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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
May 24, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

It seems like we cross into new territory all of the time these days. As we cope with a pandemic, we are in the midst of crossing a threshold, but we cannot yet see what the other side of that threshold may be like. Still, there may be opportunity in the uncertainty. We may have the agency to influence the other side of the threshold.

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice so that its flame may signify the spiritual strands of light that bind our hearts and souls with one another. Even while we must be physically apart, we bask in its warmth together.

Call to Worship

A PLACE WE ARE CREATING
-John Schaar

The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created–created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

BLESSING WHEN THE WORLD IS ENDING
-Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

Look, the world
is always ending
somewhere.

Somewhere
the sun has come
crashing down.

Somewhere
it has gone
completely dark.

Somewhere
it has ended
with the gun,
the knife,
the fist.

Somewhere
it has ended
with the slammed door,
the shattered hope.

Somewhere
it has ended
with the utter quiet
that follows the news
from the phone,
the television,
the hospital room.

Somewhere
it has ended
with a tenderness
that will break
your heart.

But, listen,
this blessing means
to be anything
but morose.
It has not come
to cause despair.

It is simply here
because there is nothing
a blessing
is better suited for
than an ending,
nothing that cries out more
for a blessing
than when a world
is falling apart.

This blessing
will not fix you,
will not mend you,
will not give you
false comfort;
it will not talk to you
about one door opening
when another one closes.

It will simply
sit itself beside you
among the shards
and gently turn your face
toward the direction
from which the light
will come,
gathering itself
about you
as the world begins
again.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
April 19, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Sometimes when we hold on too tightly to expectations of ourselves and others, it can lead to added suffering. In these difficult times, what are some of the things for which it might be liberating to let go or at least hold less fixedly?

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice so that its flame may signify the spiritual strands of light that bind our hearts and souls with one another. Even while we must be physically apart, we bask in its warmth together.

Call to Worship

EARTH TEACH ME STILLNESS
From War Cry on a Prayer Feather
by Nancy Wood

Earth teach me stillness
As the grasses are stilled with light.
Earth teach me suffering
As old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility
As blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring
As the mother who secures her young.
Earth teach me courage
As the tree which stands all alone.
Earth teach me limitation
As the ant who crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom
As the eagle who soars in the sky.
Earth teach me resignation
As the leaves which die in the fall.
Earth teach me regeneration
As the seed which rises in spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself
As melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness
As dry fields weep with rain.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

PERHAPS IT WOULD EVENTUALLY ERODE, BUT…
by Rosemary Wahtole Trommer

That rock that we
have been pushing up
the hill-that one

that keeps rolling back down
and we keep pushing
back up-what if

we stopped? We are not
Sisyphus. This rock
is not a punishment.

It’s something we’ve chosen
to push. Who knows why.
I look at all the names

we once carved into
its sedimentary sides.
How important

I thought they were,
those names. How
I’ve clung to labels,

who’s right, who’s wrong,
how I’ve cared about
who’s pushed harder

and who’s been slack.
Now all I want
is to let the rock

roll back to where it belongs,
which is wherever it lands,
and you and I could,

imagine!, walk unencumbered,
all the way to the top and
walk and walk and never stop

except to discover what
our hands might do
if for once they were

receiving.

Sermon

This month, our spiritual theme at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin is liberation.

I think many of us never imagined what a different perspective on that term, liberation, we might come to hold during this time of hunkering down and social distancing.

I don’t know about you all, but I am looking forward to the time when we will be liberated from having to practice this sheltering in place – social distancing!

This morning I’d like to talk about some of the ways we might avoid entrapping ourselves with unrealistic expectations during this strange and challenging time through which we’re living. What are some of the things which we might need to let go in order to liberate ourselves from self-imposed anxiety and judgement during this period, when we all have plenty enough stress in our world already?

For me, one of the big ones is letting go of expecting myself to handle moving through a pandemic in perfect fashion.

None of us can do that. None of us has ever had to handle this before. And, in fact, because we are under stress – trauma, all of us are likely a little ADHD about now.

We’re likely to make mistakes we would not normally make. We’re likely to be more forgetful than usual. We’re likely to have less stamina than we ordinarily do.

Last week, I had to don my face mask and protective gloves and head into a Randall’s grocery store, because none of the groceries in our area had any delivery or curbside pick up time slots available. I got my groceries, and a very nice woman bagged them and put them into my cart for me.

I got home, only to discover that several of my items were missing.

“That woman didn’t give me all of my groceries”, I thought to myself.

So off I went, back to Randall’s to march in and demand my missing groceries.

Luckily, I parked right by where I had left my cart, and there, in the bottom basket of the cart was the other bag of groceries right where I had left it when I loaded everything else into the car.

This week, I was back in Randall’s again, for the same reason – no curbside or delivery available.

A woman checking out in front of me, from 6 feet away, was placing her items in a bag with her right hand. The checkout clerk completed the transaction and told her the amount owed.

In a sudden panic, the woman exclaimed, “Oh my God, where’s my wallet?”

Then she turned and saw that she was holding her wallet in her left hand.

She looked at me with embarrassment. I smiled and said, “don’t worry, we have all been doing that sort of thing all of the time. We both laughed together, and it was a blessed relief.

When we are under stress, we are all more likely to make these sorts of absent-minded mistakes. Let’s forgive ourselves and be especially careful when driving – people are accidentally running red lights and stop signs and changing lanes without even looking.

Here is another thing to let go. If any of you are like me and have always strived to be an “A” student, we may need to let go of that for a while too. If we make it though this as a “C” student, we’ll be fine!

I know I’ve sent email messages to the wrong person and texts that were so full of typos they made no sense at all!

To our folks who are trying to work from home, while parenting and providing home schooling, I especially want to say you are doing it well enough. You have been given a nearly impossible challenge.

You get an “A” plus just for the Herculean effort.

Another thing I have been learning to let go is having to be strong all the time – keep that stiff upper lip, as I was taught most of my life in my white, Euro-scandinavian family.

We have to feel the grief, the fear, the anger the stir-craziness. We have to feel all of it in order to move through it.

That doesn’t mean we have to stay there forever, just that we can’t try to stuff it all down and numb it.

We’re all also having to let go of our ideas of separateness. We will only make it through this together, and we can be in it together even while we are physically apart.

And we’re all also having to let go of what was our daily routine. That may be an opportunity for longer-term change. I am trying to start the day with a nice walk instead of immediately looking at the news. Another thing I have had to let go is feeling like I should be doing more I’m trying to be careful with that word “should”. It can lead me into all manner of troubles.

So, those are some of the big ones for me. I invite you to consider what what it might help you to let go, or at least hold a little less tightly.

One final big one for me is learning to live with not being able to have physical contact with other people.

I love preaching and leading worship, but I have discovered during this time, that one of the things I have loved most about my ministry with this church, were the Sundays when Meg, our senior minister, was preaching, and I would be what I’ve called “the floor minister”.

You know how restaurants and retail stores have had a general manger, that would be Meg, and then a floor manager who would move about checking in with people?

That’s kind of what I got to do as a minister on those Sundays – and will get to do again someday.

Move about the church and listen to folks, ask how you’re doing, try to help with any issues you might be having.

I miss being able to shake hands, or hug, or put a hand on a shoulder.

But I am learning that love can radiate through a computer screen or a phone call or even an email or text message. Love can travel from six feet apart.

So, even though right now I am doing it through a computer video camera, I am sending you much love.

Even though I am recording this a few days before you will see it on Sunday, the love will still be there.

And I’ll be there too, chatting with you in the comments.

Because the one thing we can’t let go is love.

Not even a virus can quarantine love.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
March 29, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Though this is a difficult and challenging time, it also provides us with an opportunity to truly realize our interconnectedness – to know we can only get through this together, even as we cannot be physically together. Perhaps our vision, at least for now, may be less about the future and more about how we can treat ourselves and others with kindness and compassion in this moment and time.

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice so that its flame may signify the spiritual strands of light that bind our hearts and souls with one another. Even while we must be physically apart, we bask in its warmth together.

Call to Worship

Rev. Chris Jimmerson

It’s okay to sit on the front porch and stare into the blankness. It’s okay to scream into the void. It’s okay to weep into the pillow and pound the mattress. None of us knows how to do this. All of us are here with each other in our hearts and spirits.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Moment for 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 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.”

– The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change

Meditation Reading

Dr Amy Acton
Head of the Ohio Department of Health

I can tell you that I already envision a future that is full of hope. I’ve told you my story about how absolutely essential hope is. It’s the one thing that made a difference in a really rough childhood that I had and I feel more hopeful than I’ve ever felt. I actually believe that life is not shutting down right now. Life is not shutting us down, although we’re being quiet now and we’re making that physical distance.

Life seems like it’s shutting down but I feel life is waking us up. I truly see a vision of a future that is brighter than we have known. I say that from all my heart. I just know it in my heart and my soul. So please don’t feel like this is pulling us apart. I believe this is drawing us to each other and bonding us to each other, but it will have to be all of us.

Sermon

Well, it’s been a rough several days, hasn’t it? I know it has been for me. I miss being able to be physically with people, including you all. I’m wearing my rainbow kitties stole for this video because it helps me feel at least a little bit better.

I want to acknowledge the extra challenges those of you who are parents are facing with children at home all of the time because the schools are closed.

One of our church members, Kae McLaughlin posted on Facebook something one of her neighbors had sent out over NextDoor. It went, “Homeschooling is going well. Two students suspended for fighting and one teacher fired for drinking on the job.”

We are all facing challenges during this time, and we do not know yet how long this time will last. Our minds and our bodies know there is a potential existential threat to ourselves and those we love and care about. And this leads to several things we need to know.

Even as we go about the daily tasks of life, our minds are still processing what is happening in the background. Our bodies are producing a flood of chemicals that would normally prepare us for fight or flight in the face of danger. Only this is a danger that we cannot see and for which fight or flight do not really help, as we all have to shelter in place. Because of all of this, we are likely to tire more easily. We are likely to need more rest than usual. We have to be aware that we may be prone to be more snappish than usual, as those fight chemicals try to find a way to express themselves. I am trying even more than usual to pause before speaking whatever reaction I am having to try to counter this. My spouse Wayne claims I am only being partially successful at it.

Getting outdoors can help. Exercising can help. Connecting with those we love and care about in whatever ways we are able can help – phone calls, the internet, email, texting.

We are likely to experience both a wider range of emotions and to feel them more deeply than usual in times of stress such as this. Know that is normal. Let’s let ourselves feel the emotions. It is part of the way we move through stressful times.

The opposite can be true too though. We may experience times where we just shut down and stare at the wall for a while. Let’s be forgiving of ourselves and of one another during this time.

David Kessler, who along with Elisabeth Kubler Ross wrote about the stages of grief says that grief is one of the emotions we must acknowledge that we are feeling during this time. He says we are feeling grief both over the loss of normalcy and lack of physical connection that we are currently experiencing and what he calls “anticipatory grief.” That’s when we face an uncertain future where we know we may experience even more loss.

He says that our minds can begin racing, imagining the worst possible scenario but that, if we try to fight that and shut it down, our minds will not let us. In fact, trying to do so can cause us more pain.

Instead, he recommends also trying to imagine the best-case scenario to gain some balance.

Kessler says that one of the ways we can best manage our grief is to recognize the different stages of it, though he warns we do not move through them in in any certain order and that we can move back and forth between them more than once also.

See if you have experienced any of the example he gives: He says,

• “There’s denial, which we say a lot of early on: This virus won’t affect us.
• There’s anger: You’re making me stay home and taking away my activities.
• There’s bargaining: Okay, if I social distance for two weeks everything will be better, right?
• There’s sadness: I don’t know when this will end.
• And finally there’s acceptance. This is happening; I have to figure out how to proceed.

Acceptance, as you might imagine, is where the power lies. We find control in acceptance. I can wash my hands. I can keep a safe distance. I can learn how to work virtually.” Kessler says that naming these stages helps us move through them. Kessler adds one more stage of grief that he calls “finding meaning”. I’d like to close by talking about that for a bit.

Now, I know we have witnessed the hoarding of ammunition and toilette paper. I know we have politicians calling on Grandma to sacrifice herself for the good of the capitalistic economy.

I want to tell you a few stories of somethings my spouse Wayne and I have also witnessed lately though. I had to go to Randall’s a couple of days ago because we had run out of groceries at the house. And even though there were these bright red lines we had to stand behind at the checkout counter and signs everywhere telling us we had to stay at least six feet apart, people were greeting complete strangers as they passed one another, asking how each other was doing and really wanting to hear the answer. People were checking with the store employees to ask how they were fairing and thanking them for being there. A man who had a lot more items than I did offered to let me go before him at the checkout.

Wayne was at our neighborhood convenience store and saw a woman give the store clerk her cell phone number and invite him to call her if needed.

We live on a cul de sac, and the other night, someone down the street went into their yard and started playing their clarinet. Pretty soon, a woman at one of the other houses came out into her yard with her two young daughters and joined in by playing a saxophone. Then, a young man and his family came out into their yard, and he joined in with his guitar. And so, our neighbors provided us all with a free, impromptu jazz concert.

That’s the meaning we may be finding despite these difficult, difficult times. The ideology of dog eat dog, everyone for themselves will not get us through this and is being shown to be a failed ideology.

Instead, we are finding our interconnectedness in ways that we never have before. We are discovering that we will need each other to get through this. We are finding ways to make music together, even from a distance, both literally and metaphorically. Let’s do that in this congregation.

Stay connected.

Reach out to one another.

If you go to austinuu.org and click on the calendar, you will see several opportunities we are providing to connect online through Zoom.

Reach out to Meg Barnhouse our senior minister and to me. The best way to do that is through email. Meg.barnhouse@austinuu.org and chris.jimmerson@austinuu.org. We both have our church email on our cell phones and check it frequently.

Meg and I both love this congregation with all of our heart and to the depth of our soul.

We will get through this together.

Amen.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
March 8, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Wisdom is more than just knowledge. In fact, sometimes we have to unlearn things to have greater wisdom. Sometimes wisdom is found in uncertainty, making mistakes and the ineffable experience of our interconnectedness with the interdependent web of all existence. Sometimes wisdom is found in experiences deeper than just the cognitive.

Chalice Lighting

At this hour, in small towns and big cities, in single rooms and ornate sanctuaries, many of our sibling Unitarian Universalist congregations are also lighting a flaming chalice. As we light our chalice today; let us remember that we are part of a great community of faith. May this dancing flame inspire us to fill our lives with the Unitarian Universalist ideals of love, justice, and truth.

Call to Worship

-Hafez

The beloved sometimes wants to do us a great favor, hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Moment for 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 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.”

– The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change

Meditation Reading

-Marcus Borg

It happened as I was driving along through a sunless rural Minnesota landscape. The only sounds were the wind and the drone of the car. I had been on the road for about three hours. The light suddenly changed. It became yellowy and golden and it suffused everything I saw: the snow covered fields left and right, the trees bordering the fields, the yellow and black road signs, the highway itself. Everything glowed. Everything looked wondrous. I was amazed.

I had never experienced anything like that before unless perhaps in very early childhood and so I no longer remembered it. At the time I felt the falling away of the subject-object distinction of ordinary every day consciousness. That dome of consciousness in which we experience ourselves as in-here and world as out-there. I became aware not just intellectually but experientially at the connectedness of everything. I saw the connectedness, experienced it. My sense of being in here while the world was out there momentarily disappeared. That experience lasted maybe a minute and then faded, but it had been the richest minute of my life. It was not only full of wonder but also filled with a strong sense of knowing, of seeing more clearly and truly than I had ever had.

Sermon

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

– Albert Einstein

This month, our religious education classes and activities are examining the concepts of awakening and wisdom.

