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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
February 16, 2014

Susan B. Anthony’s birthday is February 15 and we reflect on the important work and legacy of this Unitarian and Quaker.

In the 1890’s there were a group of women who conferred together to make a woman’s commentary on the Bible. They felt the Bible was commonly used to undergird all of the laws that were unjust to women. Even though they felt the Bible was an historical document only, and not holy scripture, they knew enough people took it seriously and they wanted to address it passage-by-passage and begin a conversation about it.

Elizabeth Cady Staton and Susan B Anthony and many other Bible scholars saw where Genesis said “and then God created man in God’s own image, male and female created God them.” They felt this could be interpreted as God having both male and female in God’s self, if creating human in God’s image meant that half of humanity was male and half female. They felt this justified anyone who wanted to pray to mother god and father god, but more importantly, declared the equality of male and female. The Woman’s Bible by Elizabeth Cady Stanton was published in 1898. It is available on-line for free.

Susan B Anthony is surely in the pantheon of Unitarian and Universalist saints. Her father signed the book of the Rochester Unitarian Church, and the family attended there. Susan was persecuted, ridiculed and jailed, and she worked tirelessly for the rights of the powerless. She was intelligent, persistent, tireless, fierce and serene. Everything we admire. In our free faith tradition, one of the sources we draw from is “Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love; ” I want to say we should all be like Susan B, but she had some things going for her that were powerful in her development and in her staying strong throughout her life. Some of us have those things and some don’t.

She worked first for the temperance movement. Drunkenness was an enormous problem in those days. Per capita consumption of alcohol was over seven gal. per capita. You have to keep in mind that most women didn’t drink at all then, most slaves didn’t drink, and no children were drunks, to speak of…. yet they were counted in that statistic. After Prohibition, by the way, that consumption went way down, and it is just now reaching seven gallons again after sixty years, but men and women of all colors drink now. I think most children still do not. Part of the problem with men drinking that much was not that it was immoral or icky to drink, but that the laws made males owners of all property in a marriage. They also owned the children, and always would get custody in a divorce. They also owned their wives and received any money their wives made.

If they were “bad to drink,” as we said in the South, they would drink up their paycheck and their wives paycheck. If they were the kind of drunk that would come home violent, they would hurt their wives and their kids and not much could be done about it at all. Beating your wife was not a crime in those days. All of the issues Anthony worked for flowed from her temperance work, as she campaigned for equal pay for equal work, for the right of women and African Americans to vote, for women to be able to get a divorce if she were abused, for women to have a chance at custody of her children, and for wives to be able to own property and keep their paychecks.

Susan Brownell Anthony was born in 1820. She didn’t like “Brownell” so she just always used “B.” She grew up in New York state in the midst of a Quaker family. One of the elements in her life that allowed her to be a confident crusader was that her father believed in her, loved her, and made sure she was educated at the same level as the males in the family. Having Daniel Anthony as the head of her household, growing up, gave her the experience of how much good a good man could do. Quakers believed that men and women were equal, that they thought and spoke and led equally well. Women helped run the meetings, and women had a say in all decisions.

Daniel Anthony sent his children to the town school until the school teacher refused to teach Susan long division. The thought at the time was that girls should be taught to read well enough to read their Bibles and taught enough arithmetic to count their egg money. Anthony brought the children home, started a school in his house and hired a teacher. When you are told, growing up, that you are smart and capable, when you are loved and admired by those who are in charge of you, it is much easier for you to be able to be smart and strong as an adult. Daniel Anthony believed in the work Susan was doing, and he supported her financially and emotionally. Her family helped her all her life, supplementing the fees she was paid as a lecturer and an organizer. When she was 20, Susan took a job teaching school from a fellow who had done poorly in the job. He had been paid $10.00 a week. She was paid $2.50.

Five years later, when she was 25, the family moved to Rochester, where they joined the Unitarian Church. When you join a Unitarian church you meet people who change your life. Rochester was a hotbed of abolitionist activity. The family befriended anti-slavery activists and former slaves. Susan was horrified to hear stories of the brutality and heartbreaking conditions of the lives of slaves, and she became more and more of an activist. Her family’s farm became more and more a center of anti-slavery activity. She grew more and more radical, along with her father and their friends. She was asked to be a paid abolitionist organizer, renting halls, hiring speakers, and publicizing meetings. She began speaking some herself, and she was good at it. She also liked it. You don’t have to do everything you’re good at, but if you’re good at it and you like it too, it’s pretty clear this is something you should do.

