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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 6, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

We begin the year by thinking about elements in our lives which are doing us a disservice, and what possibilities might become open to us if we let them go. We whisper these things into flash paper and burn them together, scattering the ashes to the wind.

Call to Worship

“We Hold a Place for You”
By Chris Jimmerson

Come into this sacred space. 

Bring with you your joys, your hopes – all that you love; that which you hold holy. 

Come into this, our beloved community. 

Bring with you also your imperfections, your secret fears and unspoken hurts – those things that you still hold but that you yearn to release. 

Come onto this hallowed ground. 

Bringing too, your wildest imaginings of what, together, we might create or create more of in our world. 

Come, we hold a place for you in this our hour of worship. 

Reading

“Burning the Old Year”
by Naomi Shihab Nye 

Letters swallow themselves in seconds. 
Notes friends tied to the doorknob, 
transparent scarlet paper, 
sizzle like moth wings, 
marry the air. 

So much of any year is flammable, 
lists of vegetables, partial poems. 
Orange swirling flame of days, 
so little is a stone. 

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t, 
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space. 
I begin again with the smallest numbers. 

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves, 
only the things I didn’t do 
crackle after the blazing dies.

Sermon

This is the story of a woman, whom I’ll call Eve, though that is not her real name. 

Eve sought grief counseling: after losing her husband to Lou Gerhig’s disease. 

Eve and her husband were devout Catholics and were married in their Catholic church. They were very much in love. The marriage was a happv one. Eve described her husband as a good father and a wonderful spouse. 

After he developed the disease, she took care of him as it progressed which became difficult, as it is a cruel and degenerative disease. As he became more disabled, he resisted becoming more and more dependent, and they sometimes fought. 

Still, every night, they would lie in bed with their hands clasped so that their wedding rings touched together, and they would repeat their wedding vows to one another. 

Until his very last day, their love for and devotion to one another remained strong. 

When she sought counseling, it had been six years since his death. 

Eve told the counselor that she knew she needed to move on with her life. to start dating again, “But I can’t take my wedding ring off,” she said. “I can’t date wearing mv wedding ring, and I can’t take it off.” 

Intellectually, she knew she had honored her commitment to her husband. Emotionally and spiritually. she could not let go of her belief that marriage is for life, which the wedding ring symbolized so strongly for her. 

The counselor worked with her priest to put together a “reverse wedding” ritual for her. 

At the same church were they had originally been married, with many of the same family and friends who had attended their wedding, the priest called her up to the altar. 

He asked her. “Were vou faithful in good times and in bad?” 

“Yes,” Eve replied. 

“In sickness and in health?” 

“I was,” she replied. 

The priest led her through the rest of her wedding vows, but in past tense, and she affirmed in front of the loving witnesses who had gathered that she had loved, honored and been faithful to her husband. 

Then the priest said, “May I have the ring, please?” 

And Eve took it off and handed it to him. 

They had her ring and her husband’s ring interlocked and then affixed to the front of their wedding photo. 

Eve later described finally taking the ring off to her counselor by saying, “It came off as if by magic.” 

This story illustrates so perfectly the power of ritual. 

Like Eve, sometimes we can know intellectually that we need to let something go, and yet it can be so difficult to move past it emotionally – spiritually. 

Ritual allows us to embody our thoughts and intentions. It allows us to hold them in a much deeper place inside – or to release something from that same deep place – from our hearts and souls, not just our minds. 

That’s why we have made it our tradition here at the church, to begin each New Year by conducting a burning bowl ritual- each of us reflects upon something that we are carrying that may be holding us back – something we would like to let go because it may be keeping us from fully living out our life goals and values – reaching out with love to manifest more of what we would like to see in our world. 

Then, we whisper whatever it is into the pieces of flash paper you were given as you came in and toss them into the flame in our bowl and watch it burn away before our very eyes. 

Here are some examples of what we might want to let go: 

• Trying to control things that can’t be controlled. 
• Making other people do right 
• What other people think of you 
• Taking over other people’s problems 
• Helping when you weren’t asked to help 
• Having the same old conversation over and over

Burning Bowl Ritual 

May your life, your spirit be unburdened of that which you have burned here today. May you experience a lightness and a joy. So unburdened, may your heart reach out in love to help build the beloved community. Amen. 

Most sermons during the past 19 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. 

PODCASTS

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
December 30, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

As we close out this year and look forward to the new year, the mystery and uncertainty of what is to come also opens up almost unlimited possibilities and creative potential.

All of this month of December, our faith development/religious eduction activities have focused on mystery. 

What does it mean to be a people of mystery? 

For a faith tradition such as ours, wherein both our Universalist and Unitarian forebears were the heretics, the questioners, the embracers of mystery and questions more profound than answers, I think this is a great topic for us to be exploring. 

What does it mean to be a people of mystery? 

And I think that exploring mystery and uncertainty can drive both a sense of humility and a sense of increased spirituality – humility over the enormity of what we do not yet know, some of which lies beyond the current tools available to us through science humility when we consider what a tiny part of the vastness of our universe we are; that our lives are but a blip in the magnificence of eternity. 

And yet I also find a sense of the spiritual in knowing that we are a part of and integrally interconnected with that great vastness, that eternal movement of time, that sacred web of all existence. 

And grounded in that sense of humility, embracing that we exist in uncertainty, diving into all that still remains mysterious to us, I think opens up the possibility of almost limitless exploration, creative opportunity and both personal and societal transformation. 

I want to share with you how Neuroscientist and author David Eagleman expresses this need to embrace uncertainty, mystery and what we do not know. 

Eagleman video 

Given the enormity of what we do not know, Eagleman goes on to talk about his discomfort with the duality going on in the debate between the so called “new atheists” and religious fundamentalists. He says that we know far too little to rule out the possibility of God with such certainty, and we know far too much to believe any of the world’s religious stories so literally. 

Now, whether or not you agree with him, he holds out the prospect that if we let go of the either/or thinking, and, like when science does not yet have the tools for measuring and observing certain phenomenon and must therefor hold multiple hypothesis at once, if we open ourselves to exploring the multitude of possibilities between these two extremes, we may find new opportunities for spiritual creativity and growth. 

He calls this possibilianism, a sort of mysticism rooted in reason and the scientific method – more on that later. 

Speaking of mysticism, I looked back at some research I did for a sermon on the subject a couple of years back and was reminded that mystic sects have developed within all of the world’s major religions. 

These are people who, depending upon their individual belief systems, have found that God or the Divine or enlightenment or nirvana or a sense of transcendence or an experience of the holy or peak experiences – these were to be found by embracing uncertainty, diving into mystery. 

Even non-theistic humanists and scientific naturalists have folks who find a sense of awe and wonder, connection to something larger than themselves by staring up at the vastness of the stars at night or marveling at the beauty of a sunset. 

And I have found this embracing of the unknown quite comforting as we move through all of the uncertainty generated by our construction and renovation process. 

In fact, I wrote us a call and response liturgy to help us embrace the uncertainty. You do not need anything in writing because it is very simple. I will speak, and then when I gesture toward you, please say with me, “It’s a mystery”. 

It’s more fun if we say it like that — like my South East Texas relatives would, “It’s a mystruy”. 

OK, ready? 

I wonder when we’ll get to use the new area of the sanctuary? It’s a mystery. 

I wonder when the new kitchen will open? It’s a mystery. 

I wonder when we’ll get our parking back? It’s a mystery. 

I wonder when we will lose the use of Howson Hall for a bit? It’s a mystery. 

The staff offices? It’s a mystery. 

The classrooms? It’s a mystery. 

All together three times now. It’s a mystery. It’s a mystery. It’s a mystery. 

OK, I do not exactly experience God or anything in that, but surrendering to the uncertainty does relieve some anxiety and I have a growing sense of excitement about the creative possibilities for growing our church and our faith that this time of uncertainty will eventually create for us. 

So let us embrace uncertainty and the vast mysteriousness within which we dwell, For the Israelites of biblical times, the mysteriousness of God was considered so vast and beyond human comprehension that even his name was beyond human ability to pronounce correctly. Even trying to say his name was blasphemy and could get you stoned to death by your neighbors. 

Well, your male neighbors as women were not allowed to participate in anything like stonings. 

Except in the imaginings of Monty Python that is. 

Python Video 

A humorous illustration of why Eagleman says we know too much to take ancient scriptures literally. 

So, mystery and uncertainty are a part of life whether we like it or not. Yet, they can also be, when we are willing to embrace the uncertainty, to swim in the mystery for a while, a powerful source of awe and wonder and creative possibilities. Mystery can stimulate transcendent experience and lead to spiritual transformation. 

I’d like to share with you just a part of author and world traveler Pico lyer’s talk, which he titled, “The Beauty of What We will Never Know”. 

VIDEO 

I loved the image of the Dali Lama having the wisdom to say, “I don’t know” when that is the simple truth. What powerful modeling of the wisdom to be found in a little humility in the face of circumstances for which we cannot have certainty. 

And I loved the quote, “the opposite of knowledge …isn’t always ignorance. It can be wonder. Or mystery, Possibility” and his observation that it is often the things we don’t know that push us forward even more more than the things we do. 

Later in that same talk, Iver also observes that mystery is a source of intimacy in our personal relationships – that we cannot ever know everything about those whom we love and that is actually a wonderful wellspring of continued growth and deepening of our relationships. 

I certainly have experienced this with my spouse Wayne, Even after 27 years, we still have more mystery in one another to explore. He still surprises me sometimes. We still have more to learn about one another. 

And even if it were some how possible to learn everything there is to know about someone else, which it isn’t because we will never have the same lived experience, even if it were possible, they would still be growing and evolving and changing. 

So the Wayne I met all those years ago and the Wayne I talked with over coffee before leaving the house this morning are not the same. And the Wayne I will meet for lunch later will not be exactly the same as the Wayne I was with this morning. 