How do we awaken our wisdom? How is wisdom different than knowledge?

I’m betting that many of you, like me, have been following the developments with the coronavirus with some degree of concern, so I thought I would start with a little wisdom from our public health officials on how to try to contain the spread of viruses.

While there is certainly no reason to panic at this point, there are some practical things we can all do.

First if we are sick with cold-like symptoms we should stay home.

We’ve placed flyers all around the church with information on proper hand washing and other sanitary measures we can all follow, such as covering our mouth when we sneeze or cough and keeping food preparation areas sanitary.

We also found a formula for making our own hand sanitizer and ordered the ingredients to do so because pre-prepared sanitizer has been sold out pretty much everywhere. We will place it around the church as soon as the ingredients come in.

Another thing we can all do is become aware of not touching our hands to our faces. We all tend to this a lot without realizing, and it is one of most common ways that we end up infecting ourselves with something.

The Center for Disease Control has recently advised that older adults and folks with severe chronic illnesses stay at home as much as possible. They don’t define what they mean by “older adults”, sorry.

If you do make the decision to stay at home and would like to watch the church services via the internet, church staff will be happy to show you how to access the the video if you do not already know how to do so.

I also have a service which would allow me to talk with you over video on the internet if we needed to so during the week.

And finally, though many of us enjoy shaking hands or hugging each other, let’s please display our affection for one another with elbow bumps instead for the time being.

The management team here at the church will continue to monitor the situation very closely and will let you know if any further precautions become necessary.

OK, public health announcement over, so back to wisdom.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian, pastor and anti-Nazi dissident once wrote,

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than evil is. Against evil, one can protest; it can be exposed and, if necessary, stopped with force. Evil always carries the seed of its own self-destruction, because it at least leaves people with a feeling of uneasiness. But against stupidity, we are defenseless.”

Current theologian and minister, Tim Suttle writes that he is seeing a disturbing similarity in modern day America’s lack of wisdom, as that of the German’s in Bonhoeffer’s time.

Suttle notes that what many Americans lack is not knowledge. Instead, there is a refusal to apply that knowledge in wise ways and to dismiss as fake new any knowledge that contradicts our prejudices.

Witness the denial of so many about the growing possibility for global climate catastrophe.

Suttle says that contemporary America has lost several types of wisdom.

First – The wisdom of compromise. He writes, “Only fools believe in win-at-all-costs situations.” It is not that we need to sacrifice our values – but he notes that we gain wisdom through relationship with each other, particularly those with different Life experiences and world views. We can do more together than we can from within our ideological trenches.

Second – The wisdom of change. Trappist monk and mystic, Thomas Merton once said, “If the you of five years ago doesn’t consider the you of today a hectic, you are not growing spiritually.” Yet so many remain entrenched in dogma and ideology, never learning, never growing. Growth and wisdom always involve change.

Third – The Wisdom of Fidelity. By fidelity, Suttle means staying engaged with each other even when we disagree or make mistakes and being willing to work for the good of society over and above what we want for own lives.

Fourth – The wisdom of suffering. Suttle says that we gain wisdom through our hurts and our mistakes. None of us can really avoid suffering in life, but too many of us try to numb it through the use of drugs, alcohol, television, habitual shopping, smart phone binging, etc.

And finally – The wisdom of uncertainty. So much wisdom arises out of mystery and paradox – in having the humility to recognize how much we really do not and cannot know.

I loved that reading from Marcus Borg that Leo shared with us earlier. There is sense of mysteriousness and paradox in these ineffable experiences of interconnectedness and oneness that so many of us have had.

And I think those experiences bless us with a wisdom that goes deeper than rational knowledge and move us toward acting with more compassion and wiseness in our world.

So ultimately what I think Suttle is trying to get at is that too many Americans have lost that sense of our interconnectedness and the many forms of wisdom to be found within it.

I would add to Suttle’s list several other sources of wisdom.

Sometimes wisdom can come from sorting through our rational knowledge to find what is really useful and strip away what is not. As our call to worship put it, “shake all the nonsense out.”

Paying attention to what our bodies are telling us and getting in touch with our emotions are also a part of awakening our full capacity for wisdom.

This is a lesson I have had to learn more than once. For instance, after my step-father, Ty, who had been more of a father to me than my actual dad, after Ty died in April of 2015, I found myself just feeling numb.

There was a sense of unreality.

And for a couple of weeks, it was as if I completely shut down emotionally.

I went though the routines of life and my ministry here at the church, but I couldn’t feel anything much less locate the pleasure and joy I normally get from life and ministry.

And then one day, I was talking with Meg, and I realized that what was happening was that I had been depressed. That for me, depression isn’t a feeling of sadness; it’s feeling nothing.

It was only after this realization, after I finally let myself fully experience my grief and sorrow over losing my step-dad that the depression began to lift.

It was only after I let myself have a good cry or two that I began to also the able to feel gratitude and joy and happiness again.

So our wisdom arises from our whole selves, our reasoning and know ledge, yes, but also our physical and emotional selves.

And, as I mentioned briefly earlier, but it is well worth repeating, our wisdom also comes from being willing to take risks and make mistakes. Sometimes our mistakes are our greatest teachers.

So, as artist and writer Debbie Millman puts it, “If you are not making mistakes, you’re not taking enough risks. Make new mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody has ever made before.”

I think we can also find a special sort of wisdom within the metaphors contained in our stories, myths and poetry.

There is wisdom to be found in our music and drama – in our rituals and the arts.

All of these help us to grasp and understand life’s complexities in ways we cannot with only literal thinking.

This is the error, in my opinion, that too many people make by trying to read the bible or other sacred texts literally and thereby missing or even distorting the metaphorical wisdom such texts often contain.

For me, getting out into nature can also shift my thinking to this bigger picture, more metaphorical form of contemplation.

OK, we have now come to the portion of our service where I harp on the importance of spiritual practices, as I have been and will be doing each time I preach this year.

Spiritual practices, meditation or gardening or knitting, whatever you find connects you with the greater wisdom that is already within you, also help us become even wiser because these practices can also help to shift our perspective on life.

So sometimes our knowledge doesn’t change through our spiritual practices, but our understanding of that knowledge, our worldview, does.

Likewise, our readings and hymns and music and rituals and, I hope at least sometimes our sermons, here in worship at the church may provide us with new knowledge or insights but can also just help us shift our perspectives around knowledge we already had.

And this is likely more true the more we can engage, once again with our whole selves, intellect, physical and emotional. And his capacity to grow wisdom I think is there throughout the life of the church.

Certainly I believe our wonderful teachers and other religious education folks, along with our public forum folks, are helping people of all ages to cultivate greater wisdom.

When we work together for social justice and against all fonns of oppression, we encounter difference, which, in turn, can enhance our own wisdom and shift our perspectives once again.

Our work for the environment reminds us of the wisdom that we are indeed not separate from the interdependent web of all existence but a part of it.

Our First UU Cares Council teaches us the wisdom of caring for each other.

Our Fun and Fellowship and our games night remind us of the wisdom that we need fun, friendship, community, joy in our lives.

Our art gallery, Paradox Players, our many musical programs bring these special sources of wisdom to us.

Well, I could go on and on but there are about another 80 or so ministry teams and church programs I haven’t mentioned yet, so I better stop now.

My point is that as a religious community, in these and so many more ways, I believe we can and do help each other grow our wisdom.

Today is International Women’s Day, so I would be remiss if I were to fail to mention that in Proverbs of the Hebrew Scriptures, God’s wisdom is personified as Woman Wisdom or Sophia.

Sophia, Woman Wisdom, hearkens back to the Tree of Life. She was there at the very act of creation, frolicking in God’s presence and taking delight as God fashioned humanity, the heavens and earth, placing true wisdom within the interconnectedness between the many elements of God’s creation.

So my fellow guys, let us ponder in the days to come over what metaphorical truth Proverbs may be trying to teach us.

I’ll leave you with a poem by Unitarian Universalist minister Leslie Takahashi. It is titled, “Labyrinth”.

“Walk the maze within your heart: guide your steps into its questioning curves.
This labyrinth is a puzzle leading you deeper into your own truths.
Listen in the twists and turns.
Listen in the openness within all searching.
Listen: a wisdom within you calls to a wisdom beyond you
and in that dialogue lies peace.”

Here, as a religious community, may we walk the maze of life together.

Here, in this sacred place, may we help each other find the wisdom within us that calls to a wisdom beyond us.

Amen and blessed be.

Benediction

– Khalil Gibran

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry,
the philosophy which does not laugh,
and the greatness which does not bow before children.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
February 23, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Sometimes it takes grit and determination to stay resilient in times of challenge. Sometimes, though, like the trees, we need to be able to bend but not break when strong winds gust – change, but also hold onto our core selves, like when the river changes course around obstacles in its path. Always, we need each other to weather life’s challenges.

Chalice Lighting

At this hour, in small towns and big cities, in single rooms and ornate sanctuaries, many of our sibling Unitarian Universalist congregations are also lighting a flaming chalice. As we light our chalice today; let us remember that we are part of a great community of faith. May this dancing flame inspire us to fill our lives with the Unitarian Universalist ideals of love, justice, and truth.

Call to Worship

by Adrienne Rich

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Moment for 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 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.”

– The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change

To deepen our reflection on the meaning of Beloved Community and the challenges we still encounter for building it, each week we have been asking folks to consider something that is may be outside their realm of experience.

Kevin was 17 when he fled Honduras with his sister. After their grandmother had died, they had been left parentless, and the gang MS-13 forced them to work for it at threat for their lives.

When the gang told Kevin he would have to kill a stranger to prove his loyalty, he and his sister made the decision to flee to the United States.

He was captured at the border and placed into a shelter run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is responsible for providing care for underage immigrants.

As a part of that care, he was offered psychological counseling, which he understood would be confidential.

He met with a therapist and talked about all of the things the gang had forced him to do or witness.

Little did he know, that under a new Trump administration policy, his therapist’s notes would be passed on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who would use it to declare him a danger to society and argue for his detainment and deportation.

He has now been in detention for over 950 days while his legal case plays out.

One has to wonder if they would have done the same to a teenager from, oh, say, Finland.

What must it be like to have a vulnerable counseling session used against you in a legal setting?

As we struggle with this, let us remember there is no need to immerse ourselves in guilt or shame. In fact, these can be counterproductive, as we need joy and community to sustain our struggle to do justice and build the beloved community.

There is beauty to be found in the struggle itself.

Meditation Reading

GRACE
by Chris Jimmerson

When she was a young girl, they told her that Grace was only available to her, a child of original sin, through the forgiveness and whim of an all-powerful God.

Then, she sat with her Grandfather as he was dying. She held his hand, as she and the ones she loved stayed with him through his great passage.

And she felt Grace arise among them.

Later, during her college years, she volunteered for the local refugee shelter. And one day she witnessed the counselor work with young children traumatized by war.

She heard the children begin to speak their truths with one another, in that language that is only fully understood by such children, and she watched the counselor put his plans aside and let the children begin to heal one another.

And she felt Grace radiate between them.

And as over and over again through her years, she witnessed this same emergence between and among people, she came to understand Grace as something we co-create, and, sometimes, something we allow to happen by simply getting out of the way.

Sermon

“Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.”

“You’re stronger than you think.”

“What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

How many of you have heard one or more of these platitudes about human resilience?

The problem with them, besides the fact that they’re platitudes, is also that they center our resilience solely upon each of us as individuals. However, in reality our ability to remain resilient in difficult circumstances greatly depends on communal relationships and social support.

That’s not to say that there are not practical things we can do as individuals to build our personal resilience, and I’ll talk about some of these later.

It’s just that too often we forget that when we face challenges, we do not have to face them alone.

We have each other. We are a part of something much larger than ourselves.

As our religious education chaplain and communications coordinator, Bear Qolezcua put it in one of his wonderful Weekly Faith Connections bulletins, “These are the moments in which we are blessed to remember that we are part of the great, interdependent web of life upon which all things strum a rhythm of living and love and hope and sorrow and joy and pain and loss and newness.”

So this morning, as we consider the spiritual topic of resilience, which our religious education classes and activities have been exploring this leap year month of February, I want to start by stressing the relational, communal and social aspects of our resilience.

One group of psychologists who study resilience define it this way: “Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress .. .It means ‘bouncing back’ from difficult experiences.

However, Eric Greitens, former navy seal, humanitarian, author and ex-disgraced, shortterm Republican governor of Missouri, but hey, wisdom can come from the strangest of sources sometimes – Greitens writes that we do not really bounce back to exactly who we were before.

The parent who loses a child is forever changed.

The nineteen-year old who goes to war comes back a different person than when they left.

Greitens says that rather than bouncing back to who we were before, we move through our challenges.

He writes, “What happens to us becomes a part of us”.

Resilient people find healthy ways to integrate hard experiences into their lives.

And, especially in our most difficult situations, to do that, we most often need relationship with; we need the support of others.

As I began what was supposed to be my final year of seminary in the fall of 2014, my world had suddenly become very challenging.

My spouse, Wayne, had developed a debilitating and life-threatening illness.

I am happy to say he is doing well now, but at the time it was pretty scary.

My step-father, Ty was dying of congestive heart failure. We knew it was only a matter of time. We just did not know how much time he had left.

We were blessed that he actually lived more than a year longer than his doctors had predicted. I was so moved that he was even able to attend my ordination here at this church just a couple of months before we lost him.

On top of all that, the congregation where I was doing a part-time internship that was required as part of my final year in seminary was moving through a great deal of emotional turmoil because of abuses they had suffered at the hands of other ministers.

I began to doubt whether I would be able to complete the school year and graduate.

The seminary was a long distance program, where I could do much of the studying and work here, but then had to go to Chicago for intensive classes for several weeks three times per year.

With all that was going on, it seemed a high likelihood that I might not be able to be away at some point or that I might have to leave in the middle of classes if the worst happened in any of the situations going on back home.

I also just was not sure I was going to have the emotional stamina to push through the hard work of seminary.

My prior years at the seminary, I had served as the co-chair of the student advisory council, and the school’s president, Lee Barker, had asked me to fill a position that would serve as student representative to the faculty team and the board of trustees.

I realized that I had to call Lee to tell him I could not serve in the position. I dreaded making that call because I was afraid he would be disappointed in me.

Instead, as soon as I told him all that was going on in my life, he said, “Forget the position, you’re what matters. Let’s talk about what you need.”

He gave me such a gift of grace, because he stayed with me where I was as we continued the conversation. He didn’t try to tell me it was OK or that it would be OK because, of course, it wasn’t and he couldn’t make the promise that it would be.

He did tell me that the school would work with me to find ways around it if I had to miss class time or had trouble keeping up with readings and assignments.

He offered to be available to me if at any time I needed to talk more.

And as the school year went on, he helped me find a resilience that I could not have found by myself – a resilience that allowed me to complete that final year of seminary and graduate with my friends and classmates.

Research has found that our resilience is rooted in relationship in several ways.

Positive and supportive social relationships, such as Lee offered too me, are key to our resilience.

As the American Psychological Association puts it, “Many studies show that the primary factor in resilience is having caring and supportive relationships within and outside the family. Relationships that create love and trust, provide role models and offer encouragement and reassurance, help bolster a person’s resilience.”

So building and maintaining relationships and community are vital to our ability to weather life’s inevitable storms.

Next, finding a sense of purpose that involves altruism and working for the good of others is a second way that our resilience is rooted in social connections.

Research has found, it turns out, that when we get involved in contributing to our communities, working for social justice, trying to create a better world, we benefit ourselves, because in doing so we are exposed to different perspectives and life experiences, and we find that sense of purpose. These, in turn, help build our own personal resilience.