Susan spoke at a teacher’s convention, arguing, as a teacher, that both girls and boys should be taught, and that they should be taught together in the same room, that they could learn equally well, at equal speeds. She said there was not that much difference in their brains. It was thought by some in her day that women only had a certain amount of energy, and if they thought too hard and used their brains too much it would wither their reproductive parts. Clergy preached against the great social evil of educating boys and girls together. They said it would upset the balance of nature. What’s next, teaching our dogs and cats to read? When you study history you see that conservative religious voices, over and over, mouth what sounds from here like the most ridiculous claptrap. Those are the same voices now raised against same-sex marriage, saying “What’s next, we should be able to marry our dogs?” Liberal clergy from that time sound very much like voices from our time.

In the division that always, always happens when working for change, there were people saying “Don’t scare folks off by wanting everything all at once. Be reasonable.”

Susan B said “Shall I tell a man whose house in on fire to give a moderate alarm? Shall he moderately rescue his wife from a ravisher? Shall a mother moderately pull her baby from the fire it has fallen into?

In 1848, when she was 28 years old, the first Women’s Rights Convention was held in Seneca Falls, NY. She didn’t go. Local media had called it a hen convention, attended by cranks, hermaphrodites and atheists. Susan was shocked to find out that her father and lots of their friends supported the cause of women’s rights. They talked about that alongside the abolition of slavery Susan heard of the brilliant Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and hoped to meet her one day. When they did meet, they liked each other thoroughly and instantly. They were friends with Amelia Bloomer, who campaigned for more comfortable and sensible clothes for women. She wore an outfit that was called by her name. All three women wore those clothes for a couple of years, but they stopped when they realized it was keeping people from hearing anything they had to say. Clergy called the outfits devilish, and the press mocked them as women dressed like men.

It was not only women who were fighting against the destructive effects of alcoholism and addiction on families, who all went down together if the man of the family went down. The Sons of Temperance was a powerful political organization. Women were not allowed to join. There was a group called the Daughters of Temperance, an auxiliary group. Separate and unequal. Susan was a member of that group, one of their successful organizers and fund raisers. They elected her to represent them at a big conference in Albany NY in 1852. When she rose to make a point during a discussion, a buzz of outrage swept the hall. “The sisters,” shouted the chairman, “were not invited to speak, but to listen and learn!” Susan swept out of the room, followed by a few other women. Some other women stayed behind, disapproving. A few called the women who left “bold, meddlesome disturbers.” That very night Susan rented a hall and called her own meeting where women could speak. The room was cold and badly lit, and the stovepipe broke in the middle of Susan’s speech, but those who attended were energized and inspired. They decided to form a statewide convention. Susan was elected to head up that effort. She wrote hundreds of letters. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote speeches for her, and over five hundred women came to the conference they organized. “You stir up Susan,” Henry Stanton told Elizabeth, “and she stirs up the world.”

Their partnership lasted their whole lives, over fifty more years. Susan had more mobility, since she wasn’t caring for a household and children. Sometimes she would watch Stanton’s children while Stanton wrote her speeches. They always, no matter what they were writing and speaking about, spoke about the right of women to vote. They figured that would take care of both temperance and slavery. The women would vote correctly and abolish all evils. Susan and Elizabeth encouraged one another, kept one another radical. Her friendship with Elizabeth is the second element in her life that enabled her to be who she was. Without that partnership, as without the love and support of her family, Susan’s story would probably have been a very different one.

After organizing this convention where five hundred women attended, Susan and Elizabeth were invited to the next Sons of Temperance convention. When they arrived they found that they would not even now be allowed to speak. Clergy men stood up and protested that they would not sit with these females. Anthony and Amelia Bloomer refused to leave. One delegate shouted that they were not women, but some hybrid species, half woman half man. Another man said that they had no business disrupting temperance meetings with their dreadful doctrines of women’s rights, divorce and atheism. Anthony held a petition with ten thousand signatures she had gathered. Within minutes the two women had been thrown out, bodily.

As she lectured and traveled, some newspapers would attack her personally, calling her repulsive and ugly, saying that she was laboring under strong feelings of hatred towards men. She must have been neglected by men, and she was jealous. The third time Anthony and Stanton were rejected by the main temperance group, they disengaged from that group for the next 20 years. “We have other, bigger fish to fry,” said Stanton serenely. They began working on securing property rights for women. If women could own things, they could be free of abusive marriages. Maybe also if they had money, the legislature would listen to them better. They worked on that for the next eight years, until 1860. Anthony went door to door and town to town, gathering signatures on petitions, enduring snowstorms and ridicule, sleeping in cold farm houses and inns, going before the state legislatures everywhere she went. In 1860 the NY legislature passed the married women’s property act, enabling married women to own property, keep her own wages, not subject to the control or interference of her husband, enter into contracts, and have shared custody of her children. Many other states followed suit, changing the lives of millions of women.