We are always in a process of becoming with each experience and each passing moment, and for Wayne and I that has driven an abiding and ever deepening love and intimacy and an enchantment with the ever unfolding mysteries of one another. 

And so Iver says it is with our human relationships and our broader human lives and spirituality – the mystery creates almost unlimited possibilities and creative potential. 

I agree with him, and that brings me back to David Eagleman’s possibilianism that I mentioned earlier and called a sort of mysticism rooted in reason and the scientific method, 

Possibilianism says that we cannot claim certainty over that for which we have no way of being certain – the existence or none existence of God; even how we might conceive of such; how we find meaning; our place within this vast universe. 

Possibilianism requires that we be open to ideas that we don’t have any way of testing right now, be open to new, previously unconsidered possibilities and be comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind all at once. 

It also requires, though, that we apply reason to these ideas and when possible test them with scientific methods. 

I think it is also important to note that this is not agnosticism, a sort of passive response to questions we cannot answer, but rather an active diving into the mysteries. 

I loved this explanation of the difference: 

• Agnostics end with the lack of an answer. 
• Possibilians begin with the lack of an answer. 
• Agnostics say, we can’t decide between this and that. 
• Possibilians say, there are other choices than this or that. 
• Agnostics say, I Don’t Know, it’s impossible to answer that question. 
• Possibilians say, I Don’t Know, there must be better questions. 

For those of you desperately searching your smart phones about now, it’s possibilian.com. You can find links to articles and videos on the subject there also. 

It occurs to me though, that possibilianism might be one great avenue of exploration for we ever questioning, ever seeking, ever heretical Unitarian Universalists. 

As we move into a new year filled as it is with uncertainty and mystery over what is to come, perhaps we can all try on possibilianism for a while. 

Perhaps we can become that people of mystery. 

In doing so, we might just open up almost unlimited possibilities and creative potentialities. 

May it be so. Amen. 

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Most sermons during the past 19 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. 

PODCASTS

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
November 25, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

The path that led us to where we are now informs all the possibilities of our continuing journey. We will explore how our memories, both those in our mind and those buried deeply within our DNA, ground as well as challenge our human potential.

Call to Worship

We Come to Love a Church
Andrew C Kennedy

We come to love a church,
the traditions, the history,
and especially the people associated with it.
And through these people,
young and old,
known and unknown,
we reach out —

Both backward into history
and forward into the future —

To link together the generations
in this imperfect, but blessed community
of memory and hope.

Reading

Joy Harjo, 1951

Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the strongest point of time.
Remember sundown and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled to give you form and breath. You are evidence of her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their tribes, their families, their histories, too.
Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

Sermon

Why is it that I can remember every word of Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Wood on a Snowy Evening” even though I memorized it for a school assignment way back when I was in the second grade, and yet in the time it takes to walk from the living room to the kitchen in my house I often forget why it was I went to kitchen in the first place?

Well, that’s actually a more complicated question than it might seem, but, to oversimplify, the reason has to do with differences in how, where and what types of information get laid out in the brain for short versus longterm memories.

All of this month, our Life Span Faith Development programs have been exploring what it means to be a people of memory, which for the most part involves long-term memory.

This morning, I would like to also explore this with you here in worship because I believe that memory and how we construct, and sometimes deconstruct and then reconstruct it, is deeply spiritual in nature.

It is a huge topic. Whole sermons could and actually have been written just on dealing with traumatic or painful memories, for instance.

This morning though, we will be focusing on three areas:

• how we construct memory as individuals,
• socially, communally, culturally constructed memory.
• and finally current research on the potential that memory may be transmitted genetically and/or epigenetically across generations.

At the individual level, what science is discovering is that we do not lay down memories like a computer records factual pieces of data onto a disk.

Rather, especially with long-term memory, our brains weave our memories into a narrative, a story that we are constantly creating to make sense of our world, create meaning in life and maintain a sense of an individual identity or self.

And we do not in reality lay down our longterm memories entirely as individuals but often in relationship with others and our environment, as we move through life experiences moment by moment.

This is the first of the reasons that I believe that memory is an essential and profound aspect of our spirituality. It is relational, and it helps us find meaning and create an ongoing story about who we are and how we fit in our world.

That we construct our memories in this way explains why the loss of memory associated with conditions like Alzheimer’s can be so devastating and so heartbreaking. It takes away people’s ability to make sense of their world, isolates them and disintegrates their sense of self and meaning in life. Several studies have found that being touched by loved ones, familiar music and being offered ritual-like communal activities can sometimes help such folks at least partially reconstruct their personal narratives and make greater sense of their world.

It also helps explain why our memories can be factually incorrect sometimes; how we can in fact have memories that seem real but that in reality never actually happened to us; and how different people experiencing the same event can come away with very different memories of that same event.

Let me give you a few examples.

How many of you have ever discussed a childhood memory with siblings, family members or childhood friends only to find yourself arguing over very different memories of the same event?

This happens to me all of the time with my younger sister, and she is constantly getting it wrong.

This is likely because neither of us laid down pure factual data – we each were creating our own narrative and so we each laid down a memory that made sense within that narrative.

In his book, “Uncle Tungsten,” Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and best-best-selling author wrote the following about memories his from childhood, living through the bombings of London by Germany in the winter of 1940-1941:

“One night, a thousand-pound bomb fell into the garden next to ours, but fortunately it failed to explode. All of us, the entire street, it seemed, crept away that night (my family to a cousin’s flat) – many of us in our pajamas – walking as softly as we could (might vibration set the thing off?)…

On another occasion, an incendiary bomb, a thermite bomb, fell behind our house and burned with a terrible, white-hot heat. My father had a stirrup pump, and my brothers carried pails of water to him, but water seemed useless against this infernal fire-indeed, made it burn even more furiously. There was a vicious hissing and sputtering when the water hit the white-hot metal, and meanwhile the bomb was melting its own casing and throwing blobs and jets of molten metal in all directions.”

Sacks was shocked, when later one his brothers read what he had written and told him that his memory of the first bomb was correct but that, in fact, when the second bomb had fallen they had both been away at boarding school.

How could he have such a detailed memory of an event, complete with images in his mind’s eye of his family members fighting the fire and the burning molten metal, if he did not actually experience it, Sacks asked himself.

It turned out that another of his brothers who had been there for the second bombing incident had written them a vivid and detailed letter about it, and that Sacks had been enthralled by the story – so much so that the images and details it aroused in his mind became laid down as a memory of having actually been there. And as a young child, it would have neatly extended the already existing narrative created by his memory of having actually been there for the first bombing.

Subsequent studies using brain imaging technology have found that scans of memories from actual experiences and scans of memories our brains have created will show exactly the same brain patterns.

Some of you may remember when Brian Williams, the news anchor, got into trouble after going on David Letterman and falsely claiming that he had been on a helicopter hit by ground fire in Iraq. He was accused of falsifying this story, lying, in effort at self-aggrandizement.

Now, we can never know for sure what went on in Mr. William’s brain, but many memory researchers believed a very similar thing may have happened to him. He was in a helicopter in Iraq when the incident happened, just not the one that got struck, and he had accurately reported the incident two years earlier. Overtime, though, as he had interviewed the people who were actually in the helicopter and learned the vivid details, it is possible his brain conflated his actual experience with the intense images generated by his knowledge of the flight that was struck.

So, by the time Mr. Williams went onto David Letterman, it is possible that his brain had constructed a memory that seemed every bit as real to him as having been at that second bombing had seemed to Oliver Sacks.

I think there is an aspect of the spiritual here also – a spiritual lesson about checking our recollections to make sure that the story we are telling ourselves is true – that our ongoing narratives have not distorted a memory, especially in ways that could be harmful.

For example, there are now numerous incidences of African American males spending years or even decades in prison, put there based upon the eye witness testimony of white people, only to be exonerated when DNA testing became available.

White people have been fed a narrative about who is most likely to commit crimes and that narrative can construct incorrect memories that have the potential to devastate black and brown lives.

And that leads us to social, communal, cultural memory, because the things we choose to remember as communities and societies and the ways in which we choose to remember them also can have profound effects upon our lives and those of other people.

We construct cultural memory as a group or society though the stories and histories we tell or choose not to tell; through the rituals, traditions and holidays we observe and prioritize and those we do not; through the arts, music, theatre, religious practices and the very use of what language, symbols and words we chose to employ.

And like with individual memory, it is important that we examine, question and sometimes deconstruct and then reconstruct what narratives we are following and reinforcing as we pass on cultural memory.

For instance, the ways in which we have minimized the brutality and savageness of the genocide committed against native Americans; our white washing of the cruelty and monstrousness of slavery and the subsequent treatment of African Americans in the U.S.; our avoiding the images of the lynchings of black and brown Americans and on and on and on; these create an incomplete and false narrative, an untrue story, a cultural memory that is steeped in denial and allows the continued supremacy of white culture and people over all others.

We fail to teach how white elites encoded the concept of race into law to slightly privilege indentured white people over enslaved African Americans so that they would not join together to rebel against such oppressive systems.

In our own state of Texas, it will only be in the next school year that our children will be finally be taught that slavery was the primary cause of the civil war rather than sectionalism and states’ rights.

Within Unitarian Universalism, we can also fall prey to this. For instance, we often pass on a cultural memory about our how Unitarian, Transcendentalist forebearer, Theodore Parker, was such a leading and passionate abolitionist. We less often convey that he also believed whites to be the superior race, called African Americans docile and lacking in intelligence and referred to the Mexican people as “A wretched people; wretched in their origin, history, character, who must eventually give way as the Indians did.”

And this is just one of many such examples.

This is a spiritual issue. We have a moral obligation to do our best to ensure that the cultural memories we are transmitting are not continuing harmful narratives – a real and daunting challenge as we are often caught within those same false narratives ourselves.

