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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
August 22, 2012
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Even in relatively good times, it can be hard to envision the possibilities that lie before us. We can get caught in routines and set ways of thinking. In difficult or tragic circumstances, it can feel like our possibilities have been taken away from us. Yet, even in such times, new possibilities often emerge. How do we learn to embrace them?

 

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Chalice Lighting

We now kindle a fire as a passion for justice burns in our hearts. Its light gives us glimpses of the many creative possibilities that surround us. Its warmth radiates into our very souls, connecting the devine spark within each of us, binding us together in beloved religious community.

Call to Worship

“Say these words when you lie down and when you rise up, when you go out and when you return. In times of mourning and in times of joy. Inscribe them on your doorposts, embroider them on your garments, tattoo them on your shoulders, teach them to your children, your neighbors, your enemies, recite them in your sleep, here in the cruel shadow of empire: Another world is possible.”

– Roque Dalton

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

“We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature. What we have been forced to leave behind we needed to leave behind. What is getting us through is what we will need to take forward, all the rest is up to us. DREAM. While have so much time. DREAM of the life you want. DREAM of the world you desire to exist in…. from there we can add to the collective weaving of whatever it is that is next. if we are gonna heal, let it be glorious.”

– Sonya Renee Taylor

Sermon

There’s a story about two salespeople who were sent to a remote tribal village in the 1900s to find out if there was any opportunity for selling shoes there for their company. Well, they both sent back telegrams to the company. One of them wrote, “Situation hopeless. Stop. They don’t wear shoes.” And the other one wrote, “Glorious opportunity. Stop. They don’t have any shoes yet.”

In September, we’ll be exploring the topic of Embracing Possibility in several of our classes and other church activities. I think that story illustrates how even in relatively OK times and situations, it can sometimes be difficult to perceive and embrace the possibilities available to us. Now, the second salesperson clearly was very open to possibility. But like the first salesperson, so often we can get into sort of a rut – sometimes just due to the necessary routines of daily living. We can develop restricted ways of thinking and of experiencing our world that limit our creative potential. Well, fortunately, studies have found that there are fairly simple ways we can open ourselves to possibility.

Just as they benefit us in many other ways, music, dancing , exercise, the arts, story telling, movies, reading, etc. can help us perceive and embrace possibilities. They take us out of the routines of daily life. Religious community and spiritual practices can also.

Research has found that practicing gratitude is one of our strongest ways to enhance creative thinking. Meditation and other spiritual practices can also help us grasp the potentialities that lie before us.

In spring of 2014, I was taking the last required class before I could graduate from seminary. My seminary was a long distance program wherein we did most of the classwork at home. Anyway, the work for the class had this routine pattern. Read a lot. Read some more Read. Read. Read. Read. Read a lot more. Write a paper. Rinse and repeat for a second and third time. The routine had pretty much stifled my creativity by the time I had to write the third paper. And suddenly, I realized I had also written myself into a corner in my first two papers.

All three sets of readings for the papers addressed pretty much the same themes, and I had written the first two papers so broadly that by the second paper I had already addressed all of the major themes from all of the readings. I had no idea what I could possibly write about for that third paper.

Finally, I went out into our backyard. It was a beautiful, cool spring day. I walked all around our backyard, over and over again, meditating, forcing myself not to think about that looming paper. Of course though, eventually I had to go back in and get back to it. I sat down at my computer, and suddenly it came to me that though the third set of readings addressed the same themes, they did so in ways that could be read as a critique of the theses I had chosen about those themes for my first two papers. So, I wrote the third paper, basically as a critical examination of my first two. Well, my instructor was a Unitarian Universalist, so, of course, they just loved it that I would be argumentative, even with myself! I got an A+ and graduated seminary.

So these are some things that can help us embrace possibility even in times that are relatively OK. And when we find ourselves in situations that are difficult, they become even more vital. Really, really tough, even painful situations like, oh, I don’t know … living through a pandemic … can make it very hard to imagine new possibilities, so we need these experiences and practices to help us through. And we may also be able to awaken ourselves to not yet imagined potentialities by asking ourselves what we have learned from the experience, as difficult as it has been.

Researchers have been asking people what they hope for after the pandemic. Here are just a few of the common responses:

• More caring and kindness.
• Deeper relationships
• Really living my experiences.
• Treating health as more than what happens at a medical facility.
• Finding ways to love more deeply than before.
• Doing for others and the planet.

These from folks across the ideological spectrum. Likewise, I think we can now envision a lot of possibilities about ways of being and doing:

• A much deeper sense of how truly interconnect we are.
• New ways of imagining work and the workplace.
• Greater comfort with stillness.
• Realizing that love is still possible, even from a distance.

Those are just a few possibilities we might now embrace.

And early research has begun to find that the pandemic and months of sheltering in place have begun to awaken more and more people to issues such as global inequalities, as well as inequities within individual nations. People are awakening to systemic racism and other forms of oppression. They are beginning to recognize the extreme weather events we have been witnessing as being due to global climate change.The pandemic has revealed the brokenness of our educational, health and criminal justice systems to a lot of folks.

Again, these are just a few examples. And I know there are still many who haven’t had these awakenings. But more and more are. In recent conversations with some of my politically conservative loved ones, I have been pleasantly surprised at how they expressed a new awareness of one or more of these. And as more people awaken, we can begin to cast a vision for change, creating a better and more just world – a world reset in the after times because of the possibilities awakening within more and more folks.

I want to turn now to how even our worst times of loss, grief and sorrow may contain the seeds of possibility in our future, if we find healthy ways to carry them with us.