Some of the suffragists, in years to come, were embarrassed by the radical things Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton did. ECS wrote “The Women’s Bible,” mercilessly asking questions about the portrayal of women in the Bible, questions that would offend and upset most people even in this day and age. Harriet Beecher Stowe refused to write for Anthony’s newspaper, The Revolution, unless she named it something less aggressive.

Anthony rode stagecoaches, delivered speeches, and endured hardships until late in her 70’s. Until her father’s death, she had his full support. Until Stanton’s death, that partnership and support sustained her. She never married, never had children. Women’s rights, abolition, temperance, these were her passions and her life’s work.

She didn’t live to see women get the vote, in 1920. She did vote, though. In the 1872 election she voted illegally, she and a few other women. She was arrested, tried, and convicted. She was hoping to appeal, as the judge wouldn’t let the jury speak, and he instructed them to find her guilty. Her fine was 100 dollars. She told him, “You have trampled underfoot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my political rights, my civil rights, my judicial rights are all alike ignored. I will not pay a penny of your unjust fine.” As he shouted for her to be quiet and sit down, she kept talking. “I shall urgently and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim that ÔResistance to tyranny is obedience to God.'”

We can learn how to make social change from Susan B: Five easy steps:

1. Trust yourself. What feels wrong to you is probably wrong.

2. Get mad. Anger is a good fuel for action. Try to get mad at the right person or the right institution, as Aristotle said. “It is easy to fly into a passion – anybody can do that. But to be angry with the right person and to the right extent and at the right time and with the right object and in the right way – that is not easy, and it is not everyone who can do it.”

3. Work to change things. Don’t just complain. Find out how to change things and start trying.

4. Lean on a friend. Have relationships, partnerships in making change.

5. Know how things work. Here is how they work: First they ignore you, then they ridicule you. Then they fight you, then they agree. Later, they say they agreed with you all along. If you know how it works, when they call you a man hater or ugly or repulsive or they say you’re not patriotic or ask what’s next, I’m going to marry my dog? You can know they have been doing it this way forever. Keep fighting.

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

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
February 9, 2014

We begin our series on the Ten Commandments with the first one. From Rumi to Emerson, we’ll talk about a UU understanding of the truth and usefulness of the commandments.

On his pseudo news show “The Colbert Report,” Steven Colbert, who is from SC, interviewed congressman Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia. Remembering that any show can take any piece of an interview, it is still telling.

“You co-sponsored a bill requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Why was that important to you?”

“Well, the Ten Commandments is – is not a bad thing, uh, for people to understand and respect.”

“I’m with you,” Colbert responds as the congressman goes on, “Where better place would you have something like that than a judicial building courthouse?”

“That’s a good question. Can you think of any better building to have the Ten Commandments in than in a public building?”

“No. I think if we were totally without them we may lose a sense of our direction.”

“What are the ten commandments?”

“What are all of them?”

“Yes.”

“You want me to name them?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“let’s see, don’t murder. Don’t lie, don’t steal-uh– I can’t name them all.”

In the faith story of the Jews, Christians and Muslims, the Ten Commandments were given to Moses in the Sinai desert; In the Hebrew they are called Aseret ha-Dvarim, best translated: “the ten statements.”

The story is found in both Deuteronomy (5:6-21) and Exodus (20:3-16) The Hebrew people followed Moses out of Egypt and they traveled through the Sinai Peninsula to the land of Canaan, which was promised to them by God. After about three months they came to Mount Horeb, also called Mount Sinai. Moses went up the mountain to talk to God. Smoke came on the mountain, like the smoke from a furnace, because Adonai (God) descended on the mountain in fire, and there was the sound like a trumpet that grew louder and louder. On the mountain, God gave Moses the commandments, and many more commandments the people were to follow. According to the Talmud, there are 613 laws the Jews must follow. When public reciting of the ten was giving them more weight than the other 593 commandments, the recitation was discontinued.

It took Moses so long to come down from the mountain that the people grew restless, and Aaron, Moses’ brother, was pressured to make some gods who would go with them to the Promised land. He asked for all their gold earrings and bracelets; he melted them down and made a statue of a golden calf. The people celebrated with dancing, shouting and revelry. “Revelry” is Bible translator language for wild partying. Use your imaginations. Moses heard the noise. It sounded like war, the text says. He came down with the tablets, which were carved on both sides (rabbinic tradition holds that they magically had writing that went all the way through, yet read correctly on both sides. The “O” shaped letters still had the circle of stone hanging in the hole, floating there without connection to the surrounding stone.) Moses saw what the people were doing, and became angry and broke the tablets into pieces. He ground up the gold statue, spread it on their water and made the people drink it. Then he got two more tablets inscribed by God.

