporarily knocked me out of my existential crisis.
As we neared the ground, Tiffany noticed that her cell phone had a signal, so she let go of my hand and dialed her fiance.
“We’re making an emergency landing. I think the plane is on fire and I’m not sure if we are going to make it. I’m living a nightmare! This is Tiffany, call me later.”
We landed. The plane was bigger than the hangar at the airport. They pulled up some metal stairs to the exit door and hurried us off of it, asking us to please pick up any rolling bags as we went past the woman still sprawled across the aisle way. She was OK – they got her out safely too.
There was a bar in the little tiny airport hangar. It was still open.
“There is a great and merciful God, and she provides comfort in our times of great difficulty.” I thought.
Eventually, they gave us our luggage, loaded us in buses and took us back to Denver, where we would board a new flight to Vancouver very early the next morning.
Now, we were faced with a new challenge. The marriage-licensing agents in Canada closed at noon on Saturdays, so we were going to have to rush to make it to one on time to get our license, so that the person who would marry us on Sunday could sign it and make it legal.
Our flight to Vancouver was uneventful, and we rushed through the airport, trying to make it through customs, get our luggage and pick up a rental car in time to get to the closest licensing agent.
We hit customs, only to find that there was a large group of rather heavy-set men with grey hair and full grey beards wearing a variety of red and white outfits or tee shirts with Christmas themes. Apparently, we had arrived in Vancouver just in time for the people who play Santa Clause each Christmas annual convention. Most of them were accompanied by plump, rosy cheeked, Mrs. Clauses, one of whom was wearing a tee-shirt with red lettering that said, “biker chick,” while her Santa’s shirt asked, “Naughty or Nice?”
Wayne gave me a look that said, “If there is a God or some kind of divine presence in the universe, it has a sick sense of humor.”
We made it through customs, grabbed our luggage and a rental car and made it to a licensing location with just barely enough time left. I parked the car, threw a coin in the meter, and we practically sprinted to the place.
We both signed where required on the paperwork, and then all that was left was to fill out the rest of the required information and pay the fee. We agreed that Wayne would do that part; while I would make sure there was enough time on the meter for us to have lunch nearby. I went back outside and walked over to the car.
And then unexpectedly, as I was glancing at my watch to see how much time I would need to add to the meter, my eyes suddenly filled with tears. I couldn’t stop it. I was so overwhelmed with joy.
As we were having lunch later, Wayne started telling me about how he had looked up at the clock as they were finishing the paperwork. “We’re really going to get married,” he had said out loud, his eyes filling with tears.
I asked him what time that had been.
It was the exact same moment as when I had experienced the exact same thing.
Perhaps the divine exists in an interconnectedness that is so much more complex and vast and powerful than we can fully understand. Maybe the divine is what happens when we love each other beyond our ability to express it in words.
The next day, in a beautiful historic home on the Vancouver bay, a wonderful woman conducted our wedding service for us. An adorable dog named Marley broke into the room and sat right beside us, our little best man with a squeaky toy in his mouth, which he occasionally chomped down on, causing it to punctuate key elements of the ceremony with a loud squeak followed by lots of laughter.
It was perfect, and beautiful and it still fills my soul with an indescribable joy to remember it.
I think that like our struggle to go get married, in the larger struggle for marriage equality, and indeed, any social justice movement, we have to keep at the journey. We have to know that the struggle for justice itself has inherit value. It is worth it, even though sometimes we will lose people who were on the journey with us. We have to keep going, even when it seems like this world upon which we travel in life is burning, and we are not sure we will ever get to the destination.
And sometimes the absurdities in life will throw Santa Clause conventions in our path that will slow us down. So too though, will we find comfort in our connections with each other. We will cry together, and we will laugh together when angels like Marley bring joy into our lives.
Yesterday was Independence Day, and it feels like the words in that Declaration of Independence, the values expressed all those years ago have come one step closer to actually being realized – that all of us are created equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights.