On October 3, 2014, Nora McInerny suffered through a miscarriage. On October 8, her father died. Then, on November 25, her husband, Aaron, died of brain cancer. Devastated, part of the way she began to heal was by forming ways to help others who were grieving losses. She discovered, like for her, one of the things they found most hurtful was when others advised them to just “move on”. I want to let her tell you her response to that and how moving forward with her loss opened up new possibilities.

Video

I’ll close with how in extremely difficult times, we can help each other find possibility. Some of you have heard me talk about the time in Houston I spent doing HIV/ AIDS treatment research. At first, there just were no effective treatments for the disease. We lost so many.

Raul was one who was especially difficult for me. Raul had moved to Houston from Puerto Rico and took a job with me as our office administrator. He was kind and smart and talented and funny and did such great work for the organization. We shared an office together, so we got to be very close. Raul had HIV. Eventually, his immune system began to fail, and he started getting sick.

My spouse Wayne was his physician at the time. For awhile, he was able to help Raul recover from a number of various AIDS- related illnesses. Eventually though, Raul came down with an infection for which there was no treatment. Eventually, he became so ill and weak that he went into a hospice, where they could at least try to alleviate his suffering.

I went to visit him just before he died. I wish I could tell you that it was a beautiful death, whatever that means. It wasn’t.

He was suffering, and he had lost control of his bodily functions, and he kept fighting it even there in the hospice, and he was angry. He had every right to be. He was 26 years old. Mercifully, the pain medicine they were infusing into him eventually helped him fall asleep. But I sat there with him in that quiet hospice room and thought to myself, “I can’t do this any more”. The sense of loss suddenly seemed too overwhelming.

I could not imagine any possible way I could keep doing AIDS research work. I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. I wanted to forget the devastation happening all around me. Eventually though, I went home and fell into Wayne’s loving arms.

Eventually, I talked with other folks I loved who were doing similar work. And they helped me begin to perceive the possibilities that would allow me to keep going, which largely involved letting myself slow down – take time to feel the emotions and take better care of myself. And together, we, all of us, held onto our love for each other and a vision of the day when we would find effective treatments. And eventually, eventually, that day came.

Still, like with Raul, we lost too many shining souls along the way. But as in the video we watched earlier, we didn’t move on without them. We moved forward with them. Raul and so many others are a part of who I have become.

And despite this time when I cannot get to be with you all in person, still, you are a part of who I am becoming even now, as I hope I am in at least some small way for you. You are part of who your fellow participants in this religious community, even through virtual space, are becoming, as they are for you.

The return of the pandemic surging because of the delta variant has been so very difficult, especially after the vaccines becoming available had offered us our first glimmers of hope, after so many long, hard months of living in pandemic isolation. So many of us were just beginning to be able to visit with family and loved ones after so being separated for so long. We had begun to dream of returning to in person worship services and activities here at the church. Now, all of that has been called into question, put on standby, by a virus resurgent. It’s a terribly difficult time.

There are moments when I am having to find ways to keep from slipping into despair. So, I know it can be so hard now to even imagine the possibilities that still lie before us. It can be so difficult to hold on to that vision for the after times – that dream of making a better world based at least in part on what we have learned from living through a pandemic.

My beloveds, we will need each other and all of those we love – we will need to help each other be able to see the possibilities that do still exist for us. So, hold onto all that you love and all of where you find love in your lives. Hold onto your love for one another and all of those who are dear to you. Hold onto your love for humanity and for all of life and creation.

Hold on to love, for within it, possibilities still abundant are calling you forward.

 

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Most sermons during the past 21 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 18, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We live in a culture that often encourages us to project an air of invincibility. Yet research by Brene Brown and others in the social sciences indicates that the opposite may be the key to living whole-heartedly. Being willing to embrace and express our vulnerability may be the source of authenticity, human connection, and empathy, as well as the ability to both love and accept being loved.

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Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

No vulnerability – no empathy. In a culture where people are afraid to be vulnerable, you can’t have empathy. If you share something with me that’s difficult, in order for me to be truly empathic, I have to step into what your feeling, and that’s vulnerable. So there can be no empathy without vulnerability…. …Vulnerability is the path.

– Dr Brene Brown

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more…. …Live your life. Live your life. Live your life. And that is my attempt to do so.

– Maurice Sendak

Sermon

Dr. Brene Brown, whose words we heard in our Call to Worship earlier has a lot more to say that I really love. She says, “Vulnerability is the core of all emotions and feelings. To feel is to be vulnerable.

To believe vulnerability is weakness is to believe that feeling is weakness.

To foreclose on our emotional life out of a fear that the costs will be too high is to walk away from the very thing that gives purpose and meaning to living.”

She defines vulnerability as “exposure, uncertainty, and emotional risk”.

Here is one of my favorite findings from her social science research on vulnerability.

She discusses people she that she calls the “wholehearted”, by which she means people who have embraced and can express their own vulnerability, and thereby are living more authentic, loving and connected lives.

Dr. Brown says that embracing vulnerability doesn’t mean never complaining about the bad things that happen in life – the things that hurt.

In fact, the wholehearted can complain as much as anyone else. They just do it in a specific and more life fulfilling way.

She says that they “piss and moan with perspective.” “Dang,” I thought, when I heard her say that, “Now that would have made a great sermon title”.

“Pissing and Moaning with Perspective; a Spiritual Practice for the Ages”.

Now, I want to be clear that she is not talking about suffering vulnerability at the hands of racism and other forms of oppression, health issues, abusive relationships and the like.

And certainly, we have all felt some very scary vulnerability due to the pandemic.

What she IS saying is that while embracing our vulnerability is not weakness, neither does it mean we will never have problems, make mistakes or suffer.

It is recognizing that we will, and loving ourselves and other people, not in spite of these things, but because of them.

To be alive is to be vulnerable.