Finally, social safety nets increase the resilience of citizens. In countries with strong social safety nets, such as paid parental leave and universal free health care, people are healthier and express greater life satisfaction.

In turn, these seem to make folks in such countries more resilient when they encounter challenges in life.

So, paid parental leave and Medicare for all, ya’ll!

Now, while still stressing that maintaining the social relationships I’ve been discussing is vital, I do want to talk a little bit about what we can do individually to maintain and build our resiliency.

Jane McGonigal is a video game designer who a few years ago suffered a traumatic brain injury that left her with constant headaches, nausea, vertigo, memory loss and mental fogginess.

Her doctors told her that in order to heal, she had to avoid anything that triggered these symptoms – no reading, no email.nowork.no running, no writing – basically none of the activities she loved in life.

She found herself growing more and more depressed. She found herself having suicidal thoughts.

She decided to try to create a game she could play that might help her make it through.

She called the game, “Jane the Concussion Slayer” and invited her twin sister and her husband to play it with her.

The game basically just helped them identify how to battle the “bad guys” – anything that could trigger her symptoms like bright lightsand activate power ups – anything she could do to feel even just a little better like cuddling her dog for a few minutes.

Within just a few days her depression lifted. She still had symptoms of the head injury for another year, but she no longer had suicidal thoughts.

She renamed the game “SuperBetter” and shared it over the internet. She soon found herself receiving messages from around the world from people with a variety medical conditions saying that the game had helped them face their challenges with much less anxiety and depression.

She was curious how such a simple game could be so helpful, so she devoured the scientific literature and discovered what the game was doing was helping people identify simple activities that have been shown to contribute to four different types of resilience.

I want to share with you a few minutes from a Ted Talk that McGonigal presented in which she walked her audience through some very simple activities we can do even several times daily that help build these four types of resilience that she will describe.

I invite you as, in the video, she talks the people in her audience through these exercises to join in with them and do the activities too.

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VIDEO

So, everybody ready? This is your first quest. Here we go. Pick one: Stand up and take three steps, or make your hands into fists, raise them over your head as high as you can for five seconds, go! All right, I like the people doing both. You are overachievers. Very good.

(Laughter)

Well done, everyone. That is worth +1 physical resilience, which means that your body can withstand more stress and heal itself faster. We know from the research that the number one thing you can do to boost your physical resilience is to not sit still. That’s all it takes. Every single second that you are not sitting still, you are actively improving the health of your heart, and your lungs and brains.

Everybody ready for your next quest? I want you to snap your fingers exactly 50 times, or count backwards from 100 by seven, like this: 100,

93 … Go!

(Snapping)

Don’t give up.

(Snapping)

Don’t let the people counting down from 100 interfere with your counting to 50.

(Snapping)

(Laughter)

Nice. Wow. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that. Bonus physical resilience. Well done, everyone. Now that’s worth +1 mental resilience, which means you have more mental focus, more discipline, determination and willpower. We know from the scientific research that willpower actually works like a muscle. It gets stronger the more you exercise it. So tackling a tiny challenge without giving up, even one as absurd as snapping your fingers exactly 50 times or counting backwards from 100 by seven is actually a scientifically validated way to boost your willpower.

So good job. Quest number three. Pick one:

Because of the room, fate’s really determined this for you, but here are the two options. If you’re inside, find a window and look out of it. If you’re outside, find a window and look in. Or do a quick YouTube or Google image search for “baby [your favorite animal.]”

Do it on your phones, or just shout out some baby animals, and I’ll put them on the screen. So, what do we want to see? Sloth, giraffe, elephant, snake. Okay, let’s see what we got. Baby dolphin and baby llamas. Everybody look. Got that? Okay, one more. Baby elephant.

(Audience) Oh!

We’re clapping for that? That’s amazing.

(Laughter)

All right, what we’re just feeling there is plus-one emotional resilience, which means you have the ability to provoke powerful, positive emotions like curiosity or love, which we feel looking at baby animals, when you need them most.

Here’s a secret from the scientific literature for you. If you can manage to experience three positive emotions for everyone negative emotion over the course of an hour, a day, a week, you dramatically improve your health and your ability to successfully tackle any problem you’re facing. And this is called the three-to-one positive emotion ratio. It’s my favorite SuperBetter trick, so keep it up.

All right, pick one, last quest: Shake someone’s hand for six seconds, or send someone a quick thank you by text, email, Facebook or Twitter. Go!

(Chatting)

Looking good, looking good. Nice, nice. Keep it up. I love it! All right, everybody, that is +1 social resilience, which means you actually get more strength from your friends, your neighbors, your family, your community. Now, a great way to boost social resilience is gratitude. Touch is even better.

Here’s one more secret for you: Shaking someone’s hand for six seconds dramatically raises the level of oxytocin in your bloodstream, now that’s the trust hormone. That means that all of you who just shook hands are biochemically primed to like and want to help each other. This will linger during the break, so take advantage of the networking opportunities.

---

So just these simple activities, repeated enough, can build our resilience. And if her activities are not workable for someone because of a disability or such, finding some simple way to challenge ourselves in each of those four areas will likely still have the same effect – physical, emotional, mental, and, of course, social.

Now, have I harped on the importance of spiritual practices yet this Sunday?

No? Well, here goes. Yep, it turns out spiritual practices – meditation, prayer, gardening, gratitude journaling, etc. engaging in regular spiritual practices builds our resilience.

Here are some other activities that help us build and maintain resilience:

• Allowing ourselves to experience joy.
• Immersing ourselves in that which we find to be beautiful.
• Laughter and humor.
• The arts, music, poetry.
• Engaging our creativity.

I think sometimes we think of resilience as always meaning being tough, having grit and determination. And that CAN be part of it.

But like those platitudes with which I started, it is not all of the story.

Sometimes resilience means allowing ourselves to feel the grief and rage and sorrow and pain of our situations without falling into immobilization, without losing joy, laughter, humor, beauty.

Sometimes, like the “flag” tree on the cover of your order of service and up on the screens, we need to muster the grace to bend but not break up against the winds of traumatic challenge or dramatic change. And my beloveds, we need each other to do so.

Sometimes we have to have the courage to ask for help.

For after all, we co-create grace in our world together. We grow stronger together.

We build our greatest resilience together.

May this place and this religious community be a wellspring of spiritual resilience so together, we may:

• nourish souls, ours and others,
• transform lives, in our midst and out in our world,
• and do justice, within these walls and beyond them.

Building the Beloved Community requires just such a great spiritual resilience.

Thus, we are blessed to have each other, in this, our beloved religious community.

Amen.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 19, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Remaining true to our whole selves, as well as our religious principles and values, is integral to practicing our faith and nourishing our spirits. Indeed, our integrity is a soul matter.

Chalice Lighting

We light the fire of Truth and ask to be clear, wise, and humble enough to admit when we don’t know. We kindle the warmth of community and ask for open heartedness and patience. We are grateful to the Spirit of Life and ask to learn the secret to loving and being loved.

Call to Worship

We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:

• The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
• Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations; Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

KITCHEN TABLE WISDOM Rachel Naomi Remen

Wholeness is never lost, it is only forgotten. Integrity rarely means that we need to add something to ourselves; it is more an undoing than a doing, a freeing ourselves from beliefs we have about who we are and ways we have been persuaded to “fix” ourselves to know who we genuinely are. Even after many years of seeing, thinking, and living one way, we are able to reach past all that to claim our integrity and live in a way we may never have expected to live.

Being with peiple at such times is like waching them pat their pockets trying to remember where they have put their soul. Often in reclaiming the freedom to be who we are we remember some basic human quality, an unsusptected capacity for love or compassion or some other part of our common birthright as hman beings. What we find is allmost always a surpirse but it is also familiar like something we have put in the back of a drawer, lost long ago. Once we see we know it as our own.

Sermon

Lately, I have been remembering again the sometimes nightmarish time some of you have heard me talk about before – the earlier days of AIDS, when we had no effective treatments for HIV, nor for the many, often fatal infections associated with it.

During those times, I was working as the director of a non-profit that tried to bring clinical trials of potential treatments for HIV and these associated infections, to folks struggling with these HIV in our community.

Our purpose in expanding these studies beyond academic settings and into community clinics was twofold.

First, we wanted to get more people enrolled into them more quickly so that the science could advance more quickly. Secondly, we wanted to provide access to these potentially effective, experimental treatments, to folks for whom there were no good treatment options and who faced dire and often imminent consequences. That’s a euphemism for “they were dying”.

Our folks who were so desperate to get into one of these studies and our doctors often faced a difficult dilemma though.

Clinical research studies have inclusion criteria – a list of medical and other conditions one must meet to be included in the study. They also have exclusion criteria, which is a list of conditions that prevent a person from enrolling.

There are good reasons for these criteria involving the scientific study design, as well as patient safety concerns.

Too often however, the entry criteria for the studies were unnecessarily stringent. This was most often due to an overly cautious Food and Drug Administration, not used to dealing with so many people in such a desperate situation.

So, were our patients to bend the rules, hide parts of their medical history that might exclude them?

Were our physicians, who might suspect or even know, to have looked the other way? Would doing so risk the validity of the study results?

Would these folks and these physicians be acting with integrity if they bent these unreasonable and unjust rules?

I can tell you that they did. People were desperate. People’s live were at stake.

Eventually, this became such an issue nationwide that the entry criteria for studies began to get loosened.

The FDA also began allowing large, open access trials. These were generally just safety studies that had very flexible criteria to allow many more people to enroll.

Open access studies became a model that is still used today for cancer and other life-threatening diseases.

I particularly remember one of the physicians who provided care for some of our sickest, hospitalized folks.

So often, the drugs available for treating their life-threatening, HIV-associated infections were simply failing.

This physician kept up on all of the most recent science on treating such infections and would often know of compound treatments – mixtures of several drugs administered at once – that were showing great promise.

The problem was though, that these compounded drugs were most often not available in our area, even through clinical trials, and the pharmacist at the hospital refused to do the compounding to create them.

Understandably – the pharmacist could have lost their license by doing so and it would have quite possibly been, oh a little illegal.

So this physician would sneak down to the pharmacy at night, mix the compound treatment themself, and then take it up to their patient’s room and administer it themself, no nurses involved.

And time after time after time, though not every time, but so, so many times, their patients survived because of it.

It worked. They lived, at least for a while longer.

And yet, there were also unknown safety risks – potential interactions between such compounded drugs that could have caused possibly severe side-effects.

And it was, as I said, probably at least testing the boundaries of legality.

Was this acting with integrity? I’ve been reminded of all of this by the current, hellish situation at our border and within our immigration catastrophe that pretends to be a just system.

Immigrants and their advocates face unjust laws, unjust interpretation and administration of laws – sometimes just outright lawbreaking by a bigoted and racist administration.

Recently, the federal government tried twice to send one of our fellow Unitarian Universalists to prison simply for giving water to migrants trying to cross the desert. I’m pleased to say the Feds failed.

And so immigrants in desperate situations, sometimes at threat for their very lives, and their supporters, are choosing to defy these immigration laws in some cases.

And yet, then the administration and the forces of hate take examples of these cases and exaggerate them to paint all immigrants as criminals and law breakers.

So, is breaking a law we consider unjust acting with integrity? Who gets to decide which laws are just and which are not?

My friends, I can tell you that my perspective is that in both the cases of people with HIV and their doctors breaking the rules and the actions of immigrants and their supporters, I believe that they were acting with profound integrity.

Human lives were and are at stake.

I believe that all of these folks reached down to where a deep well of integrity resided within them, and, faced with no good choices, made the most live-giving, the most soul affirming decision available to them.

They brought pockets of wholeness into broken and morally incoherent systems that were shattering people’s lives.

This month, as a religious community, we are exploring what it means to be a people of integrity.

I wanted to start this morning by revisiting that time when the AIDS epidemic left us with such difficult choices – to lift up the immigration atrocity we are witnessing now to illustrate how sometimes living with integrity is not so easy.

I think sometimes when it comes to integrity, we can tend to take this Dudley Doright approach of “just do the right thing”, when, in fact it is much more complicated than that.

Our word, integrity, stems from the latin “integer”, meaning whole and complete.

As in mathematics, wherein an integer is a number that is not divided into fractions, integrity implies that we are not divided – our actions, speech and methods are consistent with our core self, our values, our aspirations.

And this wholeness helps us to maintain our integrity even when the ethical choices we face are complex and unclear.

This more nuanced conceptualization of integrity, I believe, has profound implications for us, both as individuals and as communities.

At the individual level, author, educator and advocate, Parker Palmer, writes that integrity comes when we get in touch with our very soul.

Now, “soul” can simply mean the essence of who we are; the person we were born to be; though for some of us it may have mystical implications also.

Parker writes of observing the birth of his first grandchild, “What I saw was clear and simple: my granddaughter arrived on earth as this kind of person, rather than that, or that, or that … we are born with a seed of selfhood that contains the spiritual DNA of our uniqueness, an encoded birthright knowledge of who we are, why we are here, and how we are related to others. We may abandon that knowledge as the years go by, but it never abandons us.”

For Parker, we can sometimes get separated from our truest self because of fear, societal pressures and the like. So, regaining our integrity means reintegrating our souls, embracing that at our core we are enough.

Now, embracing that we are enough as who we are, imperfections and all, while at the same time embracing that most of us have a desire to I grow and improve can seem like a paradox.

There are two thing that I think can help move this from Paradox to a sort of both land conceptualization.

Dr. Brene Brown, author and social science researcher, encourages us to approach other people with the assumption that they are doing the best they can with the tools they have.

I think we can offer ourselves this same grace. If I am doing the best I can with the tools I have, then my efforts at self improvement can be seen not so much as changing who I am but as learning new tools for maintaining wholeness and integrity.

I think also, we tend to think of growth as always being about adding something new. However, quite often becoming more whole involves letting go of something harmful or unearthing some part of ourselves we have lost.

Here is another really cool both and acting with integrity will nourish our souls and help us be whole … AND nourishing our souls through spiritual practices and engaging in faithful community will fortify our integrity when we face difficult situations such as I was describing earlier.

I now pause for our Sunday moment of harping on the importance of spiritual practices as promised in a sermon a couple of weeks ago.

I want to return to this idea of growth often involving unearthing something we have lost.

I think for those of us who have experienced having our identity marginalized, this can be an especially important aspect of wholeness and claiming our integrity.

Actress America Ferrera, whom you may know from the movie, “Real Women have Curves” or the TV series, “Ugly Betty” has a Ted Talk called, “My Identity is My Superpower”.

In it she speaks of dreaming of becoming an actress every since she was a nine year old girl who would dance around the den of her house.

She tells of going to her first professional audition, and being asked, “Can you read the part again but sound more hispanic?”

She describes how even after having found success, she still faced casting stereotyping and being turned down for roles because, quote “you look too latino”.

She says she even began to straighten her hair, tried to loose weight, avoided the sun so her skin would not turn so brown.

Finally, she had gotten cast in a movie with a Latinx character but was told her casting could not be announced until the white lead character got cast because the movie would sell better if the white person was announced first.

She had an epiphany. She was no longer going to change herself into something she wasn’t. She was going to reclaim her true identity and work to change the system instead. Here she is describing this altered perspective.

VIDEO

I want to close by holding up that this wholeness that is so vital to our being able to live with integrity as individuals is also crucial for us as a religious community.

Our integrity as a religious community comes alive when we get in touch with the core of our faith: when we live according to those principles we read together earlier, when our ways of being are whole, consonant with the values this church has expressed – transcendence, community, compassion, courage, transformation.

I think that do to that, we have to keep our principles and values in front of us, keep them explicit in our hearts and minds.

That’s why I support the proposed 8th principle – it takes something essential to the integrity of our faith that is implicit in our other principles and makes it explicit.