Wayne and I, as well as married, same sex couples across the country, are now legally protected in the same way that any other married couple would be. We can’t be thrown out of the hospital room if one of us gets sick. We now have the same inheritance rights as other married couples. We have the same benefits, such as access to one another’s social security after the loss of one of the spouses.
Perhaps more importantly, for me, it feels like we have made a giant step forward toward being recognized as full citizens, as full human beings.
And yet, my friends, there is still much to be done. In 28 states, it is still legal to fire someone simply for being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. Trans-lives and their rights and dignity are still under assault, both figuratively and literally.
If Wayne and I were to drive less than hour in most any direction from here, stop at a restaurant and, while there, publicly display the same affection toward one another any married, heterosexual couple might, we would likely be placing ourselves in danger.
While we have been celebrating the Supreme Court decision on marriage equality, eight African American churches in the South have been burned down, police have assaulted and killed more unarmed African Americans, including two children run over during a high speed chase through a residential African American neighborhood.
So our work is not done. We have to find ways to sustain it, and I think our successes with marriage equality contain the seeds of how we may do so.
When I was only five years old, I told my mother I was going to be a minister when I grew up. I used to record sermons on the little cassette tape recorder my parents had given me. Later though, after rejecting the religion of my childhood, I no longer had a context within which to imagine a call to the ministry. I have since realized that the non-profit and theatre work I did most of my adult life was a way of trying to construct a secular ministry of sorts.
It wasn’t until I found this church, and this religion, that I was able to rediscover that call. A church and a religion that, unlike the one I had left those many years ago, recognizes the inherent worth and dignity of all people. A church and a religion where a gay man can offer what gifts he may have to its ministry, and those gifts will be accepted in a spirit of love.
This church and this religion gave me back my calling in life. Reimagined, this church and this religion gave me God back.
And in doing so, it transformed my life.
And I want ours to be a faith that is transformative for so many other people, especially those who still suffer oppressions and need a church that will welcome them with open arms and a great love for all of humanity. Folks like a young African American woman that I met at General Assembly.
Our wonderful youth group had put together an Action of Immediate Witness – a call for Unitarian Universalist support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Such actions require debate and a vote by the delegates attending the assembly.
We had a long and at times painful debate with a group of us standing in solidarity with the youth and representatives from the Black Lives Matter movement to pass the action of immediate witness worded as they had presented it. A number of amendments to the wording had been offered that in our view would have watered it down to make it more comfortable for white people.
In the end, it passed overwhelming with only minor amendments.
As we stood together, chanting, “black lives matter,” I noticed that the young woman was crying.
I hadn’t really met her, though we had been standing together in a group of folks throughout the debate, but I put my hand on her shoulder to try to provide some comfort. She threw both of her arms around me, pulled me into a hug, and holding onto me started really weeping. I placed an arm around her.
She said, “I was so scared they weren’t going to pass it.” And suddenly, I found myself placing my other arm around her and crying now myself, saying, “I was scared too.”
And though I had not known it until that moment, I had been afraid – afraid because had it had not passed, my religion would have so greatly disappointed, so greatly hurt our youth, our allies from Black Lives Matter. It would have so greatly fallen short of the religion I believe we can be.
It would have hurt and disappointed me.
I had reached out to minster to her, and instead, by being so authentic with a total stranger, by opening a space where I could get in touch with my own vulnerability, she had ministered to me.
And I think maybe it starts there – two strangers, standing in that great big assembly hall, holding each other and telling each other our truths, our fears, being fully human with each other.
I think this is the love that we can cultivate in this church and this religion by sharing our fears, our stories, our fragilities that make us human and let us see each other as human. I think this is the love that we then carry outward into our world and that transforms itself into justice – just as it did with marriage equality and the standing on the side of love campaign.
So, may our well-deserved and much-needed celebration also renew our commitment to standing on the side of love for all people. May it rekindle and refuel a burning fire for doing justice.