And yet our cultural norms can often encourage us to project a false sense of invincibility.

The prior Presidential administration downplaying a pandemic, for instance.

But, cultivating this false sense of invincibility can drain our courage for loving and accepting being loved – rob of us of the belonging and connection that are at the center of what it means to be fully human.

Now, I have struggled with all of this at times.

Right after I started with the church as a new minister, I helped teach one of our Sunday morning religious education classes for kindergarten and first grade children.

After the lesson, it was too cold and rainy to let them go outside and play, so we had to come up with activities that they could do inside.

A few of them got bored with these activities and decided they would turn me into an indoor jungle gym instead.

Soon, I found myself under siege by a group of five- and six-year-olds.

I was outnumbered, out maneuvered and outlandishly on the verge of experiencing pure joy – if only I would let myself give in to it.

But I found myself resisting it instead.

Dr. Brown calls this resistance, “foreboding joy” – when we won’t let ourselves fully experience joyful moments because we start to project what can go wrong.

We start imagining all the sorrow that may come.

It’s like we try to ward off the sorrow in our lives by stifling the joy.

That doesn’t work.

So, here are all the foreboding and shaming thoughts I was having as I resisted joy:

“Oh my God, I have to keep them on the carpeted area or one of them will get hurt and I’ll never get to work within Unitarian Universalism ever again.”

– and – “What will their parents think if they come to pick them up and find that they’ve tackled their Sunday school teacher and taken over the classroom?”

– and – “Good golly man, you have Reverend in front of your name now, you can’t be seen acting the fool with a bunch of first graders.”

Sometimes my shaming thoughts have a British accent.

Luckily for me, the more I resisted, the more they upped the ante.

Five- and six-year-olds have a lot of energy and determination.

So, I discovered that if I gave in and joined in the fun, they would actually more easily accept some parameters like staying on the carpeted area.

And then it was pure joy.

In addition to the foreboding joy I have been discussing, Dr. Brown outlines a number of other ways that we avoid vulnerability and that ultimately rob of us of living fully.

Here are a few of the major ones. See if you recognize any of them.

“Perpetual disappointment” – you may know folks who do this – these are the Eeyores of our world. “Oh well, it’s never really as great as it seems. In fact, it’s usually worse.”

“Numbing” – These are the ways that we avoid feeling at all or at least dull our emotions to the point of becoming unrecognizable.

Numbing includes the things we normally think of as addictions such as alcohol and drugs, but also includes things like excessive television, eating, video games, smart phone use; working too much; buying too much, etc.

Recent research says that all of this increased exponentially during the pandemic.

“Perfectionism” – She calls this the “20-Ton shield” when it comes to avoiding vulnerability.

Perfectionism is a trap though because we can’t be perfect all the time and for everything.

Thus, perfectionism can actually stifle our internal drive to strive for excellence because even excellent will not be perfect, so why take any real risks at all?

For me, it used to be a way of sort of super- numbing.

I was the oldest child in my family growing up.

Now, you may have heard about the oldest sibling syndrome wherein under stress, we can become over-functioning. We start trying to take care of everything and everyone, whether they want us to or not Ñ a form of perfectionism.

My mom was single, so I got a very strong dose of this.

Some of you may have heard me mention before that my maternal grandparents were like a second set of parents to me.

My Grandfather became my father figure, and I pretty much idolized them both.

They were my role models.

So, when I got the call one day, many years ago now, that my grandfather was in the hospital and it did not look good, I went into sort of an overfunctioner’s perfect storm.

I didn’t stop to cry or grieve or feel anything. I started making plans to make the drive over to take care of my family.

I was going to handle this situation perfectly!

And when we got to the hospital, and he was no longer conscious so that I did not even get to say goodbye, I didn’t cry or grieve. I took care of everyone else.

And when I got the call the next morning that he had died, I didn’t cry. I got up, got dressed and started planning and taking care of things.

And even when I gave the eulogy at his funeral, I still didn’t cry, nor at the reception afterwards, nor on the drive back home, nor after we got back home.

I was too busy “functioning”.

And then, I think it was maybe a couple of days later, I couldn’t find my glasses, and so I went out to our car, thinking maybe they had fallen under a seat or something and started searching for them.

I didn’t find them, but I did find a map my grandfather had given me – he was a traveler and big on maps – and he had written his name on it.

My grandfather had this habit of writing his name on all his belongings.

And suddenly, sitting there alone in the car, clutching his map, with no one left to take care of anymore but me, I ran out of ways to avoid it.

I started crying. And for a while it felt as if I might never stop.

A friend of mine who’s a playwright once had one of his characters, after having just lost her family in a car wreck, say, “I don’t have to cry now. I can cry tomorrow, or next week or next month or next year, because it’s never going to stop. It’s never going to stop hurting.”

I guess that was kind of what I had been doing – trying to put off feeling the hurt.

It doesn’t work eventually, but his character was right about this:

It never really does completely stop hurting.

We just learn to carry it with us.

And I think maybe that’s as it should be because for me it is also carrying them with us.

My grandparents are the people who taught me to have a love of nature.

To this day, even though they have both been gone many years now, I will be on a nature hike and see something so beautiful that it fills me with joy, and I will think that I have to call them and tell them about it.

Their old phone number, 409-962-2010 pops into my head, but, of course it is someone else’s number now.

The thing is, somehow because this happens, the joy of the experience is also deeper, greater, more complex.

It helps keep their memory alive in my heart.

It is a way in which I can at least somewhat re- experience their love.

I call it a joy so full that it is an aching joy, rather than that foreboding joy we talked about earlier.

Writer and poet Kahlil Gibran said it like this, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

And that’s why numbing robs us of living fully.