And my beloveds, we face a heavy challenge in these days in which we currently live, because we cannot be consistent with our principles and values, unless we speak out and take action against the gross human rights abuses of our current administration.

We cannot claim our integrity as a religious community unless we rise up to counter with love the emboldenment of hate groups and increased hate crimes they are committing against folks who are already marginalized.

I don’t use terms like “alt right” or “white nationalists” or even “white supremacists” because those are euphemisms that soften what is at the core of these groups.

So, to know what we are really up against, I believe we must call them what they are – hate groups, even while we must resist returning the hate.

I know none of us can do all. We cannot all participate in all the rallies and marches, make all the phone calls, sign all the petitions, do all the visits with congress critters and all the things.

We can all do what we can though. Spend one day registering folks to vote, give what we can to those who are doing the work of the revolution, make what call we can help our children understand what living with integrity in the world looks like for our faith.

And this is an election year, so what’s one thing we can all do come November?

That’s right – vote! And encourage others to vote and help get folks to the polls if you have the time and ability. Parker Palmer says that to be whole, we need trustworthy relationships and tenacious communities of support.

That’s part of why I love serving this congregation so much.

I believe you are just such a trustworthy, tenacious community of support and integrity.

Amen

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson and Lee Legault, Ministerial Intern
December 29, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Lee and Rev. Chris discuss their own and other spiritual practices, how to maintain them and why they are more important than ever in the year to come.

Chalice Lighting

As the days begin to lengthen, the world slowly moving from winter to spring, we kindle the flame of Transformation, the fifth of the five values of our congregation. May the light of Transformation lead us to the growth that shapes our lives and heals our world.

Call to Worship

IN THIS MOMENT
By Chris Jimmerson

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

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

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

In this moment, we gather to worship together.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

DEFINING SPIRITUALITY
by Brene Brown

Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives … For some people, that power greater than us is God; for others, it’s fishing. Some are reminded of our inextricable connection by faith; others by expressions of shared humanity.

Sermon

Lee and Rev. Chris discuss their own and other spiritual practices.

Leo: To start, I’d be interested to know how you might define “spiritual practice”, Chris.

Chris: Well, I suppose we would have to define what we mean by “spiritual or spirituality”, and I loved Brene Brown’s description of it that you read earlier. So for me, then, a spiritual practice is anything I can do that gives me that perspective and grounding in love, compassion and interconnectedness that sense of being a part of something much more powerful and larger than myself.

Leo: Lee, Does Chris’s definition of spiritual practice resonate with you?

Lee: Yes, Leo, except that I often exchange the word “practice” for “habit.” You’ll hear me use “spiritual practice” and “spiritual habit” interchangeably this morning. Thinking of them as spiritual habits made experimenting with them more accessible to me when I was just starting out. A habit is a behavior repeated so many times it becomes automatic. Washing your hands, brushing your teeth, stopping at a red light, those are all habits, and I am great at those! I knew I had transferable skills related to habit building back when I did not know the first thing about a spiritual practice.

Also, I use and depend on my spiritual habits like a carpenter uses tools or Navy Seal uses weapons. My spiritual practices are my gear or armor for encountering life. If they are absent, rusty, or not working properly, then I do not have everything I need to do what the moment requires.

Leo: Can you share some of your own spiritual practices with us?

Chris: Sure. I tend to have a couple of types of spiritual practices. The first I would call committed, on going practices – what some folks call spiritual discipline. There are two examples I have practiced in the past. One was going on meditative hikes in nature three at least three times per week, weather permitting. Most often, would bring my camera, because having it helped me notice and focus on the beauty all around me.

Another was was listing three things for which I was grateful in the notes application in my iPhone each morning. That then got shared across all of my computers and devices so that I could access the list to remind myself later of all for which I have to be grateful. I have found over time that those became less effective for me, and I recently read that there are sound neurological reasons why me might want to change our regular, committed spiritual practices.

Currently, I spend an hour each month speaking with a spiritual director. I have also come to realize that going to the gym and working out three to four times per week, for me has become a regular spiritual practice. It beaks up my work day and requires me to be mindful of just the exercises I am doing for that time period. Even when I am tired or having a stressful day or am not feeling all that well, I find that after going to the gym I usually feel much better physically, have more energy and that the stress has melted away.

The other type of spiritual practice or the ones that I do not do on a regular basis but that are more impromptu, spur of the moment activities. So, for instance, though I don’t do the meditative hikes or list gratitudes on regular, scheduled basis, I still sometimes do these practices if I am feeling a particular need for them. Another example is that sometimes during the workday here at the church, I will go sit quietly in the sanctuary for just five or ten minutes or walk the grounds of the church. These seem to clear my thoughts and help me center myself. A friend of mine from seminary says that she has an impromptu spiritual practice of sipping Chateau st. Michelle Chardonnay.

Leo: What are your spiritual practices, Lee?

Lee: I tie my spiritual habits to things I do at certain times of day. After my alarm goes off in the morning, I say a mantra: “I greet this day with an open mind, a happy heart, and a grateful spirit. I will enjoy all that I can and learn from the rest.”

After I brush my teeth, I pick the stone pendant I will wear and the pair of rock balls to put in my purse and hold throughout the day whenever I’m seated for any length of time. I think of making these selections as a type of divination. I open my mind to what challenges the day may hold and feel into what rocks might best help me meet those challenges.

If I’m going to be working with people who are upset, I’ll choose black rocks to remind me to keep my own boundaries and avoid taking on pain that is not mine. If I feel down, rocks associated with nurturance or support may feel appropriate, like Jasper or Moonstone, and using them reminds me to be gentle with myself. Divination helps me have an open mind and listen for wisdom from the inner teacher or from the Spirit of Life.

When I feel cranky at mid-afternoon, I do twenty minutes of meditation. I love to do a body scan meditation while lying down, but some days walking meditation of seated breath work better fit my schedule.

I always have a beaded rock bracelet on or with me, and can hold it any time I have a few minutes and do some breath prayer work. I touch a bead and say on the in-breath, “I serve the One,” and on the out breath, “Glory be to God.” Then I move my finger to the next bead and do the same thing. The words don’t matter, but it is helpful to say something a little longer on the out-breath so you are breathing in a four-seconds-in, six-seconds-out pattern. You could say “breath in,” on the in breath and “release the breath now,” on the out breath and achieve this 4-6 pattern.

Leo: What other types of spiritual practices might folks consider?

Chris: You know, I think we tend to think of spiritual practices as being in some way tied to one or more religions – prayer, meditation, yoga and various religious rituals. But prayer doesn’t have to be seeking help from a higher power. It can simply be articulating our wishes and hopes and inner state. And spiritual practice can also be simply digging in the ground if gardening centers us. They can be journaling, creating art, singing, chanting, knitting, learning something new, acts of kindness toward other people, engaging with others in public act for justice, absorbing the beauty of nature, holding those we love in front of a fire at night, volunteering, attending a communal bonding event – the list goes on and on. We’ve given everyone a hand out with a partial list spiritual practices. The main point is that any activity which gives you that sense of grounding, interconnectedness and being a part of something larger can be a spiritual practice. Some practices are more directed toward the mind, others the body, heart or soul. A wonderful book called, “An Alter in the World” by Barbara Brown Taylor talks about how just the way we go about our daily lives, if we practice mindfulness, can be a spiritual practice. So from that perspective voting our values or the way in which we treat other people can be spiritual.

Leo: You do more than one spiritual practice a day then?

Lee: Yes. The reason I like to layer up my armor of spiritual habits is that the day that you most need your spiritual practices is going to be when everything is going wrong. On that kind of day, you’ll miss most of your spiritual practices, and that is fine, because you will have fallback practices.

I learned this lesson when my husband had a near fatal car accident. A neighbor called me, saying he did not did not know if my husband was alive or dead but that paramedics had used the jaws of life to pull him from the wreckage, and an ambulance had taken him to the nearest trauma 1 hospital. Well, I missed my twenty minutes of meditation that day. I missed my gratitude practice. I was in spiritual freefall for a lot of hours, waiting to see if he would emerge alive from emergency surgery (which he did and he is miraculously 100 percent recovered).

The spiritual practice that I grabbed onto during the freefall was my prayer beads. I have them in my purse, so they are essentially always with me. I could do my prayer bead work in fits and snatches and unobtrusively in front of other people. In that situation, I had a tool that helped me meet the moment. All it takes is one, but you are a lot more likely to have the right spiritual practice if you have options you are comfortable with to choose from.

Leo: What obstacle or challenges can folks encounter when trying to maintain their spiritual practices?

Chris: For me, one of the biggest challenges is that when I am busy or stressed out, I tend to feel like I don’t have the time available to engage in my practices. And of course, these are the times when I need them the most! Having an accountability partner can help. For example, knowing that I have an appointment with a trainer at the gym (and that I get to pay him whether or not I show up!) is good for getting me there even on days when I am tempted to skip it. I think sometimes people get frustrated because the first few things they try don’t have the desired effect for them. For instance, I have never been good at sitting meditation. I’m too hyperkinetic. But then I discovered walking/hiking meditation and that can still be very powerful for me sometimes. Also, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes a practice may become less effective for us over time, so we may not vary our practices from time to time or find ways to deepen the ones we are already doing.

Leo: Lee, what tips do you have for folks starting out with spiritual practices? [To ask just before or after Chris talks about obstacles or challenges of spiritual practices.]

Lee: I offer four pointers for building a successful habit from James Clear, author of “Atomic Habits”:

1. Make it obvious,
2. make it attractive,
3. make it easy, and
4. make it satisfying.

Make a new spiritual practice obvious by stacking it on top of a preexisting habit. “After my alarm goes off, I will wake up [an existing habit] and then I will [do my spiritual practice: meditate, say a gratitude, create an intention for my day–whatever].”

Make your spiritual habit attractive–step two–by bundling it with something you want to do: “When my alarm goes off, I will wake up [existing habit] and do my spiritual practice [new habit], and then I will have coffee [making the new habit attractive by smacking it against something you like to do].”

Step three is “make it easy.” Set the bar for your new spiritual practice so low that you can’t fail. If your new habit is saying a gratitude, then say one and say it in your head. If your new spiritual practice is meditation, meditate for five breaths–not five minutes–in the beginning. Build up your spiritual practice after you have succeeded in building the habit of doing the spiritual practice in the first place. Your goal is to get 1 percent better at doing this new thing every day, not 100% better at doing it on the first day. Make it easy.

Finally, make your spiritual practice satisfying. What is rewarded is repeated. My prayer bead bracelets are smooth and beautiful. It is sensorily satisfying for me to use them.

Eventually, the intrinsic reward of feeling less stress and more compassion is reason enough to use them, but in the beginning, it helped a lot that I loved and wanted to hold them, like a crow likes shiny objects. For a new spiritual practice to take root, make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying.

Leo: Finally, why would you say that engaging in one or more spiritual practices matters for us?

Chris: Well, first, I would mention that there is a pretty good amount of research on at least some of these practices that shows they can be very good for us psychologically, physically and spiritually. They can even do things like lower blood pressure and relieve depression and anxiety. I also think they help ground and sustain us, especially when times are tough. They help us gain perspective and give us a sense of interconnectedness and belonging. And I think we are really going to need practices that help give us this resilience as we come up a new year where we know things like a senate impeachment trial and an election that likely to get very ugly will be happening. Finally, I would say that our practices do not all have top be individual. We can support each other. We can develop shared practices such our guided meditation group. These bind us together, deepen our relationships and reminds us that during these challenging times, we are never truly alone.

Leo: Lee, Why should people go to the trouble of developing spiritual practices?

Lee: I think your identity–indeed your humanity–is tied to your daily habits. To me, karma is a kind of compounding of habits. Peaceful, loving people practice being peaceful and loving. They do peaceful and loving things daily. Spiritual practices are embodied actions consonant with the kind of people we want to be. With practice, we become those kinds of people.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
December 8, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

When we consider the magnitude of our universe; observe the intricate beauty and yet the sometimes seemingly random cruelty of nature; contemplate the mysteries of life and living, we can feel both small and humbled, as well as have a sense of being a meaningful part of something much, much larger than ourselves. We’ll explore this sense of awe and how we might cultivate it as a spiritual practice.

Chalice Lighting

As we await the return of the light, we kindle the flame of Community, the second of the five values of our congregation. May the light of Community burn bright, reminding us to connect with joy, sorrow, and service to the Beloved Community that begins within these walls.

Call to Worship

Robert Benson
“Between the Dreaming and the Coming True: The Road Home to God”

We do not always see that we should be moving about our days and lives and places with awe and reverence and wonder, with the same soft steps with which we enter the room of a sleeping child or the mysterious silence of a cathedral. There is no ground that is not holy ground.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Moment for Beloved Community

I was just reading a study that found that white employers were more likely to reject a job application without even doing an in-person interview if they thought the person’s name sounded “black” on their resume.

So, our question to ponder this week is what would it be like to be rejected for employment just because of how your name sounded to someone.

As we ponder this, remember there is no need to immerse ourselves in guilt or shame. In fact, these can be counterproductive, we need joy and community to sustain our struggle to do justice and build the beloved community. There is beauty to be found in the struggle itself.

Meditation Reading

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
“Who is Man?”

The Sense of the Ineffable

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things.

Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.

Sermon

In August of 2017, my spouse, Wayne and I flew to Denver, Colorado. There, we rented a car and drove to a rural area of western Nebraska, where we met up with Wayne’s best friend, Teresa and her two of her sisters.

One of Teresa’s sisters had arranged with a family who had a farm outside of the little town of Alliance, Nebraska, for the group of us to view the total solar eclipse from up on a hillside on their farm.

We gathered on the top of the hill, picnic supplies in hand to wait for the eclipse.

Now, neither Wayne and I, nor the Denny sisters, Teresa, Pamela and Lisa, very often find ourselves at a loss for words. However, when the eclipse began, as the moon moved over the face of the sun and the light began to fade, as night creatures suddenly began their chorus of early evening sounds, we humans fell still and silent.

Evening shadows fell over what had been mid afternoon brightness.

Eventually, the moon completely covered the sun, yet there was still a slight glow around the edges of the moon, casting a glimmer of light on us and all of the creatures and geography below.

I was awestruck. I could feel my skin tingling.

As the moon began to move further across the sun and one edge of the sun began to be visible again, we could see a glow of light in the distant horizon.

The glow surrounded us.

I turned around in a full circle and could see an orange glow, the color of a sunrise, at the edges of the entire 360 degrees of the horizon around us.

Birds began their morning songs.

I felt myself involuntarily inhaling a deep breath. My eyes were brimming with tears in reaction to the absolute beauty and enormity of what I was witnessing.

Later, after the eclipse had ended, and we had returned to the hotel where we were staying, Wayne and I talked about the experience of it.

We both had gotten a powerful sense of how tiny our planet, indeed we are, in the almost incomprehensible vastness of our universe and the limitless sweep of time.

Yet, we also had experienced a sense of expansion and interconnectedness, of being an integral part of that great immensity.

I wanted to start with that story this morning because it is such a strong example of the spiritual theme we are exploring as a religious community during December – the experience of awe.

What does it mean to be a people of awe?

To start, it may be helpful to define what we mean by that little word “awe” that names an an experience which can have such a profound effect on us.

The expression “awe” is rooted in the Greek word “achos”, which also gives us the word ache.

So, the experience of awe opens an ache in our hearts and thereby expands them with a desire to hold on to the change in perspective, the expansion of understanding that we are given by such experiences.

Dr. Dacher Kelner, researcher and Director of Psychology at the University of California, Berkley, who studies the experience of awe, offers this definition – “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world.”