Amen
Benediction
Transcendence – To connect with wonder and awe at 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
These are the religious values this church has expressed and that underlie our mission that we say together every Sunday.
May you carry these values with you into your daily lives and live them out in a world that so badly needs you right now.
Many, many blessings upon you.
May the congregation say, “Amen” and “Blessed Be.”
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 15 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.
Looking at mystical poetry, we’ll explore how to keep our spirits alive in the modern world. Carolina Trevino is a Christian educator for children and youth at Central Presbyterian Church. She received her Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York City (Rev. Mari’s neighbor and classmate in NYC). She grew up in Austin and enjoys walking around Lady Bird Lake, perfecting her chili recipe, practicing Spanish, and will eventually fulfill her lifelong desire to learn the fiddle. Carolina is excited to be preaching at First UU for the first time!
Text of this sermon is not yet 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 15 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.
In honor of Father’s Day, we’ll talk about this Sun holiday, the Summer Solstice. What is celebrated on this day? How does it relate to fatherhood and the balance of male and female in everything?
Text of this sermon is not yet 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 15 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.
We observe the 150th anniversary of Juneteenth. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 was not enforced in Texas until two years after it was made. Many enslaved men and women hadn’t heard that the government had declared them free. Juneteenth is the celebration of that good news.
I long to know what the US would be like if it had never been legal to capture, import and own other people. Agriculture would have developed differently. The distribution of wealth amongst us would be different. Most of us carry the psychological scars of it. I grew up for a time, during the early 1960’s, in North Carolina. I was taught about the institution of slavery. “Most people were kind to their slaves,” they said. “After emancipation, many slaves chose to stay with their masters. They didn’t want to leave them.” “Lincoln freed the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation.” I always pictured this proclamation being read aloud and great rejoicing going up from the people. Joyous Black faces and emotional White faces of people saying “So long, it’s been great having you.” I didn’t really think about it that much. I had the privilege of not thinking about slavery much.
I remember the first time I heard the phrased “enslaved men and women.” It woke something up in me. Instead of calling people “slaves,” as if this were the kind of human they were, a category, easily made into an abstraction, these were women and men who had been enslaved. I supposed what it says is that I’m not “a slave” now, but the process of being enslaved would make me one. That is what happened to the men and women in that time. They were enslaved. I don’t like to say the word “slaves” any more. It doesn’t tell the story. Juneteenth celebrations in Austin are next Saturday. A parade, a gathering in the park, beauty contests and barbeque. Regular Texans celebrating. It’s a holiday here and in OK. Other states have Juneteenth celebrations too, but it’s not a holiday there.
The celebrations commemorate the beginning of the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas. See, the EP didn’t free that many people. Lincoln wanted to free the enslaved men and women gradually, granting financial compensation to the people who had been allowed to think of them as property. The EP was punitive in nature. After the Battle of Antietam, in MD, in Sept. of 1862, where 22,717 young men slaughtered one another in a corn field, Lincoln wrote in his proclamation that, as of Jan 1 of 1863, all enslaved men and women in states still in rebellion against the Union would be freed. Not those enslaved in Union states. Not if any Confederate states repented and rejoined the Union. Needless to say, no one in the rebellious states recognized the authority of Lincoln’s proclamation, so life continued as usual, only with war added, for the enslaved men and women of the South.
The war ended, I always thought, with Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in April 1865. Not really. He surrendered his armies, but there were other Confederate armies still fighting in the West. The spread of slavery across the Mississippi had been resisted. Kansas was in turmoil when about ready to join the US in the 1850’s (ten years before Appaomattox), as “free soil” folks skirmished with pro slavery forces that thought people should be able to bring “their property” with them when they came to farm. Non slave owners weren’t so much horrified, it seems, by the moral cesspool of slavery, as horrified that others would buy up all the good land and work it with people they’d already paid for, so didn’t have to pay. Horace Greeley of the NYTimes, (son of Horace Greeley, the first President of the American Unitarian Association, coined the phrase “Bleeding Kansas.” John Brown, who believed that armed raids were the way to overthrow slavery, was funded and armed by northern abolitionists, among them Ralph Waldo Emerson and his friends. I’m not sure how they felt when the arms they had bought were used by John Brown’s followers to kill five members of a pro slavery farming family in Kansas.