That’s the reason to seek lives of vulnerability and authenticity. If we refuse to allow sorrow to carve into our being, we will also never experience the fullness of that aching joy.

I think as the church and our world begin to deal with whatever the next phase of the pandemic may bring in the coming months, we will need to be willing to be vulnerable with one another, we will need honesty Ñ a willingness to share our emotions.

And I think we create in this church a space where we can bring our vulnerabilities and our whole selves, and that then can help us be more wholehearted in our larger worlds also.

I think it starts by being willing to ask for the space to be vulnerable and by being willing risk it – to reach out and say, “I have been trying to take care of my family, but I am emotionally exhausted myself”, or “I have been afraid about going back to work in person at my office because what if the vaccines start to fail? I don’t have anywhere else where it feels safe to share this fear.”

We work to create in this religious community a space where we can do that – a church where we can practice living authentically.

A place where we are allowed to be vulnerable and imperfect – to make mistakes and be forgiven for them rather than shamed for them.

A place where we are courageous enough for empathy to thrive.

A place where we love and accept love and radiate that love out into our larger world.

A community where life’s hallowed sorrows and aching joys can be sung into the rafters and held by beloved community.

A community that I love with my whole heart.

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Most sermons during the past 21 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 11, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

This is a rebroadcast of a sermon from January 27, 2019.

How do we ground our social justice work, our struggles against racism, oppression, and the destruction of our environment? Where do we find reliance and even joy? We will examine a theology that grounds this work in our collective interdependence or, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, “We are tied together in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality… This is the inter-related structure of reality.”

 

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“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
Aboriginal Activists Group, Queensland, 1970s

Call to Worship
Rev. Chris Jimmerson

I reach for my fullest potential in a world that pits my full potential against yours.

Together, we can all better reach for our full potential.

I am taught to fear difference.

By embracing our differences, we learn, grow and may be transformed.

The privileges I have been given, the power to oppress, leaves me trapped within those same systems of oppression.

Collectively, we can change those systems and liberate us all.

Racism, sexism, classism, radical capitalism, gender and sexuality biases, religious bigotries; these conspire together to bind us all into silos of spiritual emptiness.

Together, we can burst through these silos of disconnection and journey together toward wholeness and holiness.

Come, let us enter into this journey together.

Together, we celebrate our collective vision of Beloved Community. Together, we build that vision.

Reading

A NETWORK OF MUTUALITY
by Martin Luther King Jr.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

Injustice anywhere is a threat justice everywhere.

There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought be maladjusted.

Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that.

We must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation…

The foundation of such a method is love.

Before it is too late, we must narrow the gaping chasm between our proclamations of peace and our lowly deeds which precipitate and perpetuate war.

One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.

We shall hew out of the mouton of despair, a stone of hope.

Sermon Handout

COSTS OF OPPRESSION TO PEOPLE FROM PRIVILEGED GROUPS

Psychological Costs: Loss of Mental Health and Authentic Sense of Self.

 

• Socialized into limited roles and patterns of behavior
• Denial of emotions and empathy
• Limited self-knowledge and distorted view of self
• Discrepancy between others’ perceptions and internal reality
• Pain and fears (of doing and saying wrong thing, of retaliation from oppressed groups, of revealing self for fear of judgment, of different people and experiences)
• Diminished mental health (distorted view of self and reality, denial, projection)

 

Social Costs: Loss and Diminishment of Relationships

 

• Isolation from people who are different
• Barriers to deeper, more authentic relationships
• Disconnection, distance and ostracism within own group/family if act differently

 

Moral and Spiritual Costs: Loss of Moral and Spiritual Integrity

 

• Guilt and shame
• Moral ambivalence (doing right thing vs. social pressures and realities)
• Spiritual emptiness or pain

 

Intellectual Costs: Loss of Developing Full Range of Knowledge

 

• Distorted and limited view of other people’s culture and history
• Ignorance of own culture and history

 

Material and Physical Costs: Loss of Safety, Resources, and Quality of Life

 

• Social violence and unrest
• Higher costs (e.g. for good and safe schools and homes, for qualified employees)
• Waste of resources (to deal with effects of inequality)
• Loss of valuable employees, clients and customers
• Loss of knowledge to foster societal growth and well-being
• Diminished collective action for common concerns
• Negative health implications

 

Benefits of Social Justice for People from Privileged Groups

 

• Fuller, more authentic sense of self
• More authentic relationships and human connection
• Moral integrity and consistency
• Freedom from fears
• Improved work and living conditions
• Access to other cultures and wisdom
• More resources to address common concerns
• Greater opportunity for real democracy and justice

 

From: Diane J. Goodman, Promoting Diversity and Social Justice: Educating People from Privileged Group (Routledge, 2011). www.dianegoodman.com

Benediction
by Bell Hooks

The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

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Most sermons during the past 21 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 4, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

For over a year and a half, we have all been on an often challenging journey together, but we are still here as a religious community. As we contemplate an upcoming return to in-person church activities, our journey will change course again. What might we need to consider to smooth the potential bumps and avoid potential roadblocks when we begin that new journey?

 

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Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

WE TRAVEL THIS ROAD TOGETHER
By Tess Baumberger

From the busy-ness of everyday we gather once a week to remember who we are, to dream of who we might become.

We travel this road together.

As companions on this journey, we share the milestones we meet along the way. Individual moments of joy and sorrow become shared moments of comfort and celebration.

We travel this road together.

We share this journey across differences of belief and opinion Because we value diversity and because care for one another.

We travel this road together.

Today as we take the next steps, let us notice our fellow travelers: The burdens that they carry, the songs that inspire their hearts.

We travel this road together.

As we gather in beloved community, let us open the holy havens of our hearts, Let us share the sacred places of our souls For we are pilgrims who share a common path.