He says that “Awe imbues people with a different sense of themselves, one that is smaller, more humble and part of something larger… “

Similarly, neuropsychologist, Nicholas Humphrey, who also studies awe, defines it as “An experience of such perceptual vastness you literally have to reconfigure your mental models of the world to assimilate it”

The scientific study of the experience and emotion we call “awe” is relatively new. However, we have already begun to discover some intriguing and potentially important aspects of these experiences.

Several studies of the physiological responses to awe across a variety of different cultures have found a number of commonalities:

• A sudden, often vocalized, involuntary intake of breath.
• The feeling of hair on the arms being raised and/or of having goosebumps.
• Widened eyes and the formation of tears.
• Stillness and a feeling of being struck silent.

And awe seems to be beneficial to us in a number of ways.

First, and this may be one of the reasons we evolved to have the capacity for awe, is that it seems to move us from individualistic and self-centered behavior toward collective interest and prosocial behavior.

And, of course, social behavior has been a major factor in the survival of our species.

Researchers theorize this may arise because of the psychological effects of awe that I described earlier – a sense of smallness and humility and yet at the same time a feeling of connection with something much larger.

For example, near the University of California at Berkley stands a grove of eucalyptus trees that are the tallest in North America. Staring up from beneath these trees with their peeling bark, their odor and the grayish green light their canopy creates can readily induce a sense of awe.

In one study, researchers had a group of students do just that for one minute. However, the researchers had another group of students look 90 degrees away, at the facade of a science building.

Then, the researchers arranged for each group of students to encounter a person who stumbled and dropped a handful of pens.

Sure enough, the students who had ben gazing up at the awe-inspiring trees were far more likely to help the person pick up the pens. They also reported feeling less self-entitled than the other group did.

And studies like this, demonstrating the prosocial influence of awe, have now been repeated using a wide variety of methods, in diverse subjects and in numerous different circumstances.

Studies have also found that experiences of awe may improve our relationship with time by anchoring us in the present moment, making us feel we are rich in time rather than always running out of it.

Further, researchers have also found that experiences of awe boost creativity and improve scientific thinking.

This may be because awe stimulates the dopamine system, which triggers curiosity and exploration in mammals.

Albert Einstein once claimed that experiences of awe are “the source of all true art and science.”

Finally, early research indicates that feelings of awe may also be physiologically and psychologically beneficial in numerous other ways also.

For instance, several studies have found that even short but regular experiences of awe can help our bodies regulate the cytokines in our immune system.

Cytokines can be thought of as chemical messengers that among other functions help manage our inflammatory response when we get injured.

Abnormally elevated cytokines, however, are associated with depression and other psychological and physical problems.

Awe seems to help us reduce cytokine levels when they are elevated unnecessarily.

Researchers even theorize that experiences of awe may be beneficial to people with post traumatic stress syndrome.

I was struck by the story of of a man named Stacy Bare. Mr. Bare had been through two deployments in Iraq. After returning to the United States, he was suffering from severe post traumatic stress syndrome, burdened by suicidal thoughts and was drinking heavily.

One day, he had gotten into an argument with his brother as the two were hiking in Utah’s Canyon National Park. Things were getting heated, when suddenly, they came upon an amazing natural structure called the Druid Arch. Here is a picture of it.

DRUID ARCH SLIDE

The men stopped short. Their jaws dropped. They began to laugh. They hugged each other. Bare says that in that moment he could no longer even remember what they had been fighting about.

That experience of awe was the beginning of Stacy Bare’s life turning around.

Today, he is the director of “Sierra Club Outdoors”, the environmental organization’s program that sponsors trips for veterans and at risk youth on just such awe inspiring wilderness excursions.

The program has documented clear “improvements in psychological well-being, social functioning and life outlook.

Now, here is something important to know.

It does not take stumbling upon the Druid Arch, seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time or experiencing a total solar eclipse for us to reap the potential benefits of awe.

Certainly, these and other large and stunning experiences of awe, such as to be found in these types of extraordinary natural phenomenon or pieces of art and music, ritual and religious or spiritual experiences and the like are so often unexpected blessings.

However, the research has found that smaller, more run of the mill feelings of awe may be both more common than we might expect and more beneficial over the long run if we look for them and recognize them on a consistent basis.

Here are just a few, more day to day events that people have reported moving them into a sense of awe:

• Becoming absorbed in a pattern of light that the setting sun is casting on the floor through the living room blinds.
• Simpler but more frequent experiences of going into natural areas (most of us can’t visit the Grand Canyon every few days, after all).
• Gazing at the stars on a clear night or upon an extraordinary sunrise or sunset.
• Witnessing a child we love’s astonishment and joy at discovering something new in their world.
• Watching gold and red autumn leaves swirl and dance to the ground in a light wind.
• Observing other people engage in acts of kindness, justice or courage.

And the list of these more common, smaller doses of awe goes on and on.

In fact science has found that on average folks feel awe every third day and that we can increase that frequency even more if we allow ourselves the time to slow down – open ourselves to the potential for awe.

We can even find awe through other’s experiences of it, including their digital video of it!

The Unitarian Universalist Soul Matters group even put together a YouTube play list of potentially awe inspiring short videos.

Here is a short URL I created that I hope may be easy to remember. It is https://tinyurl.com/aweatfirstuu

And here is just a short example from one of the videos.

VIDEO

I want to share one more video with you also.

It’s by philosopher and television and social media personality Jason Silva. Silva thinks that finding awe in what we might otherwise consider the mundane is not only possible, but that we need it to move us out of the banal and toward the more sublime and life fulfilling.

Let’s look and listen.

SILVA VIDEO

I think I agree with him, and I think that means that these smaller doses of awe, as well as the more immense ones we may be fortunate to experience once in a while, are a vital part of our spirituality.

They nourish our souls.

A fascinating study found that practicing scientists who held awe as a a part of their love of science, were much more likely to have deep sense of spirituality and even to hold a concept of God.

Now most often, they did not hold a classic or biblical sense of God, but rather a mystical concept of the divine.

They found God in the seemingly limitless creative potential of our universe, as well as the still profoundly mysterious nature of it – some of them metaphorically and others as an actual, mystical cosmic force.

Either way, they found through awe a deep meaning and beauty in life and a source of creativity and innovation in scientific their work.

What if we made being open to – even actively seeking these experiences, both the everyday and the more extraordinary, a spiritual practice?

Surrender to the mystery.

Immerse yourself in experiences of awe. For therein is where God lives.

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 or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
November 17, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Sometimes our lives can be so fast paced that we fail to notice the beauty all around us. Societal turmoil keeps us from noticing the suffering of others. We fail to cherish the moments with those we love. We will explore mindfulness and directing our attention toward all that we value.

Chalice Lighting

We light the fire of Truth and ask to be clear, wise, and humble enough to admit when we don’t know. We kindle the warmth of community and ask for open heartedness and patience. We are grateful to the Spirit of Life and ask to learn the secret to loving and being loved.

Call to Worship

REVERENT ATTENTION
by Rev. Chris Jimmerson

We gather in reverence
Mindful of the gift of each other and this our beloved community.

We gather in courage
Focused on doing justice and growing the beloved community in our world.

We gather in solemnity
Mindful of the sufferingJ sorrow and injustice still present in our world.

We gather with gratefulness
Expanding our awareness of the great beauty and wonder also to be found in our world.

We gather to worship
Turning our attention now to the sacred interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

from “AN ALTAR IN THE WORLD”
by Barbara Brown Taylor

The practice of paying attention really does take time. Most of us move so quickly that our surroundings become no more than the blurred scenery we fly past on our way to somewhere else. We pay attention to the speedometer, the wristwatch, the cell phone, the list of things to do, all of which feed our illusion that life is manageable. Meanwhile, none of them meets the first criterion for reverence, which is to remind us that we are not gods. If anything, these devices sustain the illusion that we might yet be gods-if only we could find some way to do more faster.

Sermon

“Your attention is like a combination spotlight and vacuum cleaner: It highlights what it lands on and then sucks it into your brain-for better or worse,”

That’s a quote from psychologist, senior fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and New York Times best-selling author, Dr, Rick Hanson,

We’ll come back to Dr. Hanson’s ideas on how to grow the good in our brains through self-directed neuroplasticity a little later.

For the month of November, our religious education classes and activities have been exploring the question, “What does it mean to be a people of attention”, so this morning in worship we will turn our attention to, well, attention!

With so much vying for our attention these days, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed and distracted, We can end up just sort of moving through our hurried days on autopilot, simply reacting without much conscious thought or mindfulness of our lives, our world, our loved ones,

I caught myself doing this just the other day,

I’d had a long and somewhat frustrating day at the church, having spent much of it struggling both online and over over the phone with a financial institution that seemed to be fighting mightily not to release some funds that properly belonged to the church,

Then, after I left my office here at the church, I made an evening pastoral visit, ran several errands, including picking up laundry from the dry cleaners and finally made it home after dark and late for dinner,

My spouse, Wayne, was on the couch, reading and curled up with our Basenji dogs, Louisa Mae Alcott and Benjamin Franklin, The dogs both jumped up to greet me,

I walked right past them, went into the bedroom, closing the door behind me, hung the laundry in the closet, went into the bathroom and completed my nighttime get ready for bed routine, got my robe on and only then remerged into the living room, suddenly realizing that I had absentmindedly walked past everybody without so much as an even perfunctory greeting.

Wayne was kind enough not to give me a hard time about this.

Louisa and Ben not so much – a lot of complaining and fussing at me ensued until I had finally completed a proper greeting with them.

And it’s not surprising that we can easily lapse into inattentive states like this in situations both small and more significant.

We have so much competing for our attention these days.

• Our busy schedules
• Social media
• Social division
• Cell phones
• Text messages
• Email messages
• The Twitter monster in the White House
• Impeachment hearings
• Etc., Etc. Etc.

A recent study found that on average each single minute results in 204 million emails, 16 million text messages and 350,000 new tweets.

The average smartphone user unlocks their phone in response to a notification between 80 and 110 times per day.

Columbia University professor Tim Wu says that we are being subjected to a multi-billion dollar industry that devises ever more ingenious and intrusive ways to farm and monetize our attention.

He calls them the attention merchants, who offer us “free” services and content – social media, search engines, mass media that use targeted ads, clickbait and sponsored articles and videos to lure our attention.

Thus having ensnared us into a distracted state, wherein we’re most susceptible to advertising, they “harvest our attention for commercial exploitation”.

His words. I don’t think Wu thinks very highly of the attention merchants!

Here are some ways Wu and others say that we can try to avoid having our attention distracted by these types of tactics so that we can focus instead on our values, relationships, goals – just the moments of our lives we may otherwise be missing.

• Limit accessing news, social media and the like to at most twice per day
• Turn our smarts phones off when not expecting urgent or emergency calls or texts. Just check them a few times each day.
• Shut down our email programs and only check email at a few set times every day. (I sense a trend here).
• Avoid “clickbait”: articles or videos with sensational and/or controversial titles or descriptions.
• Look to see if a link contains the phrase “sponsored article”. If does, don’t click on it.
• Ignore Twitter Monster Tweets.

OK, actually, I said that last one. Well, Rachel Maddow and I did.

Anyway, it turns out that gaining as much control as we can over where we focus our attention is important to our mental, physical and spiritual well-being.

Dr. Rick Hanson, whose quote I read at the beginning, describes how neurological research has shown that where we direct our attention can actually alter the structures and neural patterns of our brains.

For example, London cab drivers develop thicker neural layers in their hippocampus, which is associated with visual, spatial memory. This is likely from them having been required to pay great attention to London’s spaghetti snarl of streets in order to find their way around.

Long-term meditators have been found to have changes in the brain associated with reduced anxiety and stress, along with several other neurological changes thought to have enduring psychological benefits.

In general, directing our attention mostly toward negative thoughts, emotions and experiences wires the brain in ways that lead to greater reactivity, anxiety, depression, a focus on threats and an inclination toward anger, sadness and guilt.

Conversely, directing our attention toward the generally positive aspects of our lives can lay down neural patterns conducive to resilience, realistic optimism, positive mood, a sense of worth and less stress and anxiety.

As Dr. Hanson says it, in perhaps a bit of an oversimplification, “Mental states become neural traits.”

Attention is also vital to our relationships with our loved ones, as well as at work, in our larger community and here at the church.

Sociologist, clinical psychologist and MIT professor Sherry Turkle has studied this and found that relationships depend on authentic conversation. She also found that authentic conversation requires us to give our undivided attention to others, as well as depends upon our own capacity for self-reflection.

So just a couple of practical notes here. If you are at home talking with your spouse, and you take your smart phone out and start looking at the internet or checking Facebook, you are not paying attention. You are not having authentic conversation.

If you meet your friend for lunch, and the entire time they are sharing something with you, you are mentally preparing what you plan to say next, you are not paying attention. You may be having a competition or an argument, but you are not having authentic conversation.

Now, I mentioned that capacity for self-reflection, paying attention to what is going on inside ourselves is also important.

This can be harder than it might seem. Particularly when strong emotions have been provoked, we tend to just react in the moment. We don’t stop to reengage the reasoning areas of our brains.

Here’s an example, from an experience I had just recently.

Last Sunday, I sat in on the early service. Wayne and I sat over on that side way in the back, which I have not done since the new section of the sanctuary was completed.

The singing and music during the time for meditation and lighting candles in the window was absolutely beautiful.

And suddenly, I found myself with tears in my eyes. I couldn’t stop them. The story I told myself is that it was the beautiful music and that I always am touched by this part of the service anyway, and I hadn’t seen how magnificent the new area of the sanctuary really is from the vantage point of being across from it and that I have been feeling blessed lately more than ever to being doing ministry in this place and with this religious community.

And that was all true and all correct. And all of that was only part of the true story. The emotions were more complicated than that.

The other part of the story is that I had just officiated at a memorial service the day before and that in the days and weeks before, both as a minister and in my personal life, I had spent a good deal of time with folks who were grieving and/or suffering in other ways.

So, when I had time later that Sunday to go back to that experience and pay attention to what had been going on within me, I discovered that I had internalized some of the grief of other folks that wasn’t really mine to take on.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean we shouldn’t feel our own empathetic emotions when we witness other people suffering.

And it can be very easy to unconsciously absorb some of the grief and suffering of others. In extreme cases, this is called secondary trauma.

I just mean I think we have to pay attention to the possibility of this happening because if we don’t

1. those feelings will find a different and potentially more destructive way to get out anyway and
2. I do not think we can be as fully present for our our loved ones and others who may need us if we have not dealt with this within ourselves.

And this need to examine what is going on within ourselves plays out in so many settings.

So, for instance, when we find ourselves angry with someone else … when we are feeling anxious about something, if we stop, pay attention to what we are feeling and the story we are telling ourselves as a result, what we often discover is that there is a more accurate and less dire story than our negative emotions are causing us to construct.

One of the pernicious things about negativity is that it tends to be self-reinforcing.

Clinical psychologist and mindfulness coach, Tara Brach has a practical technique with the acronym RAIN for bringing our awareness back to a closer version of reality when we have been overwhelmed by such emotions.

R – Recognize what is happening. Pay attention to the emotions cOIning up within us, as well as any physical reactions such as shortness of breath or muscle tightness. Don’t judge them, just acknowledge them, which in and of itself sometimes reduces their power over us.

A – Allow life to be just as it is. Let yourself experience the feelings and the situation as it is. That does not mean we may not work for change later, but first we have to accept what the reality is.

I – Investigate inner experience with kindness. What story am I telling myself and is it accurate? What within me or in my life most needs my attention? In what ways am I judging myself and causing shame? How can I treat myself and others with the same kindness I would show to a hurt child?

N – Non-Identification. I am not the current situation. My present emotions are not the totality of all that I can and will feel. I have the agency to rewrite this story.