After Lee’s surrender, Union troops supported the enslaved families as they began living in freedom. There were few Union troops in the west, though. Texas had sent 70,000 troops to the war. Kirby Smith surrendered on May 26 (officially signed June 2). The last battle of the American Civil War was the Battle of Palmito Ranch in Texas on May 12 and 13. The last significant Confederate active force to surrender was the Confederate allied Cherokee Brigadier General Stand Watie and his Indian soldiers on June 23. You remember that the Cherokee and other First Nations were slaveholders.
So it wasn’t as if the enslaved people in Texas labored ignorant of the freedom of all others, for two years. No one was free until Appomattox. When General Granger and his 2,000 men sailed into Galveston, the war was still in its last gasps. General Granger began Order No. 3 with the following statement informing slaves of their new status as freed Americans: “The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer.” Federal troops did not arrive in Texas to restore order until June 19, 1865, when Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger and 2,000 Union soldiers arrived on Galveston Island to take possession of the state and enforce the new freedoms of former slaves. The Texas holiday Juneteenth commemorates this date. The Stars and Stripes were not raised over Austin until June 25.
We celebrate the freedom of those who were enslaved and were freed. No one helped them. Some freed folks were given land formerly held by plantation owners, but Pres. Andrew Jackson gave that back to the plantation owners after a few years.
It’s land that is the basis of wealth. When there are laws against Black folks owning land, their families, for generations, will not be able to prosper. White settlers were given land, and, with it, the chance to make some wealth. Not all were able to do that, but many were. White folks were able to buy houses wherever they wanted to and it is only recently that Black homeowners have been able to buy in the suburbs.
The brave of old, given a sudden gift of freedom, were sometimes able to make good choices and strike good luck, even though most were not helped, and were, in fact, opposed at every turn by separate but equal schools with old text books and holes in the roof, by Jim Crow laws denying them access to the culture, by racist violence to keep them in their places. My friends, we all know that this is still going on. Let us be the ones to offer help. Let us be the ones who stand against this systematic burdening of the poor and people of color in our midst. It is time for things to be fair.
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 15 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.
Rev. Meg continues her fairy tale sermon series with a classic Japanese story, “The Boy Who Drew Cats.” How can we know what will make a difference? How do we know which efforts are large and which are small? How are the things which bring you joy used for the good of the whole?
Call to Worship by Howard Thurman
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Reading A Letter to Agnes DeMille from Martha Graham
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique.
If you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.
The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is;
nor how valuable it is;
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly,
to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly
of the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open.
No artist is pleased.
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction;
a blessed unrest that keeps us marching
and makes us more alive than the others.
Sermon
In the story of the boy who drew cats, he was pushed out of conventional places because of his difference, his passion. “You don’t fit here at the farm,” his family said. “Let’s take you to study with the monks.” It didn’t work out with the monks either. He didn’t want to study religion. He wanted to draw cats. He drew them in the margins of the scrolls from which they were supposed to be reading. He drew them in the dust while they were chanting. Eventually he had to leave, because he just didn’t fit there. The last piece of advice the monk gave him was to avoid large places, stick to small ones.
Maybe you have had the experience of being different from the people around you, of not fitting in. Some families, churches, towns, countries, have ways of pushing away the people who don’t fit. Somehow the enforcers of the system, from the church ladies who give you the stink eye when you don’t dress properly to kids who beat up other kids who seem weird to them to government death squads, all along the spectrum of enforcement, you can almost always tell when you don’t fit in a place, when everyone would be a lot more comfortable if you left. I hope none of you has ever felt that, but it’s a vain hope. Most of you have felt it ,at one time or another. It’s often a mistake to toss out the different ones, though. When everyone is too much the same, new ideas don’t happen and the society stagnates. Assumptions remain unchallenged. The potato famine happened because people were planting one type of potato, and it was susceptible to the blight that killed nearly the whole crop. It’s smarter to plan lots of different kinds of grain, potatoes, apples, etc. so if some get a disease, you don’t lose them all. Nature is nature, and humans aren’t the exception. In small native tribes the grandmothers keep track of who is related to whom, to keep people who are too closely related from marrying. First born kids are more likely to achieve highly in our culture. Out of the first 23 astronauts, 21 were first born. Second borns are more creative, with less horror of making mistakes. If you look at the biographies of great inventors, you’ll find most of them were second, third, seventh children. A culture needs the creative people. Austin’s creative class is what makes it so attractive, yet all of the musicians who give Austin its soul are no longer able to afford to live here, according to a new survey. Cherishing diversity is smart, but it’s hard for a culture that’s based on power and money.
The boy in our story is small, and he has an all-consuming passion. Most of us know someone who had a passion for playing the guitar, or for writing, or the piano or for dancing or painting, and they are drawn to doing it whether it’s a good time or not, whether people approve of the activity or not, whether they get paid well for it or not. Some of us are lucky enough to have a passion for something we can make a living doing, something people enjoy and approve of. That’s lovely. Most of us, even if it’s not all-consuming, have something we do that makes us come alive. Theologian Howard Thurman said, as you heard in our Call to Worship: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
The boy is too ashamed that his difference, his passion, as gotten him tossed out of the second place, and he doesn’t want to go home. He takes to the road, and wanders closer and closer to the epicenter of the Goblin Rat King’s domain.
The Goblin Rat King is a destructive force, haunting the countryside, wreaking havoc and destruction, taking whatever it wants, spreading terror. We have forces like this in our world. He is an inner reality and an outer one. Most of us have a big fear inside, a Goblin Rat King, a big fear, or a terrible memory, a bad decision we made in the past, that keeps us trembling and limited. There are terrible Rat Kings out in the world. Sometimes it’s us, trying to spread our system of government or make things good for the shareholders of our corporations. Sometimes it’s a terror group, calling themselves a religious purge or freedom fighters. Almost everyone who spreads terror thinks they are doing it for the good of the whole. Make society safe for the “nice” people, making life hard for the “bad” people.
Often, though, the “nice” people are the rich people and the bad people are the poor folks, queer folks, mouthy folks always yapping about their rights, acting like they should have access to education, to health care, to food and clean water.
We try to separate the “nice” from the “bad” parts of ourselves as well, and we can be brutal in our inner enforcements. Our whole culture is based on overpowering, overcoming, controlling through will, through might, through force. We want to change the world, and we make great efforts. I even hear people changing Theodore Parker’s great saying about the arc of the universe bending toward justice. They say “we’ll bend that arc of the universe!”
In the Eastern tradition which is the context for this story, one good way of doing is by not-doing. The Tao Te Ching says when you’re grilling a fish and you poke it too much, you ruin it. When you rule a country and you interfere too much, try to control too much, you mess things up. Maybe you can just do what you do, be who you are, and the cats you drew will take care of the big bad obstacle while you’re asleep, curled up into a small space. You don’t have to arrive on the scene like the Avengers (not that there’s anything wrong with the Avengers) and clean up the place with might, speed and power. Maybe you can do a lot of good with your art, with your passion, with just doing what you do and not trying to force anyone to do anything. Maybe outer and inner demons can be conquered by our doing what it is our passion to do: gardening, writing, helping, offering hospitality, cooking, building, conversation.
Recent events here at our church have me thinking hard. The church has been asked to step into the ancient tradition of offering sanctuary to a refugee. In this ancient tradition, no place but a church has the privilege of being a sanctuary. Tradition holds that soldiers will not come into a house of worship and drag someone out. Our government adheres to that tradition, so far. The woman to whom we have offered sanctuary was pushed out of her home country because of her passion for helping other LGBT folks. She has had a hard time finding a welcoming sanctuary because she identifies as “queer,” and her partner identifies as “trans.” I The UU church and our partners at St. Andrews Presbyterian are the two churches standing up for her. A person with a passion will find her way, like a seed haunted by the sun, finding its way past rocks and grit to break through to the surface. (- St. Exupery) A church with a passion for art and justice will find its way.