We travel this road together.

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

A BLESSING FOR TRAVELING IN THE DARK
By Jan Richardson

Go slow
if you can.
Slower.
More slowly still.
Friendly dark
or fearsome,
this is no place
to break your neck
by rushing,
by running,
by crashing into
what you cannot see.
Then again,
it is true:
different darks
have different tasks,
and if you
have arrived here unawares,
if you have come
in peril
or in pain,
this might be no place
you should dawdle.
I do not know
what these shadows
ask of you,
what they might hold
that means you good
or ill.
It is not for me
to reckon
whether you should linger
or you should leave.
But this is what
I can ask for you:
That in the darkness
there be a blessing.
That in the shadows
there be a welcome.
That in the night
you be encompassed
by the Love that knows
your name.

from Jan Richardson’s blog, The Advent Door
© Jan Richardson, janrichardson.com

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

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Most sermons during the past 21 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
June 20, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Getting through challenging times like this, working for justice, building the Beloved Community all require serious contemplation, hard work and allowing ourselves to feel the painful emotions that may come up. We must remember also that play, fun, and humor are necessary to sustain us. We must allow ourselves moments of joy. Love is our ultimate source of resilience, and one of the ways we express that love is through playfulness.

 

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Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila, lila meaning play. And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance.

– Alan Watts, Zen and the Beat Way

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

In rare moments of deep play, we can lay aside our sense of self, shed time’s continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world’s ordinary miracles. No mind or heart hobbles. No analyzing or explaining. No questing for logic. No promises. No goals. No relationships. No worry. One is completely open to whatever drama may unfold.

– Diane Ackerman

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

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Most sermons during the past 21 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
May 16, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The stories we tell ourselves both as individuals and as a culture have powerful effects on how we live our lives, make meaning of our world and treat one another. Might some of them be retold in ways that would improve our lives and our world!

 

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Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

It’s no coincidence that just at this point in our insight into our mysteriousness as human beings struggling toward compassion, we are also moving into an awakened interest in the language of myth and fairy tale. The language of logical argument, of proofs, is he language of the limited self we know and can manipulate. But the language of parable and poetry, of storytelling, moves from the imprisoned language of the provable into the freed language of what I must, for lack of another word, continue to call faith.

– Madeleine L’Engle, “A Circle of Quiet”

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

“Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I’m beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative – they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told. Fiction and nonfiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons that I don’t fully understand, fiction dances out of me, and nonfiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.”

– Arundhati Roy, “The God of Small Things”

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

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Most sermons during the past 21 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
April 18, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We, and all that is, are changing, at least ever so slightly, in every moment. We are always becoming something new. Our ever-unfolding, ever-changing nature is inevitable. Our agency lies in the choices we make as to what direction, what path, our becoming will follow. We’ll explore the creative, life-giving, life-saving possibilities to which the spirit of love and life, the greater good, call us.

 

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Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

Everything is in process, even the seemingly solid bed rock of earth has gone through enormous changes since it was star stuff, then magma. Nor was reality quite like the ancients saw it, changing combinations of earth, fire, water and air or spirit. Nor is it made up chiefly of mass and space as in Newtonian physics. What seems to us to be things are just packets of energy related for a time. There events actual occasions. So are we.

– Rev. John Buehrens

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

To become is a life long process. Nothing is constant, not even the self. We evolve in the midst of narratives meant only for some and ways of being made narrow by fear and power. We must, then, have the courage to listen to the truth of our own lives, to the wisdom that comes from within – responding without resistance or need to control, but with welcome and curiosity. This is what ensures our becoming is an unfolding of our truest self. This lifelong labor cannot be carried out alone. It requires help from friends, and lovers, family, and creaturely companions who bear witness to what makes us come alive. And say to us, “Listen. Look. Feel. Pay attention to that.”

This is loving and being loved.

Telling the stories. Sharing in the memories. Giving thanks for the relationships, understandings, and experiences past that have shaped us to this day.

This is loving and being loved.

Celebrating new beginnings that excite. Holding risks together. Leaning into unknowns with the promises of support and companionship.

This is loving and being loved.

Like listening to the future calling uniquely to each of us in the midst of all of life’s noise. Helping one another find our place in the shared labor of collective life. Supporting each other in what it is the world’s ache is asking from us.

This is loving and being loved.

To say, for the first time, “This is who I am. This is the truth of my body. This is what I know about myself. This is my name and this is where my path is leading me.” And to have it heard. Have it received. Have it affirmed. And then, to say it again, and again, as we change and as the world changes, and to have each proclamation greeted with an open-armed embrace:

This is loving and being loved.

There is no me without you. We shape one another. The Sacred that birthed us weaves our lives together so that we can only find ourselves through shared becoming. For my journey and all its winding ways. For yours. For all the saints who labored for what is, all the kin whose lives made ours possible. For all those yet to come for whom living our truths today will mean breaking possibilities open for them tomorrow: We pause. We give thanks. We acknowledge.

This is loving and being loved

– Enfleshed

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

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Most sermons during the past 21 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
March 21, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our commitments are central to our lives, our relationship with ourselves, with others and our world. Yet, we can over-commit, fail to live up to our commitments, find ourselves needing to renegotiate them or even withdraw from them. We’ll explore the nuances of our commitments and how they have helped us make it through an extraordinarily challenging year.

 

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Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

Inevitably in our lives we commit ourselves to something, whether worthy or not. The direction and intensity of our loyalties give shape and meaning to our lives. Loyalties, commitments, covenants, the promises we make to one another, these are the things that tell us to what we belong. By giving so they tell us who we are.

