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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
March 11, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Neuroscience and other research is learning more and more about what is happening in our brains and in our bodies during spiritual / transcendent / flow / peak experiences. Organizations from the Navy Seals to Google have been exploring ways to help their people reach these altered states more easily and more quickly, as such experiences can increase creativity, productivity, and team cohesion.

Call to Worship

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

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

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

Compassion
To treat ourselves and others with love.

Courage
To live lives of honesty, vulnerability, and beauty.

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

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

Readings

THE NIGHT HOUSE
– Billy Collins

Every day the body works in the fields of the world
Mending a stone wall
Or swinging a sickle through the tall grass-
The grass of civics, the grass of money-
And every night the body curls around itself
And listens for the soft bells of sleep.

But the heart is restless and rises
From the body in the middle of the night,
Leaves the trapezoidal bedroom
With its thick, pictureless walls
To sit by herself at the kitchen table
And heat some milk in a pan.

And the mind gets up too, puts on a robe
And goes downstairs, lights a cigarette,
And opens a book on engineering.
Even the conscience awakens
And roams from room to room in the dark,
Darting away from every mirror like a strange fish.

And the soul is up on the roof
In her nightdress, straddling the ridge,
Singing a song about the wildness of the sea
Until the first rip of pink appears in the sky.
Then, they all will return to the sleeping body
The way a flock of birds settles back into a tree,

Resuming their daily colloquy,
Talking to each other or themselves
Even through the heat of the long afternoons.
Which is why the body-the house of voices-
Sometimes puts down its metal tongs, its needle, or its pen
To stare into the distance,

To listen to all its names being called
Before bending again to its labor.

THE GUEST HOUSE
– Jellaludin Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Sermon

In a remote area of northeastern Afghanistan, an elite team of the already elite Navy SEALS special forces was on the move. Known as the Special Development Group, or DEVGRU, their mission was to capture Al-Wazu, an Al-Qadea terrorist who had recently escaped a U.S. detention facility. Al-Wazu could provide invaluable intelligence, so it was essential that the team capture him alive.

As they moved stealthily toward a compound of buildings where they knew Al-Wazu was hiding, a switch flipped within each of them. Their brainwave patterns began to synchronize. The composition of the neurochemicals in their brains changed in similar ways.

Suddenly, they were a collective, not individual actors. In this state of altered consciousness, this group flow state, they were able to move both quickly and quietly, communicating without verbalizations and with minimal physical gestures.

Their movements became synchronized. Their division of scanning for potential enemies, side to side, ahead and behind became automatic. The person best positioned to take leadership changed as needed without discussion or debate.

As they approached the compound, they automatically split into teams that would surround it, as well as an assault team that would enter the the compound and attempt the capture.

The first room the assault team entered was empty, but the next room was crowded with armed guards mixed in with unarmed women and children. It was vital that the assault team be able to disarm the guards with as little fire fighting and unarmed casualties as possible.

And in their state of altered consciousness, they were able to do exactly that – read even minute facial expressions or body movements; sweeping in to capture each of the guards quickly and disarm them.

Leaving a couple of their team behind to watch over the guards and civilians, the remainder of the team entered the next room, only to immediately encounter Al-Wazu himself, sitting in a chair, an AK-47 rifle in his hands.

It would have been so easy to react immediately and fire upon him. In a normal state of consciousness, anyone of the team might have quite rationally thought, “better to strike immediately than to give him time to open fire with the automatic weapon in his hands”.

But they didn’t. In theIr altered state, each of them had processed almost instantaneously that Al-Wazu’s eyes were closed. He was fast asleep.

They made the capture without firing a shot, without any bloodshed.

And they could do so because they had been selected and trained for this ability to enter into a group flow state.

Back in the U.S., an artist was installing her interactive sculpture, sound and light experiential art piece.

As she worked, she lost all sense of time. Time seemed to slow or perhaps to just lose all meaning.

Her sense of self dissolved into an experience of being part of something larger than her – something that was luring her to create the piece of art that was coming to be all around her. The act of creation felt effortless, and she felt a great sense of richness, a vividness, an aliveness.

In this flow state, she experienced a sense of right place and well being. She felt a great sense of belonging and connection, even though at the present moment she was physically completely alone.

If someone could have scanned her brainwave patterns at that very moment, they would have looked almost identical to those of that DEVGRU team during their mission in Afghanistan.

Interestingly, though she would not have used this same terminology, she had designed her art installation to stimulate virtually the same neurological responses.

In a lab in another part of the country, a neuroscientist who specialized in neurotheology was studying long-term meditators and other spiritual practitioners to examine what was happening with their brainwaves, neurochemicals, breathing, heart rates, etc. when they entered a state of altered consciousness that these practices could bring about.

These states have been described as nirvana, transcendent, an experience of the holy and in many other ways depending upon the religion involved.

Had this scientist been able to compare his neurological and biological findings from these spiritual practitioners with our artist and our Navy seals team, once again, he would have discovered remarkably similar results.

The neuroscientist as well as many others have also taken these findings and created biofeedback mechanisms that can help newer meditators, for example, reach the desired state of altered consciousness much more quickly than the years of practice it can otherwise sometimes take. By providing instantaneous feedback on heart rate, brainwave patterns, and the like, scientists have been able to help people more quickly focus their spiritual practices.

And this may be consequential, because other research has found that more frequent experiences of such altered states are associated with increased life satisfaction, a greater sense of belonging, increased compassion and empathy and higher levels of cooperative social behavior to name just a few of the potential benefits.

Maybe that is why Google has worked with Stephen Cotler and Jamie Wheal of the Flow Genome Project to install a prototype research and training center dedicated to helping Google’s employees experience such altered states of consciousness.

They call it “Flow Dojo”. Cute, huh?

Now, it turns out, experiences of art, music, nature, beauty, extreme physical activity, strong connections with others and certain types of sound and visual stimuli can also spontaneously generate these altered states of consciousness.

So, the Flow Dojo” prototype combines training in classical techniques such as meditation with biofeedback, art, music and the like, along with machines that can safely simulate the gravitational, centrifugal and other forces associated with extreme sports.

You see, while extreme sports can be be one of the most powerful ways of inducing an altered state of consciousness, a flow or transcendent or peak experience, they can also be, by their very nature, very dangerous. Take for example, wing suit gliding through mountain caverns and caves.

This is a sport wherein one straps on a suit that creates more bodily surface areas by stretching fabric between the legs and under the arms, essentially creating winglike structures that allow one to glide like a bird after launching from a high altitude, in this case swooping through the narrow, rock wall crevices of mountainous caverns and caves.

You can probably already imagine the potential problem. It is far too easy to make a navigational error that sends the extreme sports enthusiast smack into one of those rock walls.

For me, smashing into a rock wall at a high rate of speed followed by falling to my death on the rocky ground hundreds to thousands of feet below, would just ruin any peak experience I might just have had.

So the Flow Genome Project and Google provide machines that allow folks to experience the state of mind induced by this and other extreme sports but to do so safely.

Why are Google and other companies investing in how to help their employees experience these altered states of consciousness more deeply and more often?

Why are the Navy Seals and other areas of the military hacking transcendence?

Because it turns out the advantages they can convey upon individuals are also beneficial to the workplace and in combat situations.

These altered states have been shown to increase creativity in the workplace even after employees have returned to a more normal state of consciousness.

The sense of selflessness, timelessness, effortlessness and richness that occurs while in a state of flow, like I mentioned with our artist earlier, can also create a sense of cohesiveness and cooperation in the work place, increase job satisfaction, enhance productivity and deepen commitment.

Google employees have reported that after undergoing training at the Flow Dojo center, they found themselves more often slipping into a flow state at work and at home without even trying.

Now I should mention that Cotler and Wheal, in their book, “Stealing Fire” and elsewhere, describe certain types of excessive sex, drugs and extreme breath holding that can also induce an experience of transcendence.

To my knowledge, Google hasn’t been training their employees in these areas, and I should note that I am in no way recommending excessive sex, drugs, extreme breath holding or any combination thereof as a means of obtaining transcendence.

And no, I don’t know how “excessive” is defined in this context.

Researchers also warn that there are also potential dangers in all of this knowledge we are gathering about what happens in our brains and bodies when we experience a flow state.

For example, advertisers could insert in their ads visual, sound and other cues that tend to induce these brain wave patterns, to manipulate us into associating I their product with the heightened sense of wellbeing that often results.

Extreme sports and some of the drugs that can lead to experiencing flow, can also be highly addictive.

It is possible that such altered states of consciousness can themselves become addictive as people learn to more easily enter into them. Their is some early evidence of this.

The thing is, we can’t function if we live in these states of transcendent experience all of the time. The idea is that we carry out of them values and understandings that enhance our day to day functioning and state of mind. Jack Cornfield, American Buddhist, author and teacher writes about this in his book, “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.“

As a minister, I worry that these scientists, the military and Google learning more and more about how to hack transcendence are going to put me right out of my job.

In fact, I was going to call this sermon, “Google is Really Pissing Me Off,” but I wasn’t sure if I could say that in the sanctuary.

Oops. Actually I think that these things we are learning from science can help inform how we do church and can supplement and enhance our personal spiritual practices.

Maybe I’ll have one of those extreme sports contraptions installed in the back parking lot.

And though we are learning much about what is going on neurologically and biologically when we have these experience, for me at least, this in no way robs them of a spiritual dimension nor does it remove a sense of awe, wonder and mystery.

We still have much to explore about why we have this ability to enter these altered states and why it seems beneficial to us to do so. This may be yet another area where religion and science have the potential to inform rather than be in conflict with one another. After all, it is entirely possible that religious rites and rituals may well have been among the earliest ways we learned to hack transcendence.

And I do think that especially for us as Unitarian Universalist, these peak or transcendent experiences are a core element of our faith going back at least to our transcendentalist forbearers.

We list them as the first of the six sources of our faith. Here in this church, we list first among our religious values that we read together earlier – “Transcendence – To connect with wonder and awe of the unity of life”.

So the rituals, music, sermons, readings, fellowship opportunities and other activities we engage in here at the church are intended at least in part to help lead us into this type of experiences.

I know for me, very often our music program moves me into an altered and wonderful state of being. Another recent example was when Meg talked about the “me too” movement and then offered a ritual folks could participate in afterwards.

It was moving and powerful and difficult and cathartic, and I suspect for many of us it forever altered our consciousness about the subject.

And I think that a key reason we seek such experiences when we have gathered as a religious community is that they can help move us toward and even into another of our religious values transformation, which we define as “To pursue the growth that changes our lives and heals our world”.

In describing transformation this way, we are basically talking about creating the Beloved Community.

Now the term, “Beloved Community” get used fairly frequently in religious circles. Today though, I am using it with specific meaning.

Part of that meaning is the community of love, compassion, empathy and care we work to create here at the church. We do so through our covenant – a set of promises we make to one another about how we will walk together in the ways of love.

And this is not a sappy, sugary-sweet view of beloved community. It acknowledges that creating such a religious community is hard work. We need our covenant precisely because we will fail each other and ourselves sometimes, and our covenant helps us get back to the ways of love and right relationship.

We do so because it is worth it. As one theologian put it, the divine is to be found in the messiness of making and maintaining loving religious community together.

Another part of the meaning of Beloved Community is our participation-in a much broader movement to create more loving and just relationships and institutions in our larger world. This is the Beloved Community which Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King envisioned.

Here is how one of King’s followers described Beloved Community, “an inclusive, interdependent space based on love, justice, compassion, responsibility, shared power and a deep and abiding respect for all people, places and things that radically transforms individuals and restructures institutions.”

So, beloved community calls us to dismantle racist systems and institutions for instance – indeed it calls us to work for justice against all forms of oppression as well as the betterment of all living creatures and our environment.

It requires transformation that changes our lives and heals our world.

“An inclusive space based upon love, justice, compassion, responsibility, shared power and a deep and abiding respect for all people, places and things… “

Wow. I think creating that might be yet another way we could hack transcendence, radically transforming ourselves and revealing our path toward restructuring our institutions to benefit all people and our world.

That is transcendence beckoning us toward transformation.

That is the power of Beloved Community.

And amen to that.

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

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
February 18 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

We have experiences in life that we remember long afterwards and that often were moments that changed us. Are there common characteristics that create such moments? If so, can we create more such experiences in our lives?

Call to Worship
In This Moment – by Chris Jimmerson

In this moment, we gather together, in this our beloved community.

In this moment, we gather to know the power and beauty of ritual, music and the blending together the loving presence we each have to offer.

In this moment, we gather to glimpse that which is greater than us but of which we are part.

In this moment, we gather to worship together.

Reading
Moments – by Chris Jimmerson

The instances that capture us, hold us in stillness, rootedness, timelessness:
A glimpse of an eagle soaring high above,
The gentle touch and soothing words of a loved one just when we need them,
Sunsets, rainbows, waterfalls, mountain vistas, peaceful shorelines,
The surprise visit, the surprise act of kindness, the unearned blessing, the offering of a blessing to another.
These and so many more are the powerful moments that are waiting for us to recognize them and immerse ourselves within them.
And beyond these, are the momentous moments we have yet to co-create together.

Sermon

Chris Hurn was trying to console his young son. The boy was distraught and could not go to sleep because he had accidentally left behind his best friend and constant companion, a giant, stuffed giraffe named Joshie when leaving a family vacation at the Ritz Carlton on Amelia Island Florida.

Like many a desperate parent before him, Mr. Hurn considered all of his options and decided on the best one available to him.

He lied.

“Joshie is fine,” he told his distraught little boy, “He’s just taking an extra-long vacation at the resort.”

His son seemed to buy it and eventually drifted off to sleep.

Later that night, Hurn spoke over the phone with an employee at the Ritz Carlton and to his great relief learned that Joshie the Giraffe had been found. Hurn fessed up to the white lie he had told his son and asked if the folks at the Ritz Carlton could do him a favor and send a picture of Joshie vacationing at the hotel when they returned him.

The next day, Joshie returned home resting comfortably on a plush Ritz Carlton towel in his overnight delivery package surrounded by a Ritz Carlton frisbee and nurf football, along with a binder full of pictures.

Joshie the Giraffe lounging by the hotel pool.

Joshie driving a golf cart.

Another picture was of Joshie hanging out with the hotel parrot, and yet another featured Joshie in the spa, complete with cucumber slices over his eyes. There was even one of Joshie monitoring the security cameras in the hotel’s control room.

Needless to say Chris Hurn and his wife were thrilled and their young son was ecstatic.

Employees at the Ritz Carleton had created a wonderful experience for the Hurns and most likely for themselves also in the process.

Now, you might think our story would end here, but no, there is a part two.

A couple of years later, Joshie the Giraffe had gone missing once again, after attending a soccer tournament with the family. Once again, the Hurn’s son was distraught over the loss and having trouble going to sleep at night.

During this time the family happened have planned another vacation at the same Ritz Carlton.