Now, I want to switch gears and touch briefly on some of the science being investigated regarding whether a transmission of another kind of memory may be possible epigenetically or even genetically. Some of the research is still pretty early on, and some of it is the subject of much scientific debate. Still, I think it also has potential spiritual implications involving ancestry and heritage.

Epigenetics is the study of changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expression rather than alteration of the genetic code itself. Some research indicates that in animals, emotional “memory”, such as a propensity toward anxiety or the opposite, a tendency toward calmness and resilience, can be passed down epigenetically through several generations by the transmission of chemicals, methyl groups, that attach to the DNA and regulate gene expression. Some studies claim to have found this in humans also now.

Over much longer time periods, some researchers are exploring whether a kind of memory might also be encoded through alterations to the DNA itself.

Because my life is ruled by three terribly spoiled Basenji dogs, I was fascinated by the study of how humans and dogs have co-evolved over likely tens of thousands of years. Dogs and humans now seem to be born with an ability to read and interpret correctly each other facial expressions and vocal tones. When humans and their dogs interact, both species release oxytocin, the same bonding hormone released when humans interact with their new born children.

I was also fascinated by research with savants, people seemingly born with musical genius, artistic brilliance or even complicated mathematical skills who display such abilities without any training and at too early an age for their abilities to have been learned.

Likewise, scientists are studying people who after experiencing a head injury suddenly develop prodigious musical, artistic or mathematical ability, again without ever having had formal training in these areas. Is this evidence of some kind of genetic memory? We will have to stay tuned as the exploration continues.

I’ll close by sharing with you an experience I had recently that I think illustrates a number of these concepts about memory and demonstrates just how powerful memory can be.

Many of you have heard me talk before about how important my maternal grandparents were in my life and the love they gave me as they helped my mom raise me.

My grandparents, Leo and Ann, often took us on camping trips with them, and I have wonderful memories of being with them in the piney woods of East Texas and elsewhere.

They loved to travel and drove all cross the U.S., stopping to spend time in forests, including many a pine forest.

And, like Oliver Sacks had from his brother’s letter, I have these secondary memories from the images I created in my mind when they would return from one of their trips and share with us vivid descriptions from their adventures.

Last month, I spent a week exploring the white mountains of Arizona. One morning, I got up very early and drove way up into the mountains to a nature park called Wood Canyon Lake.

As drove into the park, I found myself in the middle of a beautiful pine forest. It was rocky, and small patches of snow reflected the morning sunlight, which was steaming through the trees at a slightly sideways angle because it was still so early.

And suddenly, I had this experience that was as if Leo and Ann were present there in my rental car with me.

I was such a powerful experience that I had to pull the car over and stop, and I struggle even now to put it adequately into words.

I can tell you though, that my grandparents had built their clothing closet out of cedar, so they had always carried a slight smell of cedar with them, and that faint aroma of cedar came back to me again under the beautiful canopy of pine trees.

And there had always been a way that I felt when I was with my grandparents that I never felt any other time. And that feeling swept over me again – an unexpected blessing and reminder of being worthy of their great love.

This is the spiritual power of memory. I got to spend a few moments with my grandparents once more, even if only through that great power of recollection.

And the ethics and values that they instilled in me were renewed and reignited.

My beloveds, this is one more aspect of the spiritual power of memory.

Not only can we remember, and when necessary, deconstruct and then reconstruct memory in ways that are more life giving, so too, like my grandparents, can we construct much of how we will be remembered.

May ours be a legacy of love, justice and stories truthfully told. 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
October 14, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

We have talked about the ancient history of offering sanctuary as we have with Sulma and Alirio. In the broader context, we all need sanctuary, a respite, a sacred place to get re-centered. We will discuss what it means to be a people of sanctuary.

Call to Worship

This place is sanctuary
Kathleen McTigue

You who are broken-hearted,
who woke today with the winds of despair
whistling through your mind,
come in.
You who are brave but wounded,
limping through life and hurting with every step, come in.
You who are fearful, who live with shadows
hovering over your shoulders,
come in.
This place is sanctuary, and it is for you.
You who are filled with happiness,
whose abundance overflows,
come in.
You who walk through your world
with lightness and grace,
who awoke this morning with strength and hope,
you who have everything to give,
come in.
This place is your calling, a riverbank to channel
the sweet waters of your life, the place
where you are called by the world’s need.
Here we offer in love.
Here we receive in gratitude.
Here we make a circle from the great gifts
of breath, attention and purpose.
Come in.

Sermon

“Yeah though I walk through the valley of the shadow, thou art with me.
Though my heart’s been torn on fields of battle thou art with me.
Though my trust is gone and my faith not near In love’s sanctuary thou art with me.”

That’s the first verse of Austin-based, singer/songwriter Elyza Gilkyson’s song, “Sanctuary”. Gilkyson also wrote the beautiful song, “Requiem” that you just heard.

I wanted to share the song “Sanctuary” with you this morning, because even though I do not sing it anywhere near as well as she does, I think the song captures so much about the concept of sanctuary and it’s different meanings.

I saw Gilkyson in concert once, and she said basically that she has intentionally left the the “Thou” in “thou art with me” in a sense of mystery and the unknown.

More on this later!

Our Lifespan Faith Development programs are following a monthly, theme-based format called “Soul Matters”, so I decided to offer a worship service each month on the same theme being explored though our “Soul Matters” activities.

It did not even occur to me when the theme for for Soul Matters for October ended up being “Sanctuary”, that we would be in a state of not being able to use our church sanctuary so we can complete its expansion and renovations.

So we find ourselves creating sanctuary here, in this room, which was actually the church’s original sanctuary many years ago.

And on top of that, on November 11, we will be creating sanctuary wherever we can, because the building will be without electricity. We’ll let you know soon where and what we’ll be doing on the 11th!

And I think that is one of the themes of Gilkyson’s wonderful song and of our service today – while sanctuary sometimes refers to a physical place, we humans are capable of creating sanctuary wherever we may be and however we may need it.

Anyway, as I said, none of this occurred to me when I was adopting the Soul Matters theme of sanctuary as our topic for today.

It also never occurred to me that I would end up writing this sermon on this past Friday, which just happened to have been the 17th anniversary of my 19th birthday. Apparently there is no sanctuary from getting older.

Nor did it occur me that today, October 14, happens to be national “Clergy Appreciation Day.”

Just thought I would mention that. Anyway, our word, “sanctuary” comes from the Latin root “sanctus” which means “holy” – a place set aside for holy worship. Today, it also means a place or situation of refuge, protection, such as a bird or nature sanctuary. For we humans, it can also mean a place or circumstance where we find renewal of the mind, body and spirit – a restoration of wholeness and integration, which is related to the meaning of the Germanic root of the word “Holy”.

So, when we think about what “Sanctuary” means, what it means to be a people of sanctuary, as our faith development programs are examining this month, there is a rich tapestry of understanding to explore.

One meaning of sanctuary that we have been actively engaged in here at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin is the ancient tradition of temples and churches providing sanctuary, refuge to folks being wrongly persecuted by the government. This tradition goes all the way back to the time of the Hebrew scriptures and has recurred again and again through the centuries and throughout the world.

In the U.S., churches provided sanctuary along the Underground Railroad for slaves fleeing the South to seek freedom. Later, churches sometimes provided shelter for women’s and civil rights leaders.

In the 1970s, religious groups provided sanctuary to soldiers on leave from the Vietnam war who refused to return to the war for ethical reasons.

In the 1980s and 90s, churches provided sanctuary for refugees from civil war and political turmoil in several Central American countries, when our government was refusing to provide asylum to these persons even though our government and corporations were at least partially responsible for the situations causing them to have to flee their home countries.

Now, of course, we find ourselves with similar or even worse circumstances, and this church has stepped into that ancient tradition and offered sanctuary to two persons whose very lives would be at threat were they deported to their home countries.

We have also provided advice based upon these experiences to over 20 other churches that have become sanctuary or sanctuary supporting congregations, growing the sanctuary movement.

I am pleased to report that Alirio, who has been in sanctuary with us for more than a year now, along with Hilda, who has been in Sanctuary at our partner church, st. Andrew’s Presbyterian, will be filing applications for stays of removal, which would prevent their deportation, at the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement office in San Antonio later this coming week. They’ll be accompanied by their attorneys and a small group of supporters and will have the benefit of much congressional support that has been built on their behalf.

Let’s all hold them in love’s sanctuary this coming week.

Another meaning of sanctuary is a physical place that we hold sacred – a place where we feel safer, where we connect with something larger than ourselves, a place where we can renew ourselves after the challenges of life and our world.

As we discussed, that can be a church sanctuary such as we have created here, but can also be any place or circumstance within which we find refuge and renewal – somewhere in nature, in the arms of a caring loved one, gardening in our back yard, listening to music that moves us, in the words of a favorite poem, etc.

Some folks also make it a practice to create sacred spaces and daily rituals within their homes and families to make their home a place of sanctuary.

What are the places and practices within which you find refuge and renewal? Do you have enough of them? How often do you spend time within them?

Forming a sense of belonging and relationship is another way that we also can create sanctuary for ourselves and others.

When I was twelve years old, my Grandparents gave me the gift of sanctuary. My parents were in the midst of a difficult divorce, and my mom was having to work a lot, so her parents took care of us before and after school each day.

At my Grandparents house, I always knew I was loved. I always felt safe. I always knew I would be cared for.

I was struggling over the divorce and my not so great relationship with my father. I was also having problems with some of my schoolmates, because they were sensing that I was somehow different, though I do not think they or I yet knew that it was because I was a young gay kid growing up in a small, ultraconservative, South East Texas town.