– Henry Nelson Weiman

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

While we might want community, it is often community on our terms, with easy entrances and exits, lots of choices and support and minimal responsibilities… Our lives are knit together not so much by intense feelings as by shared history, tasks, commitments, stories, and sacrifices.

– Christine D Pohl

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

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Most sermons during the past 21 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
February 21, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We know that many folks may be enduring hardship because of the terrible weather and power outages we’ve experienced this last week. We are not addressing these conditions in the sermon today because Rev. Chris has been without power since last Sunday and is still without power as of Friday morning. Because of this, along with travel issues on icy roads, a new sermon was not recorded, and we will be rebroadcasting a sermon that we hope lifts your spirits and brings you a little humor as we all try to thaw out and get our lives going again.

Jim and Jane Henson created their lovable puppet characters over six decades ago, and the Muppets really began to gain prominence in the early 1970s. Through their decades of television and movies, what have the Muppets had to tell us about life, love and creating community?

 

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Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

Play, humor, fun, joy, these are essential to human well-being. Yes, we need our serious sides too, but we can not thrive without these essentials of life.

– C E Limoux

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

Ingrid Fetell Lee “The Aesthetics of Joy”

JOY IS A PROPULSIVE FORCE It’s a curious feature of autocratic regimes that forms of joy are often banned. Music is a common one. In China under Mao, listening to the music of Beethoven was a crime. Folk or traditional music is typically condemned, such as in Nazi Germany, which targeted Jewish music…. Dancing was similarly reviled, and all types of celebration found themselves in the crosshairs of European colonists setting out to spread Christianity and “civilization” around the world. Music, dance, art, eroticism: all of these fuel an emotional response that creates momentum, one that can be hard to control….

So, simply put, joy can be considered resistance because it’s a form of “energy for change,” as Audre Lorde puts it.

Sermon

Swedish Chef Video

I have waited my entire life to begin a sermon with the Swedish Chef doing Rapper’s Delight.

And, choosing this service topic gave me an excuse to wear my new Muppet boots, featuring Animal.

In actuality, I have been thinking about doing this service since back when I was in seminary and having to read many, many, many theology books and write many, many theology papers.

One evening I decided I needed to clear my head of the deep thinking for a bit, so my spouse Wayne and I went out to see a movie.

Thinking it would get me about as far away from theology as I could get, we went to see the muppet movie that was playing at the time that was simply titled, “The Muppets”

By the way, for Unitarian Universalists, theology does not have to involve a God or Gods, though it can. It can also be about a way of thinking about and understanding that which is ultimate, that which is most important for living richly and fully, that which is larger than ourselves but of which we are a part.

Anyway, I am sitting there watching the movie, and I’m like, “Wow, there’s a kind of theology happening here.”

It’s about creating community and struggling together toward a common purpose. The Muppets have always had each other, even when things looked bleak. They stuck together. They stayed in relationship even when they had conflict.

They never let one another give up – they carried each other when needed.

And I sat there thinking, here we have a band of quirky, intelligent, creative oddballs and misfits who somehow find each other and create a caring community where they laugh, cry, play and sing together.

My God, they’re Unitarian Universalists!

I told Wayne all of this. He said, “Shut up and watch the movie.”

I’m joking about that last part. We talked on the way home, not during the movie. We were at Alamo Drafthouse, and the ghost of Ann Richards would have taken us out if we had done so.

Over the past 63 years now, in television programs like “Sesame Street” and “The Muppet Show”, as well as in their movies, the Muppets have modeled spiritual themes rooted in community, belonging and interconnectedness: we can help each other follow our dreams; reconciliation and redemption are possible.

They’ve modeled staying true to yourself and your calling; mysticism and wonder; the effort and the struggle being more important than the outcome; being willing to ask for help when we end it; and to quote one line from the movie, “Life’s a happy song when there’s someone beside you to sing it”.

A while back, I put a public post on Facebook, asking folks, “Over the years, what have you learned about life and living from the Muppets.

Now, I should have known in a mostly Unitarian Universalist crowd that I would get some typically smart aleck responses like:

 

• • It’s not easy being green.

 

 

• • Don’t be a grouch or you’ll end up living in a garbage can.

 

 

• • Cookies are good.

 

 

• Don’t play with electricity like crazy Harry

 

The more serious responses all also focused on belonging and relationship. Folks had gotten from the Muppets:

 

• • The importance of listening deeply to one another.

 

 

• • The power of music to turn strangers into friends and friends into family.

 

 

• • How friends make life exponentially better.

 

 

• • That you might as well embrace life’s weirdness because life is already weirder than you think.

 

 

• • Caring and curiosity will make your own life better.

 

 

• • Our differences are what make life more interesting and creative.

 

 

• • Even with our differences, we can all live on the same street and get along.

 

 

• We can all come together and create something beautiful if given the chance.

I loved it that one of church couples has decided that everyone has a “Spirit Muppet” in life (you know, like spirit animals), and they have chosen Ralph the Dog and Grover as theirs.

 

They decided this after reading about slate. com Supreme Court reporter Dahlia Lithwick’s “Unified Theory of Muppets Types” which theorizes a singular factor that divides us in our society: “Every one of us is either a Chaos Muppet or an Order Muppet. “

Here’s how Lithwick explains her Unified Muppet Theory:

“Chaos Muppets are out-of-control, emotional, volatile. They tend toward the blue and fuzzy. They make their way through life in a swirling maelstrom of food crumbs, small flaming objects, and the letter C.

Cookie Monster, Ernie, Grover, Gonzo, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and-paradigmatically-Animal, are all Chaos Muppets.

Zelda Fitzgerald was a Chaos Muppet. So, I must tell you, is former Justice Stephen Breyer.”