One morning they mentioned how wonderfully the hotel had treated them when Joshie the Giraffee had been left behind and were surprised to learn that every employee at the hotel seemed to know the story of Joshie. The hotel employees were saddened to learn that Joshie had recently disappeared again.

Later that afternoon someone knocked on the door of their room and handed the Hurn’s son a bag with his name on it. The bag contained another stuffed giraffe with a small note attached introducing him as “Jeffie,” a long-lost cousin of Joshie’s. The note said that Joshie had gone off on a worldwide adventure, and Jeffie would be honored to be the Hurn’s son’s new companion. It also said that Jeffie liked warm hugs.

Once again, the staff at the hotel had created an amazing moment for the Hurn family.

The Hurn’s story is a really fun example of what Chip and Dan Heath call defining or powerful moments in their book, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact.

We all have such powerful moments in our lives – meaningful experiences that stand out in our memories and that sometimes can change the direction of our lives.

What I love about their use of the Hurn’s story as one example of a powerful moment is that it demonstrates that such moments don’t necessarily have to occur during one of life’s major events or involve some spiritual/religious transcendent experience, though these of course are also often defining moments.

They can also be smaller moments, like when the employees of that hotel made extra efforts to create two wonderful experiences for the Hurn family.

Here is another example of such a moment.

Several years ago, my spouse Wayne and I were vacationing in Switzerland. We had rented a car and decided to make a drive over a mountain pass in the Swiss Alps. We had reached almost as high as the road went, when we entered one last small valley before the mountain rose sharply to its peak. There was a small village in the valley. The houses and buildings looked exactly as one might imagine for Switzerland Ñ wooded exterior walls with plant boxes full of greenery and flowers hanging below each window.

There was a large heard of cattle in the village, and the cows were unfenced, roaming freely around the little town. Each cow was wearing a large bell.

And suddenly, it began to snow.

The snow settled in like a fog, limiting how far we could see, wrapping us tightly into the village. It began covering everything around us in a stunningly beautiful crystalline white blanket.

I pulled our car over to the side of the road.

We could still see light glowing from some of the windows of the houses, when through the quiet of the snowfall, the cows began shaking their heads and ringing their bells. We opened our car windows slightly to hear them better, and sat, enshrouded by the little Swiss village at the top of the mountain, listening to the bells ringing and watching the snow fall.

It was like suddenly finding ourselves in the front cover of a Hallmark card.

That’s the thing about our powerful moments. Sometimes they can seem absolutely magical!

Of course, being good, reason and science based Unitarians, we know that there is not really any magic involved.

Although, looking back on that experience, my Universalist side really wants to believe that there might have been at least a little magic going on.

Don’t tell anyone.

We actually had another much less positive moment when we realized we had to drive down the other side of the mountain in what had become quiet a snowstorm. Wayne’s oh so helpful comment was, “If you kill us by driving off the side of this mountain, I am going to be very mad at you.”

Now, let me tie this back to the Heath’s research, in which they found that powerful moments are created from one or more of the following elements:

Elevation: “Defining moments rise above the everyday. They provoke not just transient happiness, like laughing at a friend’s joke, but memorable delight”. For example:

Opening the overnight package to find not only Joshie the Giraffe but extra gifts and a photo book full of Joshie enjoying all the pleasures of a resort hotel;

The mesmerizing sensory experience of bells ringing amidst an entrancing snow fall in a beautiful village nestled in a valley near the top of a mountain.

Insight: “Defining moments can rewire our understanding of ourselves or the world”.

The Hurn’s faith in the potential goodness of other people was no doubt enhanced by their experience with the employees of that Ritz Carlton, and I’ll bet they instantly developed a brand loyalty too!

Experiences like the one Wayne and I shared in that snowfall remind us that there is great beauty to be found in our world, and it surprises us sometimes if we take care to fully notice it.

Connection: “Defining moments are social: weddings, graduations, baptisms, vacations, work triumphs, bar and bar mitzvahs, speeches, sporting events”. In addition to these life passages and large group events, smaller moments that we share with others and that more deeply connect us can be quite powerful also.

The Hurn’s suddenly felt connected to a group of hotel employees they did not even know, as well as a strengthening of their own family bonds.

When Wayne and I experienced such beauty high up in that mountain valley it deepened and enriched our connection with each other.

Pride: “Powerful moments capture us at our best – moments of achievement, moments of courage”.

It is easy to imagine the pride the employees of that hotel must have felt because of going the extra mile to make a distraught young boy happy again.

I drove all the way down the side of that mountain without once killing us by driving off the edge of it.

The striking image on the cover of your order of service is of Leshia Evans, a 35 year old nurse and mother of a five year old child, who courageously stood her ground on behalf of her and other people’s right to peacefully protest police brutality against African Americans. Even when confronted with being arrested by two Baton Rouge police officers clad in paramilitary gear, she remained calm and peaceful, and this image of her became iconic of the peaceful movement in which she was participating – a powerful moment for us all.

Leshia Evan’s story brings up another aspect of our defining, memorable moments. Though we have been concentrating on positive powerful moments, it is important to acknowledge that sometimes our defining moments can be those we experience as negative or even painful at the time.

Leshia Evans must have experienced great fear even as she exhibited such pride and courage.

The Heath’s share the story of Lea Chadwell, who despite her love for the animals she helped care for as a veterinary technician, began day dreaming about opening her own baking company.

She found great joy in baking delicious dessert items for others, and eventually, she was able to open her own baking store, which she named, “A Pound of Butter”.

At first she was thrilled, but the store did not make enough for her to leave her veterinary job, so she worked constantly between the two. Additionally, she found that she did not like the organizational and financial management aspects of running a business.

The fun of baking for others was turning into stress and dismay. One day, she realized that in a rush to deliver a wedding cake to a customer, she had left the front door of her empty baking store wide open. In a lightening bolt instant, she had an insight. “I’m making self crazy, and I am not enjoying this”, she thought to herself.

Lea Chadwell closed her store and went back to doing only the job she really loved, caring for animals. Eventually, she re-found her joy in baking for loved ones also.

Sometimes, though admittedly not always, even our negative powerful moments can provide us with insights that may eventually change our lives for the better.

Elevation. Insight. Connection. Pride.

These are the characteristics that comprise our powerful moments, sometimes singularly – more often two or more of them combined together.

The Heaths go into much more detail and provide much more nuance about these in the book than I can cover today, so I’ll close with a few of the larger take aways.

Knowing these elements of our defining moments can help us be more alert for them when they come our way – to slow down and let ourselves experience them, like Wayne and I did during the snowfall.

Now let me admit that I didn’t know these elements at that time, so my pulling over to the side of the road was the likely the fortunate happenstance of not being able to see very far ahead because of the snow.

In fact, Wayne would probably tell you that I can have a bit of a manic personality style and am normally more likely to be like, “Of yeah, wow, that’s very beautiful, now let’s go” and then slam my foot down on the accelerator.

Maybe now that I know these elements, he’ll get to enjoy more beautiful scenery inspired powerful moments, even when I am the one driving.

The music, rituals, sermons, readings, candle lighting, singing together and the many other activities we engage in here at church are intended to engage these elements with the hope of creating powerful experiences that are their best may even be transcendent.

You see, knowing these elements, we do not have to wait for defining moments to randomly come our way, we can create them.

And even in our daily lives away from this, our beloved religious community, you can create them for yourself and those you love.

Like the employees of that Ritz Carlton, you may even find opportunities to create them for people you do not know very well or at all.

And the cool thing is, very often while trying to create a powerful moment for others, we end up experiencing one ourselves as we do so.

Providing extra kindness to elevate a moment or decorating your office at work during a holiday to provide a surprise elevated sensory experience for your fellow staffers.

Searching for insight and listening deeply to others to help them find it.

Opening ourselves up, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and share our stories to create greater connection. Recognizing and slowing down to experience shared moments with others that have the potential to be powerful ones.

Complementing and rewarding the admirable traits and the successes of others to arouse their sense of self pride. Doing the same for yourself, which sometimes can be even harder.

These are just a few examples of how we might engage these elements to create such moments.

Finally, the Heath’s discovered that powerful moments are always active – we gotta do when the spirit says do.

• The hotel employees deciding to do something special for a young boy by staging and taking photos of Joshie the Giraffe.
• Pulling over to the side of the road so that the power of a moment can fully wash over us.
• Standing with courage and pride against a highly armed and highly agitated police force.
• Having the insight and courage to shut down a business that was once but is no longer a dream.

Our powerful moments involve doing. They involve staying alert for the moment. The old truism is still true – We must seize these moments.

Some interesting research found that these powerful moments alter our sense of time. We perceive them as lasting much longer than they actually do and weight how we rate the whole of our experience much more heavily toward them. At their most powerful, we experience them as timeless.

This is one reason that time can seem to go by more quickly as we age. Many of our powerful moments brought on by first experiences are front-loaded into our earlier years – making our first best friend, beginning school, graduating the various levels of schooling, our first love, marriage, having children for example.

We can slow down our sense of time throughout our lives by being alert for and even actively creating defining moments.

Elevation. Insight. Connection. Pride.

These are our tools for creating moments that will allow us to experience a timeless life within the one precious, finite life that we have been given.

So, seize the moments my beloveds, seize the moments.

Amen.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 14, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Despite his life being taken from him early, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. left behind a legacy of human/civil rights advances and a strong call toward justice. What will the legacy of this generation of Unitarian Universalists be?

Reading
– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

Sermon

“I am sure that most of you have read that arresting little story from the pen of Washington Irving entitled “Rip Van Winkle.”

The one thing that we usually remember about the story is that Rip Van Winkle slept twenty years.

But there is another point in that little story that is almost completely overlooked. It was the sign in the end, from which Rip went up in the mountain for his long sleep.

When Rip Van Winkle went up into the mountain, the sign had a picture of King George the Third of England.

When he came down twenty years later, the sign had a picture of George Washington, the first president of the United States.

When Rip Van Winkle looked up at the picture of George Washington – and looking at the picture he was amazed – he was completely lost. He knew not who he was.

And this reveals to us that the most striking thing about the story of Rip Van Winkle is not merely that Rip slept twenty years, but that he slept through a revolution. While he was peacefully snoring up in the mountain, a revolution was taking place that at points would change the course of history – and Rip knew nothing about it. He was asleep.

Yes, he slept through a revolution.

And one of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands.

They end up sleeping through a revolution.”

Dr. King’s legacy is that he led a revolution in civil and human rights. Though incomplete, the gains he was able to bring about by waking people up have made real differences in real people’s lives every since.

And though as is clear from current events in our news, we still have far, far to go Ð though there have been efforts every since to curtail and find ways around the civil rights gains he and his movement brought about, still, I believe he led a powerful and peaceful revolution.

And I believe that if our democratic laws and institutions hold up against the assault they are currently under, we may be living in a time when the potential for another powerful and peaceful revolution is brewing.

So we, each of us, must decide what our legacy may be.

Will we stay awake for this revolution?

All around us, it seems that a sleeping giant is awakening. Disturbed and dismayed by the racist, classist, misogynistic, bigoted behavior and policy making of so many of our political and other leaders, oppressed peoples and their allies are engaging at a level not seen since perhaps the days of Dr. King’s movement.

Now, I want to pause here to say that I know that we likely have folks here today with a wide spectrum of political points of view. We likely have folks who would prefer not to hear about politics and public policy from the pulpit, and I can understand that. I can understand the desire for spiritual nourishment during worship and I return to the subject later.

And yet, I also feel compelled to talk about what is happening in our society at large on this Sunday before Martin Luther King Day because our mission that we say together every Sunday states that we gather in community to nourish souls, transform lives and do justice.

Our Unitarian Universalist principles say that we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We affirm and promote justice, equity and compassion in human relations; The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large; The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all; Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

So, for me, I cannot, as a Unitarian Universalist minister, feel that I am living out that mission and fulfilling our principles, let alone providing religious leadership, and yet ignore racist statements like the also ugly and vulgar one Mr. Trump made just three days ago, much less the policy making being attempted both administratively and through legislation that has the real potential to harm people.

For me, this is a spiritual matter.

There is a revolution brewing that sides with love, that recognizes we are “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny”, as Dr. King said.

There is a revolution brewing that is congruent with our religious values, and I can’t sleep through it without damaging my spirit, my very soul.

All around us Indivisible chapters and many, many other groups, are making phone calls, organizing town hall meetings and conducting visits to government officials offices to resist harmful legislation.

All around us, disparate human rights movements are joining forces like never before to build more power for demanding justice.

All around us, committed folks are identifying ways to counter the forces of hatred and tribalism with love and communalism.

The “me too” movement that Meg will be talking about next Sunday resulted in millions of women and also many men sharing their stories of sexual harassment and assault, powerfully demonstrating just how large this problem is.

In response, 300 prominent women in the entertainment industry formed the “Time’s Up” movement to combat sexual assault and harassment through a legal defense fund set up especially to help less privileged persons, advancing legislation to combat harassment and through several other initiatives. The women wearing black you may have noticed at the Golden Globe Awards, did so at the request of the Time’s Up leadership to raise awareness about these issues.

In special elections in Virginia, Alabama and elsewhere, people of color, especially African Americans, younger people, and women, particularly single women, voted in huge numbers for candidates that ran against the forces of oppression.

In Virginia, such candidates swept all of the statewide offices.

Also in Virginia, an openly transgendered female defeated an anti-LGBTQ incumbent to become the first openly transgendered person to be elected to a state legislature in the United States.

Virginians also elected the first two Latina women to their state house, as well the first Asian American woman and the first openly lesbian woman.

In Alabama, Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore, a vocal anti-LGBTQ bigot, who had also made racist statements and stood accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with several women, some of whom had been under-aged at the time. <> Doug Jones is a former federal prosecutor who put away the Ku Klux Klan perpetrators of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four African American girls.

He also has a son who is openly gay and who attended his swearing in to the U.S. Senate by none other than Mike Pence.

I’ll admit that I enjoyed watching that.

Immensely.

Folks, these are the seeds of a powerful, peaceful revolution, if our democratic institutions stand. I fear that those who are trying to undermine those institutions might well heed the words of John F. Kennedy – “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible”, he said, “will make violent revolution inevitable.”

So, I believe the possibility for that powerful and peaceful revolution is upon us, and that our religious principles, values and mission are calling us to stay awakened for it.

But how do we do that? Especially when it can seem like there is this constant barrage of anger and conflict coming at us and so many issues to address that it can become so tiring and seem so overwhelming. How do we avoid freezing up, retreating to the comforts of our homes and families and, like Rip Van Winkle, sleeping through the revolution?

Well, let me be the first to admit that I don’t have all of the answers. I admit that I feel like hiding in my living room with Wayne, my now three dogs and a glass of chardonnay myself sometimes.

But I think it can sometimes help with the sense of being overwhelmed, the constant barrage blaring from our televisions, to get engaged in some way. Taking some sort of active role can help restore a sense of at least some personal agency when our world starts feeling so tumultuous.