So, Dr. Brach’s RAIN is a practical way to stay mindful.

And I think contemplative practices can also help us become more capable of remaining mindful.

Meditation, journaling prayer. And prayer does not have to be directed to a higher power but can just be a way of focusing our intentions and attention.

Just sitting on the ground and truly paying attention to the intricacies of life all around us.

Noticing the sound of the water when we shower in the morning. Stopping to pay attention to how the sunlight feels on our face when we first walk out the door.

Stop. Pause. Notice. It can be that simple.

Dr. Hanson offers another practical way to draw our attention into the present moment and to focus it upon positive experience.

I’d like to invite you now to engage with me in his meditation for self-directed, positive neuroplasticity.

I invite you to close your eyes – close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and then follow along as I read Dr. Hanson’s guidance for this meditation.

Have: Find a pleasant sensation that’s already present in the foreground or background of your awareness.

Perhaps a relaxed feeling of breathing, a comfortable warmth or coolness, or a bodily sense of vitality or aliveness. Perhaps warmth you sense from those around you.

The sensation could be subtle or mild.

There may be other sensations, or thoughts or feelings, that are uncomfortable, and that’s alright.

Just let go of those for now and bring your attention to the pleasant sensation.

Enrich: Stay with the pleasant sensation. Explore it a little. What’s it is like? Help it last. Keep your attention on it.

Come back to it if your attention wanders. Open to this sensation in your mind and body.

Without stressing or straining, see if it can become even fuller, even more intense.

Let the pleasure of this sensation help keep it going.

See if you can embody it through small actions, such as shifting your body to breathe more fully or smiling softly.

Absorb: Intend and sense that the pleasant sensation is sinking into you. Imagine the experience weaving its way into you like water soaking into a sponge.

Let the sensation become a part of you.

In this absorbing, let there be a sense of receiving, softening, sinking into the experience as it sinks into you.

As we come out of the meditation now, I hope Dr. Hanson’s exercise gave you at least a sense of the potential power of paying deep attention to the good. If it did not this time, I hope you will give it a few more tries.

The latin roots of our word, “attention”, mean “to stretch toward”. Where we place our attention may well determine the direction that calls us into our future.

I leave you with words from writer and poet, Annie Dillard.

“At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening … “

As you go back out into the world now may your attention be drawn to that which is life giving, that which nourishes our soul.

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 or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Text of this sermon is not available. Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
October 20, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

There is something about connection and sense of belonging that is essential to us as human beings. Any yet, true belonging is more than just fitting in with others. In fact, sometimes it means being so spiritually grounded in both a sense of self-acceptance and at the same time a sense of being a part of something larger than ourselves that we can stand alone even while maintaining connections. We’ll explore developing a sense of “right place” and sacred belonging.

Chalice Lighting

May the flame we now kindle light the path back to our center, back to that place of belonging again to our deepest self. And may our chalice remind us that we are held and welcomed whole, without the need to hide a single piece or part of who we are.

Call to Worship

HERE WE ARE TO EXPLORE THE MYSTERY
Chris Jimmerson

Here we are to explore the mystery of life together. In this place that is sacred to us we gather to experience the awe that rises from being part of the great unknown. On this hollowed ground we glimpse with wonder that which is larger than us and difficult to fully fathom. Yet, in which we are an intergral part within which we find a true sense of belonging. We gather to ask questions more profound than answers, to dwell together for a while in a great openness of mind, heart and soul.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

BRAVING THE WILDERNESS: THE QUEST FOR TRUE BELONGING AND THE COURAGE TO STAND ALONE.
Brene Brown

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 being both 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.

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 or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
September 15, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our religious values are aspirational expressions of our highest expectations for ourselves. Expectations can provide powerful inspiration and help us live out our Unitarian Universalist faith and reach for our best selves. So too though, sometimes the unexpected and letting go of expectations that are not serving us well can also bring enrichment to our lives. We will explore the intricacies and paradoxical nature of expectation.

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice, the flame of our heritage, in solidarity with Unitarian Universalists and all the peoples of the world lighting candles of planetary hope. May it ignite a spirit of solidarity and enthusiasm for the new world we can create, together.

Call to Worship

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

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

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

Compassion
To treat ourselves and others with love

Courage
To live lives of honesty, vulnerability, and beauty

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

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

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

TRUST YOURSELF TO THE WATER
By Alan Watts

Faith is a state of openness or trust. To have faith is like when you trust yourself to the water.

You don’t grab hold of the water when you swim, because if you do, you will become stiff and tight in the water, and sink.

You have to relax, and the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging and holding on.

In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe becomes a person who has no faith at all. Instead they are holding tight.

But the attitude of faith is to let go and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

Sermon

All of this month, our religious education classes and activities are exploring expectation as a spiritual topic, so today, we will also spend some time considering expectation as it relates to our Unitarian Universalist faith.

To begin this morning, I thought we would start with a reflection on expectation taken from one of our great Unitarian Universalist sacred scriptures, National Public Radio.

Power of Expectations video

I loved that chapter from our NPR sacred texts because it captures so many of the conundrums we encounter when we examine our expectations, especially from a spiritual or faith-based perspective.

So, for example, we set expectations for ourselves, and yet, as the video demonstrated, other folks also place expectations upon us. On top of that, we quite often internalize the expectations placed upon us by others without even realizing that we are doing it, and so they become unconscious self-expectations.

Our expectations and those of others toward us can be greatly beneficial to us.

Studies have shown that positive expectations can beneficially influence everything from health outcomes to psychological well-being to career and sports performance, and on and on.

Yet, expectations can also limit us when they are set so high as to be unachievable, or our life situation changes such that what was once possible for us can no longer remain a reasonable expectation.

Conversely, expectations that are too low can also adversely influence us. For example, many studies have shown that teachers having lower expectations towards students of color or with disabilities greatly disadvantages such students.

So sometimes we have to learn to let go of unreasonable or harmful expectations, and sometimes we try to defy expectations that would otherwise limit us.

Interestingly, our expectations not only impact our behavior and that of others toward us, as pointed out in the video, now research indicates that expectations can have actual physiological effects upon us.

My favorite study I found about this involved drinking beer.

The researchers randomized people into two groups. Both groups were asked to taste test two different beer samples. One sample was just plain beer. The other was the same beer to which the researchers had secretly added balsamic vinegar.

The researchers did not tell the first group the difference between the two beer samples.

The folks in this group overwhelming preferred the taste of the balsamic vinaigrette infused beer.

The researchers told the second group the difference between the two beer samples before they tasted them.

Almost to a person, the second group hated the beer with the vinaigrette in it – many going so far as to spit it out and exclaim something like, “this is terrible.”

The expectation that adding the vinaigrette to beer would ruin the taste caused them to experience exactly that.

Subsequent tests showed that it was not just mental perception. Telling the second group up front about the balsamic poisoning of their beer had subtly altered the physiology of the second group’s taste buds compared to that of the first group.

Other research has identified physiological effects from our expectations that are much more potentially life altering than the tase of our beer.

Other research has also found that our expectations can draw our attention and focus so strongly that we may miss other important information.

This probably had a survival advantage at one time by, for instance, allowing us to focus on what we expected a potential predator might do and not get distracted by less life threatening things.

Today though, that focus itself can sometimes become the distraction.

Let’s watch an example of this phenomenon.

As you watch the next video, following the instructions at the beginning of it, please try not to express any verbal reactions so as not to break the concentration of your fellow congregants.

Ball Passing Video

How many of you saw the man in the gorilla suit before they played it back a second time?

This is probably an experiment that is better done in an individual versus group setting because those who see the gorilla may give off subtle reactions that clue others in the group to then see it also.

I watched it alone the first time and did not see the gorilla. The researchers have found that well over 50% of people who watch it do not see the gorilla because we are focusing so intently on our expectation about being able to correctly count how many times the folks in white pass the ball.

And I did get the count right, by the way, even if I did miss the damn gorilla.

Next, I want to introduce you to Daniel Kish, whose story I think so embodies the power of letting go of unhelpful expectations, defying expectations that limit us – keep us from claiming our full potential and humanity.

Daniel Kish Video

Daniel was born with a form of ocular cancer. His doctors had to remove one of his eyes when he was 7 months old and the other eye when he was 13 months old.

The first thing he did after waking up after his second surgery was to climb out of the crib and crawl around the nursery they had put him in at the hospital.

For whatever reason, his mother decided not to try to hold him back, even though she feared he might get hurt.

And he did a few times, but he says it was worth it.

Daniel learned to echolocate that clicking noise you heard him making in the video allows him to listen to how the noise bounces off things and determine shapes and motions around him.

It is much that same way that bats use sonar to navigate when they fly.

As you saw in the video, Daniel learned to ride a bike. By the time he entered elementary school, we was able to walk to school on his own and pretty much take care of himself through out the day.

Because his mother never enrolled him in an assistance program for the blind and let him go to a regular school, Daniel did not encounter other blind people until he got older.

He was dismayed to discover that so many blind folks he met were unable to take care of themselves in so many of the ways that he was capable.

Daniel came to believe that the well intentioned efforts of loved ones and non-profit services to help blind folks with so many aspects of daily living was creating expectations well below their potential.

So, he started the non-profit organization he discusses in the video. Through it, he teaches echolocation to others and sets expectations allowing folks to live more fully and more independently.

Researchers using MRI scans have found that people using echolocation light up the brain in the same patterns of those of us with ocular vision.

They can correctly identify and describe the shape of objects placed in front of them, as well as the direction of motion.

So, in a real since, by raising expectations through teaching echolocation, Daniel Kish is giving people of form of vision.

With that, I want to close by talking briefly about how I think expectation is such a large part of our Unitarian Universalist faith.

As Unitarian Universalists, we share 7 principals that we affirm and promote.

• • The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

• • Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

• • Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

• • A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

• • The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

• • The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

• • Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

It is likely we will be adding an 8th principle regarding dismantling racism. At this church, we also have a set of religious values that you all read together earlier with Elizabeth.

Our faith principals, our religious values, they are our aspirations, the expectations we have set for ourselves concerning how we will be in our world – how we will be with each other – how we will live our lives.

And we are reaching for those expectations all of the time, in so many ways through the many ministries and programs of this church, as well as our our larger denomination.

Next Sunday, we will have the chance to live our values when we celebrate this religious community and all pledge together to support it into the future.

Our green sanctuary ministry team has been living our principle about respect for the interdependent web in so many ways, including getting the Austin City Council and the Travis County Commissioner’s Court to pass resolutions that require our city and county governments to put into high gear actions across their departments to fight the climate crises.

And this Friday, September 20, Unitarian Universalists from across the country will live out the expectations of our faith by joining in a world-wide climate strike.

Led by our youth, people from across the world will join together to demand urgent action on the climate crisis before it is too late.

And folks we do not have long. A few years at most.

Some links where you can get more information are posted on the church website.

Here in Austin, the climate strike will begin with rallies at the state capital at 10 a.m. and again at noon on Friday.

I hope as many of us who can will live our religious values by participating. Our youth are expecting us to leave them a world that is at least livable.

Our youth are expecting us to act as if our house is on fire.

Because it is.

As Unitarian Universalists, our faith has always been one of hopeful expectation.

For Unitarian Universalists, our faith expectation is that there is meaning and beauty in our world that has yet to be fully revealed.

As Unitarian Universalists, our faith tells us that we are the ones who must unveil those revelations yet to become.

May we make it so.

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 or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
Ausust 25, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

This month’s Soul Matters is Emergence. We will explore how we might keep ourselves open to unexpected and creative possibilities and the potential for transformation.

Chalice Lighting

As we light the chalice may our souls become its hearth. We join our hearts to the one great flame of bright compassion, Beloved Community, and fervent justice. May our sparks become a wildfire in the world, lighting the way for all.

Call to Worship

“MERE CHRISTIANITY”
by C.S. Lewis

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg.

We are like eggs. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

“YOU CAN’T BE NEUTRAL ON A MOVING TRAIN”
by Howard Zinn

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – Where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future; The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Sermon

Janine Shepard had dreams of competing in cross-country skying at the Olympics for her home country of Australia.

She was on a training bike ride with some of her fellow teammates headed toward the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney.

They had reached the foothills, her favorite part of the ride. She stood on her bike to allow her to pedal more strongly.

She felt the cold mountain air in her breath.

She reveled in the morning sun on her face and basked in the beautiful morning sunlight in her eyes.

And then everything went dark.

A speeding utility truck had hit her, knocking her unconscious, breaking her neck and back in six places, fracturing five ribs on her left side, crushing her right arm and leaving her with internal bleeding and a number of other life-threatening injuries.

Medics airlifted her to a hospital with a specialized spinal unit in Sydney. When she arrived at the hospital, her blood pressure was forty over zero.

As Janine Shepard herself puts it, “I was having a REALLY bad day.”

She was paralyzed from the waist down.

She spent ten days in the lCU before the internal bleeding stopped, and her doctors could do surgery on her back.

Her lower back was crushed. The surgeon spent hours removing fragments of bone from her spinal cord. They removed some of her ribs and used them to rebuild her back.

The surgery was a success in that she regained slight feeling and movement in parts of her lower body; however, she was told she would never ski again and might not ever walk again.

After some time, they were finally able to move Janine to the acute spinal unit, which would be the first step in her long attempt at rehabilitation and recovery.

Here is Janine Shepard herself, describing life in that acute spinal unit.

VIDEO

After six months, Janine’s parents were finally able to take her home, in a wheelchair, still wrapped in a plaster body cast.

Janine was depressed. She wanted her body back. She wanted her life back.

Then, she remembered her friends in the spinal ward, the connections, the hope, the courage of those fellow human beings in circumstances so like her own.

And she knew she could accept her new circumstances.

She began to think about how she might build a new life. She says, “I stopped asking myself, ‘why me’ and realized, ‘why not me’. I thought, ‘maybe rock bottom is the perfect place to start. ‘”

And in that uncertainty, she found a new creative freedom to begin imagining a new life, such that one day when she heard a plane flying overhead, she looked up through her bedroom window and thought, “Well, if I can’t walk, I might as well learn to fly.”

“Mom”, she cried out, I’m going to learn to fly.”

“That’s nice, dear,” replied her mom.

And Janine did learn to fly. She booked flight training with a nearby school. They lifted her into a plane, body cast and all, and once in the air, the instructor gave her control of the plane, as she could use her hands and arms. He pointed toward the Blue Mountains and said to fly toward them.

And so her new life began right above where her tragic accident had happened.

She eventually learned to walk again.

She eventually got, first a single engine plane license, and then several other types of licenses, leading up to her commercial license and even an aerobatics license – you know where people fly upside down and in loops and such.

Just less than 18 months after Janine Shepard left the spinal unit, she began her new calling, teaching other people to fly at the very same school where she had first learned how to take a small plane out over the Blue Mountains.

The theme we have been exploring this month in our religious education program is the spiritual theme of “emergence”. Emergence is defined as to become manifest, to rise from, the process of becoming.

I wanted to share Janine’s story with you this morning because I think it so powerfully illustrates so much of how the emergent, how transformation and change happen in our individual lives, even when it is on a much less dramatic basis than hers.

Her story demonstrates how so often, something new arises out of change that has been forced upon us, even sometimes difficult or even tragic circumstances.

Now, I want to be careful to state clearly, we are not talking about cliches such as: “God works in strange and mysterious ways,” to somehow justify tragedy as being ultimately good.

What happened to Janine was random and terrible and not part of some master plan.

It was how she responded to it that allowed the emergence of her new passion.

Janine’s story also shows how so often in order to say yes to something new, we have to let go of something else that is no longer healthy and sometimes no longer even possible for us.

And often, for transformation to emerge in our lives, we have to learn a new perspective. We gain a more complex understanding about life.

Later in her Ted Talk that I showed you a segment from earlier, Janine Shepard says, “I learned that I am not body and you are not yours.”

And so she says that if we learn to look beyond the superficial and help each other to try to live vulnerable, authentic lives, allow the ultimate, creative expression of who we really are to emerge, our collective liberation and bliss might just become emergent also.

We need relationship. We need belonging for beneficial emergence to occur.

After all, like the folks in that acute spinal unit, we are all interconnected by millions or billions of metaphorical straws. Non-plastic, metaphorical straws, no doubt.

That brings me to the scientific theory of emergence.

In science, emergence theory is the study of how creative and complex systems arise that are greater than the sum of their constituent parts. The system comes to hold properties that none of its individual components alone do.

Examples include how life itself first arose on our planet and then evolved from single cell entities into ever more complex life forms.

How energy transitions into matter.

How fish school and birds flock together, moving as one with such grace and coordination without an apparent leader.

And the examples go on and on.

Scientists are studying whether the natural laws, the rules by which each of the individual components of these systems adaptively interact in such ways that create something more complex and creative.

Scientist Harold J. Morowitz takes this even a step further and applies it to human social systems. Morowitz even describes a spiritual/ theological aspect of this.

For Morowitz, our ethics, the rules we follow in our interactions with each other and all that is, make us partners with the immanence of, the continuing emergence of God in our world.

Now whether we agree with Morowitz’s version of theism, it does seem that emergence theory supports Janine Shepard’s idea that our individual and communal emergences are linked and together might have the potential to result in something even greater.

I recently saw a video featuring Michelle Alexander, the author of the book, “The New Jim Crow”. Unitarian Universalists across the country read, studied and discussed her book together a few years back, as the source material for our annual “Unitarian Universalist common Read”.

In the video, she reminded me of another aspect of emergence.

We most often do not know exactly what is emerging until the full emergence has happened.

I want to share that video with you now.

VIDEO

I am intrigued by her idea that we may be the revolution – that those of us who want to struggle together with compassion and love to build the Beloved community and secure our collective liberation are creating the new emergence and that the forces of bigotry and hate are the resistance against that new emergence.

And yet, as I said before, we can’t know what will actually emerge while it is still happening, so we have to make sure that the ethical and spiritual rules we are following, our own emergence, contributes to that greater system – that Beloved community about which we dream.

I don’t know about you all, but for me that can be difficult sometimes. With the barrage of negativity and hate and half-truths and outright lies that are coming at us constantly these days – with the images of people, including children, in cages, with no where to sleep except on a concrete floors without even enough room to stretch out – with children dying while in the custody of our government – with two mass shootings in less than 24 hours recently – with almost daily reports of authorities apprehending one or more young white men with multiple weapons of war who have threatened synagogues, churches, schools, retail stores, gay bars – it can be difficult sometimes to act and feel in healthy, constructive ways.

It can be far too easy for me to want to lash back out, for anger, fear and even rage to emerge within me.

I keep wondering when one of those young guys will avoid apprehension until it is too late, and they commit the next mass killing.

So I think we have to honestly acknowledge that we are living in a time of extraordinarily elevated anxiety. We are experiencing social trauma.

No matter which side of the political spectrum one is on, to reach for our best selves, for our best selves to have any chance of emerging, we have to acknowledge these feelings. We have to find ways to talk about them with other people.

Not talking about it is not really an option, at least not a healthy, life giving option.

I believe this church is a place where we can have such honest and vulnerable conversations.

We can be there for one another. certainly, I want you to know your ministers are here for you during these times.

This church, this congregation is a place where we can both find respite and seek the emergence of our best and truest selves, the people we are called to be, both individually and communally.

I want to close by telling you how fortunate I feel, how grateful I am to get to do ministry with this congregation and with our extraordinary and just plain fun senior minister, Meg.

I am moved by what we have already become and by the church that is still emergent.

You heard earlier about the new ways of doing religious education that are emerging. Our religious education ministries are brimming with potential and filled with fantastic people.

I have no doubt that wonderful new ways of being and understanding will emerge for both our religious education learners and those leading the programs and classes.

With our beautiful new renovations and expansion, so much can now emerge that we cannot yet even fully imagine the potentialities.

New ministries are already emerging, such as a visitation program for older church members who can no longer attend church on a regular basis.

So much is already happening. So much is yet to become.

I can’t wait to witness and be a part of the emergence of all that we have only begun to dream.

Much love. All blessings. 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 or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 21, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In our religious education department, we are experimenting with teaching our children UU values through guided, joyful, playful games and activities. Many of our church groups are also engaging in more opportunities, for fun, fellowship, humor, and connection. We’ll take a look at how joy, fun, and connection can enhance our spiritual learning, build resilience and enhance our overall wellbeing.

Call to Worship

MINDFUL
by Mary Oliver

Everyday 
I see or hear 
something 
that more or less

kills me 
with delight, 
that leaves me like a needle

in the haystack 
of light. 
It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,

to lose myself 
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself 
over and over

in joy, 
and acclamation.

Reading

WELCOME MORNING
by Anne Sexton

There is joy 
in all: 
in the hair I brush each morning, 
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning, 
in the chapel of eggs I cook 
each morning, 
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee 
each morning, 
in the spoon and the chair 
that cry “hello there, Anne” 
each morning, 
in the godhead of the table 
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house 
each morning 
and I mean, 
though often forget, 
to give thanks, 
to faint down by the kitchen table 
in a prayer of rejoicing 
as the holy birds at the kitchen window 
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it, 
let me paint a thank-you on my palm 
for this God, this laughter of the morning, 
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, 
I’ve heard, dies young.

Sermon

“BE MORE DOG” VIDEO

OK, it is not my intention to inflame a cat lovers versus dog lovers war by starting with that video this morning.

I love both.

I think the “Be More Dog” metaphor is about being less aloof and allowing ourselves to experience and engage in more fun and joy.

Though, of course, if you have ever engaged in cat cohabitation you know that they have their own ways of playing and playing pranks. Evil pranks.

As you may have heard already, there at the church, we are experimenting with help our children and youth learn our Unitarian Universalist history and value, engage in spiritual development and learning through games, play and joyful, fun activities.

And this is not just limited to our children and youth activities.

We will be infusing our adult religious education programs with this same sense of humor, play and joyfulness.

In addition their other activities, many of our church groups and ministries are also trying to add opportunities for connection, joy and fun, such as lunching together, holding potlucks, watching video and films together and other types of social activities.

Examples include our People of Color group, White Allies for Racial Equity group, our Alphabet Soup group and some of our Chalice Circles.

The same is being practiced more and more in our own and in other social justice movements. More and more, it is becoming clear that for such movements to be maximally effective, for folks to have resilience and avoid burnout, opportunities for social connection, play, humor and joy are absolutely vital.

And of course we have a fellowship team that creates such opportunities for the church as a whole.

Another group has started a game night here at the church.

All of next week, the church will be teaming with young witches and wizards attending our annual Hogwarts Camp UU.

The halls will be filled with laughter, fun, play and joy, while at the same time much learning about our faith will be happening.

Now, shhhh, don’t tell them I told you this, but I suspect that the adult volunteers, who make Hogwarts happen each year, experience as much, if not more, fun and joy as our children and youth they are serving do.

And all of this attention we are paying to fun and joy is for good reason.

More and more, we are discovering that fun and joy are key contributors to our learning and wellbeing.

More and more, science is finding that joyfulness and joyful play stimulate neurological patterns and neuro-chemical transmitters that improve our ability to learn and retain information.

Joy helps us lay down more complex and contextual memory and to retain such learnings and memories longer because they get associated with pleasure centers in the brain.

As one researcher puts it, “nothing lights up the brain like joy and play.”

Games and play also teach social skills and allow for a more creative perspective on the subject matter involved.

This is partially why many educational programs in general have begun to move away from strictly transmission models of teaching to more generative and even transformation models.

Within Unitarian Universalism there is even a model that is called “spirit play” (and in Christian traditions, “God Play”).

To over generalize a little, folks are moving away from the banking education model, wherein the teacher stands at the front of the classroom and deposits information into the passive minds of the students, to more like this (show Child Play Slide) wherein learning occurs through a sense of joy, play, games, humor, fun activities and social interconnectedness.

And, it is important to note that joyful play is not just rehearsal for adult challenges, as we oftentimes tend to think of it. For instance, if you prevent a kitten from playing, as an adult cat it will still know how to stalk, hunt and kill prey.

Humans and cats and dogs know instinctively know how to engage in play with each other simply for the joy of the playing.

In fact, all mammal species have been observed to engage in play at all ages of their lives.

The researcher I quoted earlier has found that play seems to have some vital biological role, just as sleep and dreaming do.

Joy, fun, play seem to be beneficial to us both psychologically and physically.

The opposite is true also. As adults, a lack of joyful play has been associated with depression. Children who are deprived of play often develop serious psychological issues as adults.

This was found to be a factor with Charles Whitman, the U.T. tower sniper who killed 16 people and injured 31 others here in Austin back in 1966.

I would propose that joy and play are also vital to our spiritual development and that a lack of joy damages our very souls.

In fact, there is a theory that church, along with its associated religious rituals, is in truth “deep play”. It is helping us understand deep and complex life issues in metaphorical ways at least partially through experiences of spiritual ecstasy (otherwise known as joy or bliss).

I want to share with you a story that I think illustrates both how we learn through our experiences of joy and how being open to joyfulness can be so good for us.

The guy in the video I am about to show you is a farmer and goat rancher from upstate New York named Jay Lavery. The video has become known as “The Barn Dance”.

Now, since our subject matter today is “Learning Through Joy”, and one of the ways we experience joy is dancing, I encourage you to get up and dance along with Jay if you are so moved – or at least to groove in place on your chair or pew if not.

VIDEO

I got a little worried when he started the stripper moves there (actually, he keeps his remaining clothes on through the rest of the video).

Mr. Lavery posted his video for his Facebook friends, partially because he had serious back problems, and he wanted them to know he was doing OK.

He says never expected that his joyful video would go viral, with over 7 million views in less than a year.

Fifteen years prior to making that video, Mr. Lavery had a traumatic back injury that required several surgeries including a discectomy and a spinal fusion.

His dancing, along with practicing yoga and meditation, are how he overcomes the back pain he would otherwise have and how he avoids having to take pain medications.

Now there could be some physical aspects to this, but I have little doubt that his joyfulness in his dancing has helped him learn how to move through the pain.

As he puts it, he hopes his video inspires “anyone to move in spite of pain and I hope this puts a smile on your face … ” Avery even got to go on the Ellen Degeneres show, where he expressed his great amusement over many aspects of what he calls his” 15 minutes of fame”, including several marriage proposals he has received from several women smitten by his silky moves.

“What they didn’t realize,” he says, “is I’m gay.”

So, if, as is apparent from Jay Lavery’s story, joy is so good for us.

If joy helps us learn more readily and in more complex and complete ways, why don’t we infuse more joy, fun, humor and play into our our educational institutions, our workplaces, indeed our lives?

Why has the banking model of education persisted for so long and why does it still continue to be the primary model throughout so much of our current educational system?

Well, I am not sure I know all of the answers to those questions.

I suspect though, that it could have something to do with our protectant work ethic and more broadly our puritan ancestry.

Work, school, and church are not supposed to be fun!

On a more individual level, I think we may sometimes not allow ourselves to fully experience joy because of what social science researcher Bene Brown calls, “foreboding joy”.

Now some of you may have heard me talk about Dr. Brown’s concept of foreboding joy before, so this time I thought I would let her tell you about it herself.

BRENE BROWN VIDEO

So, we do not get to experience true joy, the fullness of joy without vulnerability.

Joy requires a sense of belonging and connection, and we do not get these unless we risk being our authentic selves. We don’t get these unless we allow ourselves to also experience the inevitable sorrow and loss that goes along with living and loving fully.

Joy requires us to have the courage to be be vulnerable.

One of the religious values we have defined for ourselves here at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin is this:

“Courage – To live lives of honesty, vulnerability, and beauty.”

May we live that value together so that we may experience a full and vibrant joy together.

And let’s remember to dance, laugh, play and have a little fun while we are at it!

I would like to leave you with the words of Steve Garnaas Holmes, who is a Methodist Minister and author. He comes from a Christian perspective, so I invite you to translate with your own understanding of that which is ultimate as you listen to his words.

They are titled, simply, “Joy”. “Who says God has to be so serious all the time? That God can’t have some fun, go on a lark, crack a good one?

Who says God can’t evolve a platypus instead of a woodchuck, or a flightless bird just as a joke?

Or give you a gorgeous sunset just to see the expression on your face? Or invent laughter?

Who says God’s passion is reasonable and not unrestrained celebration?

Jesus’ first miracle was a party trick. Pure. fun. Wine from water. And really good stuff, too. And at a wedding, no less. It’s a parable of covenant faithfulness, and love, and an ironic reverse-foreshadowing of the Last Supper.

It’s a parable of abundance and beauty and mystery and needless splendor.

It’s about life, and about blessing, and about joy-way too much and too good, way more and better than we need. Ridiculous. Over the top joy.

So raise a glass! Drink deep.”

And amen to that.

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 or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 14, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We live in an economic system that perpetuates itself by creating a culture of scarcity. What if we stopped to appreciate and express gratitude for all that we already have? What if we worked toward a culture of abundance?

I recently bought this iPhone. It’s the latest and the greatest technology.

Within a few months, a newer model with even later and greater features will come out – a model that was already planned when I bought this one.

We live in an economy that is designed to keep us at first thrilled with our new purchases and then quickly disillusioned with them and craving their replacement.

We exist in a culture where we are told that what we have is never enough. We exist in a culture that by design creates a myth of scarcity.

How often have you gone to reserve a hotel room or a flight online and gotten the little flashing message that only two more are available at this price.

Or “there are 30 people currently looking at this hotel.”

How many ads do we see that contain a not so implicit message that we are never successful enough; we never have enough; we are never good enough; attractive enough; thin enough; sexy enough; smart enough, etc.

Some other car is always newer and nicer than ours; our dishwasher is too slow and too loud; our clothing is already passe; our hairstyle is no longer the style.

Scarcity. Scarcity. More scarcity.

This morning as we have gathered for worship, the Trump administration has threatened to round up, detain and then deport thousands of immigrant families – a move which will:

• worsen the conditions at already overcrowded and inhumane detention camps,
• separate families, including taking even more children away from their parents,
• and send folks who have been contributing to our society to countries where they will often face threats to their wellbeing and sometimes even their very lives.

And this too is also at least partially a fear-based tactic rooted in that mythology of scarcity.

Now there is a lot going on with this, including not so subtle racism and xenophobia, but these too arise at least partially out of the scarcity myth.

Trump himself has stated that we do not “have room for these people” – that somehow if we allow asylum seekers into our country it will mean taking jobs and resources away from the folks who are already here.

And yet study after study has found that this is simply not the case. We have plenty of wealth to go around. Immigrants are net contributors to our society. We have the food, housing, economic and other resources to more than support our population plus many more.

And when it comes to basic human rights, I like this meme that has been going around lately.

“EQUAL RIGHTS FOR OTHERS DOES NOT MEAN LESS RIGHTS FOR YOU. IT’S NOT PIE.”

The scarcity myth drives inequality and human rights abuses.

It drives radically capitalistic, consumerism.

The scarcity Myth is one of the major lies that has been used to excuse a vast transfer of power and wealth from the many to the very few that has been going on for decades now.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not against economic development and technology advancements that can enhance our lives and wellbeing. I love my iPhone.

I just think we can choose a different narrative that would eventually drive a different kind of economy and society.

I believe that rather than scarcity, we can choose abundance, not just for the few but for all.

We can adopt a narrative that we are, there is ENOUGH.

VIDEO CLIP

That’s Kevin Cavenaugh, an architect by training and now a commercial real estate developer in Portland, Oregon. The flowery pants he is wearing in the video were made for him one of his children out of fabric recycled from their old couch.

Cavenaugh goes onto explain that as they began to recover from the recession, and he rebuilt his business, he kept asking himself this question about enoughness – how much is enough?

Doing so has changed how he lives and how he does business.

He asked himself how much is enough wealth and discovered that while he was making a percentage of the profits from his building developments, the members of his small staff were not. So, he created a program in which they could become vested in a percentage of the profits also the longer they worked with him.

He also asked himself how much equality is enough because the inequity in pay between men and women in our country bothered him.

He then redesigned the pay pyramid for his company so that instead of him making more than everyone else, everyone gets paid exactly the same, including himself.

It turns out, he discovered, that companies that treat their employees better and equally have better long-term stock valuations. They attract the best talent. As he puts it, not paying equally was stepping over dollars to pick up dimes.

Finally, he was disturbed by the rising level of homelessness in Portland. Rent in the area has grown 20 times faster than wages, so that even folks with a college degree and who are working can find themselves living out of a tent in one of the city’s parks.

He asked himself and a group of investors for one of his buildings, how much would be enough rent? They did the calculations and discovered they could make enough return from their investment if they developed a building that would provide simple rooms with a bed and washbasin, shared showers and restrooms and a communal kitchen and living area. By doing so, they could rent the rooms out for $290 a month each.

So now, a number of formerly homeless folks have simple but adequate shelter. It is enough.

And this defining and redefining of “enough” it turns out is one of the strongest ways in which we can resist the cultural myth of scarcity. It is one of the ways we can find greater life satisfaction.

All over the country, people are engaging in this counter cultural idea and redefining for themselves what “enough” means.

People are embracing minimalism. You can learn more at theminimalists.com, but basically minimalists are discovering a new sense of freedom by living with far less stuff.

One common way that people get started is by jettisoning at least one material possession each day for at least a month by asking each day of one item, “does this have value to me? Does it have utility in some way or bring me joy?”

If the answer is no, it goes – sell it, donate it to charity where someone else might find value with it, just get rid of it.

Many folks have found they got rid of more than one item per day and continued the practice for several months.

I’m pretty sure it would take me at least a year to clear our whatever all that stuff in our garage is.

Other families with children have determined what the minimal salary they need is to feel life satisfaction and provide adequately for their children. They then live off of that and donate anything they earn above it to benefit others.

We have all witnessed the movement toward smaller or even tiny houses that has been growing.

What folks have discovered when they have done some of these things is that it freed them to pursue their desires and goals in life more easily. Many found they did not need to make us much money and could take a job that left them time to travel, go back to school for their Master’s degree or pursue a passion such music or an art, as examples.

Now, I am not suggesting that everyone here has to become a minimalist, give all their money to charity (but if you do please consider your church) or sell their house and all their stuff to move into a 600 square foot box.

I just offer some of these trends as an example of how it is possible to define and redefine “enough” for ourselves. I am suggesting that by periodically asking ourselves the question, “What is enough to me” we may begin to find ways to experience a greater sense of abundance.

In addition to thinking about what enough means to you, here are a few other ways that we may also develop a greater sense of abundance in our lives and that have thereby been shown to increase life satisfaction.

Invest more of your time and resources in your relationships with others.

Whether it is our spouses, partners, children, other family members, friends, our fellow church goers, the stranger we just met or some folks in need we may never meet, study after study have shown that belonging and connection, love and doing for others are vital to our satisfaction in life.

Also, invest more of your time and resources on experiences rather than things. Traveling, attending a play or concert, learning to play the guitar or speak a new language, taking the children to an amusement park or to go camping, whatever the experiences may be, a wealth of studies have shown that we place higher value on experiences rather than things. Experiences bring us greater happiness than possessing material items.

Next, practice gratitude every day.

Practicing gratitude has been shown to be one of the strongest ways to develop a sense of abundant life and is continually associated with greater life satisfaction.

The key is that it has to be a practice something you do. It is the active practice of gratitude that brings abundance. Here is a little more about the science of it and some potential gratitude practices.

VIDEO

Finally, whether it is through attending worship, cultivating a spiritual practice such as meditating, gardening, working for justice in our world, making art or music, whatever it is for you, finding ways to connect with something larger than ourselves, to experience the holy, to know truth meaning and beauty within our connection and experience of that something larger than ourselves lies abundant living.

These are just a few of the ways we can develop a sense of abundance in our lives.

I’d like to close today by inviting you to engage with me in a spoken and sung meditative ritual on abundance. Please repeat after me:

I am grateful for life.

I am grateful for loving and being loved.

I am grateful for the adventures and experiences of my life.

I am a part of something larger than myself.

I experience truth, meaning and beauty.

There is enough.

I am enough.

I am enough.

I am enough.

Please sing after me:

What we need is here.

What we need is here.

Now please sing with me:

What we need is here.

What we need is here.

My beloveds you are enough. Abundance is already ours.

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 or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
Bear Qolezcua
July 7, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We often think of perseverance as being strong, having grit, to keep pushing forward even against difficult obstacles. Perhaps though, perseverance also requires a time for rest and spiritual renewal, being vulnerable enough to acknowledge that we need help sometimes and need others to carry the burden for a bit while we do the things that restore us.

Call to Worship

STILL I RISE
by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise.

Reading

– Aimee Van Ausdall

This morning I have been pondering a nearly forgotten lesson I learned in high school music. Sometimes in band or choir, music requires players or singers to hold a note longer than they actually can hold a note. In those cases, we were taught to mindfully stagger when we took a breath so the sound appeared uninterrupted. Everyone got to breathe, and the music stayed strong and vibrant… So let’s remember the advice of music: Take a breath. The rest of the chorus will sing. The rest of the band will play. Rejoin so others can breathe. Together, we can sustain a very long, beautiful song for a very, very long time. You don’t have to do it all, but you must add your voice to the song.

Bear Qolezcua

THE LIGHTHOUSE AND THE LITTLE BLUE BOAT

Once upon a time there was a mighty lighthouse. The tower had a broad base and a bright pink stripe spiraled up its body. The house that sat beneath it was always warm and inviting, its furnishings roughhewn but cosy. The smell of lemons, cinnamon, and vanilla swarmed around its great hearth.

The lighthouse sat on a very old bay. For many years it oversaw the sea and swells as storms came and went, crashing over the shore and snarling at the tower with great blows. The lighthouse survived each one but even though sometimes a window might be broken or the tower would be scarred and chipped, it continued to be a beacon of safety and strength.

Time passed and the sea changed. Parts of the surrounding bay got deeper, and others more shallow. Jagged boulders were upended in the distance to form a sea wall. They created a gentle pool beneath the watchful tower of the lighthouse. The jags were dangerous and dark, making the lighthouse’s job more important than ever.

After some years, the dry dock beneath the tower was opened and a little blue boat was taken from it and put into the water. The lighthouse loved its little blue boat. It was squeaky and small but safe and dependable.

It stayed afloat even when the ocean swelled and threatened it or when it found itself being pushed to the craggy breaks and jags out at sea. The little boat served its purpose well, no matter the gales against it, as it rescued many who were lost in the water, bringing them safely to shore without fail.

Once, the little blue boat’s oars fell off and it was swept quickly into a current, unable to find its way home. It discovered many dark places in the sea, some were far more dangerous than the jags the boat had avoided so well in its bay. A kind young woman discovered the boat, trapped in mangrove roots along a river inlet. She gave it new oars and asked nothing in return. She wished the little boat farewell and the somewhat scuffed and marred vessel made its way back home.

On a frosty winter morning, the lighthouse found it had a crack in its foundation. Many tried to mend the damage but it could not be repaired. The lighthouse resigned itself to shining brightly as long as it could. Years later the foundation broke and the light faded. The lighthouse fell.

The kerosene lantern used to light the tower spilled fuel and flame, the woodwork burned to ash, leaving only chipped, bare stones in a pile on the shore.

The little blue boat sailed off into the sea, not knowing which way to turn. It did not rescue others from the waters because it was scared of not having a safe place to take them when it had no safe place to go itself. It became so very lost in the great sea that it couldn’t find the shore at all. It stopped looking at all, fearing more jags, more fire, from any shore to which it might come.

By chance, the boat happened upon the familiar rocky breaks of the sea wall it once knew. More rocks had been upended and the bay was cut off from the outside. The little blue boat looked through whatever cracks and faults it could find and saw that the shore had changed much more. The pile of rubble still on the land, buried under a thin layer of mud and sand. The little blue boat stayed there for so long it forgot how many moons passed.

Workers with noisy machines came and cleared the fallen building, they gathered and buried the ashes of the tower’s frame. Nothing was left but the Ebenezer stone bearing the name of the original overseer. The little blue boat wished to be closer and see more but it could go no farther in the water.

The loss of the lighthouse left the boat scared to return to the open sea and so it stayed stuck along the jags for years, letting them cut at it, scuff it, and wear parts of it so thin they threatened to break open where the sea water would overtake the boat and claim it in the depths.

Some young people found the little boat while out on the water and two got into it. They asked the boat to take them back home and the boat did, having nothing else to do with its time. The boat lingered on their shore, resting from the great jags and storms. With time, many came and repaired the boat, patching weak spots, strengthening it and protecting it.

This rest ended one day when a great ship passed nearby the boat and caught itself in a shoal too shallow for the ship to make. It slowed and began to capsize. The passengers and crew were in danger as the ship yawed toward the water. Some made it to rescue boats but many were thrown dangerously into the cold dark waters out at sea. They cried for help but none seemed to come from the lifeboats surrounding the ship. Many of which had already made it to shore.

The little blue boat heard them crying out but it felt so afraid. It was unsure about the mended parts of its body, worrying if it would be strong enough and whole enough to be able to once again carry the weight of others within. It decided that with the rest it had received it must at least try and floated quickly over to passengers in the water, taking them on board and delivering them safely to the shore, many times over it did this until none were left in the water. It discovered that it saved itself by caring for others who needed only the safety of a lifeboat.

Having once again found its purpose, the little blue boat sailed off into the sea knowing the currents and sea walls would never allow it to return to its bay. Because of its time of rest and repairs, the little boat carried the strength and endurance of its lighthouse within, once again bringing hope and safety to passengers and ships in peril.

Chris Jimmerson

When my mom was 67 years old, she wrecked her Harley Davidson motorcycle.

She slid off the road on a sharp curve in the hills of the East Texas pine forest and skidded sideways across several dozen feet.

She broke her nose, scraped the skin off of both arms and broke seven vertebrae in her lower and mid back.

The emergency responders had to take her by life flight to a hospital that was over an hour and a half away from where the accident had happened.

We were not sure she would survive.

The neurosurgeon who took care of her back injuries had to use screws to attach two metal rods on each side of her spinal column.

It is still a lot of fun to go through airport security with her even today.

I asked her permission to tell you the story of her accident and her recovery from it this morning, because I think I learned about perseverance from it.

My mom survived the accident and then persevered through first a rehabilitation hospital and then outpatient physical therapy, yes, partially through her own grit and determination. She drew upon her own religious faith and spiritual practices.

Also though, she had a whole host of loved ones who stayed with her and supported her through those times.

My step-father, Ty, took care of her when she was not physically capable of caring for herself.

Her children and other family members chipped in too. Along with a whole host of friends, we brought them meals, helped with chores and errands, provided rides to where she needed to go, gave her emotional support and sounded a resounding chorus of “no” when she wanted to get back on a motorcycle again before she was even fully healed. Today at age 78, my mom no longer rides a Harley, but she does have an open air go-cart in which she zooms around her neighborhood at altogether alarming rates of speed.

So perseverance, our ability to survive and sometimes even thrive through adversity, has both an individualistic component and a communal aspect.

We persevere through our own grit and determination, yes. And science has shown that we can cultivate this tenacity and resilience through spiritual practices, religious faith, remaining open to humor beauty, joy, grief, embracing gratitude and forgiveness and practicing self-compassion. But, we also need community. We need love and support to fully develop our perseverance.

We find greater strength, power and sustenance communally.

So, our religious community here at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin can help us all maintain our spiritual perseverance.

We need each other and so many more if we are to persevere against the assaults on human rights and dignity; the degradation and potential destruction of life and our planet we are witnessing in these times.

Sometimes we have to vulnerable enough to admit that we need help and be willing ask for it.

Sometimes, to be able to persevere in the long run, we need to set the burden of our struggles down and let others carry them for a while. We just need a pause – a respite – a time to simply take care of ourselves and our nearest loved ones. We need this in order to be able to build up the resilience that is so necessary for perseverance.

And yet, it is more complicated than that even, because those of us with relative privilege can more easily retreat from the struggle than those who are being crushed under the weight of extreme oppression and maltreatment. We must not allow ourselves to fall prey to the lie that we can look away permanently, because in the end, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhereÉWhatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

This past week, we witnessed the juxtaposition of the celebration of our country’s Independence day (and all the values it is supposed to represent) with the Department of Homeland Security’s own Inspector General’s report on “Dangerous Overcrowding and Prolonged Detention of Children and Adults” at five Customs and Border Protection holding facilities here in Texas.

These are supposed to be temporary holding facilities at the border, and yet in these 5 facilities alone, the Office of the Inspector General found:

• 8,000 detainees in custody with almost half held greater than the time period allowed by law.
• 2,669 children, 826 held longer than the law allows, 50 younger than 7.
• Children and adults sleeping on concrete floors with no access to showers, limited or no changes of clothing and no hot meals.
• Adults held in over-crowded, sometimes standing room only conditions, some for over a month.
• Adults who had gotten sick after being fed only bologna sandwiches.
• Once facility was basically outdoor cages that had been constructed under a bridge in the outdoor heat of El Paso.

These are just some of the conditions that have been observed. These are only the border facilities and do not include conditions at longer term prison camps maintained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

I am dismayed that my country is doing this (AGAIN) – horrified that it is happening in my state. I can only imagine how painful witnessing this must be for those of you with small children of your own.

I struggle because no matter how many phone calls I make, emails I send, petitions I sign, contributions I give, rallies and protests I attend and on and on, still it never feels like enough.

I struggle with persevering when it would be so easy to fall into despair and helplessness.

And yet, I know the folks in those facilities have had to persevere against conditions in their home countries, perilous journeys to seek refuge and the horrifying way in which they are being treated by our government.

I know these folks have had to persevere in ways in which I never have and can only begin to grasp at understanding.

I know that I cannot claim to affirm our Unitarian Universalist principles, such as the inherent worth and dignity of each person, justice, equity and compassion – I cannot uphold this church’s mission – I cannot maintain my own humanity if I remain silent while the humanity of people seeking our help is defiled.

I know that I must act now – that waiting for the next election to act is too late, as important as that election will be in relation to ending these atrocities.

I know to persevere, to keep up the struggle in the face of such heartbreak, I will need:

• this religious community,
• my Unitarian Universalist faith,
• the leadership of those who have experienced our broken and bigoted immigration system,
• the many other folks and organizations that are joining together to cry out for an end to these atrocities.

My beloveds, I believe that our Unitarian Universalist faith, our religious values, this church’s mission, they are calling us, each of us, to do what we can to demand an end to these crimes against humanity.

Doing what we can will look different for each of us, depending upon our circumstances.

We have left a list of many different ways to get involved on the social action table in Howson Hall and have also put it on the social action page of our church website so that you can follow the hyperlinks it contains. Beloveds, we come from a long tradition of perseverance on behalf of truth, justice and human dignity.

Today, we are called to continue in that faithful tradition. We can carry each other when each of us inevitably needs respite. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Amen and blessed be.

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.

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