Order Muppets-and I’m thinking about Bert, Scooter, Sam the Eagle, Kermit the Frog, and the blue guy who is perennially harassed by Grover at restaurants (the Order Muppet Everyman)-tend to be neurotic, highly regimented, averse to surprises and may sport monstrously large eyebrows.

They sometimes resent the responsibility of the world weighing on their felt shoulders, but they secretly revel in the knowledge that they keep the show running.

Your first grade teacher was probably an Order Muppet. So is Chief Justice John Roberts.

And in this way, we can understand all societal conflict.

Are you an order muppet or a chaos muppet?

Now, whether or not you buy Lithwick’s “Unified Theory of Muppet Types”, I do think that the muppet characters can be thought of as archetypes that capture some of our human traits and, more specifically, our Unitarian Universalist faith characteristics rather well.

Of course, we have to start with Kermit the Frog, who I think can be thought of as representing our Unitarian Universalist rootedness in rationality and the use of reason. He’s a steadfast thinker and philosopher and a natural leader.

There is a great drive in this part of our faith that leads us to contemplation, discovery and progress in our state of knowledge. The shadow side of it though is that we can get so caught up in our heads that we sometimes do not actually act upon that knowledge.

But either way, how can we keep from loving a frog who does a cover of the Talking Head’s “Once in a Lifetime”.

Kermit Video

In contrast, I think Animal can be thought of us as representing our embodied, emotional, passionate side.

This is the side of us that drives to acting upon our faith but can also result in us being hasty and irrational.

Still, it is where a deep well of compassion and love resides. ÇAnimal VideoÈ

Next, I think Fozzy the Bear can represent how we can enhance our faith by infusing it with a sense of fun, fellowship, joy and humor.

While our faith would become shallow if these were all that it involved, fun, fellowship, joy and humor can very much help us sustain and deepen the other aspects of our spirituality.

Even when the jokes are really bad. Waka. Waka.

Fozzy Video

And then there’s Janice, our guitar rocking, deep thinking, mystical side of ourselves.

I also suspect Janice may be Buddhist.

Janice (and we) though have to be careful sometimes to avoid thinking we’re being deeper than we really are.

Janice Video

I have always loved Statler and Waldorf, the grumpy guys that sit up in the balcony and offer unsolicited commentary.

I think maybe they can be thought of as representing our Unitarian Universalist history of skepticism and questioning.

A healthy dose of skepticism and questing has helped keep ours an honest religion.

I think the danger may be that too much skepticism can devolve into sitting on the sidelines and criticizing the efforts of others in our faith.

Statler and Waldorf Video

And, of course, we cannot leave out Ms. Piggy, who as you heard in our reading earlier considers is a feminist, as well as I think represents that there is probably a spark of Diva along with that spark of the divine within each of us.

In fact, in 2015, Ms. Piggy received the Sackler Center First Award for her feminism from the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Gloria Steinem, presented her with the award.

Ms. Piggy has a particular kind of feminism, I think. She embraces her femininity and feminine charm, but is also tough as nails, knows karate and will take you down if you mess with her!

I like to think of Ms Piggy as representing our strong and steadfast commitment to feminism and all struggles for equality and human rights – our affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

Here’s Ms. Piggy in her own words with some advice on being stylish and living life.

Ms Piggy Video

So, those are just a few of our Muppet archetypes.

My apologies if I left out anyone’s favorite Muppet character. I leave it to you to figure out what archetype they may represent, as well as to discern your own “spirit muppet” if you are so moved.

I am leaning towards Gonzo.

So, to summarize, Muppet theology is about our need for connection, community and belonging.

It is about knowing that creating community can be messy and difficult sometimes, but, if we stay in relationship with each other even during the challenges, we can become our best selves and create something greater than ourselves at the same time.

Muppet theology is about learning that the things that may be our greatest strengths can also be aspects of ourselves that can contain challenges and potential pitfalls.

It is about being there for each other, carrying each other when it is needed, as well as celebrating our uniqueness and our differences.

In these times, wherein cynicism abounds, it occurred to me as I working on this service that the Muppets might seem a bit naive and simplistic these days.

Then I thought, “or perhaps they are expressing some very basic human values from which we can too easily become separated”.

Maybe we could benefit from a return to simple compassion, caring and communality. The Muppets model for us that sense of caring and compassion. They model how if we stay in community, stay in relationship through good times and bad, we can make beautiful music together.

And so it is that I am left with no choice but to close by offering you at least a small part of the Muppets performing Bohemian Rhapsody.

Bohemian Rhapsody Video

And Amen.

 

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Most sermons during the past 21 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 17, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our imagination can lead to both wonderful spiritual paths and can take us down paths that can wound our spirits. On the one hand, our imagination helps us dream of a better life for ourselves and a better, more just world for all. Yet, we can also imagine things that are not true and get drawn into harmful cultural myths. Our imagination can also help sense the sacred all around us in our everyday lives.

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Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

You can either think that the world is getting better or the future will be much better than it is now or that you can think the world is getting worse. But that continuum isn’t as important to me, actually, as this idea of – Do you think that you have agency in this world that is either getting better or worse. When it come to our futures we have hope, we have fear, but sometimes we forget that we also have influence, and that means we can choose the future we want to work towards. Nothing is written in stone.

– Angela Avantella

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

I’ve decided to exercise my imagination more. I want to build strength and add some muscle to it. But, keep it kind, make it more active and more likely to activate on a moments notice when really needed. So, I’m reading more, emersing myself in stories, myths, poetry, the arts, more often. Rewriting the poems and stories of my childhood sometimes. Permitting my daydreams to take hold, allowing music to enter into my heart and soul, and at times I even dance, poorly, I think, but that’s OK. As I dance my awkward dance I dream not only of a future made better than today, but a present moment suddenlly filled with possibility.