I know many of you are already actively working for justice and to improve our communities and our world in so many terrific ways, and I am so thankful to you for all that you do. I hope that it brings you a sense of fulfillment and spiritual nourishment.

And if you are not as engaged as you might like, know that you do not have to become an out-front, outspoken social justice or political activist to be a part of revolutionizing our society for the better.

There are great organizations with which to volunteer. You can help register people to vote. You can make a difference just by showing up at events like the Martin Luther King Day Celebration tomorrow or the Women’s March next Saturday.

There are all kinds of ways to get involved with some our social action and community support activities here at the church. Just talk with the nice folks at the social action table after a service sometime to find out more.

You can also support or get involved with any number of our national Unitarian Universalist groups, such as “Love Resists”, which works to resist criminalization of people of color, migrant, Muslim, LGBTQ and other targeted communities. This is just one example of the many opportunities you can find out about by going to www.uua.org on the web.

OK, public service announcement over now.

Once we each have found our way to get engaged, I think the other way we stay awake is to take care of ourselves spiritually, emotionally and physically.

Some of you have heard me say some of this before, but it bears repeating in times like these.

Building a revolution, a true legacy of change for the better, is long-term and can be challenging sometimes, and it is easy to get burnt out or even collapse into cynicism or despair.

That makes it even more important if you have a spiritual practice that nourishes and sustains you to create the time to engage in it on a regular basis and to think about picking one up if you do not currently have a spiritual practice.

Meditating, praying, chanting, singing, knitting, simply sitting in quiet contemplation, being in nature, it doesn’t have to be anything complicated or even overtly religious as long as it soothes your soul.

Based on recent personal experience, I recommend getting a new puppy.

Puppy breath as a spiritual practice is the greatest.

Identify where you experience beauty and spend some time there whether it is by the ocean, a creek, a river a lake, the mountains or in an arts museum. Make time for beauty in your life.

And let yourself experience joy. Whether it comes from playing with your kids or your kitties or both, making music or art or whatever brings you joy, we need the experience of joy in our lives to sustain and enliven our spirits.

Every Sunday, we say that we come from a long tradition of seeing a spark of the divine in every person.

I like to think of that as a light that is unique to each of us. I encourage you to tend to that light in these ways so that you can shine it out most brightly to better our world in the way that only you can.

Combined together, our unique lights and those of so many others working for justice and a more sustainable world can radiate out into that world and fuel a powerful and peaceful revolution.

We are witnessing forces of racism and bigotry emboldened in our society right now. Almost as terribly, we are also witnessing leaders from across the political spectrum who are failing to speak out forcefully against this and are thereby complicit in it.

However, in response, we are also witnessing a potential revolution based in compassion, community and solidarity.

My beloveds, our faith is calling us not to sleep through that revolution.

Let our legacy be that we awakened and became the revolution.

May each of our sparks of the divine unite and shine brightly together with many, many others to light our way.

Amen.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
November 5, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

We tend to think of ministers as answering a calling, but all of us are called in some way to make a difference in our world. How will we live out our mission next?

Call to worship

First UU Church of Austin is an intentionally hospitable community where:

• All people are treated with respect and dignity
• All people of goodwill are welcomed
• People are supported in times of joy and need
• People find connection with one another in fellowship
• We are fully engaged and generous with time, treasure and talent
• We invite people of goodwill to find a spiritual home with us
• We engage as UUs in public life

First UU Church of Austin nourishes souls and transforms lives by:

• Engaging and supporting one another in spiritual practice and growth
• Providing worship, programs and activities that awaken meaning and transcendence
• Providing a caring, supportive and safe place to rekindle the spirit

First UU Church of Austin witnesses to justice in our personal lives and beyond, by:

• Practicing liberal religious values in the public arena
• Empowering all people to access the richness of life
• Providing leadership to the greater UUA community to expand the reach of our movement
• Partnering with the interfaith community to live our shared values

Reading

-Dawna Markova

“I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which came to me as a seed goes to the next as a blossom and that which came to me as a blossom, goes on as fruit.”

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

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 17 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
October 1, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Often we must make decisions and face challenges with incomplete information and limited options. Sometimes if we move into these situations with an open mind and heart, doing so can be transformative.

This past Friday morning, as I sat down to start writing this sermon, which I had titled, “leap of faith”, I glanced at the calendar on my computer and realized that it was exactly three years from the day I began full-time ministry here at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin.

So, it occurred to me that I probably ought to start by thanking our senior minister, Meg Barnhouse, for having taken a leap of faith on a fresh out of seminary new minister, who had only just received ministerial fellowship from our Unitarian Universalist Association three days prior to that first day of full- time ministry here at the church.

Thank you all for supporting Meg’s leap of faith.

The phrase “leap of faith” is thought to have derived from the Danish Philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, who actually used the term, “leap to faith”, which he thought was necessary in order to accept the contradictions and paradoxes present within the Christian belief system.

In my life, I eventually came to agree with him about those contradictions in Christian beliefs, so Ileapt to a different faith and became a Post-Christian Unitarian Universalist.

Anyway, I wanted to explore the ways in which we take leaps of faith and even what we mean by the phrase these days, with or without the religious connotation. I was curious about how much power the phrase might even still hold in our more secular era.

So, I conducted my own, rigorous, scientific study.
I put a post on Facebook asking folks to tell me about a time they had taken a leap of faith.

The post garnered 42 responses.

I told my trainer at the gym about this because he often likes to get into philosophical discussions with me as he puts me through exercises no one my age has any business attempting.

He said, “Wow! I didn’t think you had that many friends.”

Apparently, he’s a comedian too.

Anyway, some common themes emerged. Lots of folks had made a leap of faith to move somewhere to which they had always been strongly drawn – a place where they felt a peace and at home – often at great expense and often involving the sacrifice of lucrative careers.

Similarly, many people expressed having given up a career, often in mid-life or later, and making a leap of faith to pursue a strong sense of calling:

– Some, like me, had felt a calling to ministry and found themselves upending their lives to enroll in seminary.

– Many other people had made a leap of faith to switch careers and answer a calling to one of the other helping professions such as psychological counseling, social work and medicine.

– Other folks felt called to pursue a wide variety of creative arts fields, from writing to music to different types of design work to performance arts and many others.

People also talked about making all kinds of leaps of faith around parenting.

Another common theme people expressed was taking a leap of faith to allow themselves to love and be loved, as well as to leave a long-term relationship that was no longer working.

Finally, several Unitarian Universalists wrote of their struggles to allow themselves to even experience faith again after finding Unitarian Universalism, because they had been wounded by religion in their past.

Several themes around what taking a leap of faith is and is not and under what circumstances we most often take such a leap also emerged from those posts, as well as in several journal articles I read on the subject.

We most often take a leap of faith out of a love for something, a desire for something greater and more fulfilling, not out of fear. In fact, fear-based decision making most often keeps us stuck where we are or causes us to regress.

Leaps of faith are not acting rashly or foolheartedly. They occur when we feel a strong pull toward something, we feel a need for change in our lives, we face some challenge, and we must make decisions about what to do with incomplete information and often with limited options.

We choose to move forward, we make the leap as best we can in the face of great uncertainty.

And, really, when in life are we ever not facing great uncertainty.

And in fact, some folks have expressed that their leaps did not even really feel like much of a choice at all. I remember reading the story of one woman who eventually established a successful consultancy business after feeling unfulfilled and miserable for many years in a corporate job. She wrote of her experience, “It felt less like a leap and more like being pushed off the edge of the cliff.”

And we have to know that sometimes we do fall off the cliff. Sometimes we make a leap of faith, and we fail, or it does not work out, at least not the way we had planned. Sometimes, like the Wiley Coyote in those Road Runner cartoons, we go flying off the edge of the cliff only to hang impossibly in the air for a moment and then fall straight to the ground below with a loud “splat”.

The thing is, almost always, like the Wiley Coyote, we somehow miraculously survive the fall. And unlike the coyote, sometimes good things do eventually come out of it – we learn from it – we are transformed even if recovering from the fall is painful.

Back in the early 2000s, my spouse, Wayne, and I had begun to realize that we wanted to make some changes in our lives. We were living in Houston at the time. For a variety of reasons, we wanted to get out of Houston and felt that Austin would be a better fit for us.

Likewise, though we both had good positions doing work we liked at a non-profit healthcare clinic, for me at least, there was still a feeling of something missing, something not quite completely fulfilling about what I was doing.

So, I began applying for positions in Austin.
In 2004, when I was offered a position as the executive director of a non-profit organization providing immigration legal services and advocacy on behalf of immigrant rights, we made a leap of faith.

Wayne is a physician, we thought. He can get work anywhere, we thought.

We leased an apartment here in Austin, and I moved over to start the new position while Wayne remained in Houston for a while to sell the house and search for primary care positions here in Austin.

We sold the house, and Wayne thought he had found a position.

Then, it fell through, and he was not able to find another one.

“Splat”.

Apparently, at that time, primary care physicians across the country were trying to move to Austin, and the city’s healthcare infrastructure had not kept up with its population growth, so such positions were almost never coming open.

So Wayne had to go back to work for the clinic in Houston. For a year, we lived in separate cities, one of us traveling to be with the other one on weekends when we could.

And it was hard. It did feel as if we had fallen off of a cliff sometimes.

And yet we learned from it and were eventually transformed by it.

We learned that our love for one another, our relationship, was strong enough to survive and overcome the geographic distance that had been placed between us.
We learned that there really is some truth to that old adage that absence can make the heart grow fonder, but what they don’t tell us is that we have to work at it, even from across the distance, to help that love grow even stronger.

We learned that my domestic skills and talents were extremely lacking. I found out you can’t microwave an egg.

I’ve gotten better since then, though Wayne might feel differently as to what degree.

Eventually, Wayne got a great position with a clinic here in Austin, where one of the other doctors happened to be a member of this place called First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin.

He told Wayne all about it, and we decided to visit the church. So began a series of other leaps of faith that have been transformative in our lives and have led to me standing in this pulpit this morning telling you this story.

One of the things that so strongly drew me to Unitarian Universalism was that it inherently involves taking a leap of faith – not a leap to faith so that we can accept holding contradictory beliefs simultaneously like Kierkegaard said was necessary – but rather an acceptance that none of us has all the answers.

That revelation is continuously unfolding.
That there are questions more profound than answers.
That undiscovered vistas still lie before us.

That sometimes we experience transcendence by allowing the great mystery to wash over us.

We make leaps of faith within this religion all the time.

Lifelong UUs and/or UUs who are people of color, who stay with our faith even when it does not always live up to its own aspirations.

People who were previously non-religious who discover in Unitarian Universalism a faith that does not require holding beliefs in the supernatural.

Folks from various different faith backgrounds who often felt wounded by their prior religion, and find in Unitarian Universalism a faith where they can leap back in again.

And every Sunday, we come together as people from these wide ranging backgrounds and more. Every Sunday, we come together as a people with a multiplicity of theologies or world views.

Earlier, I called myself a “post-christian UU”. I made that distinction to acknowledge that we do have many UUs who view their faith through a Christian lens.

And among us every Sunday morning we have atheists, and agnostics, and possibilians, and Buddhists, and folks who draw from earth centered traditions and many, many other faith views. We have a number of us who hold a faith we have constructed for ourselves by drawing from many of the world’s wisdom sources.

Yet, despite these differing views, we come together to experience, no matter what each of us may envision it to be – humanity, the web of all existence, God, the music of the universe unfolding – no matter what we call it, we come together to experience something we recognize as much larger than ourselves, yet of which we are not just a part, but an integral part.

And that leap of faith we make together during worship, at its best, creates in us a sense of accountability to each other and our world – a faith that the way in which we lives our lives matters.

It takes a big leap of faith for us to come together across such a wide range of spiritualities, and yet every Sunday, we do exactly that.

Perhaps we need each other to take our leaps of faith. Perhaps, though we must sometimes go alone into the wilderness for a while, in the end our faith exists only in relationship with others.

In fact, sometimes, we make a group leap of faith. Over the years, I have witnessed the folks in this church make some pretty big and brave leaps of faith together.

Here are just a few of recent examples. Offering immigration sanctuary first to Sulma Franco and now Alirio Galvez. We were taking a leap of faith in both instances because it is not possible to know what the outcome may be when providing sanctuary.

And with Sulma, we were having to kind of build the bicycle while riding it because we had never done this before. And what a leap of faith Sulma took and Alirio is taking with us.

This church also had a capital campaign and is about to begin renovations and expansions. We made a leap of faith that like in that old movie, Field of Dreams, “If we build it, they will come.”

And my friends, they will come. Already, they are coming to our doors. We are only swinging those doors wide open and setting up a larger welcoming table for folks who are not really “they” but “us”.

Author and speaker Martha Beck said on Oprah, so it must be true, that our leaps of faith are always love based decisions, never fear based. These then are just a few of the love based decisions this church has made together.

We make our leaps of faith – we take risks in the face of uncertainty – because we are lured by love and life to do so. We take our leaps of faith because we don’t get to feel fully alive, most creatively alive unless we take these leaps.

We only get love if we leap.

We only experience the fullness of our own creative capacity if we leap. Our souls only take flight if we take a leap of faith first.

So, now you can go out into the world after our service today and tell people that one of the ministers at church told you to go take a flying leap.

Please, just be sure and also tell them that he said that because he wishes you the love and creative life fulfillment he gets to experience every day serving as a minister at this church.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
September 3, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

As First UU Church of Austin lives into our values and mission, what is possible? What differences will we make in whose lives? How big can we dream, and what will it take us to get there?

Call to Worship

By Leslie Takahashi

To worship means to consider that which has worth – today we consider, with gratitude, the many gifts of this community –

The opportunity to be affirmed in who we are and to offer that affirmation to others The chance to stand up together to help remake the world in the ideal of justice

And the aspiration to consider all life as precious for if all of it is made of stardust, how can it not be wondrous?

So this morning let’s welcome all of these gifts with gratitude – for they have been paid for with many currencies

The blood of the martyrs who died so that we can be free in our religion

The sweat of those who persisted in justice’s name against hostility and adversity The tears of those who struggled to build better lives for those in this life

The questions of our children as they understand the world anew and offer their understanding to us as a fresh lens

The laughter and joy of those giddy with the embrace of community

The dollars and cents of those who gave what they could – and then stretched a little more.

The infinite small acts of service that make the parts greater than the whole, done by those who knew themselves in sympathy with our purposes.

So today we consider with gratitude and humility what it means to pay forward what has been paid forward for us.

And now, with all of this, let us enter into worship with gladness in our hearts.

Reading

Gifts

For those who came before, who gave to us this faith that sustained us this, our beloved religious community.

We offer our gratitude and those gifts that are significant and meaningful to us.

For those who will come after us, our literal and spiritual children and grandchildren, who will carry forward our beloved Unitarian Universalism and our beloved church.