These are time-honored precepts, and they encapsulate more than one ancient culture’s wisdom about how to live a good life. In fact, they borrow heavily, verbatim in parts, from the code of Hammurabi, whose tablets we have in the British Museum. I remember, in seminary, being taken aback to realize how much of Mosaic law was taken directly from Hammurabi, which argued against it being given directly from God to Moses.

This morning, starting this series on the Ten Commandments, I will talk about the first one. “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.” Egypt was moving toward monotheism about this same time in history, around 1550 BCE. Maybe it’s an evolution of human understanding. Today when we talk about there being god in everything would say it’s the same sacred energy, Being, or quickening or Oneness, with many names. To most people, giving gods different names made them different gods. I have a family member who wanted a doctor who “worshiped the same God” he did. A Muslim doctor had the skill, unquestionably, but worshiped Allah, who was a god, but a different god, a false god. I was taken aback that there were still people who didn’t think of god as one, with many names. There are still some who think that way, calling “Allah” a “false god,” We watch movies about the Greek myths, thinking Zeus is an old fashioned action figure of a god, not thinking that Zeus is the same word as Deus, which is Latin for God in all Christmas cantatas. It is the understanding of the Divine that changes throughout the ages.

A cynical way to see it might be that the first commandment was a way to control the people – if there were just one god, there was just one group of people who could speak to that god and tell the people what he wanted.

From within the faith, the explanation is that The Hebrews had to become the Jews. If they were absorbed into the surrounding culture, there would be nothing distinctive left of them.

Nature religions had many gods with different roles: death and rebirth, being taken apart and put back together, male and female coming together for the fertility of the land, rain and sun and earth and wind all playing their parts, or not, for the life or the suffering of the people. History, in an earth-based religion, is made of circles and cycles. With one God, who works in the lives of the people, the movement is more in a line. This happened, then this. Telling the stories of God’s interaction with the people became more important than the regularity of the rain and the seasons.

To bring this to a Unitarian Universalist place, let me remind you of the Emerson quote we read together.

Emerson wrote: “The gods we worship write their names on our faces, be sure of that. And we will worship something – have no doubt of that either. We may think that our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of the heart – but it will out. That which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our life and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we are worshipping, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”
(Ralph Waldo Emerson quoted [and slightly adapted] by Chaim Stern in Gates of Understanding, vol. I [New York: Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1977), p. 216)

The word “worship” comes from two old Anglo-Saxon words “weorth” and “scipe” The first means worth, the second is to shape, as in scoop or shovel. So we are shaping what we see to be of worth, here in worship. That’s why atheists can worship next to theists, because, whatever your understanding of god or no god is, you have things you consider to be of worth. Coming here on Sundays shapes what you value. What makes you feel awe, feel like there is something greater than you are present? For some it’s freedom, for some it’s security, for some it’s power, for others it’s not hurting anyone but yourself. All of those values shape your life and your choices.

What I want to say this morning as you considerwhat you organize your life around is that I vote for love to be our highest worth. Truth is good, and I’m an addict, but truth without love can be destructive. Freedom is wonderful, and I need it like air, but freedom without love can be destructive. Destruction is necessary sometimes, but destruction without love is not generative, it doesn’t lead to more life.

Here is your homework, that no one will check or hold you to: What would your Ten Commandments be?

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

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
February 2, 2014

We bring our well-behaved, house-trained animals to an intergenerational animal blessing service. Rev. Meg preaches about animal companions, and the First UU Intergenerational Choir serenades our animal friends with a variety of songs.

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

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

We sometimes act like they communicate the same way we do. We smile at the animal to say hello. I hope they understand that. For animals, baring teeth is a threat. We would be in trouble if we said “look, that cute dog is smiling at me,” when we saw a dog baring its teeth. We feel close to animals, so we attribute to them the same emotions we would have in a certain situation. If a dog comes to you with ears lowered, chin down, you may think they are sad or being pitiful. That is their non-threatening friendly look. Their excited “Hey! Let’s go!” look is easier to read. Scientists who observe animals say they do have emotions. They just get excited, humiliated, threatened and confused by some things we don’t normally think of. Some things we have in common though. We want to be touched, loved, we want food shelter, attention, territory, a purpose, loyalty, belonging, exercise and fun.

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

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

Thank you for being part of my family. Thank you for entertaining me, for keeping me company. I will be a good friend to you, treating you with kindness. I will try to learn more about how you think, learn what is important to you, and not just imagine that you think like I do. I will do my best to give you a good life and a peaceful end. I bless you now because you bless me so much.

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

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 19, 2014

They say that magic is changing consciousness at will, and music certainly does change how we see the world. Can music cheer or spook you? What does music do to your brain?

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

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 12, 2014

As we think about how to make our church more hospitable, let’s talk about the language of space, how buildings communicate. If “architecture is frozen music,” what tune are we playing?

Imagine a court room where you enter through a house-sized door into a homey room with couches and tables, lamps and rugs. The walls are painted in decorator colors . There are two circles of chairs, and the judge’s seat is one of the chairs in the inner circle. The judge is in street clothes. The atmosphere is casual. The jury is in the outer circle of chairs watching the proceedings. How would that work? Not well. The courtroom counts on visual cues for its sense of authority. There are the wood-paneled walls, the judge’s bench raised up high, the chairs all facing the judge, the jury off to one side in rows. No matter how shabby a courtroom is, the weight of the law is reinforced by the arrangement of the space.

When you walk into a cathedral in Europe, you know immediately that this is a building where people encounter their idea of God. The atmosphere is hushed and dark. Stained glass windows tell stories from the Bible, and stories of the people who were instrumental in the building process. The light is dim unless the sun is shining directly through the round rose window at the front. The source of light is mostly from just the one place. One source. A cathedral speaks volumes about what the people thought about God, about the priests, about themselves. God is high, high above. The feeling of awe you get from the lift of the space and the richness of the details is maybe a cousin to the awe you would feel for the majesty of God. Magnificence in the building mirrors the magnificence of the divinity, Everything is oriented toward the altar, where the chief miracle of the body and blood takes place, and toward the pulpit, where the Word is read and preached. The pulpit is up high, so people look up to hear the priest. That grants the position some authority. Any church building speaks of what the people think of the human and the divine. Some soar into the heavens. Some UU buildings are low and cradling, without ‘lift’ in the ceiling or in the feel of the room. What they want to express is that it is the community we celebrate. In some UU churches, the people sit in raised levels and the minister stands in the pulpit at floor level, more like a classical Greek amphitheater. In Charleston, one of our two hundred year old churches, the pulpit is raised high — that’s the way they built churches in the 1700’s before the Revolutionary War, when that building was built. Most UU churches in which I’ve preached bought their buildings from other churches or from old synagogues. Those who have built their own spaces tend to be sensible, light-filled, and with views that let the congregation soak up nature as they worship.

A Salt Lake City Tribune article First Unitarian in Salt Lake City this way: “a white-painted light-filled, simple space, impossible to hide in. Every corner is apparent, clearly illuminated by natural light from the tall, multi-paned Palladian windows, recalling the light of reason revered by Unitarianism’s great liberal forbears. The lines, the light, the absence of ornamentation serve as an invitation to introspection and meditation. There is no cross, no icon, no altar. Unitarians focus on this world, not the next. In austere contrast to the colorfully ornate symbolism layered over ancient Christianity, the Unitarian aesthetic, like its gospel, is minimalist: “It’s a simple, basic idea,” says Goldsmith. “We believe in the unity of deity.”

(“Like the faith, (the) Unitarian place of worship is geared to clarity and function,”Mary Brown Malouf, Salt Lake Tribune 7.26.03).

A British architect, Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe, says “Architecture is to make us know and remember who we are.”

We are ramping up a conversation that has been ongoing for many many years in this congregation. The religious education space has been make-do for a while. We’re okay, but it’s time to pull all of the imagining and planning together that’s been done through the years, take a look at it and see what we could afford to do. There is a team of people whose job it is to research the costs and benefits of each option. What would it cost in money and time? What would it cost in terms of the ministers’ energy? The goal is to find a way to live out our mission and our long range plan and whether we can do that on this site or whether we need more space. We’ll be talking about this all Spring, off and on, because there is a lot to consider. What do we want our building to say? Many UU churches are hidden, hard to get to. Many UU buildings are saying “You’ll find us if it’s important enough to you. If you know one of us already. Lots of them are off the road behind lots of trees, with small signs that you can only read at walking speed. It seems to be a shy denomination. You can’t see our church from the street. Almost no one sees us by accident. The people who get here have to really want to get here. That might be the way we want it. This room is filled with light from lots of sources. The shape of the room is simple, as if to say “this is not a complicated faith.” As the Salt Lake article says, we value clarity and function. We have a window with a view of a garden, and nature is central to our sense of what is miraculous. Some UU churches have worship space with moveable chars, and they might have a party or a banquet in the same space in which they worship, as if to say worship and daily life are part and parcel of one another. This room, with its pews, is not that way, and seems to communicate that we are a serious denomination and we take our place among other denominations in the theological conversation.

We know what we want people to feel when they come into the space. Welcome. Safe. Architect Philip Johnson said “All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.”Attribution:1975 address at Columbia University, quoted in Philip Johnson: Writings Oxford 79

What is our mission? You see that on the wall. What is our long range plan? I’ve written about it in the newsletter and spoken about it at our congregational meeting. The LRP talks about being a lead church in our denomination, a flagship church. The country is now divided into regions, and our denomination is asking large churches within the regions to be gathering places for people from the smaller churches for trainings, meetings, gatherings of all kinds. We seem already to be a church for whom the arts are an important element, and we would like to build on that strength. Social justice is important to our members too, and maybe we can find ways of intertwining the arts into our social justice outreach. One of the main goals set by the congregation is to be hospitable. This means to have a good place for people to come, a place that speaks of how important we feel about welcome. A place that has room for the folks who need what this church has, and for the people needed by this church. Yesterday at the New Member class I was talking to someone about how each person in this room is like a novel in and of themselves, and then I thought about how many book collectors we have in this congregation and how we dream of having a place for all of our books. We are collecting books here, gathering in people with their stories, trying to live our mission, and asking ourselves “what kind of space is needed so this church can happen?”

The LRP talks about how Austin has grown and is poised to grow in the next twenty years. Do we want to be a mega-church? No. Do we want to grow as big as we can possibly grow? Not really. Not with this minister. You are already a church that starts other churches. Live Oak Congregation and the Wildflower Congregation both grew out of this church. Our Large Church Consultant told us that, for a church to thrive, it needs 2oo members at its start, and a minister, some money and a staff person. We couldn’t spare 200 people from our current membership. Even at 600 members, which is about as big as we could grow with our current facility, we couldn’t spare 200. The LRP says we will have a 500 seat sanctuary so we can grow to 1,000 members. When we get to 800 we’ll take on an assistant minister who would like to have a church of his or her own, and we’ll start gathering 200 folks and raising money for them to go start a new church. It might be the folks who would like to build with straw bales, or have the kind of church where the whole congregation goes to build a house or plant a garden for a school on a Sunday morning.

The LRP calls for us to have space for one or even two artists to have studio space in the church, and we might advertise nation wide for artists to come spend a year with us interacting with the church and the surrounding community as painters, filmmakers or dancers in exchange for the free year of space. The LRP describes us in five years as being known in Austin for being on the forefront of one justice issue, focusing our best talents and efforts on making a change in Central Texas. Will we have rooms for neighborhood meetings, a kitchen we can really cook in? Bathrooms that are truly accessible? Will we have space for doing art with LGBT youth or immigrant youth? What kind of space do we need to accomplish these plans? What about outside space? How does the landscaping speak to who we are as a church? Are we neat and controlled or wild and exuberant? It all speaks. What is it saying? What do we want to say?

What kind of space will we feel moved to support? What kind of space will we be able to buy? Could the landscaping be important to that? Some art? A certain kind of walkway? Frank Lloyd Wright, a Unitarian architect, says “Architecture is life, or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived.” Attribution: An Organic Architecture MIT 70

What will show a true record of our religious life and how it is lived, how it will be lived?

“Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul” Ernest Dimnet

Does this building act on the soul of the people who come in? On the soul of the community? Does it encourage people, make them feel at home, make them proud? Make them feel safe? How will the new space act on the soul of those who come in ? What kind of people will the new space attract? Formal people? Informal? Eccentric? Mainstream? I hope it attracts more people like you.

There is one thing I hope doesn’t happen. I have been in a couple of places where there was a new carpet. Suddenly the management was rigid and authoritarian about people not being able to eat or drink in a place that had previously been a comfortable space for milling around, socializing. The level of formality of the place jumped. People stopped using the room until there were enough stains on the floor so the management relaxed enough for the room to be usable again. The spaces we will create are for living in, for having church, having fun, talking and laughing and praying and teaching and dancing in. Like this one. Yes, we dance now and then! It’s good for the soul.

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

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 5, 2014

Here at the first of the new year, we bring things for the fire, to let them go from our lives. Outmoded habits, grudges, practices, ideas, maybe a relationship that has become destructive, a worry you are willing to release… any or all of these things can go into the burning bowl.

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

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 15, 2013

We join together in our annual intergenerational Christmas Pageant as the shepherds, angels and royalty gather around the newborn holy child.

Call to worship

From Patrick Murfin’s “We Build Temples in the Heart”

Today, let us be that stable, let us be the place that welcomes the last the weary and rejected, the pilgrim stranger, the coming life.

Let not the frigid winds that pierce our inadequate walls or our mildewed hay, or the fetid leavings of our cattle shame us from our beckoning.