My grandparents loved to travel and would sometimes go out of town for a month or more. Right before they were about to go on one of their trips for the first time since the divorce, my grandfather took me aside and gave me a key to their house. He told me that I was welcome to go there any time I needed to do so, even while they were out of town.

Their providing me with that sanctuary, that place of escape and safety, made such a huge difference for me as I moved through that difficult time. It was about having access to that physical place of refuge, yes, but even more so it was their gesture of love and understanding that created sanctuary for me.

Finally, I think we create sanctuary when we take care of each other at an even larger level – when we tend to one anothers’ wounds communally.

I think of the way in which at this church we have worked to make ourselves a welcoming space for LGBTQI persons, who so often have been hurt by religion in the past.

Likewise, we are trying to tear down white supremacy both within these church walls and beyond them, though we still have much work before us to do regarding this.

I think of how we take care of each other when we get sick, comfort one another when we encounter life’s inevitable losses, mark life passages with one another.

I think of how we help each other confront our own fears, challenges and “growing edges”, as they said when I was in seminary.

And I think of how, on an even larger level, we create sanctuary for each other when natural disasters strike, such as the hurricane we have just witnessed or the raging fires we have seen recently in some of the Western states. People coming together to create the chance for recovery and renewal for other people struck by such disasters.

This is human love and compassion in action. This is us creating love’s sanctuary.

Here is more from Eliza Gilkynson’s song:

Through desolation’s fire and fear’s dark thunder, thou art with me.
Through the sea of desires that drag me under, thou art with me.
Though I’ve been traded in like a souvenir, in love’s sanctuary thou art with me.

Now, I have been talking about our human ability to create sanctuary, but I would be remiss if I did not also talk about our human tendency to create the need for sanctuary in the first place because of the evils we do to one another.

As we have been discussing, we have to create spaces and circumstances of sanctuary to help ourselves through life’s inventible challenges and hurts and losses, as well as to celebrate its joys. We create sanctuary in response to the ravages that sometimes come from our natural world.

Far too often though, we also find ourselves having to create sanctuary for the victims of the harmful behavior perpetrated by human beings.

For far too many women and not just a few men, the past weeks have felt like being traded in like some cheap souvenir, as Gilkynson puts it in her song, as people in positions of power (primarily white, wealthy men) dismissed and belittled stories of sexual harassment and assault.

And so people have had to build “me too” and “times up” movements to try to provide some relief from the abuse.

We have to create shelters like SafePlace here in Austin for victims of domestic violence.

Alirio has to take sanctuary with us because he would likely be killed if our government were to deport him to his home country, even though our country helped create the horrible situation in EI Salvador in the first place.

We have to build shelters and legal services and a whole gamut of support structures for immigrants being treated so deplorably by our government. We have to cry out against children being held in tent city internment camps like the one here in Tornillo, Texas, after being forcibly separated from their parents.

Scientists are forced to try to find ways to provide sanctuary, indeed to save from extinction, species after species whose very continued existence is at threat because of what humans are doing to their environment.

And I could go on and on and on. People have to create, Back Lives Matter and other groups to try to create some relief from the gross injustices of our criminal justice system against African Americans and other people of color.

We have to create housing assistance and other support for the basic needs of families because their employers are not paying them enough to survive.

Refugee services for victims of war and genocide. Medical services for people with inadequate or no health insurance. Services that provide sanctuary for elderly folks so often discarded and abused in our society.

Well, again, I could go on and on. You know the list. You know the many ways people are having to create relief, renewal, some form of sanctuary for the victims of so many forms of abuse and societal neglect.

It can feel pretty discouraging sometimes, can’t it? It can be tempting to fall into despair.

But that is exactly what an ideology that is on the rise throughout our world encourages – despair. It is an ideology of scarcity. An ideology that sees life as a zero sum game, wherein there must be winners and losers. A cynical ideology that wants to keep us in doubt and off balance. An ideology that sees authoritarianism as the only way to maintain order.

But, my beloveds, we can take another world view. We can choose faith over despair. We can have an ideology, indeed, a theology, ‘Of abundance. A theology that says we are all in this together. A theology that envisions a world wherein we all thrive together. A theology based on compassion and love and that create’s love’s sanctuary, knowing that the “thou” in love’s sanctuary with us is each other.

A theology that says that together we have this mystical ability to bring divine possibilities into being, into full realization, which in turn then offers back to us ever more creative and live-giving choices.

That’s a theology that will build a larger and larger sanctuary of beloved community in our world.

I am so thankful that we have this place, not just the beautiful new physical space we will soon occupy, but more importantly, this religious community – a community where we can come to be in sanctuary together to regain our bearings, renew our faith, nourish our often wounded souls so that we can go back out into our world and keep creating love’s sanctuary in that world.

Through the doubter’s gloom and the cynic’s sneer, thou art with me.
In the crowded rooms of a mind unclear, thou art with me.
Though I’ll walk for a while through a stream of tears.
In love’s sanctuary thou art with me.
In love’s sanctuary thou art with me.
In love’s sanctuary thou art with me.

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
and Jules Jaramillo
September 2, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Our spirits become most fully alive and connected to our human potential when we are able to embrace our UU faith and spirituality in our daily lives. Join Jules and Rev. Chris as we explore the wonderful possibilities of our UU Living Tradition.

Call to Worship

Now let us worship together.

Now let us celebrate this congregation’s highest religious 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. Today and all the days of our lives.

Now and in our daily lives, we nurture and cultivate these higher spiritual commitments.

Reading
by Sophia Lyon Fahs

The religious way is the deep way, the way that sees what physical eyes alone fail to see, the intangibles of the heart of every phenomenon. The religious way is the way that touches universal relationships; that goes high, wide and deep, that expands the feelings of kinship…

Life becomes religious whenever we make it so: when some new light is seen, when some deeper appreciation is felt, when some larger outlook is gained, when some nobler purpose is formed, when some task is well done.

Sermon

I was standing on an outdoor platform in Chicago, waiting for the train that would take me to my class that morning. The platform was located under a street that ran across a bridge overhead, partially blocking the morning sun.

Still, one, wide ray of sun was shining though, and it was snowing very, very lightly. Tiny, fragile snowflakes were being held aloft by a brisk wind, swirling in circles in the air.

They danced through the bright ray of sunlight, reflecting it in dazzling patterns, as if thousands of miniature mirrors were whirling and casting their own small rays of light in almost infinite directions – tiny spirits dancing and floating and spreading light into their world.

Needless to say, I was captivated, standing transfixed until the sound of my train approaching drew my attention.

I turned toward the sound of the train. As I did, I made eye contact with an elderly gentleman who was leaning on a carved wooden cane for support. He was smiling. There was a joyful glint in his eyes. I smiled back.

Without exchanging a word, we both knew that we had both been mesmerized by the beautiful ballet of sunlight and snowfall. We both knew that we had somehow been profoundly moved by it.

Riding in the train a few moments later, I could not help thinking that the potential for the religious, the possibility for transformation exists within any moment.

In that small, fragmentary sliver of time on a cold train platform in Chicago, I understood that this person I had never meet and would likely never see again, was, like me, enmeshed in all the beauty and fragility and wonder and suffering and joy that life has to offer.

I was reminded that this understanding is the place from which compassion and love flow.

This idea, that the possibility for transformation is present within every moment, has strong implications for how we think about and do faith development.

If there is transformative potential in every fragment of time, in each encounter – and if we take the work of the church to be at about spiritual growth, then that means we can carry our faith with us beyond these church walls, open ourselves to the ongoing possibility of religious experience in our daily lives Ñ both that which we create intentionally and that which occurs when we are not even expecting it.

And throughout the week, everything we do here in the church can be seen as faith development. Religious education is occurring not just in classrooms, but also throughout the life of the church. Every worship service, every ministry team and committee meeting, every conversation during the fellowship hour has the potential to be transformative.

I wonder, if we take this view, how might our church meetings change? Might they focus less on details and more upon our values and vision? Might we put our mission at the top of every meeting agenda?

Might we, from time to time, begin our ministry team meetings by reviewing our covenant of right relations?

Maybe we infuse our stewardship campaigns with our passion for living out our mission in the world and making real differences in real people’s lives!

Perhaps we pause during meetings for a reflective period or to sing a hymn together that captures our vision for creating a better world.

How about some time for dancing during that Green Sanctuary Team meeting! OK, well at least maybe time for meditation and prayer!

The way that we are together becomes paramount. The how we interact takes precedence, whether in the classroom or the boardroom.

The method is the message, as our Unitarian Universalist education forbearer, Angus McLean famously put it.

Here is another example.

When I was doing my ministerial internship, one project they gave me was to put together an intergenerational Christmas Pageant for one of our December worship services.

The pageant was a Unitarian Universalist version of the biblical nativity story. Our cast included folks ranging in age from four or five to this amazing woman in her mid-eighties who ran circles around me and kept our rehearsals on track.

Putting together a pageant, complete with costumes, props, songs and children dressed up as the animals in the stable had been quite the challenge but lots of fun too.

We had camels, cows, a donkey, some doves and at least a couple of cats.

An ongoing challenge was helping them to remember that there were imaginary stable walls around the edges of our little dais. More than once during rehearsals, a cow or camel would walk right through one of the imaginary walls, and we would have to remind them not to do that!

On the Friday before we were to do the pageant, the news broke about the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary.

On Saturday, I talked with my supervising minister. We had to decide whether to go forward with the pageant or whether it would be too light hearted given the anguishing news.

We decided to go forward; however on Sunday morning, we stood together before the congregation, and offered a prayer for the victims and their families before we be started.

I could feel a noticeable sense of shock and grief among our church members that morning.

We started the pageant.

About halfway through it, one of the children costumed as an animal in our imaginary stable, one of the cats I believe, got so wrapped up in one of the songs in the pageant, that she stood up and started dancing.