We offer our gratitude and those gifts that are significant and meaningful to us.

For the gifts of live and love.

We offer our gratitude and those gifts that are significant and meaningful to us.

For our common purpose, for the opportunity to gather as a community, for the blessings of nourishing souls and transforming lives both inside these church walls and beyond them, for the call to do justice.

We offer our gratitude and those gifts that are significant and meaningful to us.

For ourselves, we who form and carry forward our faith and our beloved community.

We offer our gratitude and those gifts that are significant and meaningful to us.

Sermon

“We gather in community to nourish souls, transform lives and do justice.”

What an inspiring mission. What a grand purpose. What a sacred reason to be.

And it arose out of set of values that this religious community has discerned are at our very core:

“Transcendence. Community. Courage. Compassion. Transformation”.

What glorious aspirations we share.

This is the time of year where we are engaged in our stewardship campaign to ask you for your financial pledges that will make living out those values and that mission possible next year. One of your stewardship ministry co-chairs really wanted me to call this the “Sermon on the Amount”. I declined.

I declined because I want to talk with you about more than just the amount. I want to reflect upon the vision that those shared values call us toward – the dream that we step into every Sunday, when we say together that mission, our sacred reason to be. – But I do also want to acknowledge that we sometime shy away from talking about money, especially here in church and especially as a part of worship.

And yet, a spiritual practice of generosity and a commitment toward responsible stewardship of our church and religious community is a vital part of nourishing our own souls and transforming our own lives. We have inherited this church, our spiritual dream and vision, because of the generosity of our religious ancestors, and we have the opportunity to pass it on even more greatly realized to those who will follow us. And to me, there is something divine in that possibility.

Our church, and all Unitarian Universalist (or UU) churches, are organized in a manner that is referred to as “congregational polity”. Polity just means how we organize and govern ourselves. Our congregational polity goes all the way back to 1648 and a written set of promises, or a covenant, that a group of our predecessor churches made to one another, called the Cambridge Platform.

Briefly, congregational polity, as established by the Cambridge Platform, means that we are a group of associated churches that support and work with one another so that we can all more greatly live out our shared UU faith. Each church pays into a shared administrative body called the Unitarian Universalist Association or UUA. The UUA provides many forms of important administrative and educational support to our churches and our larger UU work in the world.

However, each of our UU churches are independent entities. We own our own property and govern ourselves. There is no centralized denominational hierarchy that can tell us what to believe or what to do – all thanks to the Cambridge Platform.

Maybe that is why my UU History professor in seminary had us sing out Boo-yah after any mention of the Cambridge Platform.

Oops, boo-yah.

Let’s do that together. The Cambridge Platform.

Boo-yah.

The Cambridge Platform. Boo-yah.

The Cambridge Platform.

Boo-yah.

Thank you for indulging my religious nerdiness. Now, another result of congregational polity is that there is no centralized denominational body that provides us with overall financial support. The lion’s share of the funding that allows this religious community to step into the dream together, live out our mission, our sacred purpose together, comes from the very members of this religious community. We have to fund ourselves, also thanks to the Cambridge Platform.

Boo-yah.

And that’s OK, because I know that this congregation is up to it.

We have … you have the spiritual generosity to step into that dream together.

I know this because I have watched you pledge to a capital campaign that will result in creating a welcoming table for more and more folks who will join us in living our sacred purpose together. Strengthened by their presence among us, I have no doubt we will step into the dream even more fully.

And I have experienced the spiritual generosity of this church very directly and very personally.

Several years ago now, not that long after my spouse Wayne and I joined this church and before I went to seminary, Wayne developed a disabling and potentially life-threatening condition called polymyositis.

Polymyositis is likely an inherited condition wherein the immune system attacks the body’s own muscles.

For Wayne, it caused a number of symptoms and problems including weakening his leg muscles to the point where it was difficult for him to walk.

Members of this church brought us food. They offered to take Wayne to his various medical appointments. One member came by and gave Wayne two beautiful walking canes that this church member had hand carved himself.

I can’t begin to tell you how much that all helped.

I was working as the executive director of an immigration legal services non-profit at the time, a job that required well over 40 hours per week. Trying to balance that with caring for Wayne’s needs and just being with him was extremely difficult, and the help that members of this church gave us made a real difference.

Plus, I was scared. I was greatly worried. My heart was hurting over seeing what the disease was doing to Wayne and the fear that it might take him from me.

Just knowing that this church was holding us in prayers and love helped us to make it through that time.

Now, I want you to know that Wayne is doing much better now.

The polymyositis is in remission, and he is even seeing a fitness trainer at a gym, doing exercises people half his age have no business doing.

And in my time with the church since then, and especially now as one of your ministers, I have witnessed this religious community do the same for so many others – helping people through battling cancer and other serious illnesses, holding family members and loved ones through the deaths of ones they loved, loving and supporting one another through any number of life’s challenges and sorrows, and also celebrating life’s joys together.

And that’s only some of the spiritual generosity of this religious community that occurs within these church walls. But you also take that generosity out into our community and our world in so many ways.

We have folks working for justice by engaging in antiracism activities, fighting for LGBTQ rights, the rights and dignity of the disabled, women’s rights, immigration justice and so much more. We have a group of real leaders in the Austin area on the environment and climate change.

This congregation offered sanctuary to Sulma Franco and helped her avoid deportation to her home country of Guatemala, where she would have faced persecution and most likely even death.

That’s the difference that gathering in community to nourish souls, transform live and do justice makes. It changes lives for the better.

Sometimes it even saves a life.

I believe it changes our own lives by helping us to be better people.

People living more fulfilling, ethical lives and who are moved to work for justice in our community and our world.

What an inspiring mission. What a grand purpose. What a sacred reason to be.

And the thing is, I could go on. I have only scratched the surface of all the many ways in which this congregation is demonstrating your spiritual generosity by living out that mission. In all, we have over 80 ministries and programs.

I want to change gears just slightly now though and talk about the resilience and spiritual generosity this religious community has demonstrated over the past several months, while our senior minister, Meg, has had to be out so that she could heal and recover from the serious infection she had developed.

First, I can’t begin to adequately voice for you how much the love and support so many of you expressed to Meg and Kiya has meant to them. You helped lift their spirits at a time when it would have been easy to fall into despair.

And all the while, you have kept that mission alive.

For instance, over these past few months, a dedicated group of church leaders have expanded our efforts toward antiracism, multiculturalism and dismantling the dominance of white norms, both in the church and by working with other groups out in our community. We can and must keep expanding this work; however, we have an everstrengthening base upon which to build.

During this time, so many of you have worked in so many ways as we battled the many harmful bills that came up in the Texas Legislature. We were not always able to stop some of them, but there were important victories. I was happy to see that on Wednesday of last week, a judge at least temporarily blocked one of the most harmful of those that did pass, Senate Bill 4, the so called “show me your papers” anti-immigrant, anti-sanctuary city law.

Over the past few months, you have kept this religious community growing in so many ways. A dedicated group of building committee volunteers did a new set of canvassing visits for our capital campaign to invite relatively new members to participate. Those newer members responded very generously, and many of them have now become canvassers themselves!

And speaking of new members, 46 great folks joined the church between January and July of this year. That is more than joined in all of 2016.

In general, Sunday attendance has also been up, as has attendance in our Faith Development classes for our children and our youth.

If you did not get to be at the service that our high school youth did in May, let me tell you it was profoundly moving. It was great evidence that our folks that work with our children and youth over in our faith development wing are doing amazing and holy work. Rumor even has it that a couple of our youth have begun considering going to UU seminary.

The greatest number of members from this church ever to attend our Unitarian Universalist annual General Assembly did so this past June. Under the leadership of our excellent denominational affairs chair, our participation in our larger faith is growing.

And, so many of you have worked in so many ways to continue and expand our social justice and interfaith efforts this year.

Under the leadership of it founding chair, we have formed and sustained a terrific new Women’s Alliance.

Then recently, this congregation has again offered sanctuary to an immigrant that faces potentially life-threatening consequences without it.

Over the past week, I have been heartened by the generosity shown across our country to offer support and aid to people affected by Hurricane Harvey. I have been especially touched by the responses of our local UU churches, and most especially you, the folks of this church.

Because once again terrific leadership has stepped up from among you. They are providing us ways to donate tangible items and/or to make a financial contribution to folks who have been affected by Harvey. You can also contribute to help our UU churches that were damaged by the storm. Please visit the social action table in the gallery after this service to find out more.

These are just a few of the ways you have kept our mission alive and the spiritual generosity of this religious community flowing over the past few months while Meg has had to be away.

I tell you all of this because that is not what so often happens when a well loved minister is unexpectedly absent for an extend period due to serious illness. What more often happens is that much of what I have just described grinds to a halt. Anxieties rise. Tempers flare. Attendance and new member growth fall.

And very often the poor soul who steps in as the acting senior minister under such circumstances is treated in way that, oh, let’s just say is quite the opposite of the compassion, support and generous spirit with which you all have treated me.

And although of course I would not have had it happen under these circumstances, the compassion and support you all have shown me, has allowed me to learn and grow as a minister. You have helped my soul thrive, and for that I am and always will be extraordinarily grateful.

The resilience, compassion, generosity of spirit and commitment to our mission and ministries this religious community had demonstrated during this time is nothing short of amazing. You are already stepping into the dream together.

So, our stewardship campaign is just the way we provide ourselves with the resources it will take to keep living that dream together next year.

Members of the church have already pledged $300,000 toward 2018, many of them raising their pledges by significant amounts compared to this year.

I know that not everyone has circumstances that will allow them to do that, so here is that sermon on the amount after all. In this church, we ask that our folks pledge an amount that is meaningful and significant to you within your means. We are hoping to increase our pledges by around 5% overall.

Oh, and we also ask that you please be nice to your canvasser.

They are wonderful group of church volunteers who we can never thank enough.

“Transcendence. Community. Courage. Compassion. Transformation”.

What a compelling set of values this religious community shares.

“We gather in community to nourish souls, transform lives and do justice.”

What a sacred reason to be.

May we keep the dream of this, our beloved religious community alive and growing by continuing to support ourselves as we have done going all the way back to the Cambridge Platform.

Boo-yah! And Amen.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
August 27, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

When we encounter life’s challenges and difficulties, the stories we construct about them can help us or hinder us from fully engaging in them and moving toward wholeness and healthiness. Drawing on the work of Glennon Doyle Melton and Brene Brown, we will look at all three acts they outline for our stories.

Call to Worship

No One is Outside the Circle of Love
By Susan Frederick-Gray, Erika A. Hewitt

We know that hurt moves through the world, perpetrated by action, inaction, and indifference. Our values call us to live in the reality of the heartbreak of our world, remembering that:

No one is outside the circle of love.

We who are Unitarian Universalist not only affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person; we also affirm the inherent wholeness of every being-despite apparent brokenness.

No one is outside the circle of love.

We know that things break, or break down: promises, friendship, sobriety, hope, communication. This breaking happens because our human hearts and our very institutions are frail and imperfect. We make mistakes. Life is messy.

No one is outside the circle of love.

With compassion as our guide, we seek the well-being of all people. We seek to dismantle systems of oppression that undermine our collective humanity. We believe that we’re here to guide one another toward Love.

No one is outside the circle of love.

No matter how fractured we are or once were, we can make whole people of ourselves. We are whole at our core, because of the great, unnameable, sometimes inconceivable Love in which we live.

No one is outside the circle of love.

Reading
“Statement of Conscience on Escalating Economic Inequality”
adopted by the UUA General Assembly

Challenging extreme inequality inequity locally and globally is a moral imperative. As a pragmatic faith we are committed to working to change economic and social systems with a goal of equitable outcomes of life, dignity, and wellbeing experienced by all. The escalation of income and wealth inequity undergirds many injustices that our faith movement is committed to addressing including: economic injustice, mass incarceration, migrant injustice, climate change, sexual and gender injustice, and attacks on voting rights….

…The growth of inequity does not happen by accident. It is a direct consequence of the decisions of those people who own and control the nation’s and world’s corporations and resources and their allies in government, who take for themselves the wealth created by the hands of the many and the bounty of our fragile planet….

…Unlimited funding of campaigns by wealthy individuals and corporations, lack of access to conventional financial institutions and predatory lending, and flawed tax policies increase inequity and insecurity….

…Our Unitarian Universalist faith calls us to respond to economic injustice and advocate for those among us being harmed by inequity…

…Words and deeds of prophetic people challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil such as inequality with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love….

…By speaking, acting, and spending in concert with one another and by centering, resourcing, and empowering communities who are most impacted by economic inequities, we can create better and more just economies. Together we can make a difference….

Sermon “A Story in Three Acts”

Act I: David Overton and Rev. Chris Jimmerson

David

In late March of this year, almost exactly three months before our annual Unitarian Universalist (or UU) General Assembly in New Orleans, a controversy broke out within our larger UU denomination.

The Unitarian Universalist Association (or UUA), the administrative body that serves our congregations in a number of important ways, hired a white, male minister to head up the Southern UU regional arm of the UUA. The minister who the UUA hired did not live in the south and did not plan to move to take the position.

A conversation began among UU people of color about how UUA hiring practices had seemed to favor white, male, ministers and how few people of color had been hired to serve in top management positions.

Very quickly, a Latin religious educator from the south revealed that she had been a finalist for the position. She had been told by the UUA director of Congregational Life that, though qualified for the position, they were looking for someone who was “a right fit for the team.” and were thus hiring someone else. People of color have often experienced the term “right fit” as code language that white people use to exclude non-whites from positions for which they are clearly qualified.

A number of charged exchanges broke out on social media and other communications. The UUA President at the time, Rev. Peter Morales, wrote a statement regarding the controversy, hoping to calm the situation. Instead, a number of UU people of color found his wording hurtful. The controversy became more inflamed.

A few days later, Rev. Morales resigned from serving as President of the UUA, citing his hope that doing so would allow healing to occur. By early April, the chief operating officer of the UUA and the director of congregational life also resigned. The minister who had been offered the position announced he would not accept it.

The Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association wrote a letter to the UUA board in response. His letter further inflamed matters and by early June, he too had resigned.

In May, our well-loved UUA moderator (the moderator presides at UUA board meetings and at our general assemblies) also resigned due to a recurrence of a previous cancer that had been in remission. On June 2, Jim died.

So, as our denomination approached its annual General Assembly in June, we found ourselves with no president, several other high-level resignations, no moderator, and a raging internal controversy.

Chris

I recently participated in a workshop with Glennon Doyle Melton and BrenŽ Brown. The workshop was about how when we encounter difficulties, hurt and or/failure in life, if we can identify the truth of our story – if we can avoid creating a false story to numb the pain – we often can transform ourselves. We can learn and change in ways that are healthier and more life fulfilling.