– Chris Jimmerson

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

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Most sermons during the past 21 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
December 13, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Sometimes stillness is not so much a lack of motion but rather a moment to find our center so that we can discern where to move next.

 

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Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

Today I’m flying low and I’m not saying a word. I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I’m taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I’m traveling a terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.

– Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

KEEPING QUIET
by Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth
let’s not speak in any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

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Most sermons during the past 20 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
November 22, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Often, we can have a tendency to equate healing with being cured – like when we take a prescribed regimen of a medication and then get better. For trauma and other emotional wounds though, healing is more of an ongoing process, sometimes lifelong, whether individually or socially. We will explore embodied ways of approaching such healing.

 

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Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

PARTNERS IN CARE: MEDICINE AND MINISTRY TOGETHER
Fred Reklau

Cure may occur without healing and healing may occur without cure. Cure alters what is. Healing offers what might be. Cure is an act. Healing is a process. Cure seeks to change reality. Healing embraces reality. Cure takes charge. Healing takes time. Cure avoids grief. Healing assumes grief. Cure speaks. Healing listens.

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

INSTRUCTIONS IN JOY
Rev. Nancy Schafer

“MENDING”

How shall we mend you, sweet Soul?
What shall we use, and how is it
in the first place you’ve come to be torn?
Come sit. Come tell me.
We will find a way to mend you.

I would offer you so much, sweet Soul:
this banana, sliced in rounds of palest
yellow atop hot cereal, or these raisins
scattered through it, if you’d rather.
Would offer cellos in the background singing
melodies Vivaldi heard and wrote
for us to keep. Would hold out to you
everything colored blue or lavender
or light green. All of this I would offer you,
sweet Soul. All of it, or any piece of it,
might mend you.

I would offer you, sweet Soul,
this chair by the window, this sunlight
on the floor and the cat asleep in it.
I would offer you my silence, my presence,
all this love I have,
and my sorrow you’ve become torn.

How shall we mend you, sweet Soul?
With these, I think, gently
we can begin: we will mend you with a rocking
chair, some raisins,
a cat, a field of lavender beginning
now to bloom. We will mend you with songs
remembered entirely the first time
ever they are heard.

We will mend you with pieces of your own
sweet self, sweet Soul – with what you’ve taught
from the very beginning.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

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Most sermons during the past 20 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
October 18, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Listening deeply is a gift that we can give to others. Even more, it is a gift we can give to ourselves.

 

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Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

WHO WE LISTEN TO IS WHO WE BECOME
Rev. Scott Taylor

Sometimes it can become to loud
it is hard to hear those voices
you once knew so well.
Voices that knew you so well.

It is said that silence heals us,
but silence also holds us together.
So pause while we can
while this sweet sweet space gives us room to listen,
to hear the echos of memories that made us whole.
The pain of others that reawakens our hearts.
The beauty of the wild woods that wants us back.

We don’t just listen for clarity and guidance.
We listen to become larger.
Those voices calling us home
are our home.
We don’t have conversations,
we are our conversations.

We must remember, friends,
who we listen to is who we become.

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

I AM GOD, OF COURSE
Rev. Steve Garnass-Holmes

I looked at the tree blossoming in spring
and said, “Who are you?”
And she said, “I am God, of course, becoming beautiful.”
And I beheld her.

I looked at the sea
and said, “Who are you?”
and the same voice said, “It is I, flowing within you.”
And I opened myself.

I listened to the silence
and said, “Who are you?” and she said, “I am holding you.”
And I listened more.

I looked at my troubles and said, “Who are you?”
and I heard: “I am your own broken heart.”
And I wept with gratitude.

I looked at the suffering of the world
and I asked, “Who are you?”
and she said, “I am in labor pains.”
And I moved closer.

I looked at the unknown and said, “Who are you?”
and the silence said, “I am Becoming,”
and I stepped into the darkness.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

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Most sermons during the past 20 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
September 13, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

During times of anxiety and stress, we often need more rest. Physical, mental and spiritual renewal can become even more important for us. We’ll explore stories of renewal, ways we might find it and how sometimes when our life circumstances change dramatically, we may be able to reimagine ourselves.

 

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Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

“Anyone can slay a dragon,” she told me. “But try waking up very morning and loving the world all over again. That’s what makes a real hero.”

– Brian Andreas (Kai Skye)

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

Excerpted from
THINGS THAT JOIN THE SEA AND THEY SKY: FIELD NOTES ON LIVING
by Mark Nepo (Sounds True, 2017)

By midmorning, I take Zuzu, our yellow Lab, for a walk. It’s there that the trees and birds begin to speak. Or rather, I begin to listen, as they’ve been sharing their secrets constantly. Most mornings, I see birds tending and feeding their young, flying to and fro with twigs, or pecking at the ground for seed. They’re always building and mending their makeshift nests. Much like us, going to and fro to gas up the car, and pay the bills, and get the tools we need to patch the roof. Endless tasks that keep us a part of life.

Today, we went for our walk a little closer to noon. The sun was everywhere and things seemed extra close. Perhaps my mind was more empty and my heart more full, but the tulips just opening and the wind ruffling the budding leaves seemed Eden-like. Then I saw a single bird perched atop the very tip of an enormous blue spruce. So easily balanced, it looked out on the world it would have to return to. Then I saw another perched atop an old oak. The birds pausing from their tasks became silent teachers, saying without saying that we need to fall in love with the ordinary rhythms of life, again and again. And when the tasks are done or have become too heavy to complete, we need to pause and perch atop our worries and concerns. So we can return to the world and do what needs to be done, until what sustains us reveals itself like the inside of a seed cracked by our beak.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

---

 

Most sermons during the past 20 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS