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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

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

– Rev. John Buehrens

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

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

This is loving and being loved.

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

This is loving and being loved.

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

This is loving and being loved.

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

This is loving and being loved.

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

This is loving and being loved.

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

This is loving and being loved

– Enfleshed

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

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

– Henry Nelson Weiman

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

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

– Christine D Pohl

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

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

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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

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

– C E Limoux

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

Ingrid Fetell Lee “The Aesthetics of Joy”

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

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

Sermon

Swedish Chef Video

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My God, they’re Unitarian Universalists!

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

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

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

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

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

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

• • It’s not easy being green.

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

• • Cookies are good.

• Don’t play with electricity like crazy Harry

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

• • The importance of listening deeply to one another.

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

• • How friends make life exponentially better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s how Lithwick explains her Unified Muppet Theory:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you an order muppet or a chaos muppet?

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

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

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

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

Kermit Video

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fozzy Video

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

I also suspect Janice may be Buddhist.

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

Janice Video

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

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

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

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

Statler and Waldorf Video

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

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

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

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

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

Ms Piggy Video

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

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

I am leaning towards Gonzo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bohemian Rhapsody Video

And Amen.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

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

– Angela Avantella

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

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

– Chris Jimmerson

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

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

– Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

KEEPING QUIET
by Pablo Neruda

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

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

PARTNERS IN CARE: MEDICINE AND MINISTRY TOGETHER
Fred Reklau

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

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

INSTRUCTIONS IN JOY
Rev. Nancy Schafer

“MENDING”

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

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

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

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

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

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

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

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

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

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

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

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

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

– Brian Andreas (Kai Skye)

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

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

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

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

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
August 30, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In this time of Covid-19 and witnessing the violent treatment of protestors, it can seem hard to find our balance. Especially when the protestors are rising up against the violence and other horrible things being directed at black, brown and native people in the first place. Sometimes, we tend to think of balance as a sense of peace and calm, but perhaps balance also means accepting our fear, pain, anger and desire for justice in our world.

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

I arrive in the morning torn betwen a desire to improve or save the world and a desire to enjoy or savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

– E.B. White

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

DON’T JUST DO SOMETHING, SIT THERE
– Sylvia Bernstein

Equanimity doesn’t mean keeping things even. It is the capacity to return to balance in the midst of an alert response to life. I don’t want to be constantly calm. The cultural context I grew up in and the relational life I live both call for a passionate engaged response. I laugh and I cry and I’m glad that I do. What I value is the capacity to be balanced between times.

Sermon

Some days you eat salads and go to the gym. Some days you eat cupcakes and refuse to put on pants.

It’s called balance.

That’s a social media meme by a very spiritual and wise woman named Rita. O. Jackson.

I loved it when our senior minister Meg sent it to me, because I think that in a humorous way, it so perfectly illustrates one of the seeming paradoxes of our topic today – finding balance, equanimity, harmony in life.

Sometimes we have to to through feeling out of sorts, experience the difficult emotions in order to grow and find even greater life balance.

I’ll come back to this later; however, I think I would be remiss, if in examining balance, I were not to begin by exploring the social unrest, the struggles for justice and the state-sanctioned violence being directed at those rising up to demand justice that are happening in our country right now.

Justice is often represented, symbolized, by Lady Justice holding up the scales of equity. This image is rooted in ancient Egyptian, Greek and, later, Roman Goddesses, who all carried out concepts associated with justice.

It’s interesting that our ancient ancestors seemed to think that females would best embody the balance of justice.

Today in the United States, those scales of justice are greatly imbalanced. They are imbalanced related to gender, gender identity, class, race, sexual orientation and so much more.

On one side of the scale, it is heavily weighted toward those who enjoy privilege, power, wealth and other resources.

The other side of the scale it is swinging haphazardly in the air, because there are too many folks for whom oppression affords them far less justice, far less privilege, far less access to power, wealth and other resources.

We have folks that own more than one mansion, yachts and expensive cars in the dozens, many of which they rarely if ever drive.

Do folks really need all of that, when in the meantime, we have people losing their housing, unable to provide the necessities of life for their families, unable to access healthcare when they or their loved ones get sick?

All of this greatly exacerbated by the pandemic, while the US Senate does nothing to keep their aide going.

But perhaps the scales of justice are out of equilibrium nowhere more greatly than in the systemic racism that pervades the very institutions of our society.

In particular, protests have arisen over law enforcement’s use of lethal force against black, brown and native American people.