She pirouetted right through one of our imaginary walls, whirling and swirling in balletic circles in front of our carefully set up nativity scene.

She was about the same age as the youngest children who had been killed at Sandy Hook.

The woman who had helped keep our rehearsals on track and I were sitting together, and we looked at each other, both wondering if we should get up and lead our little dancing cat back into the scene.

As soon as our eyes met though, we both knew that we had to let her continue.

She was dancing. The music was playing and the people were singing. At one point the song almost faltered. The children were mesmerized by the little girl’s impromptu ballet and the adults were nearly overcome with emotion.

I looked around the sanctuary and saw that the adult’s eyes were glistening, their tears reflecting tiny pinpoints of light in almost infinite directions across our sanctuary.

We kept on singing, and the little girl kept her ballet afloat, and our spirits were dancing through joy and sorrow and back again in small, fragmentary slivers of time.

The music and the singing and the dancing were the method. That we had to continue our part in the creative co-telling of life’s grand pageant was the message.

A young girl’s dancing had transformed a congregation that morning.

I have a spiritual director who says that a key element of spiritual growth is to be always mindful of and open to the possibility of transformative experiences.

I think that’s right.

And, I believe faith formation in our churches can go a step further by helping us to actively carry our faith into our daily lives – to actively pursue transformative experience both in our lives and throughout the life of this congregation.

May we always be mindful of our capacity to transform one another.

Amen.

Text of Jule’s homilie is not yet available. Click the play button to listen.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 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
August 26, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

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?

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.

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
August 19, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

For many of us, the stories and images we have been witnessing in our news and social media have felt like trauma. In fact, some notable authors have suggested that Americans have begun to show the signs of trauma as a people. We will explore some of the ways to lower our trauma responses and foster resilience, love, and joy.

Reading

After the Blinding Rains
Chris Jimmerson

After the blinding rains came and washed away the foundations;

After the howling winds blew through windows, shattering glass and tearing apart wooden blinds and curtain fabric;

Once the bombs had knocked down even the walls made of such precise and rugged stone, and fires had ravaged wooden rafters.

I stumbled amidst the rubble of what was left, crying out at all that had been lost, unable to make repairs and build anew, searching for some new materials that might withstand such devastations.

And then I saw you, and also you, and all of the ones following each of you, each carrying with you your own fragments of what had been.

Some of you bringing new elements to strengthen our possibilities – replace what had been lost.

And together, we built new structures of meaning.

We created soaring towers of beauty; deep wells of understanding; walls held aloft by an infrastructure of love.

And there we dwelt for a while, fortified once more, having chosen our new place and our new way of being.

Sermon

In 1972, in the mountain town of Buffalo Creek West Virginia, a rudimentary damn that had been holding back waste water and sludge deposited behind it by a coal mining company collapsed during a rainstorm. A huge wall of thick black waste flooded town after town below, destroying homes, churches, roads, businesses.

One hundred twenty five people died.

The waste avalanche wiped out the entire infrastructure supporting community after community.

Sociologists visiting the area a year later discovered not only individual trauma, but also collective trauma.

Entire communities experiencing collective disorientation and disconnection, shock.

Entire communities struggling to find meaning and purpose because the structures and institutions, relationships and routines that had defined their daily lives for generations had been swept away.

Collective trauma is when the familiar ideas, expectations, norms and values of an entire community or society are damaged, plunging them into a state of extreme uncertainty and confusion.

Studies have found that collective trauma can be trans generational, passed on to the children of communities that have experienced trauma. One study evert found that holocaust survivors had passed a genetic tendency toward stress hormones associated with trauma to their children, though others have questioned this study.

Individually and collectively, trauma is the result of experiences that pose an existential threat to our well being or even our very existence.

We can also experience secondary trauma when we witness such experiences happen to other people.

I’m going to go through a list of some of the signs and symptoms that can indicate trauma in a society and/or in individuals. As I do so, I’d like to invite you to reflect on what we are witnessing in our u.s. society these days, as well as what you mayor may not have felt or experienced.

• Anxiety, fear, tension, inability to relax, trouble sleeping.
• Increased rates of substance abuse and other addictions.
• Impunity, social injustice, inequality, discrimination.
• Feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.
• Rumors, disinformation, tendency toward conspiracy theories.
• A sense that one can never do enough.
• Hyper vigilance, chronic exhaustion, paranoia, a sense of persecution.
• Loss of communality, polarization, tearing of the social fabric.
• Depression, despair, increased physical ailments, shortened life expectancy.

Any of that ring a bell? And the list could go on.

A growing number of sociologists and others are suggesting that u.s. society is exhibiting signs of collective trauma.

And would that really be so surprising? Let’s review again some of what we have been experiencing and witnessing.

• Rapidly growing wealth and income inequality that has resulted in greater and greater numbers of American households living in poverty or only one lost paycheck, one unexpected major expense away from it. People having to crowd fund insulin and other basic healthcare necessities. This is an existential threat, folks.
• News reports full of violence, terrorism threats, renewed fears of nuclear warfare, mass shootings. School children having to participate in active shooter drills where they hide under their desk while uniformed men with guns burst into their school room. How can we think they wouldn’t be traumatized?
• Climate change that is driving a new age of species extinctions and making whole geographic areas of our world uninhabitable.
• The Me Too movement revealing harassment and abuse women continue to endure in this country.
• Polarizing and sometimes violent political rhetoric and attacks upon the very institutions of our representative democracy.
• Those of us who are LGBTQI and our allies witnessing our hard fought rights protections being reversed and moves to make discrimination against us legal.
• The continued brutality against and killing of African Americans by police who are rarely held accountable for it. Clueless white people calling the police on African Americans for the crimes of having a barbecue while black, napping in their own dorm lobby, a black child selling lemonade in front of her house.

I find it horrifying to read these stories and view these images and videos. I can only imagine how traumatizing it must be for African Americans and other people of color.

Our government ripping small children apart from their asylum seeking parents, some who may never be reunited. Our gross mistreatment and human rights violations of immigrants more broadly.

Again, I experienced what I can only honestly call secondary trauma over these stories and images. The trauma experienced by these children and their parents must be devastating, as well as that experienced by their collective communities.

These are just some of the societal issues we are experiencing that could very well be leading to collective trauma.

Now, I have to talk about our 45th President here for a moment. Every time I do, I hear back from someone who thinks we should not talk about politics from the pulpit (or our senior minister Meg gets an upset email about it).

The thing is, that set of religious principles that we read together earlier – as Unitarian Universalists we make a covenant (a sacred promise with ourself and with one another) to affirm and promote them.

And we cannot be true to that covenant, that sacred promise, if we remain silent while those religious principles are trampled upon and violated in the political policy sphere.

So, when the Obama administration was holding small children in prison like facilities, I spoke out against that too.

And I do not think we can begin to address the societal ills I just described if we do not acknowledge that the policies and rhetoric of 45 and his administration are creating some of them and making others of them much worse than they had been.

And while I am getting myself in trouble, there is one more potential source of collective trauma that some social observers have proposed we may be experiencing.

I want to read a definition for you.

“Gas lighting is a form of psychological manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim’s belief.”

Collective trauma is when the familiar ideas, expectations, norms and values of an entire community or society are damaged, plunging them into a state of extreme uncertainty and confusion.

The Washington Post Fact checker found that as of August 1 of this year, our 45th President had made 4,229 false or misleading claims in 558 days.

That’s an average of almost 8 falsehoods per day, and they found his rate of daily denials, misdirections, contradictions, and lies has been increasing.

If you watch his rallies, I think he is even traumatizing his own supporters in this way

OK, enough about that. Since I am on my iPad, I’m just sending Meg a text warning her not to check her email until she gets back from vacation and study leave.

So, if we accept that we may be experiencing collective trauma, how do we heal? How do we reduce our trauma responses and foster resilience?

Well, the first step may be recognizing the trauma. I think sometimes because what we are experiencing may be at a lower level than people who have experienced the horrors of genocide or individual abuse, we discount our own feeling and experiences.

To become whole again though, requires that we share our feelings collectively, share our stories with each other, and that can feel very vulnerable. It is a paradox of trauma that it understandably causes us to want to put up an emotional shield because our vulnerability has been abused, and yet expressing our emotions can be one way through it.

We can work to change the conditions that are leading to trauma in the first place. We can join with groups that are pressuring our current governmental officials to institute policies that alleviate these social conditions and create a more equitable economic system.

We can work to elect officials more committed to social justice and economic fairness. We can encourage and help others to vote. And my friends, there is an election coming up – so vote!

And my beloveds, I called this sermon, “Loving, Laughing, Living” because one of the things trauma causes us to do is to withdraw from the very things that bring us joy in life – that are what our lives are all about.

During times such as this, connection and belonging with our loved ones, and expressing that love with them becomes even more important. Finding larger communities of compassion and support, such as we have with this congregation can be vital.

Taking care of ourselves, eating well, exercising, getting plenty of rest will help.

Here’s some advice that really helped me – only access news and social media once or twice each day and set time limits on how long.

Tending to our spirits, engaging in practices which ground and calm us, whether that is attending worship, meditation, yoga, hikes in nature, taking time to list all that for which we are grateful, whatever the practice might be, tending our spirits can also help shield us from collective trauma.

And it is OK to take a break from life’s struggles – immerse ourselves in beauty and the things that bring us joy. In fact, it is not only OK, it is necessary to our wellbeing. It is one of the strongest ways we resist collective trauma.

Playfulness and fun. Humor. The arts. Music. Goofing with our pets. Exhilarating in natural beauty.

Collective trauma (and progressive guilt) can cause us to rob of us these experiences of beauty and joy. We can feel that we do not deserve them because, after all we have it better than many other folks do.

The truth is we need them to sustain our spirits and give us resilience in our struggles to create a better world wherein we no longer experience human caused collective trauma.

Allow yourself the joy, my beloveds. I’ve come to think of joy as divine love finding expression in our lives.

I’ll close with the words of the poet Jack Gilbert:

“If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation.

We must risk delight… We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. We must admit there will be music despite everything”.

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
July 15, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Our new mission statement says that we “build the Beloved Community”. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. defined it, that’s a huge dream though. We do not do it alone. We do so as part of a rich Unitarian Universalist heritage and our larger UU movement, as well as in partnership with many other faiths and groups. We’ll examine our mission in relationship to these larger efforts.

Call to Worship
Susan Frederick-Gray

We love to celebrate when we were on the right side of history–when we let our faith and commitment to human dignity and commitment to universalism lead us into the practice of justice. But that is not the whole story, and it is important to be honest about our complicated history, not to bring shame or guilt, but to bring understanding that can inform our faith today.

We are in a time of deep challenge and opportunity in our faith. The reality for many is dire, and increasing threats are real. Policies of the state seek to silence, imprison, deport, and even murder people. Our congregations are faced with important questions of how we answer to empire as well as how to wrestle with how close we have come to beloved community–or how far we still have to go. It is important that we not let the opportunity or the urgency of this moment slip away. Like the theme of this year’s GA says, “All are called” to this work, and I believe we have been readying for it.

My hope is that this GA may be one more collective pace forward to “becoming the religious people we want to be,” the religious people we are called to be.

Mission

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

Reading
– Reverend Shirley Strong

“Beloved Community is 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.”

About Beloved Community

“Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty; hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decencv will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful confict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”

– THE MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. Center for Nonviolent Social Change

Sermon

As I listened to you all read that description of the Beloved Community with David earlier, I thought, wow, that is a lot, isn’t it? It is a huge undertaking.

And if you look at the definition of the Beloved Community by the King Center printed on the back of your order of service, it says that building the Beloved Community, means we have to eliminate “poverty, hunger and homelessness”, eradicate “racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice” and abolish “war and military conflict”.

No problem! And if we are going to get all that finished by tomorrow, I am going to have to go ahead and wrap this up early so you all can go get to it.

It is a lot. Dr. King’s vision of the Beloved Community is a big, bold dream, an ultimate outcome that we strive to create.

And, if you’ll notice, we have made it the ultimate outcome toward which we strive here at the church we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice TO build the Beloved Community.

I don’t know about you all, but with the events we see in our news every day, for me that dream can sometimes seem awfully far away. The vision of Beloved Community for which we yearn can seem pretty big and overwhelming.

So, I think it is important that we remember that we do not build the Beloved Community alone. We build the beloved community as a part of something much, much larger than ourselves.

Here in this congregation, we say that we strive to build it together.

And we build it alongside our other local Unitarian Universalist churches, along with a host of local interfaith and secular partners and coalitions.

We build the Beloved Community as part of our larger Unitarian Universalist or UU faith. And our larger UU Faith also has interfaith and secular partners at the regional, national and international levels.

We also build upon the foundation of a rich faith heritage, which has not been perfect at times, and yet was among the first to call for abolition, ordain women and then ordain LGBTQ persons into our ministry, as examples of those foundations upon which we build.

So, please allow me a few moments of indulging my inner polity geek by reviewing with you a little about how our larger Unitarian Universalist Faith is organized.

We are a member congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Association or UUA. The UUA is composed of, largely funded through and broadly governed by our UU congregations, fellowships and other organizations.

We elect the UUA board, and we also elect the UUA President, who oversees operations and other UUA staff. The UUA provides a number of programs that support us, represents us regionally and nationally and helps organize our efforts to build the Beloved Community at the national level.

We also have a number of UU organizations with which we partner that are working for justice in specific ways. I’ll mention just a few:

Did you know we have a Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office that has been and continuous to be a highly effective advocate for human rights worldwide?

Likewise, our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, or UUSC, challenges injustice and advances human rights both at home in the U.S. and abroad.

We have a Women’s’ Federation, the Side with Love campaign; two UU specific seminaries, UURise for immigration sanctuary and human rights; our disability rights group EqUUal Access, the UU College of Social Justice (or UUCSJ); Diverse Revolutionary UU Multicultural Ministries or DRUUM; Black Lives ofUU or BLUU; Allies for Racial Equity or ARE; and our professional associations for ministers (the UUMA), religious educators (LREDA) and musicians (the UUMN).

We love ourselves some acronyms, don’t we?

All of these and others are working in their own arenas to build beloved community. And all of these and more are our partners and help make up something much, much larger, of which we are a part.

Whether all of this is already familiar to you or you are hearing about some of it for the first time, I think it is good to remind ourselves that we are not alone in our struggle to build the world about which we dream.

As you heard about earlier, one of the ways we connect with our larger UU movement, is that each year, folks from our church attend the annual UUA General Assembly (or GA for short), where UUs from around the country and even the world gather to worship together each day, conduct UU A business and learn from each other.

The video that was showing as you came in may have given you at least a little sense of the connection to UUism and our traditions that attending GA can create.

I would like to share with you just a few things we did at GA related to building the Beloved Community.

First, we made some internal changes.

Based upon their membership size, churches are allowed to appoint a certain number of their members attending GA as delegates. Delegates are allowed to vote on issues taken up during the assembly.

Ministers have been automatically given delegate status; however, Directors of Religious had not been. Because most churches do not allow staff to also be members, this was effectively keeping our religious educators from having a full voice in their own faith association. I am thrilled to report that we voted to change the UUA bylaws so that active directors of religious education are granted delegate status and allowed that full voice.

Similarly, we have had two, non-voting youth observers to the UUA Board of Trustees. We changed the bylaws to make these full, voting trustee positions to give our youth a greater voice.

More externally focused, We also had a lively discussion about choosing a new congregational study action issue, or CSAI because we need yet another acronym. CSAls are issues that our congregations will then jointly study and engage in social action around.

One of two proposed CSAls was more explicitly focused around undoing white supremacy. It was important to many of our people of color that this more explicit CSAI be the one adopted. They asked Allies for Racial Equity to speak on behalf of it, and I ended up being the ARE representative to do so. Through the magic of people with cell phone cameras, there is video stitched together of it.

VIDEO

Occasionally, I have an opinion or two about something.

After continued good discussion, delegates voted overwhelmingly to select the undoing white supremacy CSAI.

One of our church members, Rob Hirchfeld, recorded a great reflection on how participating in such discussions at GA can challenge and deepen ones own faith.

VIDEO

The delegates also voted to take on a number of urgent social justice issues that you can find out about by searching for “actions of immediate witness” on UUA.org.

Finally, there were real efforts to feature the voices of people of color and other marginalized groups at GA, and, to stress the theme of this years G.A., “All are Called” – we are all in this together, which means we are both not alone in our struggles to build the Beloved Community, and we are each accountable to one another and our faith as we do so. Here are just a few of our UUA President, Susan Frederick-Gray’s powerful words on this:

VIDEO

No time for a casual faith. No time to go it alone.

So far, I have talked about how we build the Beloved Community as part of something larger than ourselves in ways that are very tangible – as part of the UUA, in cooperation with other faiths and groups.

I’d like to close by sharing with you an experience that I think demonstrates my belief that we also do this work as a part of something more intangible, spiritual and even larger.

A few of you may have heard me tell this story from many years ago now. I was still in seminary and serving as a chaplain intern at the old Brakenridge hospital. I’ve changed a few inconsequential details to protect the identity of the other people involved.

One Sunday, I was asked to bring a young woman back to the Intensive Care Unit to see her younger brother. He had just died as the result of an accident at his summer job earlier that same day. She had fought with him before he left for work that morning and needed to say her goodbyes and seek forgiveness before the rest of the family would get there.

As we stood by his bed and she spoke the words she needed to say to him, she suddenly turned and placed her head on my shoulder, cupped a hand over each of my shoulders and collapsed her entire weight onto me.

I hadn’t expected this, and it was as if her body had suddenly become a stone weight and her overwhelming grief was pouring into me though the tears she was crying on my shoulder.

In that moment, I thought I might collapse too.

That I didn’t have the strength, and that we were both going to fall down onto the cold tile floor beneath us.

But we didn’t, and somehow, the experience was as if something was holding me up, so I could keep holding her up.

Rebecca Ann Parker, one of our UU theologians, calls this an “upholding and sheltering presence” that is “alive and afoot in the universe”. Others might simply call this God. Still others might say that it’s some sort of a bio-psychological reserve built deeply into our genes that helps us help others survive so that our species can go on.

I think maybe it was that on a level that is much deeper than words, I sensed that I was a part of and being upheld by my much larger faith tradition and movement that in turn is a part of something even greater.

I was being held up by all the love I have felt and been given and by an even greater love that emanates when we as human beings are at our very best when we glimpse that we are interconnected with each other and the web of all existence in ways that are far more complex than our day to day comprehension can fully grasp.

And that greater love sustains us and gives us strength and moves us toward building the Beloved Community.

It is a love of such power that it makes me believe that peaceful revolution is possible – that someday we really just might eliminate poverty, hunger and homelessness, abolish military conflict and eradicate racism and all forms of oppression.

My beloveds, we are not alone. You are not alone.

We are a part of something almost incomprehensibly larger than ourselves that is calling us all toward divine possibilities we have yet to even fully imagine.

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
May 27, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

In her newest book, Brene Brown examines the supposed duality between becoming fully ourselves as individuals and finding true belonging and community. She finds it to be a false duality. She raises the question of how we find sacredness both in being a part of something and in standing alone when necessary.

Call to Worship

Exerpt from Dr Brene Brown’s book, “Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone”.

True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness.

True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are. It requires you to be who you are.

Reading

Exerpt from Dr Brene Brown’s book, “Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone”.

Theologians, writers, poets, and musicians have always used the wilderness as a metaphor, to represent everything from a vast and dangerous environment where we are forced to difficult trials to a refuge of nature and beauty where we seek space for contemplation. What all wilderness have in common are the notions of solitude, vulnerability, and emotional, spiritual, or physical quest.

Belonging fully to that you’re willing to stand alone is a wilderness — an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, as sought after as it is feared. The wilderness can often feel unholy because we can’t control it, or what people think about our choice of whether to venture into that vastness or not. But turns our to be the place of true belonging, and it’s the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand.

The special courage it takes to experience true belonging is not about braving the wilderness, it’s about becoming the wilderness. It’s about breaking down the walls, abandoning our ideological bunkers, and living our wild heart rather than our weary hurt.

Sermon

I’d like to begin today with a confession.

I am still struggling myself with what I am going to talk with you about today. I still mess up. I still get angry or hurt and make mistakes.

The last time I preached, I talked about human rights activist, Valarie Kour, and how she says that to build the Beloved Community, we must practice revolutionary love – love that is an intentional act both brutally difficult at times and ultimately beautiful and life-giving.

She says that are three aspects of revolutionary love. We must love ourselves; we must love others who do not look like us; and we must love our opponents, even those who would harm us.

It’s that last one I am struggling with this morning.

Anyone else struggle with that one? Valarie Kour confesses that she struggles with it too.

She tells the story of the first person killed in a hate crime in response to the attacks of 911, a close family friend named Balbir Singh Sohdi who like her, was a Sikh. Frank Roak, the killer, mistook him for a Muslim, because of Balbir’s turban and beard.

Roak had bragged, “I am going to go out and shoot some towel heads. We should kill their children too.”

Flash forward 15 years, she returned to site of the shooting and was joined by Balbir’s brother, Ranna. They lit a candle, mourning how little had changed.”

Kour asked, “Who have we not tried to love yet?”

And so, 15 years later, they called Frank Roak, who was still in prison.

They asked him why he agreed to take their call.

Roak replied, “I am sorry for what I did to your brother, but I am also sorry for all the people killed on 911”.

Ranna somehow found the compassion to not react to the second part of that and say, “That is the first time I have heard you say that you feel sorry.”

Roak answered, “Yes, I am sorry for what I did to your brother. One day, when I go to be judged by God, I will ask to see your brother, and I will hug him, and I will ask him for forgiveness.”

Ranna replied, “We already forgave you”.

Here is how Kour explains what she learned from that story.

VIDEO

So forgiveness, finding a way to be in conversation even with our opponents, is not releasing them from accountability. It is not giving up on struggling, fighting, resisting, rebelling against an ideology we oppose.

It is living our own values to their fullest.

It is, as Kour puts it, tending the wounds, both theirs and ours – the wounds that are so greatly and dangerously dividing us.

Dr Brene Brown, social worker, researcher, author and our second Ted Talk divinity for this morning, approaches much this same challenge in her book, “Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone”.

I can only scratch the surface of this book full of great information this morning, so I’ll start by simply highly recommending it to you.

Part of what she reveals though is how we as a society have been moving more and more into silos.

We are segregating ourselves not just by race and ethnicity anymore, but also by societal and political ideology.

We move geographically to live around people whose ideology largely matches our own.

We interact on the web and social media with people of like mind.

We attend churches or other communal institutions with folks who think and believe much like us.

Conservatives watch the “Fox Propaganda Network” and progressives watch the Rachel Maddow Ultimate Truth and Journalistic Integrity Hour”.

OK, I am joking. The truth is we all are getting a lot of editorializing.

And yet the data shows that we are lonelier than ever before. We have LESS of a sense of belonging, the more we segregate ourselves with only the likeminded.

Perhaps it is because we never have to be challenged by a different perspective. Perhaps we never have to go out into the wilderness and truly determine who we are, what we believe, what values we hold dearest, because all we have to do is go along with what the people with whom we already agree are saying.

And if we haven’t done the work of knowing who we truly are, we get triggered far too easily. We lose civility. We get on Facebook and spout simple slogans or share dehumanizing posts about our political opponents, which Brown notes diminishes our own humanity and drives us to feel even more isolated.

We avoid having the substantive and much needed conversations that might allow us to find reconnection. Hells Bells, as my grandmother used to say, we avoid even being around those with whom we disagree.

The problem is these are our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens and, far to often, our friends and family members.

The problem is, if we never have those difficult but civil conversations, we will never move forward. We will retreat more and more into our ideological bunkers until the fabric of society itself comes unraveled.

I know I sometimes avoid such conversations because they can be so very, very hard. I’m afraid I will make mistakes. I’m afraid I’ll get hurt.

That’s why it made me feel so much better to hear my Guru Brene Brown say much the same thing.

VIDEO

Good advice – especially for social media.

Another of my personal gurus, Van Jones, human rights activist, attorney, CNN commentator, and author of another recommended book, “Beyond the Messy Truth: How We Came Apart; How We Come Together” also offers much that is very, very helpful on this subject.

Today, I want to share a story he told at a recent conference I attended.

Jones tells of visiting communities in West Virginia where they were having to bring in freezer trucks on Friday nights because too many bodies of people who had died of opium overdoses were coming in over the weekend to hold them all in the local morgues.

Babies were being born already addicted and then losing both their parents.

Jones brought five leaders who had emerged from the 1980s crack epidemic in his community in Los Angeles with him West Virginia to work with five leaders there.

He says that was hard, because when drugs were ravaging his community, it was not treated as a public health issue. It was treated as a criminal issue – with brutality and imprisonment.

They began by sharing pictures of people each of them had lost. Out of that common pain, came a common purpose. They forged relations across their differences and divides.

I want to let you hear him tell about something that happened while they were there.

VIDEO

“The biggest danger we face is becoming what we are fighting”

But how do we avoid that? How do we engage with civility, even when those whom we disagree, are not always so civil toward us?

Well, there are no easy answers. It’s difficult even for these folks with far more expertise on this than me. All three say it is hard. And yet all three also say it is absolutely necessary.

Here are some thoughts.

Brene Brown says that people are hard to hate close up, so move in. Get to know them. Engage with them.

In the best book chapter title of all time, she also writes, “Speak Truth to Bullshit. Be civil”.

We can hold people accountable without using personal attacks. We can hold fast to our values without dehumanizing others.

No shaming, no name calling, no putting other people down.

We can listen and reflect back to people what they say. We can ask, “can I tell you how that makes me feel or what I understand about this?”

Valarie Kour talks about approaching other people with curiosity and wonder. She talks about the importance of sharing our stories and listening to theirs. “Stories,” she says, “can create the wonder that turns strangers into sisters and brothers.”

Van Jones speaks of searching for common ground – not mushy middle ground – but true shared interests. He talks about how he is working with conservatives such as Newt Gingrich on issues such as our criminal justice system, the addiction crisis and creating high tech and clean tech jobs.

It is difficult. Finding compassion, much less love, for those who might harm us is gut-wrenchingly hard. I know. 1’m one of the targets. Certainly none of should try to engage in a situation where we are at threat for physical harm.

I don’t have all the answers. None of us do.

I do know this. I know we have to try. I know we will never build the beloved community if we disconnect from, leave out, 30 to 40% of the population. We have to build a new way.

After the last Presidential election I found myself needing to have this kind of conversation with my mom. She gave me permission to share this story with you.

She had voted for Donald Trump.

I had posted some things on social media that were … strongly worded.

Our relationship had become strained. We avoided the topic. It is hard for love to flourish when pain has been left unspoken.

We agreed to talk. We set ground rules – each of us in turn would talk about our perspectives on the election and its aftermath – no interrupting, no arguing, no trying to convince the other of anything.

And it was difficult. And it was holy. And the ground beneath us and between us shifted, as if God had entered the room and held us both as we moved through that difficult but ultimately loving conversation. My beloveds, we can do this. It will not be easy, but we can build that new way.

We can build the be-(revolutionary)-loved community.

Amen.

Benediction

“We are bound together in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny”.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s words still ring true and powerful today.

And that means that even as we leave this sanctuary today, our work together to help build the beloved community goes on, as we work for justice that can transform both the lives of others and our own.

Likewise, the courage, community and compassion we experience here go with us also.

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

Go in peace. Go in love.

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
April 15, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Why do good people sometimes do really bad things, or allow such things to happen in our name? How do we try to parent this in ourselves or reengage if we need to do so?

Call to Worship

Blessed Imperfection
Chris Jimmerson

Come, though we know we will fail one another and make mistakes.

So too, will we forgive. So too, will we support and uphold one another.

Come, though we know we will sometimes be unable to reach our highest aspirations.

So too, will we reach mightily together toward those aspirations. So too, will we sometimes surprise ourselves by exceeding our wildest expectations together.

Come, as together we hold up our values and ethical principles, knowing we will make mistakes but also knowing we will return again and again to those values and principles.

Come into this beloved religious community.

Come, let us worship together.

Reading

Valarie Kour on Revolutionary Love

Revolutionary love is a well-spring of care, an awakening to the inherent dignity and beauty of others and the earth, a quieting of the ego, a way of moving through the world in relationship, asking: ‘What is your story? What is at stake? What is my part in your flourishing?’ Loving others, even our opponents, in this way has the power to sustain political, social and moral transformation. This is how love changes the world.”

Love calls us to look upon the faces of those different from us as brothers and sisters. Love calls us to weep when their bodies are outcast, broken or destroyed. Love calls us to speak even when our voice trembles, stand even when hate spins out of control, and stay even when the blood is fresh on the ground. Love makes us brave. The world needs your love: the only social, political and moral force that can dismantle injustice to remake the world around us – and within us.

To pursue a life of revolutionary love is to walk boldly into the hot winds of the world with a saint’s eyes and a warrior’s heart – and pour our body, breath, and blood into others.

Sermon

The book, “Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live with Themselves” addresses really fascinating and important subject matter in just about the most the most pedantic and tedious of ways possible.

Now in all fairness, my dog Benjamin seems to disagree and in fact found it quite tasty.

Anyway, this morning, I have tried to engage in an act of loving kindness for you all by reading some of it and closely skimming the rest so that you don’t have to do so.

I’ll try to share with you the top level overview.

Each of us develop a set of moral principles, ethical values, in life that among other things most often involves the avoidance of doing harm to others. Our ethics are handed down to us through the societies in which we live, our families, admired figures and the like, as well as through our own life experiences, cognitive analysis and emotional responses to the effects of our own behavior.

These ethics are then enforced and reinforced by legal and societal sanctions and rewards.

However, we also have moral agency. We self-monitor our behavior for consistency with our morals. Unless we are sociopathic, we feel bad when we harm someone else.

How is it then, that good people sometimes do really terrible things or allow them to be done in our name, using our tax dollars?

Well, social cognitive research has discovered a number of ways in which we as individuals, and, in fact, entire groups or societies give up our moral agency – disengage from our ethical values – allow our selves to do harm to others without losing our sense of moral integrity.

We human beings are infinitely creative, so bear with me now as I walk you through the amazing number of ways we have come up with to violate our own moral standards and not feel the least bit bad about it.

– Moral Justification: We justify conduct that is harmful to others by convincing ourselves it has a larger moral, societal or economic purpose.

Going to war in Iraq gets justified by the threat of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism (both of which, of course, at least in regards to Iraq, turned out to be untrue).

Excusing advertising cigarettes to children as upholding freedom of speech.

– Euphemistic Labelling: Using language that sanitizes the consequences of our actions or even disguises them as something else.

Children killed in a bombing raid get called, “Collateral Damage”. Terrorists assume the label of “freedom fighters”. The gun industry repackages assault weapons as “modern tactical sporting rifles”.

– Advantageous Comparison: Justifying inhumanities through either comparison to even greater moral atrocities or by conflating them with higher principles and/or revered persons who have exhibited moral courage.

Pesticide companies once justified the negative public health consequences of their products by comparing with greater numbers of people dying in automobile accidents.

One former president of the NRA gave a speech in which she compared advocating for the ability to carry assault weapons to Susan B. Anthony’s fight for women’s voting rights and Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King’s struggles for civil rights.

– Displacement of responsibility: Excusing one’s detrimental actions by claiming a lack of agency for them – that one is subject to the dictates of some greater authority – soldiers just carrying out a superior’s orders without questioning them for example.

– Similarly, Diffusion of responsibility: Diffusing individual responsibility for immoral behavior into that of a group with whom one participates in such behavior together. When the death penalty is administered by lethal injection for instance, the placement of the IV s, the strapping down of different areas of the inmate’s body, the attachment of monitoring equipment, the pushing of the plunger to deliver each of the different drugs, each of these tasks are sub-divided between different people so that no one participating has to feel individually responsible for the death.

– Misrepresentation of Injurious Consequences: Minimizing, disregarding or even disputing the harmful effects of one’s actions. Denying global warming or that it is caused by human activity, for example.

– Attribution of blame: Perceiving the victim of injurious conduct as somehow being responsible for their own mistreatment. Blaming the African American teenagers shot by police for their own deaths because of some minor offense they had committed or because they had simply not been respectful enough.

– And finally, the really big one

– Dehumanization: stripping others of human qualities, viewing them as less than human, disengages our feeling of moral responsibility to act in just ways toward them.

This is exactly what allowed for the great evil of slavery in our country. At least in part, it is what still underlies racism and all of the other isms that continue to thrive in America today.

So, these are the ways that we justify acting unjustly.

Now, whether or not we can see ourselves in the specific examples I used too illustrate them, I do think we can easily fall prey to one or more of these mechanisms of moral disengagement from our own ethical standards.

And because these mechanisms are not always operating within our consciousness, they can far too easily allow us to turn away from, to block from our awareness, systems in our societal and governmental structures that oppress and do great harm. We can too easily allow injustices to be done in our names and with our tax dollars.

So, how do we guard against these forms of moral disengagement? How do we recognize and confront systems that do great harm when we are a part of those very same systems?

This congregation is beginning to live into a new version of our mission, and within that new mission I believe lies at least part of the answers to these questions.

The new mission is really more of an extension, a logical next step to the mission we read together earlier. It goes like this: “Together, we nourish souls, transform lives and do justice to build the Beloved Community.”

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

I believe that doing these things together, living our lives in this way, working to help build the Beloved Community IS how we stay morally engaged.

It is how we proactively call ourselves back to our highest ethical values and reengage when inevitably we will sometimes fall short of them. Now the term, Beloved Community, as we use it in our new mission statement and as I am using it today, has a specific meaning and context handed down to us by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is the vision he left to us, as described by the King Center for Non- Violent Social Change.

That description is on the top of page three of your order of service, and I invite you to read it with me now.

“Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homeless-ness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.

So the love in this meaning of Beloved Community is not an easy, shallow, Hallmark moment sort of a love.

Valarie Kour, activist, filmmaker and founding director of the Revolutionary Love Project says that we must engage in a radical kind of love, indeed a revolutionary love to build the beloved community.

Bringing feminist and womanist perspectives to the concept of Beloved Community, she says that revolutionary love “is not just a feeling but a form of sweet labor – fierce, bloody, imperfect, and life giving.”

It is love as an action – love that we engage in even knowing it will be difficult and challenging sometimes, and that we will make mistakes, and yet we must recommit to it and keep reengaging in acts of sweet labor over and over and over again. It is a revolutionary love that call us to mobilize, that calls us to action, that call us to our highest ethical values.

Valerie Kour describes three key practices for living out revolutionary love.

1. Love for others. We must see no strangers. We must adopt a fundamental vision of our interconnectedness. I must view your as a part of me that I have not yet met. We must develop curiosity when encountering difference.

This can be harder than it seems. Neuroscience has found that we may be hardwired in the more ancient parts of our brains to have an initial reaction of fear or even revulsion when we encounter someone who looks and acts differently than us.

But we do not have to let that initial reaction dictate our behavior. If we can then engage our frontal cortex by getting curious about this other person, we can change this emotional dynamic. “I wonder whom she loves? What pain has he suffered? What do they do for fun?”

Asking ourselves these and other curious questions can help us humanize the “other”. It can help us reach out and find common ground. Perhaps more importantly, it can help us begin to value difference.

We can do more together, grow more as human beings, not despite our differences but by embracing them.

Like the players in a jazz band or the individual ingredients in a Cajun gumbo, we each have a distinctiveness to add that combined together, do not melt away, but instead help create a greater whole.

And in our current social climate, this ability to love the other becomes even more important. We must willing to exercise this love on behalf of folks who have far less privilege than we do and are often in harm’s way these days.

2. Tend the wound. We must practice loving even those with whom we disagree, who would harm us. We must see the wound – see them as human and fragile. As Kour says it, “They hurt us because they do not know how else to deal with their wound.”

This is really, really hard labor, and the subject of another upcoming sermon. But isn’t just moral. It is tactical. We have more success when we go after unjust systems instead of individuals who are also caught up within those systems themselves.

3. Breathe and push. Kour says our sweet must include loving ourselves and that this is the love that we so often tend to the least. To sustain our engagement in the work of living our moral values, to love others with a revolutionary love, we must tend to ourselves.

This is not just individualistic self care. It must be the loving care we find within community. We need connection and belonging, such as that to be found within this religious community, to experience beauty and joy, to have others who will tend to us and pick up the burden for a while when we are the one who has been injured. We need beloved community for ourselves.

So these are how we practice a revolutionary love – how together we nourish souls, transform lives and do justice to build the beloved community.

Revolutionary love can move us to dismantle systems of oppression that do harm in our names and build the Beloved Community in their place. and we need it more than ever.

We need revolutionary love to transform a global economic system that benefits the very few over the great many and is endangering the very life on our planet.

We need a revolutionary love that creates a system that prioritizes people and lifeá itself over profits and wealth accumulation and by doing so builds the Beloved Community.

We need a revolutionary love that addresses the root cause of the devaluation and dehumanization that make the MeToo and TimesUp movements necessary – that still results in women receiving less pay than men for doing the very same job.

We need revolutionary love to bust up the patriarchy and build the Beloved Community in its place.

We need a revolutionary love to stand up to an executive branch that is not only systematically reversing rules and procedures that had been into place to protect the rights, of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer people, but within some branches, is putting into place rules and procedures making it legal to discriminate against us.

We need revolutionary love to bring LGBTQ folks fully into the Beloved Community.

We need revolutionary love to dismantle a private for-profit prison system, including our immigration detention system, that treats black and brown bodies as commodities, often forcing them into labor for little or no pay, in effect recreating indentured servitude and slavery.

We need revolutionary love to replace that system and build the Beloved Community.

And even more my friends, we must have a revolutionary love that dismantles a culture of white supremacy and Christian hegemony that leads to the abuse of people of other faiths and continues to drive extremely harmful disparities in eduction, health care, voting rights, incarceration rates, housing, income, police brutality, arrest rates and on and on and on for people of color.

We must, we MUST engage in a revolutionary love that will not rest, will not stop, will not give up until it dismantles these systems that are draining us all of our very humanity and replaces them once and for all with the Beloved Community. Revolutionary love is where we may find the strength to remain morally engaged against these and other forms of systemic harm.

Revolutionary love is how we instead create systems that make it possible for each and every one of us to live out our full human potential, and these systems of health not harm are the foundations upon we build the Beloved Community about which which we dream.

I hold a revolutionary love for this faith and for this church and the people who bring it into being.

I have no doubt, no doubt, that we can, together, nourish souls, transform lives and do justice to build the beloved 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 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.