Let our outstretched arms be a manger so that the infant hope, swaddled in love, may have a place to lie.

Let a cold beacon shine down upon us from a solstice sky to guide us the seekers who will come.

Let the lowly shepherd and all who abide in the fields of their labors lay down their crooks and come to us.

Let the seers, sages, & potentates of every land traverse the shifting dunes, the rushing rivers, and the stony crags to seek our rude frame.

Let the herdsman and high lords kneel together under our thatched roof to lay their gifts before Wonder.

Today, let us be that stable.

Introduction

WHEN GOD WAS A BABY

At the Christmas pageant last year, children picked out costumes from piles the director had arranged on the tables outside the sanctuary. You could be an angel, a shepherd, an animal, or a king. Two brothers came in already dressed as Batman, and stood reverently by the manger looking at the baby Jesus. “There is no Batman at the manger,” one person said later.

“Probably not,” I answered, “but there is a lot we don’t know about what actually happened. Historically, we barely know Jesus lived, much less whether he was born in Bethlehem, or whether he was married to Mary Magdalene, or whether he went to India to study in the ‘lost years’ between being a twelve year old talking with the teachers in the temple and beginning his ministry as an adult.” I saw her eyes glaze over with this much information, and circled back to the point. “Right. Odds are against there having been a Batman.”

The baby in the manger is a soul story, if not an historical story. Soul stories are as likely to be true as stories from history, but they are perhaps a different sort of true, and you approach them differently. Before and after doing historical research, Biblical study, and the kinds of work on context and language one does when looking at a story from a Scripture, my inclination is to interact with the story as I would with a dream.

Holding the image of the Divine as a baby in mind and heart, I invite myself to let go of my hold on the Abrahamic God, the ideas about the Divine I can live with or not, the elements of the concept of a God I believe in and those I don’t believe in. A soul story is a dream from the depths of a culture, not an individual. This is bigger than my squeamishness or my history.

When God is a baby, no one has to be afraid of God. No one has to tremble before God’s wrath. No one has to wonder what they have done wrong, how they have disappointed God. A baby God isn’t mad at you – in fact, it needs you to coo over him, hold him close, smell her head, curl her tiny fingers around your pinkie, protect him and visit her with presents. No wonder Christmas is a well loved holiday – we get to coo over the baby God, and feel the aching openness of a heart at its very beginning.

Among the ways to understand the Divine is as the spirit of love, the spirit of light, the spirit of life. A baby love, a baby light, a baby life would carry within itself all that it will become, like an oak within the acorn, like two hundred and thirty-eight possible tomatoes contained within one tomato seed, like a mighty river that starts as a spring seeping out of the earth in a high and quiet place. The light starts as a tiny spark. A new baby love has all the possibilities in the world, it carries all the hopes and dreams. Later on, as it grows and matures, it becomes more real, and if you are skilled and lucky, it grows richer and deeper. As life starts you care for it and nurture it. You are careful with it. You delight in it. A baby is full of possibility.

What if this is a story about the soul entering the world of the body? The light of spirit and wisdom, the Divine Seed planted in a human being? Some of the founders of our free religion believed that the seed of God, a tiny sliver of the light, was in each of us.

I think about the Divine seed, the wise baby, within me, containing the whole of divinity in itself, yet needing to grow. Antoine St. Exupery writes: “the seed haunted by the sun never fails to find its way between the stones in the ground.” (“Flight to Arras”) Is my soul the seed, or is it the light? I say it is both. Do we long for the Divine, or are we Divine ourselves? Both. Do we search for God or is God within us? Both.

In times of confusion and doubt, I see myself able to visit my soul like the magi, the wise magicians, and kneel before it with gifts of quiet, respect and love. I can nurture the light, the seed of God within me. I can protect it from the forces of power-over that show up next in the faith story, the forces of fear and control, the Herod power, the light-killing, love-killing power of the outer world and of my inner world as well.

I wish for each of you at this time of the rebirth of the light that the light be reborn in you, that love be cradled in your heart, that you be a seed haunted by the sun, finding your way from the nurturing darkness, past all obstacles, stubbornly and rapturously breaking through to live in the light.

The Christmas Pageant

Today, we are a family, a community, gathering not only to enjoy an old story, but also for the feeling of being together. We have lit our chalice as a symbol of the light that people before us have celebrated forever and the light that shines within each of our souls. However it is expressed, it is a time of joy.

