Emptiness and Creative Renewal

June 5, 2022 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
June 5, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

While change be difficult sometimes, it is also ever present in our lives. Out of change and even loss, we so often find enhanced faith, greater resilience, and creative renewal. Out of it, new beginnings emerge. We will engage in a ritual of faith and renewal.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

Transitions are a part of life, allowing for perpetual renewal. When you experience the end of one chapter, allow yourself to feel the emotions of loss and rebirth. A bud gives way to a new flower, which surrenders to the fruit, which gives rise to a seed, which yields a new sprout. Even as you ride the roller coaster, embrace the centered internal reference of the ever-present witness.

– David Simon

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

NOTHING IS STATIC
by Rev. Manish Mishra-Marzetti

The ground shifts, sometimes slowly,
sometimes like an earthquake,
reminding us that the solidity
we often love and seek
is an illusion.

The crumbling dust of the desert plains,
the moist fertility of farmlands,
the eroding coastline of tidal shores,
all are changing.

Committees dissolve or are created,
leaders retire or step away,
ministers come and go,
by-laws are amended.

New experiences
lead to new truths,
which foster evolution;

the natural course of life
always pushing us
toward greater understandings
of what it means
to be human.

Everything about our existence
points toward change,
flexibility,
and dynamic re-creation.

And it’s hard because
change involves loss.

Can we hold the losses well,
while not holding ourselves back?

The ground shifts, sometimes slowly,
sometimes like an earthquake;
nothing is static.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 22 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Flower Communion and Farewell

May 30, 2022 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
May 29, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In this intergenerational service we celebrate the traditional Unitarian ceremony of flower communion. We remember its origins as a vivid resistance to Nazi oppression. We bid farewell to Rev. Meg Barnhouse as she retires.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.

-Ralph Waldo Emmerson

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

– Chris Jimmerson

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

The Pumpkins Promise

May 22, 2022 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
May 22, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Making commitments is complicated. Sometimes they are easy and sometimes they are hard to keep. How do we build our self-esteem by doing what we say we are going to do?

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

Love cannot remain by itself – it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service. Whatever form we are, able or disabled, rich or poor, it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing; a lifelong sharing of love with others.

– Mother Teresa

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

Stand by this space, work for it and sacrifice for it. There is nothing in all the world that is so important as being loyal to this space which has placed before it the loftiest ideals, which has comforted us in our sorrows, strengthened us for noble duty and made the world beautiful.

Do not demand immediate results but rejoyce that we are worthy to be entrusted with this great message. If you are strong enough to work for a great true principle without counting the cost go on finding ever new applications of those truths and new enjoyment of their contemplation always trusting in the one God which ever lives in us.

– Lydia Brown

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Nurturing Beauty

May 15, 2022 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
May 15, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We tend to think of beauty as something we experience, but we also are capable of creating it. Nurturing beauty in our lives may be essential to our spiritual well being.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

Beauty awakens and admonishes us.

We are here in a religious community not to hide from the anquished cries or the tender lullabyes.

We are here as a religious community not to protect our hearts from breaking.

We are here together to borrow courage with the task of coming alive.

We are here so that together we might heed the admonitions of beauty to answer the call to create, protect and preserve.

– Mary Katherine Morris
UUSC

Affirming Our Mission

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

Moment for Beloved Community

8 REASONS
Amanda Gorman

When the penalty for rape is less than the penalty for abortion after the rape, you know this isn’t about caring for women and girls. It’s about controlling them.

Through forcing them into motherhood before they’re ready, these bans steadily sustain the patriarchy, but also chain families in poverty and maintain economic inequality.

Pregnancy is a private and personal decision and should not require the permission of any politician.

For all time, regardless of whether it’s a crime, women have and will always seek their own reproductive destinies. All these penalties do is subdue women’s freedom to get healthy, safe services when they most need them.

Fight to keep Roe v. Wade alive. By the term “overturn Roe v. Wade”, the main concern is that the Supreme Court will let states thwart a woman’s path to abortion with undue burdens.

One thing is true and certain: These predictions aren’t a distortion, hypothetical, or theoretical. Women already face their disproportion of undue burdens when seeking abortions. If the sexes and all people are to be equal, abortion has to be actually accessible and not just technically legal.

Despite what you might hear, this right here isn’t only about women and girls. This fight is about about fundamental civil rights. Women are a big part of it, but at the heart of it are freedom over how fast our families grow goes farther and larger than any one of us. It’s about every single one of us.

This change can’t wait. We’ve got the energy, the moment, the movement, and the thundering numbers.

Meditation Reading

WALKING AMONG TALL GRASS
Rev. Chris Jimmerson

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

The Fire of Anger

May 8, 2022 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
May 8, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

How do you handle your rage? How do you help others with theirs? How do you deal with anger when it is at someone else, or when it is at the supreme court?

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

O Spinner, Weaver, of our lives,
Your loom is love.
May we who are gathered here
be empowered by that love
to weave new patterns of Truth
and Justice into a web of life that is strong,
beautiful, and everlasting.

-The Rev. Barbara Wells

Affirming Our Mission

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

SIDE WITH LOVE STATEMENT ABOUT REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE.

Our Unitarian Universalist faith affirms that all of our bodies are sacred and that we are each endowed with the twin gifts of agency and conscience. Each of us should have the power to decide what does and doesn’t happen to our bodies at every moment of our lives because consent and bodily atonomy are holy and when disparities in resources or freedom make it different for certain groups of people to exercise atonomy over their own bodies our faith compels us to take liberatory action.

Meditation Reading

CIRCLE OF CARE
By Lisa Bovee-Kemper

In religious community, we share our joys and our triumphs, our sorrows and our broken places. In this circle of care, we make space for the complexity of life, the myriad experiences that bless and break our hearts. The truth of human experience dictates that on any given day, we each come to the table with hearts in different places. It is especially so on this day, invented to honor women who nurture.

In this circle of care, we honor the truth that mothering is not and never will be quantified in one single descriptor. Mothering can be elusive or infuriating, fulfilling or confusing, commonplace or triumphant. It exists in the every day experiences of each person. There is no human being that is not connected to or disconnected from a mother.

And so we honor the complexity of experience, writ large in flowered platitudes, but here in this space laid bare, honoring the truth in each of our hearts. There is room for all in this circle:

If you have carried a child or children, whether or not they came to be born, we see you.

If you have fervently wished to do so, and circumstances of fate made it impossible, we see you.

If you love children we cannot see, whether because of death or estrangement, we see you.

If you never wanted to be a mother, we see you.

If you are happy to mother other peopleÕs children, as an educator, an auntie, or a foster parent, we see you.

If your mother hurt you, physically or emotionally, we see you.

If you had no mother at all, we see you. If your mother is or was your best friend, we see you.

If your gender says you are not a mother, and yet you take on the role of nurturer, we see you.

If you wonder whether your mothering has been enough, we see you.

And if yours is a different truth altogether, we honor your unspoken story.

There is room for all in this circle. May it be so, today and always.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Curiosity and Respect

May 1, 2022 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
May 1, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our covenant of healthy relations says we should speak to each other directly, in an attitude of curiosity and respect. How do we do this best?

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy god mother to endow it with the most useful gifts, that gift would be curiosity.

– Eleanor Roosevelt

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then – to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

– T.H. White

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Being Present with one another

April 25, 2022 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 24, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our covenant of healthy relations calls us to “Welcome and serve by being present with one another through life’s transitions” What does it mean to be present with one another? How do we do that?

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

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

– Albert Schweitzer

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

Being fully present isn’t something that happens once and then you have achieved it; it’s being awake to the ebb and flow and movement and creation of life, being alive to the process of life itself.

– Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Coming to Life again

April 18, 2022 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 17, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Inanna, in the Babylonian faith story, goes to the underworld to visit her sister. At every level of the underworld, she is stripped of one more element of her rank and dignity. After three days in the underworld, she returns to the overworld. What does this story have to teach us about loss and resurrection?

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

i thank You God for most this amazing day:
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

– e e cummings

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

AN EYE FOR MIRACLES
Diego Valeri

You who have an eye for miracles
Regard the bud now appearing
on the bare branch of the fragile young tree.
It’s a mere dot,
A nothing.
But already it’s a flower,
already a fruit,
already its own death and resurrection.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Awakening

April 11, 2022 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
April 10, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Many of us are engaged in a lifelong process of awakening to realities that are different than what we were taught. It is a process that can feel liberating and help us awaken to our own, full creative potential. So, why are we witnessing such a backlash against wokeness.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

Love and Justice are not two.
Without inner change, there can be no outer change.
Without collective change, no change matters.
You make an actual vow,
hear the crys of the world
step into the experience of awakening
to the suffering of the world
and the desire to bring an end
to that suffering.

– Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.
What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.
To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.
You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.
Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

– David Whyte

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

Most sermons during the past 22 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

What is the Eighth Principle

April 4, 2022 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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What is the Eighth Principle?

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 3, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

What started the sense that we needed another principle? Why now? Why antiracism? Why do we choose to focus on this issue as opposed to all of the other oppressions? We will vote on it at our May meeting.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

MY HELP IS IN THE MOUNTAIN
Nancy Wood

Earth cure me.
Earth receive my woe.
Rock strengthen me.
Rock receive my weakness.
Rain wash my sadness away.
Rain receive my doubt.
Sun make sweet my song.
Sun receive the anger from my heart.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

People say, “What is the sense of our small effort?” They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.

– Dorothy Day

Sermon

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SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Grasshoppers in Indra’s Glittering Net

March 27, 2022 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
March 27, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our seventh principal affirms that we are all part of the physical world in both a physical and a spiritual way. The health of our planet and the health of other animals and humans affect the health of our own body/ mind.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

A NETWORK OF MUTUALITY
By Martin Luther King, Jr.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted.
Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that.
We must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.
The foundation of such a method is love.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Learn more about Beloved Community at this link. – The King Center

Meditation Reading

A PRAYER OF SORROW

We have forgotten who we are.
We have alienated ourselves from the unfolding of the cosmos.
We have become estranged from the movements of the earth
We have turned our backs on the cycles of life.
We have sought only our own security
We have exploited simply for our own ends
We have distorted our knowledge.
We have abused our power.
Now the land is barren
And the waters are poisoned
And the air is polluted.
Now the forests are dying
And the creatures are disappearing
And the humans are despairing.
We ask forgiveness
We ask for the gift of remembering
We ask for the strength to change.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Water Communion 2022

March 22, 2022 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
March 20, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

A year ago, during the freeze, many of us lost our water for many days on end. Others of us who had water filled up containers to give to our neighbors and friends. We bring water to the service and share a couple of sentences about about our experience of the freeze last year as well as what water means to us.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS
By Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its
muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Learn more about Beloved Community at this link. – The King Center

Meditation Reading

Water knows no boundary. Though we may draw it on a map, say this is where the water starts and where it ends, it is not true. Water knows the way into the Great Mystery. It is not afraid of going underground. Water is not afraid of dams or dry creeks, bridges or brick walls. It is patient. Water understands time. It will find a way.

– Thomas Lloyd Qualls, Painted Oxen

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Renewing Faith

March 13, 2022 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
March 13, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In challenging, sometimes scary times such as those in which we find ourselves, it can be hard at times to maintain our faith. Perhaps we can help each other retain our faith and resilience. Perhaps faith is to be found in our struggles for love, justice and a better world – a continual process of remembering that there is beauty to be found in the struggle, even when we cannot know what the outcome may be.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead, you relax and float.

– Alan Wilson Watts

Affirming Our Mission

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

Learn more about Beloved Community at this link. – The King Center

Meditation Reading

FIRST LESSON
– Philip Booth

Lie back daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man’s float is face down. You will
dive and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

How to eat a car

March 6, 2022 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
March 6, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all; Our sixth principal is broad and demanding. How in the world do we promote this, much less make this happen?

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.

– Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Affirming Our Mission

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

Learn more about Beloved Community at this link. – The King Center

Meditation Reading

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these — to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

– Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Widening the Circle

March 4, 2022 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
February 27, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Liberation theology helps us understand that we all can fulfill our greatest potential when we open ourselves and our institutions to all people – greater and greater perspectives. Unitarian Universalism proposes that walking together in covenantal community, in the ways of love, is our way toward widening that circle, maybe even bursting it wide open so none of us left on the inside or the outside.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

Differences are not intended to alienate, to separate. We are different precisely in order to realise our need of one another.

– Desmond Tutu

Affirming Our Mission

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

Learn more about Beloved Community at this link. – The King Center

Meditation Reading

A POEM IS BELONGING
– Rosemerry Watola Trommer

And if it’s true we are alone,
we are alone together,
the way blades of grass
are alone,
but exist as a field.
Sometimes I feel it,
the green fuse that ignites us,
the wild thrum that unites us,
an inner hum that reminds us
of our shared humanity.
Just as thirty-five trillion
red blood cells join in one body
to become one blood.
Just as one hundred thirty-six thousand
notes make up one symphony.
Alone as we are, our small voices
weave into the one big conversation.
Our actions are essential
to the one infinite story of what it is
to be alive. When we feel alone,
we belong to the grand communion
of those who sometimes feel alone-
we are the dust, the dust that hopes,
a rising of dust, a thrill of dust,
the dust that dances in the light
with all other dust, the dust
that makes the world.

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