I’ve been thinking a lot about shelter since we volunteered to give sanctuary to our new friend, the LGBT activist seeking sanctuary from Guatemala. I hear the Stones song in my head, and I wonder what it means “War, children, it’s just a shot away.” The Civil War started with one shot, from a Citadel cadet at Ft. Sumter. World War One started with a shot, an anarchist, armed by a government official, got lucky and ended up close enough to Archduke Ferdinand’s carriage to shoot him and his beloved wife.
When things are unstable, out of balance, it only takes a small thing to tip everything over into chaos. Might it make sense, then, for enough small things to tip in back into balance? Love, children, it’s just a kiss away. The bards Mick Jagger and Keith Richards seem to think that a small thing can make a big difference.
The boy in our story had the experience of his art conquering the big mean rat hurting the whole countryside. He lived in that temple the rest of his days, becoming a great artist. May our passion, our difference, be the way Nature comes through us, uniquely, in order to heal itself. May we be open to letting our demons be conquered through art rather than by power.
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 15 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.
Summer has arrived and we welcome it. Our annual flower communion service celebrates stubborn hope and new life despite all odds. We’ll be “Whistling with a Shoe Full of Slush.”
Opening Words By Thomas Rhodes
We come in a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes.
Some of us grow in bunches.
Some of us grow alone.
Some of us are cupped inward,
And some of us spread ourselves out wide.
Some of us are old and dried and tougher than we appear.
Some of us are still in bud.
Some of us grow low to the ground, And some of us stretch toward the sun.
Some of us feel like weeds, sometimes.
Some of us carry seeds, sometimes. Some of us are prickly, sometimes.
Some of us smell.
And all of us are beautiful.
What a bouquet of people we are!
Reading
The Duck of Enlightenment by Kathleen McTigue
One spring afternoon I went home a little early so I could claim an hour of study time before my children got home. As I opened the door, I was greeted by both cats, which was a little odd because they don’t usually condescend to notice our coming and going unless it’s dinner time. One of them promptly bolted out the open door while the other wrapped himself persistently around my legs. As I stood puzzling over this behavior, at the edge of my vision, I caught a sudden motion in the family room where there should be no motion in an empty house. With the hair rising on the back of my neck I slowly moved into the house and rounded the corner of the room, and then I saw it. There was a duck in the family room. A wild brown duck — a live duck. In the family room.
My brain actually stopped completely for a couple of heartbeats. What should the brain do, after all, with so utterly unexpected a sight? I stood there in the doorway and said out loud, “There is a duck in the family room,” as though it would help me believe it. None of the windows were open. The doors were properly closed. The duck huddled in the far corner of the room next to a clutter of books and DVD’s, radiating the hope that if she kept perfectly still I wouldn’t see her. Carefully I caught her up- a small duck, female, her heart tapping frantically against my hands- and carried her outside. I looked at her, full of wonder at this little visitation. Then I opened my hands. She leaped into the air in a great arc of liberation and beat her wings in a straight line of escape all the way to the horizon.
I went back to investigate the breach of household security, and within a few minutes the mystery was explained. A trail of ashes spilled from the fireplace, and here and there on the wall and against the ceiling I saw soot in little feather-shaped impressions where the duck had thrown herself up toward the light. It all made sense then, how a duck could come to be standing in the middle of my house. But I felt lucky that for a space of a few breaths, my linear, deductive mind had been shocked into silence. When something tumbles us into that state of wonder, the unexpected quiet in our heads is like a window flung open on the world. Instead of the routine, predictable story we live each day, there is something new under the sun and, surprised out of our minds for a moment, we actually see. Startled awake, we receive what’s in front of us: simple, astonishing, unedited.