The season of the winter solstice has been celebrated in one form or another for thousands of years. A hundred different cultures have told stories about how the birth of their gods took place at this time of year, or how light, hope and life are returning to their world and to their lives. This evening, we will present the version of this story written by Christians, which is part of our American and Western culture, whether we are Christians or not. It is the story of a special baby, a child of God as all babies are, a child called Jesus. And today, this story is wrapped not only in swaddling clothes, but also in wonderful music about the greenery, the holly and the ivy, the candles, music and merriment that were part of the season long before Christianity was born – like our next carol, “Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly.”

THE CHRISTMAS STORY:

Now this is the Christmas story. It happened long, long ago, in a far away land. A man and a woman named Joseph and Mary had to make a journey to the city of Bethlehem, because there was a new law that said everyone had to return to the city where they were born to pay their taxes. Joseph was worried about Mary taking this trip as she was going to have a baby very soon, but Mary wanted to be with her husband for the birth of their first child. It was a long trip to Bethlehem, three full days of walking.

Mary was glad when they saw the rooftops of Bethlehem in the distance. “Joseph,” she said, “let’s stay at the first inn we come to. I think our baby is almost ready to be born.” But when they got to Bethlehem, they found the little town crowded with people. They stopped at the first inn they came to and knocked on the door. But the innkeeper told them, “I’m sorry, there is no more room here.” At the next inn the innkeeper said, “We’re full. Try the place three streets over. It’s bigger.” Joseph tried another place and another place, but everywhere it was the same story: “Sorry, no room for you here.”

Finally, when it was almost night time, they saw a house at the edge of town with a light in the window. Joseph knocked at the door, and told the innkeeper, “Please help us. We need a place for the night. My wife is going to have a baby soon and I don’t think she can travel any farther.” And the innkeeper said, “There’s no room in the inn, but don’t worry, we’ll find someplace for you.” The innkeeper showed Mary and Joseph to a quiet little barn where the animals were. (Animals, come join us in the barn with Mary and Joseph.) It was clean and warm and smelled like sweet hay.

And on that very night in that barn in Bethlehem, their little baby was born. It was a boy and they named him Jesus. Mary and Joseph wrapped him in the soft swaddling cloth and made a little bed for him in the hay.

BIBLICAL READING: Luke 2:1-7

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

That night, like every night, there were shepherds in the fields outside Bethlehem, watching the flocks of sheep. The shepherds were surprised and amazed by a very bright light in the sky and a strange song coming from nowhere and everywhere, all at once. It was angels and they were glorious! (Angels, please find the shepherds to share the good news.)

After sharing the joyous news with the shepherds, the angels went to find the baby born in a stable in the city of Bethlehem and to tell everyone about him. (The Angels are free to wander the sanctuary spreading the news and come to the barn to say hello to baby Jesus. Then they should return to their seats.) Mary and Joseph never saw the angels, but the angels saw them and their little baby and all said, “What a beautiful child!”

BIBLICAL READING: Luke 2:8-16

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Suddenly a great company ofthe heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.

After the angels had gone away, the shepherds remembered what they had said, that a wonderful baby had been born and that they could find him by following the brightest star in sky. So the shepherds all said to each other, “Let’s go look for that baby.” They had no trouble finding the stable, because of the bright star, and sure enough, there inside were Mary and Joseph, watching over their little baby, Jesus. And the shepherds all said (very quietly), “Oh! What a beautiful child!” Then they went away and told everyone what they had seen.

On this same night, three wise men saw the bright star and said to each other, “Look at the amazing star! It must be shining for something very special!” The wise men loaded up their camels with treasures and traveling supplies and followed the star all the way to Bethlehem. (The Wise Men will make their way to the barn/stage.) Jesus was only a few days old when the wise ones found him, but they knew he was special. “What a wonderful child. This child will be our teacher.” And they gave the baby gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Mary and Joseph wondered for a long time about all of these things that happened when their child was born. “Isn’t it wonderful that all these people would come to see our baby and give us presents for him. They don’t even know him.” When Jesus grew up, he was a courageous teacher, just like the wise ones said. And one ofthe most important things he tried to teach people was to love each other and to treat all people, even strangers, with kindness and care. And people who have tried to follow his best teachings have become better people, and have spread light through their world, which is what we are here to do.

Today we shared the Christmas Story about one special baby. But this baby isn’t the only special one. Every child is a treasure, is a wonder and a miracle. And as they grow up, they are always and forever a treasure, a wonder and a miracle.

Reading

For so the children come and so they have been coming.
Always in the same way they come
Each night a child is born is a holy night.

[parents] sitting beside their children’s cribs
feel the glory in the sight of a new life beginning…
Each night a child is born is a holy night, a time for singing,
a time for wondering, a time for worshipping.

Excerpted from “Each Night a Child is Born is a Holy Night” by Sophia Lyon Fahs

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

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776