As David and I were talking about recent events within our denomination and at our UU General Assembly, it became obvious to us that the framework presented in the workshop provides a great way to understand recent events within Unitarian Universalism and the challenges and opportunities our denomination is facing. In the workshop, Melton and Brown describe how when experiencing great difficulty, to respond to it in ways that are healthy and potentially transformative, we must live out a story in three acts.

In our current UU story, what David just described is Act I. Our denomination began what Melton and Brown call a “Brutiful Adventure”. “Brutiful” refers to how life can be both brutal and beautiful and that we have to accept and experience both. We do not get one without the other. If we reject the brutal, we also reject the beautiful.

The brutiful adventure begins with an inciting incident that often reveals realities and truths we have been suppressing or denying. In the case of our denomination then, the inciting incident was the most recent UUA hiring decision and revelation that a qualified person of color had been among the final candidates that David told you about.

This incident let loose a strong undercurrent of feeling among UU people of color about UUA hiring practices specifically and a continued dominance of white cultural values within UUism more generally that has been with us dating all the way back to a controversy that broke out in the early 1960 over efforts toward black empowerment within UUism.

The brutal includes the great hurt that so many have felt since the incident, the string of resignations and the unexpected and untimely loss of Jim Key during the middle of it all.

The beautiful is the way in which so many UUs have vowed to one another and to our denomination to work through these difficulties and truly live out our commitment to becoming a truly anti-racist, multicultural denomination.

Act II: Carolyn Gremminger and Rev. Chris Jimmerson

Carolyn

Since the events that David described, there has been a recognition within Unitarian Universalism, leading up to and following General Assembly (or GA for short), that we still have much work to do to be in right relationship with each other and to truly become a religion that lives our commitment to dismantling racism, both within our faith and beyond it.

We have come to realize that we are not all in agreement yet, and that we will have to live in that tension, even while remaining in covenant with one another for a while.

For example, we have begun a conversation about a culture of white supremacy within Unitarian Universalism wherein we do things in ways that adhere to white, western European cultural norms, often to the exclusion of other cultural practices.

Yet, some UUs object to the use of the term “supremacy” given how it is so often used in the media these days in relation to white nationalists and neo-Nazi hate groups. Other UUs though, feel very strongly that the use of the “culture of white supremacy” terminology is necessary in order understand the great challenge that lies before us as a denomination. For these UUs, the term captures that the dominance of white cultural norms is the water in which we currently swim and thus can be very difficult to see.

Other UUs fear that the great, almost singular concentration upon our internal UU struggles with race leading up to and at GA may distract us from other vital matters, such as climate change, class inequality, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights and the like.

Yet other folks also worry that this internal focus could prevent us from being present and vocal in public life at a time when our religious values are needed like never before.

Similarly, the UUA board had approved raising 5.3 million dollars over time to fund Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism. Many saw this is a very positive step. Others worried that it might drain resources from other important needs. During the early and most emotional times of the inciting controversy, relationships between folks became strained or broken and will need time and much mutual work for healing to be possible.

So, our denomination is acknowledging that we must commit to doing the work of coming together across our differences, healing, and learning from all that has happened. We have committed to living out our multiculturalism both within UUism and out in our world. We know that this will take time and that we must stay engaged even while it will still be difficult sometimes.

Chris

What Carolyn just described is what Melton and Brown would call “Act II” of our story. Act II is where we have to stay on the mat – we have to struggle with our difficulties, feel the bad feelings, live in tension for a while, because if we try to avoid them by moving on too soon, we will be doomed to relive Act I yet again someday.

Melton and Brown also say that we have to identify what the rules of our current world are that may be holding us back. We have to identify such unhelpful rules in order to move past Act I and begin to work through Act II. For UUism, some of those rules include the dominance of white cultural norms within our denomination, such as perfectionism, either/or thinking and avoidance of open conflict.

Unitarian Universalism is currently in Act II with the story we are sharing with you today, at least for the most part. We are identifying that which has been holding us back and trying our best to stay on the mat. At times, we have not been entirely successful at staying on the mat, and that is not surprising or out of the ordinary. It is difficult. Sometimes we have to recommit.

We have lost leaders because they did not stay in relationship with us. We are hopeful they will come back into relationship, perhaps in a different way than they were before.

Yet, we also have a great number of us who have committed to staying on the mat – to doing the challenging yet potentially transformative work that lies ahead. At GA, the leaders that moderated our sessions clearly worked hard to set a tone that was respectful and healing but that also recognized the difficulties with which we must grapple. They modeled acknowledging our mistakes and working with one another across our areas of disagreement.

A multitude of opportunities to learn about dismantling racism and creating multicultural ways of being were also offered at G.A.

So at GA and since then, our denomination has been doing its best to stay in the struggle against racism internally and externally.

The way forward will be uncomfortable and difficult sometimes. This is where we are for now – staying in the struggle, even though it is hard at times, because it is the struggle that makes transformation possible.

Act III: Valerie Sterne and Rev. Chris Jimmerson

Valerie

While as a denomination, we are still mainly in what Carolyn and Chris have described as Act II, we thought it would also be important to mention some really positive developments that have occurred leading up to GA, at GA and since then.

After Peter Morales resigned, the UUA appointed three co-presidents to serve until the election for our new president could be held at GA. All three co-presidents were people of color, and one was the first female ever to serve as UUA president. These co-presidents implemented interim hiring practices with specific multicultural goals for UUA positions, including management positions Then, at GA, the delegates selected our first elected UUA president, Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray! Rev. Frederick-Gray has pledged to work with a board-appointed commission to put into place permanent multicultural hiring practices and has already appointed people of color to top positions within her new administration.

In late April and early May, almost seventy percent of our congregations participated in anti-racism/culture of white supremacy “teach-ins” using materials created by UU people of color. These congregations dedicated a worship service to the teach-in and many have offered educational classes following it. In the two days before GA, hundreds of UUs participated in intensive undoing racism workshops, and, as Chris mentioned, there were a number of great workshops on the subject also provided during GA.

We also held a beautiful memorial service for Jim Key at GA, which allowed our folks some closure around his loss. Kiya performed Meg’s song, “All Will Be Well” at the memorial service.

Since GA, our denomination has also begun to embrace a both/and outlook rather than an either/or point of view regarding our being able to do the internal work of examining the dominance of white cultural norms within our own institutions and showing up to work for justice in our larger world. We can do both, and, in fact, must do both. An essential part of doing racial justice in the world is also doing it in ourselves. We can’t make change out there, if we don’t also do so in our own hearts. Additionally, we can work for racial justice while also still working for justice against other forms of oppression and harm to our environment.

For instance, large numbers of our UUs were among the interdenominational faith leaders who showed up in Charlottesville to stage a peaceful, interfaith counter protest to the neo-nazi, white nationalist supremacists group who were there. Here at our church, we decided until Meg could be back with us to do something similar to the teach-ins I mentioned earlier. In the meantime though, our church already has a lot going with antiracism and multiculturalism efforts.

We have done education on white supremacy culture with our Austin Area UU White Allies for Racial Equity group and our Board of Trustees. We have an active People of Color Group and allies group. We have begun offering a racism-unlearning circle and have offered several film screenings and other learning opportunities regarding antiracism.

Finally, a group of folks is working to identify a broader educational curricula that we can offer in 2018 that would accommodate a large number of our church members being able to attend it over time.

So, much is happening and moving forward!

Chris

All the positive developments that Valerie just described are what examples of what Melton and Brown say can happen in act III of our story. If we have done the work of identifying the rules that are holding us back and staying in the struggle, we get to write our own ending for the story.

While we still have much work to do and must stay on the mat for a while, as Melton and Brown would put it, these positive developments are a sign that even though these have been difficult times for us as a denomination, they also offer us the opportunity for real growth and transformation.

We have the opportunity to write our own ending – to create a faith that is truly multicultural and inclusive of a multitude of cultural norms and practices. Such a faith in turn, holds the great potential of being transformative for each of us as individuals, by widening our worldview.

We invite you to join in. Feel free to talk with David about opportunities for getting involved with our larger denominations. Join our people of color or allies group according to how you identify.

Together, with each other and with the many wonderful folks in our larger UU faith, we will write our own ending to the story we have shared with you today.

And that truly is holy work.

Amen.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
August 20, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Our mission begins with “we gather in community.” As we prepare to celebrate and participate in LGBTQ Pride week and activities, we’ll examine how our common purpose begins with a concept of community that values all of us as our truest, full selves. This will be the first in a series of sermons on the elements of our mission.

Call to Worship

WE ANSWER THE CALL OF LOVE
By Julia Corbett-Hemeyer

In the face of hate,
We answer the call of love.

In the face of exclusion,
We answer the call of inclusion.

In the face of homophobia,
We answer the call of LGBTQ rights.

In the face of racism,
We answer of justice for all races.

In the face of xenophobia,
We answer the call of pluralism.

In the face of misogyny,
We answer the call of women’s rights.

In the face of demagoguery,
We answer the call of reason.

In the face of religious intolerance,
We answer the call of diversity.

In the face of narrow nationalism,
We answer the call of global community.

In the face of bigotry,
We answer the call of open-mindedness.

In the face of despair,
We answer the call of hope.

As Unitarian Universalists, we answer the call of love –
now more than ever.

Reading

LET US MAKE THIS EARTH A HEAVEN
By Tess Baumberger

Let us make this earth a heaven, right here, right now.
Let us create a heaven here on earth
where love and truth and justice reign.

Let us welcome all at our Pearly Gates, our Freedom Table,
amid singing and great rejoicing,
black, white, yellow, red, and all our lovely colors,
straight, gay, transgendered, bisexual, and all the ways
of loving each other’s bodies.
Blind, deaf, mute, healthy, sick, variously-abled,
Young, old, fat, thin, gentle, cranky, joyous, sorrowing.
Let no one feel excluded, let no one feel alone.

May hate and warfare cease to clash in causes
too old and tired to name; religion, nationalism,
the false false god of gold, deep-rooted ethnic hatreds.
May these all disperse and wane, may we see each others’ true selves.
May we all dwell together in peace and joy and understanding.

Let us make this earth a heaven.

Sermon

This coming week, the Austin-area lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community (or the LGBTQ Community) will gather for a number of LGBTQ Pride events, culminating in the annual Pride parade Saturday evening. Lots of straight friends and loved ones will also join in the Pride activities.

For many years now, our church has been participating in these Pride events, and for two of those years recently, we have held a “Big Gay Sunday” service to celebrate and give context to that participation.

So, earlier this summer, already knowing I would be in the pulpit on this date and that it would be Big Gay Sunday, I was at our Unitarian Universalist annual General Assembly earlier, and seeing it on display at a booth in the exhibit hall, I had no other choice than to purchase this big gay rainbow stole to wear for this momentous occasion.

And this is a time for celebration. Yet, I cannot help but feel an eerie sense of this strange juxtaposition between what happens when many souls come together at LGBTQ pride and what we witnessed last week in Charlottesville, Virginia and to lesser degree yesterday in Boston.

Next weekend, people will come together for the Pride parade, where they will proclaim universal love and acceptance – the valuing of each and every person claiming the fullness of our own, individual identity.

People will celebrate inclusiveness and the forming of community. They will uphold the beauty of how our differences blended together allow each of us to shine more brightly, so that together we form that famous pride rainbow that will be on display on flags everywhere. There will be beautiful colors and sometimes-flamboyant outfits. There will be dancing and music and laughter and joy.

We will recognize that progress has been made – oppression can be overcome. Though we are not nearly all the way there yet, and progress has come at a heavy price sometimes, our demands for justice have been and continue to be worth it. Contrast that with what we saw with the white supremacist nationalist groups last week in Charlottesville.

This so-called “Unite the Right” event could not have been more different than LGBTQ pride.

Well, except for the guys carrying Tiki torches straight out of the “on sale now” rack at Pier One Imports. As Betty Bowers, who claims to be America’s best Christian posted on Facebook, “when fascism comes to America it will be carrying Polynesian party accessories”.

They also carried Nazi flags on the streets of an American city, waving them next to their confederate flags, bringing together two symbols of two of the worst, most murderous episodes in recent human history.

Some dressed in paramilitary gear, and many carried semi-automatic weapons, pepper spray and other armaments.

The white nationalist protesters chanted misogynistic, racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic slogans.

“Blood and Soil”, they chanted – a phrase borrowed from Nazi Germany that idealizes a master race rising up out of white, rural, farm life.

“Jews will not replace us,” they chanted.

“White lives matter more.”

“F-You, Faggots.” Only they used the actual f-word that I will not say in this sanctuary.

Violence broke out, and, despite the claims of Mr. Trump that there was blame on all sides; the white nationalists instigated that violence.

A 20-year old man drove his car into a crowd of peaceful counter protestors, injuring 17 people, killing Heather Heyer, who was only 32 years old.

My heart breaks. I struggle with understanding. I struggle with holding these two events occurring so closely in time with one another, each seeming to take a sense of pride in such opposite directions.

• LGBTQ Pride seeking inclusive community, while a white nationalist movement glorifies exclusion, along with religious, racial, gender and sexual identity tribalism.
• A celebration of something worthwhile gained through a hard fought movement for justice versus outrage over the perception privilege lost because of the human rights gains of others.
• Solidarity and equality juxtaposed with authoritarianism and hierarchy.
• And the list could go on.

I think it is important to note that this rise in authoritarianism and race-based nationalism is happening not just here but throughout the world. So, I it is an existential threat to humanity and our world.

Certainly, it is a threat to those of us who are among its targets. So, I am feeling a need for the sense of love, acceptance and belonging inherit in our upcoming LGBTQ Pride week. I am feeling grateful for my Unitarian Universalist faith and this church that I so proudly serve.

Our faith was likely the first to perform a same sex union in the late 1950s! We were among the first denominations to ordain gay ministers. Though we were much slower to ordain transgender ministers, we were still one of the first faiths to do so historically. Unitarian Universalists have long been amongst the most vocal supporters of LGBTQ rights and marriage equality.

This church has been an LGBTQ welcoming congregation for several decades now, as are 95% of our congregations with at least 150 members. The Welcoming Congregations Program is a Unitarian Universalist curricula that helps our churches learn how to be welcoming and inclusive places for people who identify as LGBTQ.

If you have never experienced what it feels like to be excluded from your family or a community simply because of who you are, it is hard to describe what it feels like to find a community where you are welcomed and included. After feeling rejected by and never really a part of the religion of my childhood, when Wayne and I first found First UU Church of Austin, the only way I can describe what it felt like to me is that it felt like coming home, only to a religious home that I had never had before.

In fact, Wayne and I used to joke that being gay at this church almost seemed to be an advantage. People would be like, “Oh, you’re gay. That’s great! Wanna be on the board of trustees?”

I think that one of the ways that we do the work of ridding ourselves of the prejudices and sense of supremacy we have all been taught in one way or another, is to do the spiritual work of expanding who it is we are able love and love with equality, like the Welcoming Congregations program has helped so many Unitarian Universalists to do.

And that brings me back to the folks in the white supremacist nationalist movement.