Afterward, basking in the dazzlement of my visitor, it occurred to me that it really shouldn’t require a duck in the family room to awaken my wonder. Isn’t the same lovely little duck just as wondrous, just as worthy of my awe and my open and grateful heart, when she is out in the woods where she belongs? The real miracle is not that her frightened heart beat against my hands for a moment but that her heart beats at all — that her heart beats, that my hands can hold, that my eyes can see.
Introduction to Flower Communion
The Unitarian Universalist Flower Communion service which we are about to celebrate was originated in 1923 by Rev. Dr. Norbert Capek [pronounced Chah-Peck], founder of the modern Unitarian movement in Czechoslovakia. On the last Sunday before the summer recess of the Unitarian church in Prague, all the children and adults participated in this colorful ritual, which gives concrete expression to the humanity-affirming principles of our liberal faith. When the Nazis took control of Prague in 1940, they found Capek’s gospel of the inherent worth and beauty of every human person to be — as Nazi court records show — “… too dangerous to the Reich [for him] to be allowed to live.” Capek was sent to Dachau, where he was killed the next year during a Nazi “medical experiment.” This gentle man suffered a cruel death, but his message of human hope and decency lives on through his Flower Communion, which is widely celebrated today. It is a noble and meaning-filled ritual we arc about to recreate. This service includes the original prayers of Capek to help us remember the principles and dreams for which he died.
Consecration of Flowers by Norbert Capek
Infinite Spirit of Life, we ask thy blessing on these, thy messengers offellowship and love. May they remind us, amid diversities of knowledge and of gifts, to be one in desire and affection, and devotion to thy holy will. May they also remind us of the value of comradeship, of doing and sharing alike. May we cherish friendship as one of thy most precious gifts. May we not let awareness of another’s talents discourage us, or sully our relationship, but may we realize that, whatever we can do, great or small, the efforts of all of us are needed to do thy work in this world.
Homily
“Whistling With a Shoe Full of Slush”
It Could Be Worse
A long time ago, there was a family that lived happily in a small, quiet house in Poland. One day they learned that the grandparents were coming to live with them. The child was very excited about this, and so were the parents. But the parents worried because their house was very small. They knew that when the grandparents arrived, the house would become crowded and much noisier.
The farmer went to ask the rabbi what to do. The rabbi says, “Let them come.”
So the grandparents move in. They have a lot of furniture, which goes in the living room, where they sleep, and in some other rooms, too. It is crowded and noisy in the house so the farmer goes back to the rabbi: “I did what you said, Rabbi. Now my in-laws are here. And it is really crowded in the house.”
The rabbi thinks for moment. Then he asks, “Do you have chickens?”
“0f course I have chickens,” says the farmer.
“Bring them into the house,” says the rabbi.
The farmer is confused, but he knows the rabbi is very wise. So he goes home, and brings all the chickens to live inside the house with the family. But, it is no less crowded and noisy. In fact, it is worse, with the clucking, and pecking, and flapping of wings.
The farmer goes back to the rabbi. “I did what you said, Rabbi. Now with my in-laws and the chickens, too, it is really crowded in the house.”
The rabbi thinks for moment. Then he asks, “Do you have any goats?”
“0f course I have goats,” says the farmer.
“Bring them into the house,” says the rabbi.
The farmer is confused, but he knows the rabbi is very wise. He brings all the goats from the barn to live inside the house. It is no less crowded and noisy. In fact, it is much worse, with the chickens clucking and flapping their wings, and the goats baa-ing and butting their heads against the walls and one another.
The next day, the farmer goes back to the rabbi. “I did what you said, Rabbi. Now my in-laws have no place to sleep because the chickens have taken their bed. The goats are sticking their heads into everything and making a lot of noise.”
The rabbi thinks. He looks very puzzled. Then he says, “Aha! You must have some sheep.”
“0f course I have sheep,” says the farmer.