I do not think that responding in kind to the violence, hate and intolerance will help us understand or much less have any chance of persuading anyone. Nor do I think it will help us resist this harmful ideology.

In fact, I think we likely need the opposite. We need that sense of love and compassion I was just discussing. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Earlier this week, the founder and editor of a conservative political journal who had been an avid Trump supporter, wrote an editorial in the New York Times in which he stated that given the events of the past several months, he now greatly regrets that support.

I was disappointed to read the comments by progressives on the editorial, in which many of them lambasted him and attacked him personally. What makes us attack even those who seem to be transforming their worldview in a way that we might be better off supporting?

At a recent public forum here at the church, Bruce Naylor, one of our congregation members put forward a concept he called the “Warrior Brain” that has helped me make sense of what we have been witnessing, as well as our own temptations to respond in kind sometimes.

Bruce theorizes that warfare had, at least at one time, as we moved from hunter gatherer, nomadic, tribal groups into agricultural city states, an evolutionary advantage, because at least for some groups, it eliminated the competition. Warfare then shaped our brains and was passed on through successive generations.

Bruce says that our warrior brains drive us toward an “us versus them” ideology. It focuses us on winners versus losers and loyalty versus traitors. Our warrior brain offers us no empathy for the enemy. In fact it dehumanizes our perceived enemies. It uses deception as a tactic. It fills us with anger. It pushes us toward tribalism. It makes us most comfortable when there is an authoritarian leader and a hierarchal organization of society.

Sounding familiar?

Recently, though, I had lunch with Bruce and another of our terrific church members, Peter Roll, and we theorized that we likely would also have inherited what we are calling our “Aquarius brain”.

Remember that old song, “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius”. Sure wish that would happen just any time now.

As the development of agriculture allowed humans to evolve into larger and larger city-states and then nations, we would have seen a survival advantage from cooperation and greater inclusion, as well as greater and greater specialization.

The Aquarius brain that would have been shaped by this would move us toward empathy, reason, compassion and inclusion. It would lead us to value difference rather than fear it. It would move us toward favoring more democratic organization of social groups and influence us toward loving with equality. This is sounding much like that juxtaposition I was struggling with earlier, isn’t it?

Now, these are very broad descriptions of the Warrior and Aquarius Brains concepts. If you want to learn more, look for the Science and Religion First Sunday Seminars that will begin this October.

I think these concepts can be very helpful as a framework for understanding, at least in part, what we’re witnessing in our country and our world. We all inherited both a warrior brain and an Aquarius brain. Some of us likely have a biological predisposition toward one or the other, and our cultural environment likely drives us toward more often engaging one or the other. But it’s not just the white nationalists that can fall into warrior brain mode. We do too.

Here is why I think we have to know this.

The stakes are high very right now. I don’t assume to know what candid Trump really meant by “make America great again”, but I do know what his white supremacist nationalist followers mean, because they have told us.

It means going back to a time when women were to be barefoot and pregnant. It means going back to a time when anyone without Lilly white skin was to remain subservient or risk there very lives – a time we unfortunately have never really entirely left behind.

It means going backwards so that Jews and Muslims become fair game to be scorned, degraded and attacked.

It means going back to a time when those of us with non-conforming sexual and/or gender identities were to remain hidden deep within our metaphorical closets at risk for our very lives.

Those are the stakes, and I think that if we engage our warrior brains now and respond with hate toward the hate, violence toward the violence, then the opposing ideology will have already won, because we will have already given in to it.

We must instead proclaim our ideology of love, inclusion and equality at every opportunity we can show up to do so.

So when we go to Pride events this coming week, we are not only celebrating. We are also uplifting and singing out a clear message.

We will not go back.

We will not go back.

We. Will. Not. Go. Back.

My friends, I will not go back. In my lifetime, I have tasted something greater than when it started, and I will not give up the greater equality and the opportunity to be legally wed with the person who is the love of my life.

And the only way I know to resist going back is to demonstrate more love in my world. To contrast and juxtapose that love with the opposite of it that is being expressed so frighteningly these days.

I must find ways to shut down my warrior brain and, as Dr. King said, drive out hate with love.

I must find a way to love even that young man that drove his car into a crowd of peaceful protestors, though still loudly condemning what he did and opposing the ideology that compelled him to do it with every fiber of my being.

I know this will not be easy. Empathy comes hard in situations like this. I try to imagine what misery lies behind such actions. I know it is not possible to live a life that is happy and full with a heart filled with such malice, and perhaps that is a seed from which some amount of empathy might grow.

I’m fear that if we give up on even one human being, we give up on all of humanity.

So, we must find a way to go on loving even when it is difficult, because it may be our best way to resist the existential threat of rising global authoritarianism and racial-ethnic supremacy.

We must find a way to go on loving for ourselves and those who are dearest to us, because the alternative is an entire society and perhaps an entire world constantly locked in warrior brain.

The Buddha said, “In this world, hate has never yet dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law, ancient and inexhaustible.

So, during LGBTQ Pride this coming week, may we love with a great fierceness. May we put that love into action, building and expanding communities of love, acceptance and belonging in all of the days that follow.

Amen.

Benediction

Now, as you go out into our world, carry with you the love and sense of community we share in this sacred place.

Carry with you a mind open to continuous revelation, a heart strong enough to break wide open and a peace that passes all understanding.

May the congregation say, “Amen”, and “blessed be”.

Go with love.

Podcasts of sermons are available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 17 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 9, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

We all at some point will be unable to care for ourselves, or will need the help of other people in some way. Why do we struggle so much to ask for help when we need it?

Singer, songwriter and performance artist Amanda Palmer, writes “So, a plea. To the artists, creators, scientists, nonprofit-runners, librarians, strange-thinkers, start-uppers, and inventors, to all people everywhere who are afraid to accept help, in whatever form it’ s appearing: Please, take the donuts. To the guy in my opening band who was too ashamed to go out into the crowd and accept money for his band: Take the donuts. To the girl who spent her twenties as a street performer and stripper living on less than $ 700 a month, who went on to marry a best-selling author whom she loves, unquestioningly, but even that massive love can’ t break her unwillingness to accept his financial help, please… Everybody. Please. Just take the…” expletive deleted… “donuts!” That’ s from Palmer’ s book, “The Art of Asking or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help.“

Palmer derives “take the donuts” as a metaphor for being willing to ask for and accept help from a tale she tells about someone we Unitarian Universalists claim as one of our own, Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was among our transcendentalist ancestors, whose ideas still influence our Unitarian Universalist religious worldview today and, more generally, still influence the whole of American culture.

Thoreau is perhaps most remembered for his book, Walden, which chronicled his thoughts and experiences living mainly alone for almost three years in a 10 by 15 foot cabin in the woods next to Walden Pond.

What is less often discussed, as Amanda Palmer points out, is that Thoreau’ s cabin sat on land owned by his friend and fellow transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose home in Concord was less than a two mile walk from the cabin. What’ s more, Emerson had Thoreau over for dinner quiet often during his time roughing it by the pond.

Also, Thoreau’ s mother and sister brought him a basket of baked goods every Sunday, which apparently included fresh donuts.

We often attribute our hyper-individualism and extreme self-reliance to the transcendentalists, but it seems that these may not have encompassed the entirety of their thinking and way of living. Thoreau wasn’ t foolish – he took the donuts when they were offered.

Part of Palmer’ s point is that this misconstrual has led to a culture in which we can easily over value individual independence, strength and control. We can find it very, very difficult to ask for help, even when we very much need it. We will not let ourselves take the donuts, even when they are freely offered, because we view accepting help as a sign of weakness.

And this can be reflected both in us as individuals and in our larger communities and our larger society. Even our Unitarian Universalist churches have struggled sometimes with a go it alone perspective, not always fully actualizing how we could help and learn from one another. I am pleased to report that there is much work being done at the local, regional and national levels on how we can become better connected amongst our churches and other institutions. As a country, the U.S. has often taken a go it alone or even domineering posture. The U.S. spends more on military and defense than the next eight countries in our world combined, even though we live in a time when military strength alone will not solve problems like terrorism and global climate change. We need the help of others to solve many of our current problems.

At the same time, we do not provide adequate support and care for the poor, our children, people with disabilities and chronic disease and the elderly. If we view asking for help as a sign of weakness, it is far too easy for a society to begin to view needing help as a sign of some character flaw and thus being unworthy of our support.

A society’ s values and ethics, I think, can be evaluated based upon how well it takes care of its young, its sick and disabled and its elderly. By that measure, I’ m afraid ours is in danger of a great moral failure if we do not change course soon.

The thing is, we will all face many of these challenges in our lives. We may face economic challenges at some point. We will all get sick from time to time. All of us will age. Even if we may not currently face physical or mental challenges, still, we are only temporarily abled. In fact, the only way we can avoid an eventual deterioration of our physical abilities is if we manage to somehow get ourselves dead first. We will all need the help of other people at various points in our lives.

On top of that, there are many other life situations wherein, even if we are capable of making decisions and acting on our own, we can still benefit from asking for help. By doing so, we can improve our lives and the lives of others. Complete self-reliance is an impossibility. Human beings need and always have needed one another to survive as a species and to live as fully and as best we can as individuals.

In her book, “Mayday: Asking for Help in Times of Need”, M. Nora Klaver, a renowned business and organizational coach, argues that asking for help can actually lead to making better decisions, generating more creative possibility, improving our emotional well being and forming deeper relationships. Klaver says that not only do we often fail to ask for help when we need it, we also are usually terribly bad at it when we do ask for help. We fidget and fumble our words and cast our eyes downward.

She offers several reasons why we dislike and are so bad at asking for help, but the greatest among them is simply fear. She describes three forms of fear that are rooted in lies that we tell ourselves.

1.) Fear of surrendering control. We’ re afraid that, if we ask for and accept help, we will give up our independence and our control over our own lives. In reality, though, we have far less control than we think we do in the first place. Sometimes surrendering into the present moment, the current situation, the flow of our lives leads to some of our greatest spiritual experiences. Likewise, allowing someone else to help us when we are in need can be a gift of graciousness to them.

2.) Fear of separation. We fear that if we ask for help, those from whom we seek that help or others who witness our asking for it may reject us. This is based in a primal human fear – the lie that we are always, ultimately alone in this world, when in fact, we are greatly interconnected.

3.) Fear of experiencing shame. We fear that if we ask for help, we will reveal our inabilities, flaws and shortcomings and be judged unworthy. We tell ourselves a lie about how we must be perfect in order to deserve human worth and dignity.

Klaver tells a story about a woman she calls, “Gina” to illustrate all of this. Gina was a young mother. Her husband had lost his job and was out of work for an extended period. Gina found herself supporting her family not just financially, but emotionally as well. She had been promoted to a position of high responsibility in her work life, so she had people relying on her both at home and at work. However, to meet their needs, she had been neglecting herself. She gained weight, started smoking and ignored the growing depression she was experiencing.

When Klaver first met Gina, she was on the verge of breaking down, but terrified to ask for help.

She was scared of failing at her job – that if she took any time off to deal with her own needs she would be letting down those who reported to her (fear of surrendering control). She felt as if she had to be perfect – a boss, wife and mother without flaws (fear of shame). In fact, she worried constantly that she might actually lose her job (fear of separation).

Wiping tears from her eyes she had sobbed, “No one can help me! I just have to deal with this situation on my own.”

It took a lot of convincing, but Gina finally agreed to direct some of the concern and compassion she had been showering on others toward herself. She sought help. She called the Employee Assistance Program at her work and got their help finding counseling for her depression. She asked her boss for time off to attend to her own needs. She got her mother to help watch her young son for a few days so that she could spend some time in a rural cottage to get some rest. She asked her husband to understand that she needed this time to herself and that she needed him to take care of things while she was gone.

And every single one of them gave her the help she needed.

Three months later, Gina’ s life was going significantly better. She and her husband had grown much closer. She no longer worked overtime every week, and in fact had become very protective of her family and alone time. Her energy returned. She lost weight. She quit smoking.

To bring about this change and allow herself to reach out, Klaver says that Gina had to embrace three virtues –

• compassion, particularly for herself,
• faith that if she asked for help at least some of the change for which she hoped would happen
• and finally, gratitude for all she already had and for the help received from others so that those relationships could grow even stronger.
• Asking for help had transformed her life in ways that going it alone never could have.

Compassion. Faith. Gratitude. Transformation.

Those sound like spiritual terms to me.

And it makes me believe that developing our willingness and capacity to ask for help when we need it is a spiritual endeavor.

Like many of our spiritual quests though, it takes intentional practice. We do not automatically get better at it.

Especially with asking for help, we need the practice, because most of us have never been taught how to go about asking for help. We have few if any models, stories or mythologies to follow.

For example, how many of you are familiar with the New Testament story about the Good Samaritan? (No, really, raise a hand if you are.)

Now, how many of you know the biblical story of Jairus?

How about the Canaanite woman?

Less of us are familiar with the latter two.

The Good Samaritan story is about offering help. The other two are about people who asked for help.

It is telling that the religious tale about offering help is in our psyches much more strongly than the stories about asking for help. Perhaps we need to tell and uphold those other stories more often.

In this religious community, we could do that, and we also could create new stories and practices affirming that developing our individuality and accepting communal support are not opposite ends of a duality – that we can help each other become our most whole selves and to be as self reliant as is healthy and possible given whatever our circumstances might be.

Church it seems to me is a great place within which we could create a loving environment, a beloved community that encourages and supports asking for help – a place where we can all help each other learn how to take the … expletive deleted … donuts.

Here is the process M. Nora Klaver suggest we practice regarding asking for help.

Before making a request for help, get clear on what the real need is. Make sure what would actually be helpful. Then, if the timing is not urgent, take a break first and engage in something that helps you find a greater sense of calmness. Then, set up a time to ask in person if at all possible. During the request, take a leap of faith that new paths will open up no matter what the response to the request, and then word the ask as simply as possible.

After the request, be grateful, listen intently and then express your gratitude no matter what the response. You will have something for which to be grateful. No matter what, you will learn more about your relationships, as well as the situations your friends and loved ones might be in themselves. Sometimes people want to help but cannot because they do not have the capability or are facing some big challenge themselves at the time. At the very worst, you might discover that a relationship is not what you thought it was or is in need of repair.

Most of the time though, people will want to help.

No matter what happens, new opportunities will appear to you, and you will have grown in compassion, gratitude and faith.

Asking each other for help requires that we have the courage to be vulnerable – to risk real human connection.

May the members of this church practice this together.

May this be a community of love and support that nurtures both asking for and offering help to one another.

May we walk in the ways of love together, giving and receiving of one another’ s unique gifts and abilities.

The song says, “I get by with a little help from my friends.”

May we go even further.

May we proclaim together, “We’ re going to thrive with a little help from our friends, our families and this, our beloved religious community”.

Amen.

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

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 2, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Many, if not most of the world’s religions have a sect that is mystical. We will examine why religious experience is so often to be found through mystery, awe and wonder.

What if I told you that there might be a relatively simple way you can become a more compassionate, ethical person, increase your life satisfaction, slow down you perception of time and improve your health?

Now, what if I told you that to gain these benefits all you need to do is have more experiences of mystery, awe and wonder, brought on at least in part by a sense of your own relative insignificance given the enormity of our universe and the vastness of time.

The good news is, paradoxically, the experience often also involves a mysterious, ineffable sense of expansion – of connection to, even oneness with all that is, ever has been and ever will be. Within these experiences, there is also a sense of non-duality – that the ultimate reality is non-linear and much more complex than can be expressed through either/or thinking.

Broadly defined, these are sometimes called mystical experiences, and mysticism, a belief that this type of experience is necessary for faith, can be found within all of the major world religions. Mystic sects have developed within each of them that have created various practices, some monastic and some communal, intended to bring about these types of experiences.

Within the monotheistic religions, mystics believe that one can only know the ultimate reality of God through this mysterious, awe-inducing direct experience of the divine. And this is because God is so large and so great – so beyond our usual comprehension. God is beyond what words or concepts can capture, and so this ineffable and fleeting experience of oneness with God is necessary.

For instance, many Hindus have concepts called the Atman, the individual soul of the self and the Brahman, the cosmic soul. The merging of the Atman into the Brahman, is necessary for human beings to end a continuous cycle of suffering and rebirth. Paradoxically though, the Atman has always been the Brahman.

The Abrahamic religions – Christianity, Judaism and Islam – all also contain mystic sects. For example, the Muslim Sufis engage in practices and a way of life intended to bring about experiences of the divine -experiences of awe and wonder over a sense of both insignificance in the face of the divine and at the same time oneness with the divine. Again, we find a sense of paradox and non-duality.

Notably, mysticism does not require a belief in a deity at all. In Taoism there is a mystical sense that one must flow into the Tao, which is literally translated “the way” and is more a process, pattern and underlying substance of all that exists that cannot be grasped as an intellectual concept. It must be lived and experienced.

The Buddhists have a concept of “no-self” or release of self that must be experienced in order know Dharma, the ultimate reality that involves constant change and paradox. Even the very concept of “no-self” is non-dualistic. It is like the flame in our chalice, which visibly exists to our eyes. Yet, it is actually being burnt away and begun anew in each instant and therefor, also does not exist.

And, one can certainly find mysticism within Unitarian Universalism. The transcendentalists of the 19th century developed at least in part in reaction against what they viewed as the overly staid, overly intellectual Unitarians of the time. They argued that an experience of the over soul, a kind of oneness between God, man and nature was necessary for spiritual development, and they often found and experience of wonder and awe through nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, perhaps the most well known of them all, wrote of an experience he had in a forest, “Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes, I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”

Likewise, Universalism also has long had elements of mysticism within it. Later, after the merger of the Unitarians and the Universalists, many folks with a spiritual grounding in the earth-centered faiths came into Unitarian Universalism, and also brought experiential practices into our religion.

Today, even many Unitarian Universalists (or UUs for short) who ascribe to non-theistic (or at least firmly undecided) humanism and/or naturalism, nevertheless also consider themselves mystics. We even have a national UU Mystics in Community group with a website, newsletter and Facebook page.

Rather than experiences of a diety, these UUs describe having had experiences of an ultimate reality or a oneness with all of humanity and with all of existence. Often these are brought about through encountering the wonders of nature, contemplating the mysteries of our universe, or engaging in ritual practices such as meditation.

Even loss, sorrow and facing the mysteries of death can sometimes lead to mystical experiences. Here is a story from someone who found themself in just that situation.

“It was a few weeks after my mom died. I was lying in my bed the evening after her memorial service. I was experiencing this strange mixture of grief and gratitude all at once – gratitude that she was no longer suffering – gratitude that I had been able to be with her until the last. I had been able to look into her eyes and tell her how much I loved her and how grateful I was for all she has done for me. I held her hand and sat with her even after she had fallen silent and her eyes had gone dim. I was there at the sacred moment when she exhaled her last breath.

At the same time, I was feeling overwhelming sadness and grief over losing her. I had this sense of unreality. How could it be that I would never see her again, never get to hug her again or tell her that I love her? And there was this feeling of being unmoored. With my mom now gone, I felt unanchored in my world, adrift and floating without direction.

And as I drifted between fitful sleeping and then waking up, being washed over by great waves of sadness and sorrow and contemplating the mysteries of life and death and my own mortality, I suddenly had this experience of spreading out, dissolving into all that was around me.

It’s hard to describe, but it was as if I was in the leaves of the trees in my yard and in the roots of the plants in my garden. I flew in the birds, swam within the creatures of the sea, moved within my fellow human beings and the myriad creatures of our earth. So too, was I in the rocks and stones, in the wind and rain, ever expanding, ever dissolving, ever no more and yet ever everywhere.

I would swear it was not a dream. It didn’t feel like a dream. It seemed more real than a dream, somehow more real even than day-to-day reality.

And then it stopped.

I was in my room again. Me again.

And yet, I felt a greater sense of peace, a greater acceptance. The grief and sorrow were not gone, but somehow the unreality was no longer so present. The feelings I was having seemed more right, more necessary.

And then, I have no idea why, but into my head popped the one about how the Dali Lama orders pizza.

He just calls up and says, “Make me one with everything.”

And that terrible joke sent me into a burst of giggles. I realized that I could not remember the last time I had laughed or felt joy.

And suddenly I knew that I would eventually find my bearings, get anchored in my world again. I would miss her profoundly the rest of my days and yet the love I knew for her would go on, carried within an all-encompassing love that is enduring and may well even be eternal.

So somehow, delving into mystery, allowing ourselves to be drawn into that sense of awe and wonder, letting mystical experience happen if it comes seems to be helpful to us. As I mentioned earlier, scientific research is beginning to discover it can be beneficial to us, whether we associate such experiences with a divinity or not.

I don’t know why this might be true. It’s a mystery.

I think maybe it is a result of, a response to the situation in which we find ourselves. Perhaps, it is a shift in perspective that brings us both humbleness and a sense of expansiveness and possibility.

David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Stanford, illustrates this perspective shift through describing what happened some years ago when NASA conducted the Ultra Deep Field Experiment. In the experiment, NASA repeatedly pointed the Hubble telescope at a tiny point of our sky that appeared to be completely dark – so tiny that it would be equivalent to our perspective of looking at the tip of a pencil held at arms length. Using technology I do not completely understand, they hoped to capture any light photons that might have emanated from that tiny patch of space that would not be visible to our naked eye but that could be detected through the Hubble lens and this technology. They thought they might discover a few stars previously unknown to them.

Instead, they discovered thousands of galaxies – trillions of stars like our own in just that tiny patch of dark sky. And because the light from those galaxies had traveled such a great distance to reach the lens of the Hubble telescope, it had taken a long, long time for it to cross that distance, even at the speed of light. Those thousands of galaxies, those trillions of stars in that tiny patch of our sky had existed billions upon billions of years ago.

Now, place ourselves and our lifespan within the immensity, the enormity of the size of our universe and the vastness of that kind of time period. It’s humbling and yet awe inducing. For Eagleman, the enormity of the mysteries that surround us, the vastness of what we don’t know, far from being frustrating, is full of wonder, creative potential and almost infinite possibilities for new discoveries. In fact, he calls himself a possibilian and rejects both fundamentalist, literal interpretations of the world’s religions but also rejects the absolute certainty expressed by some of the neo-atheists. He quotes Voltaire who said, “Doubt is an uncomfortable position. Certainty is an absurd one.”

Over the past 400 years, science and mathematics have brought us wondrous discoveries about how our world and universe work. It has created amazing advances in technology. It has even expanded the average human lifespan. And yet, all that we still do not know in this incomprehensibly vast universe means that ours is still a very, very small island of knowledge floating in an almost infinite sea of mystery.

If we think of our current knowledge as that island surrounded by an immense sea of what we do not know, that means that even as we learn more, as our island of knowledge grows, the circumference, the perimeter of where our knowledge bumps up against that sea of the unknown also expands. We generate even more questions and more potential discoveries to explore.

That sea of the unknown includes that which we cannot yet explore scientifically because our scientific toolkit does not yet have the ability to observe and measure it. It is the yet to be discovered territory, the possibilities wherein our island of knowledge will continue to grow, continue to take us into new understandings and new possibilities.

And the unknown also includes the meaning making and experiences of beauty we create for ourselves over and over again, generation after generation, as we learn more and create new metaphorical understandings – the art and poetry and theatre and dance and literature and storytelling and music we have yet to imagine.

The unknown includes how we are interconnected with the web of all existence in ways that we do not yet fully understand.

Given this perspective, how can we not be mystics? How can we not look out over that vast sea of mystery and be filled with awe and wonder?

Perhaps our human capacity for mystical experience is there to give us glimpses into that almost infinite sea of mysteriousness that surrounds us – to help us gain that shift in perspective – to fill us with a sense of humility, expansiveness and interconnectedness all at once.

My friends, we call ourselves a people of faith. The very word faith implies an acceptance that there is much we do not know, that revelation is not sealed but rather is continuously unfolding.

Given that, shall we embrace the unknown, praise uncertainty, celebrate nearly endless possibility?

What if we did that?

What if we dive into the sea of mysteriousness and swim in its vast waters, at least from time to time?

Might it be where the divine is yet to be discovered?

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

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
June 18, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Telling stories is central to how human beings make meaning and view our world. How do the stories we learn and tell ourselves affect our lives and our society?

Sermon

Genesis: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the deep. Then God said, “Let there be light”. And there was light.

Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters.” Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters, which were under the firmament from the waters, which were above the it; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven.

Turn

The Sky World Woman: Back at the beginning, the world that we now know as earth was nothing but water, while above it was a larger, more ancient world – above it was the sky world.

And a woman from the sky world, who was very curious, had dug a hole in that sky world. She dug and dug until she dug all the way through and fell into the hole and out the other side of it. And so it was that this sky woman came tumbling down toward the vast ocean of water that was the whole of our world at that time.

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Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so.

Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind”; and it was so.

Then God said, “Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth. Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth”; and it was so.

Turn

Now, living upon our ancient watery world were all manner of water animals, and the animals looked up to heavens and saw the sky world woman falling toward them at an altogether alarming rate of speed. And so the geese and ducks and other water birds flew up to her, forming a net with their bodies and catching her as she fell, bringing her gently to the face of the waters, where they placed her on the back of a giant sea turtle.

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Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created male then female. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply.

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Well, now the sky world woman and the water world animals had a problem, because the sea turtle could not hold her up forever, and the woman really could not swim all that well. One of the animals, many say it was the platypus, recalled that there might be a substance called mud deep below the surface of the waters and perhaps that could be brought up to create something upon which the woman could rest.

And so one by one the animals began trying to dive as deep as they could in search of mud. The pelicans tried. A walrus tried, and on and on, but each of them returned to the surface without having been able to go deep enough to bring up any mud. Finally, the otter tried. It was gone avery, very long time under the waters until they all feared it had drowned.

Suddenly though, it popped to the surface of the waters a scoop of mud in its paw.

The sky woman spread the mud on the back of the turtle and began to sing and dance upon it, and the animals sang and danced with her and the mud began to spread and separate the waters until there was plenty of muddy land for the Woman to live upon, as well as son1e of the animals who had decided to go with her.

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Now, you probably know the rest of the biblical Genesis story.

God puts Adam and Eve into a great garden – a perfect world of beauty and bliss where all their needs are met. He tells them there is only one rule. They may not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They do anyway, many tellings of this story blame the woman, and an angry God thrusts them out of the garden and into a howling wilderness, after which much toiling, trouble, sinning and suffering ensue.

Turn

In our other story this morning, which I found through the work of two Native American writers and storytellers, Robin Wall Kimmerer and Thomas King, the Sky Woman gives birth to twins, who work with the animals to mold the mud into mountains, valleys and plains, as well as to cut rivers and streams through it. From seeds the woman had in her hand from all her digging before she fell, they place upon the land all of the plants and vegetation that the animals and early humans will need for food and shelter.

Turn

Now, for those of you on this side of the sanctuary to whom I just told the Genesis creation story, let’s think about some of the key themes and elements of this story.

There is a formality to it. It creates a hierarchical world – God, then humans, then animals and plants. Humans are given dominion over all other life. We have an omnipotent, male God who speaks of all creation into existence in a solitary, individual act. We have humans being given abundance and then, because of their original sin (and thus their fundamental depravity), being thrown into scarcity. The world is a competitive place – God versus the devil – humans versus the elements – and each other. We have woman made second and blamed for the original sin. We have harmony being transformed into chaos.

And let’s think about what sort of culture those of us with this creation mythology might form – one that is hierarchical, staid and individualistic – one that focuses on competition and scarcity?

Perhaps it might become a culture that values power over others and thus could easily become warlike, could justify imperialism, colonization, slavery, racism and other forms of oppression – a culture that is foundationally patriarchal and that sees the natural world as a resource to be exploited.

Turn

And for those of you on this side of the sanctuary, some of the main themes of the Native American creation story I told to you are quite different.

It is far less formal, even playful. There is no omnipotent God.

Instead, the humans and the animals start with divine-like abilities. Working in cooperation, the humans and the animals bring the world into being, turn chaos toward harmony. They exist communally and with far more balance and equity – no human dominion here. The original human is female, and the story has a maternal quality to it.

With this as a creation myth, what sort of culture and society might we form? Might it not be very different?

Now, I am over simplifying a bit. Still, the differences are stark.

The power our stories have over us at a very fundamental level as individuals and as communities and societies is clear.

We are storytelling creatures. We make sense of our experiences by folding them into a narrative that our brains are constantly constructing and reconstructing for us.

And this is important to know, because once we let a story loose in our world, we can never really take it back. We can only change the telling of it or create a competing narrative.

Of course, we should not read these mythological stories as being literally, historically true. They are to be read as metaphor, as poetic and symbolic. Reading them as too literal is a mistake we often accuse fundamentalists of making.

Yet, I think we too can do this in a sort of reverse way, by also reading these stories too literally and thereby dismissing them without considering the poetic meaning and beauty we might find through them.

Many of you are likely familiar with the Christian story of the virgin birth of Jesus, the divine son of God, whom God sent to the earth only that he might die on the cross to wash our depravity clean with his very blood so that whosoever should believeth in him should not perish, but rise again as he did after his crucifixion.

I, personally, cannot take this story in a literal sense. And told the way it often gets told, it sometimes embodies values and ideas that I believe can be harmful – violence, human depravity, redemption through suffering, the spilling of blood and death.

There are other ways this mythological story can be told though, with a poetry that I find much more agreeable.

Here’s an example.

Once there was a spark of divinity that arose out of humanity’s highest aspirations for living more fully, with more love, compassion and joy. And this spark lured humans toward the more life-giving, lifefulfilling choices available to them within the creative possibilities of their universe.