“Bring them into the house,” says the rabbi.
The farmer knows the rabbi is very wise. So he brings the sheep inside. It is no less crowded and noisy. In fact, it is much, much worse. The chickens are clucking and flapping their wings, the goats are baa-ing and butting their heads. The sheep are baa-ing, too, and one sat on the farmer’s eyeglasses and broke them. The house is loud and crazy and it is starting to smell like a barn.
Completely exasperated, the farmer goes back to the rabbi. “Rabbi,” he says, “I have followed your advice. I have done everything you said. Now my in-laws have no place to sleep because the chickens are laying eggs in their bed. The goats are baa-ing and butting their heads, and the sheep are breaking things. The house smells like a barn.”
The rabbi frowned. He closed his eyes and thought for a long time. Finally he said, “This is what you do. Take the sheep back to the barn. Take the goats back to the barn. Take the chickens back to their Coop.”
The farmer ran home and did exactly as the rabbi had told him. As he took the animals out of the house, his child and wife and in-laws began to tidy up the rooms. By the time the last chicken was settled in her coop, the house looked quite nice. And, it was quiet. All the family agreed their home was the most spacious, peaceful, and comfortable home anywhere.
When I hear this story, I think it would be easy to assume that the lesson it’s trying to teach us is not to complain about our lives, no matter how inconvenient, but I don’t think that’s the point at all.
Dissatisfaction is part of being human. We will always have reasons to complain if someone is ready to hear them. It’s much harder to look for joy and for possibilities.
A while back, I started thinking about today and how it has been a year since our last Flower Communion celebration, a time when we celebrate the return of Springtime — of new life and new beginnings. Flowers are blooming on our cactus and baby birds are popping their tiny heads out of nests. City swimming pools and snow cone stands have opened up, in anticipation of all of the kids who are one grade older, this week or last!
These are all exciting things definitely worth celebrating, but as is human nature, I couldn’t help but think about all that’s happened in the past year. It has been a doozy: all the sad and awful things that have happened in the world, in our country, in Texas, all the loved ones who have died from this very church community… It makes a small house full of barn animals seem like a Zen retreat! I looked up “quotes about Springtime” to try and find some inspiration for today’s celebration and found this one by Doug Larson, “Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush.”
That seemed perfect. Although spring here in Austin has meant torrential rains and not the slushy mess that it did for the northeast, but we are still a-whistlin’. We can think of so many disappointments, stresses, and tragedies to weigh down our proverbial slushy shoes, and yet we whistle on. We whistle to the tune of forward-thinking, of taking a stand when we know that something is wrong, of inspiring others to do the same. We lift our heads and whistle about hope for tomorrow and resolve for today.
We whistle because life has beauty beyond despair and joy beyond grief. We don’t whistle to forget that our shoes are filled with slush or to ignore the discomfort of it all. We whistle so that we don’t get stuck in hopelessness and grief and disappointment. We whistle because there is still so much for us to do, because being together is wonderful, because flowers are still blooming, because so many reasons…
A much-loved Mexican folk song, Cielito Lindo, sings, “Ay, ay, ay, ay Canta y no llores. Porque cantando se alegran, Cielito Lindo, los corazones.” Which roughly means, “La, la, la, la Sing and cry no more. Because singing gladdens the heart, my pretty darling.”
Whistle on. There is so much room in this tiny house. Let’s celebrate the hope of spring.
Flower Communion
It is time now for us to share in the Flower Communion. I ask that as you each in turn approach the communion vase you do so quietly–reverently–with a sense of how important it is for each of us to address our world and one another with gentleness, justice, and love. I ask that you select a flower — different from the one you brought — that particularly appeals to you. As you take your chosen flower — noting its particular shape and beauty — please remember to handle it carefully. It is a gift that someone else has brought to you. It represents that person’s unique humanity, and therefore deserves your kindest touch. Let us share quietly in this Unitarian Universalist ritual of oneness and love.
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Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 15 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.