But the evils of avarice, jealousy and tribalism obscured their ability to see these creative choices held before them. The powerful could not see past their dominance and greed. The poor and oppressed were prevented from reaching for their full potential.

Still, there was good in humans. And this found expression in the story of a child – a child who represented our highest human aspirations. The child grew into a wise leader, teaching others the healing power of love, drawing them toward compassion, calling them to give preference to the poor and oppressed until such circumstances would no longer exist.

But some of the most powerful among them would not hear this call. They vowed never to allow such teachings to continue, and they killed this wise one to extinguish that spark of divinity.

What they did not know, is that human aspirations transcend any one person. They rise again and again even up against the physical loss of one or more among us.

What they could not know was that by killing one person, they only caused that spark to grow stronger, carried forward in the hearts of those who wished to dwell in love and in all that is life giving.

Same story told metaphorically and expressing a very different set of values, not to mention far less blood and gore than in the Mel Gibson film about it.

And I think it is important for us to reclaim and recast some of these ancient stories because they have been implanted into the very foundational structures of our societies. Social and political science research has found that these myths are transmitted even into modern secular societies where, for even the non-religious, they are enculturated through the ethno-symbols, memories, values, rituals and traditions embedded within the ongoing practices of a people. They are present even within the very language in which we think and speak.

Some of you may have heard me talk about how when I was five years old, I told my mom I was going to be a minister when I grew up. But we were Southern Baptists, and when I found I could not fit within that religion, I created a story about what all religion was and so thoroughly rejected the religious stories of my childhood, that I left my self with absolutely no context within which to even consider ministry.

It wasn’t until many years later that I found Unitarian Universalism and began to feel a calling toward ministry resurging.

I described that calling to a rather sharp-tongued friend of mine as “a really really persistent little voice inside me”. She replied, “Well, tell the little voice to shut the hell up.” I laughed. She did too.

Later though, I realized that telling the little voice to shut up was what the story I had created for myself about religion had been causing me to do for all those many years. I began to recreate my own story about religion, as well as reframe the religious stories of my childhood, so that I could finally fulfill the aspiration toward which I felt beckoned.

And I think that it is vital that we as a liberal religious faith reclaim and recast these religious stories even though we may not share the beliefs and theology they have sometimes been used to express. They are a part of the very fabric of the culture and country in which we live.

And currently they far too often are being used to cast a narrative that justifies vast wealth inequality, authoritarianism, violence, oppression, hyper-individualism and the destruction of our planet. Certain folks are among the valued, chosen people and thus deserving of their wealth and power and others are expendable or even to be debased.

The New York Times recently ran an article about how a new public and political, liberal religious voice is awakening after lying largely dormant for nearly 40 years.

I believe that voice is sorely needed right now. It’s been too quiet for too long. To amplify our highest aspirations for greater peace, environmental stewardship, compassion and communalism, we have to be willing to reclaim our religious voices in the public square and recast the religious narrative that has taken hold. We have to be willing to use words like morality, good and evil.

And, if we are to ever develop greater understanding and compassion with those whom we disagree, we must also be able to hear and understand their stories and to speak our own.

The stories we tell and the ways in which we tell them define us as human beings.

To change ourselves, our relationships, our communities, our nation and our world for the better, we will have to reclaim and reframe some stories that have already been let loose in our world.

From time to time, we will even have to create new ones.

It may not be as hard as it might seem. Maybe we dive into the deep, bring up a little mud and begin the act of creation over and over agaIn.

May we sing and dance as we do so. Amen.

Benediction

As you go out into our world now, may you carry with you stories of compassion, joy and peace.
May the story of your life be centered in love.
May the ongoing story we write together be one of justice and healing.
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 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
June 4, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

We are in challenging times, encountering much change within UUism and our church. We look at how stress can show up in our lives and steps to manage it.

Reading:
By Erika A. Hewitt

As we enter into worship, put away the pressures of the world
that ask us to perform, to take up masks, to put on brave fronts.

Silence the voices that ask you to be perfect.

This is a community of compassion and welcoming.
You do not have to do anything to earn the love contained within these walls.

You do not have to be braver, smarter, stronger, better
than you are in this moment to belong here, with us.

You only have to bring the gift of your body,
no matter how able;
your seeking mind, no matter how busy;
your animal heart, no matter how broken.

Bring all that you are, and all that you love, to this hour together.
Let us worship together.

Reading:
David O Rankin

There must be a time when we cease speaking
to be fully present with ourselves.

There must be a time when we exclude clamor
by listening to nothing whatsoever.

There must be a time when we forgo our plans
as if we had no plans at all.

There must be a time when we abandon conceits
and tap into a deeper wisdom.

There must be a time when we stop striving
and find the peace within.

Sermon

After the first day of the meeting, we had a nice dinner and an opening night party and then all went off to our rooms to get some sleep. Wayne and I were in a room located on one of the upper floors of the hotel. At around 4:30 a.m., the next morning, the building started shaking violently. I anchored myself in bed holding tight to one edge of it until the shaking stopped, at which point, the building commenced swaying back and forth, something that felt most unnatural for a building to be doing. Foolishly, I got up and looked out the window. The water in the pool far below was splashing out of each side of it. It looked about half empty. Terrified, I dashed back into the center of the room.

We had just experienced the Northridge Earthquake, the epicenter of which had been less than 60 miles away.

After the swaying finally stopped, and we had calmed down a little, we finally went back to bed to try to get some fitful sleep, when suddenly, a speaker in the wall of our room blared to life and the very young sounding voice of the overnight manager came over it.

“Ladies and Gentleman, we have just experienced an earthquake.” “Dooooon’t panic.”

Then there was this clicking sound, which I am guessing is when he thought he had turned the mike off, and then we hear from further away, “So, what do we do now?”

We found out the next day, that one of the other meeting attendees had panicked, bolting from his bed wearing nothing but his underwear and out the door of his room, which slammed shut behind him. He ran across the hallway right into a mirror on the wall opposite his room, breaking the glass with his forehead. And so it was that he found himself, dressed in only his skivvies, locked out of his room with his forehead bleeding.

Now, the moral of this story is stress and anxiety can make us do really stupid stuff. They also can be bad for our health, (even when we don’t run around half naked and bust our forehead on a mirror).

The terms “stress” and “anxiety” are interrelated. They can cause very similar effects on our behavior, health and mental status. They are not exactly the same though.

Stress is normally thought of us an acute reaction to external events or situations in our lives.

Anxiety is an internal state rooted in fear that can exist with or without such external stressors.

In common everyday language though, we often say something like, “I am really stressed out” when we are actually feeling is anxiety, whether or not it is in reaction to an external stressor.

Family systems theory is a field in psychology and psychiatry that looks at how entire human systems – families, communities, churches, nations – can as a system “get stressed out”. Anxiety can fill up the whole system.

The entire system can start to do stupid stuff.

And we as members of the system can pass the anxiety around to one another, causing it to spread throughout the system like a virus.

The longer the anxiety lasts, the more chronic it becomes, the more it can hold us back and do us harm to us, as individuals and to our family, church or community.

And, my beloveds, we are living in a highly stressful, anxiety provoking time.

We face potentially devastating consequences from global climate change, and, speaking of doing stupid stuff, Trump just withdrew us from the global climate pact. Covfefe indeed.

We are witnessing terrorism. We are experiencing increased hate crimes and violence.

No matter what our political outlook, the divisiveness and polarization we are seeing at the national and state levels produces anxiety for folks of all political persuasions.

I know many folks in this church have recently gotten more involved in political activism than ever before, moved to action by fears of growing authoritarianism and harmful public policy being enacted.

It’s wonderful that so many folks are living out their highest values in the public and political arena. Yet doing so can also stress us out. It can be hard to keep up with all of the rallies, petitions, town meetings and other actions. It is scary to call up the office of a politician whom we know disagrees with us.

I’ve talked with many of you who have expressed how difficult it can be to balance all of this with the demands of life and family and just paying attention to our own needs for physical and mental wellbeing.

And this is in addition to the normal stressors of our day-to-day lives – jobs, bills, overloaded schedules and the like.

Peter Steinke is a renowned congregational consultant who applies family systems theory to churches. Listen to some things he lists as potentially being the most anxiety provoking for a religious community:

Strife or conflict at the denominational level. Check.
Large decreases or increases in attendance or membership. We have averaged about 40 more folks attending on Sundays since the election. Check.
The unexpected absence of a minister or other key leadership. Check.
Building construction or renovation. Check.
Ladies and gentlemen, doooooon’t panic.

Joking aside we are experiencing a lot of things that can make as fearful and anxious, and, as I mentioned earlier, a chronic state of anxiety can cause us harm.

As individuals, it can cause ill health effects too numerous to mention them all. Examples include things like premature heart disease, mental health problems, infertility and immune suppression. It can also impede our memory, decision-making and general ability to function effectively.

In our families and congregation, anxiety can result in getting stuck, where we avoid making the tough decisions and lose our ability to respond creatively as a group. We can lose sight of our mission. It can lead to the formation of factions and infighting. It can result in fake fights and highly emotional responses that are greatly out of proportion to whatever the stressor might be.

In one church, lots and lots of email messages were sent expressing great upset over the fact that the church secretary used the term “worship associate” rather than “lay leader” in the order of service one Sunday.

That was a fake fight to avoid the real anxiety that folks were feeling because a new minister was making larger changes to how they did worship overall.

OK, we know anxiety can have these ill effects and that we currently have all these potential sources of anxiety.

So, what do we do now?

I’m going to share some of what we can do, but first I want to offer the caveat that I an not seeing much at all in the way of anxious reactivity currently in this church. I offer the following as tools should we need them.

At the congregational level, there are several healthy ways we can handle anxiety and help keep its level lower. We have in place structures and systems, such as our covenant of healthy relations and our conflict resolution procedure. These and other resources are on our church website.

We also try to make clear what the lines of authority and accountability are. For example, our senior minister, Meg, has asked me to serve as the acting senior minister during her sabbatical so that folks will know to whom to take matters they would normally have brought to Meg.

Another thing we can do is use “I statements” when having important discussions in the church. I statements are when I clearly label my point of view as what I think, rather than expressing my world view as a fact of nature to which, of course, any reasonable person would naturally have to agree.

We can also help prevent the spread of anxiety within the church system by avoiding what’s called triangulation.

I’ll give you an example, but I must pause for the following disclaimer. “The persons and events in this triangulation example are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.”

OK, so triangulation is when Tommy is upset with Walter because Walter was supposed to give him a ride to church last Sunday. Walter completely forgot and did not pick him up. This Sunday, Tommy sees Walter getting coffee in the fellowship hall, but instead of talking directly with Walter, he goes to Suzy and says, “I’m so mad at Walter I could spit. He was supposed to give me a ride last Sunday and he never showed up. Could you go tell him how rude that was and make him apologize to me?

Translation: “Hi Suzy, have some of my anxiety.”

Suzy can avoid being triangulated by refusing to take on the anxiety and saying something like, “Wow, that sounds like you really need to talk with Walter. Want me to walk over there with you?”

What Dr. Steinke and other family systems folks will tell you though is that the number one thing we can all do to most greatly lower the anxiety in our family, community or church is to work on lowering our own anxiety as individuals.

We do that through a process called, “self-differentiation”. Self-differentiation is when we get to know ourselves and our own patterns deeply. We define what our own highest values and beliefs are.

And, we identify activities – practices that are calming and centering for us and get disciplined about engaging in such practices. By doing all of this, we can become a more non-anxious presence when we interact with others.

Now being a non-anxious presence doesn’t mean that we will never feel anxiety. It just means that we have identified our unconscious responses to anxiety – our patterns and emotional reactions, so we can make these patterns conscious to ourselves when they are happening. This then allows us to make calmer, healthier choices if needed.

Many of our patterns grow out of the fight, flight or freeze responses embedded in the more ancient parts of our brain. And none of these are necessarily bad. Any of them might have been quite useful depending upon what predator or other threat our ancestors might have encountered. It is when we are not aware of them that they can be the wrong choice for the situation.

So if you’re one of those folks that has been engaging in the constant political resistance I was discussing earlier and your are feeling stressed out and in need of taking flight from it all for a little while. If you’re feeling the urge to escape by, as our choir sang earlier, wanting to rock and roll all night and party everyday (metaphorically speaking, of course), that’s OK, at least for a while! Just make it your conscious choice and know it may not be the healthiest thing for you as a way of life.

One of the things that our unconscious fight, flight and freeze responses can do is disguise anxiety as a different emotion. Identifying what that is for you can be very helpful.

How does anxiety show up for you? For some of us, it may be the classic fear response – a tightness in the chest, elevated heart rate, rapid breathing, an urge for flight. For others, it may show up as anger – an urge to fight. Yet others as a numbness, an inability to feel, which can be incapacitating – like being stuck or frozen.

Family systems theory says that we also translate these unconscious patterns into ways of interacting with each other within our family or church system that once again are largely outside of our awareness.

The three major styles include, 1. conflict. We fight – we argue, blame and criticize others. 2. distance, where we emotionally take flight – we distance ourselves from others and avoid uncomfortable yet important topics. And finally, fusion, a freeze response in which people get stuck in patterns where some people in a system over-function, taking on most of the responsibilities, decisions and activities required to maintain the system, while other folks under-function, abdicating these responsibilities.

By knowing ourselves and our patterns, we can interrupt anxiety and our unconscious responses to it.

Finally, I want to close by inviting you in these stressful times, to inoculate yourself against anxiety and give yourself a way to lower it when it does come, by finding one or more spiritual practices that work for you.

Now, the very term “spiritual practice” can cause anxiety sometimes because we think it necessarily has to be religious or onerous like – something like extended meditation every day or lengthy journaling.

It doesn’t have to be though. It can be anything from walks in nature to photography to knitting to gardening to cooking to singing, dancing, making music to writing to creating art to taking moments to cuddle with our loves ones, be they human or of the four legged furry variety. Humor and play can help a lot too.

Whatever is calming for you. Whatever brings you back to center and that you can commit to doing on a regular schedule.

A spiritual practice can be quite simple and yet quite effective. Sometimes if I am having a long or difficult day during the week here at church, I come in here. I sit sit alone in this sanctuary for just a few moments and feel the echoes of the sacred things that happen when we worship together in this space each Sunday.

And my breathing slows. And my thoughts stop racing.

And my emotions find calmness. And my heart begins to soar.

And I am able to know again that which I hold most important. I experience again that which is larger than me but of which I am part.

That which is sacred washes over me again in that quiet stillness.

Where do you find that stillness? What brings you that calm? What slows your breathing even as your heart soars?

My friends, stress and anxiety do not survive our encounters with the sacred.

Amen

Benediction

Now, as we go out into our world;
May the covenant that binds us together dwell in your heart and nourish your days,
May the mission that we share inspire your thoughts and light your way,
May the spirit of this beloved community go with you until next we are gathered again.
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 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.