In response to these demonstrations, the police have often inflicted violence against mostly peaceful protestors. They’ve labeled the protests as riots, even though much of the violence has in fact been committed by white supremacists who infiltrate the protests and initiate violence and other acts of destruction.

AND, even if that’s not always the case, as my colleague Misha Sanders recently wrote, “‘It’s sad that the police shot that man, but that doesn’t excuse burning things down.’ Stop right there. How about this instead: ‘It’s sad that things are burning down, but the police shouldn’t have shot that man.’ There, that’s better.”

Most recently, we have witnessed the police shooting of Jacob Blake after some kind of domestic disturbance. They shot him seven times in the back in front of his three young children as he tried to get into his SUV. He is currently paralyzed from the waist down and fighting for his life. Yet, the police have him handcuffed to his hospital bed.

We don’t know all the facts yet. Some reports claim that Blake may have had a knife. Still, how can that possibly justify shooting him in the back in front of his small children?

Funny how we never seem to hear about police shooting a white person in the back (or kneeling on their neck until they suffocate).

Of course, some folks claim that this is because of bias in news reporting.

No. The statistics have no bias. The statistics tells us we don’t hear about police shooting a white person, even if they do have a knife, because the police are so much less likely do so with white folks.

They are far more likely to use deescalation techniques instead.

And so we have to ask ourselves why, instead of using these same deescalation techniques, police so often use lethal force against our black, brown and native American siblings.

The scales of justice are profoundly out of balance.

Lady justice is weeping.

So, to build the Beloved Community, we must struggle to right these imbalances. And to sustain this struggle, I think requires us to try to seek harmony in our own lives. Creating balance may mean, we have to both savor and save the world.

And finding such balance is also a part of our own well-being and life-satisfaction.

Recently, I posted on Facebook, asking, “where are you finding balance in life these days?”

Here is a summary of many of the responses:

• Getting outside, enjoying nature, gardening, hikes and walks, observing beauty.
• Community, relationship, family, friends, loved ones, fellow church members.
• Working out, water aerobics, various other forms of exercise.
• Reading, learning new concepts and skills, listening to music, enjoying the arts.
• Meditation, Yoga, Tai Chi, mindfulness.
• Stopping for rest, taking naps.
• Giving oneself projects, clearing out living spaces of what is not needed, setting up new routines to replace those we lost when the pandemic hit.

Notice how many of these could be thought of as spiritual practices.

Now, in all fairness, some of the Facebook comments ran in bit different direction, as epitomized by the following: “Balance? What balance? I’m an anxious ball of ever-evolving existential crisis!” And, “I’m no longer sure what balance means. Truthfully, I’d be much better balanced with a haircut.” And I loved this one, “I go lie down in the garden. You can’t fall off. It smells complicated. The bugs are good company. Sometimes I even lie face up!”

Several other folks mentioned a feeling of being on a seesaw or rollercoaster, experiencing ups and downs, feelings of trying to do too much and then not doing enough, tipping too hard in one direction and then too hard in the other.

These folks expressed a sense of only glimpsing balance in mid-swing of the seesawing.

And I think this is important too. Especially during challenging times such as these, we will have moments…or days…or weeks when we feel out of balance. That’s only natural. How can parents trying to decide what to do about their children’s education while often trying to work, maintain a home and find a moment for self care not feel out of sorts sometimes?

The thing is, we’re often sold this mirage that having balance means always feeling calm, collected and serene.

Some days though, we need to eat cupcakes and refuse to put on pants.

And yet, life can seem imbalanced when we experience feelings like discomfort about facing uncertainty, sorrow at witnessing so many lives lost, anger over the proliferation of injustices.

I wonder though, if these emotions might also be potential sources of growth – a new, richer sense of balance.

Now, this certainly is not always the case. We have to acknowledge in some instances that things are just bad.

Sometimes though, discomfort can lead to transformation.

I think, especially during difficult times, we can also feel really imbalanced when we judge ourselves too harshly – set unrealistic expectations for ourselves.

I suspect that this may be especially true among Unitarian Universalists.

I know it is among me, myself and I!

To counter this, I turn to my favorite social work professor and author, Brene Brown.

Brown encourages us to realize that other folks are “doing the best they can with the tools that they have.”

Maybe, we can extend that same graciousness to ourselves.

We are enough. We, each of us, are doing the best we can with the tools that we have.

And we can still try to expand our toolkit, while also offering ourselves that grace along the way.

There is so much more I would love to say about balance; however, in the interest of leaving you time to balance the activities of your day, I’ll close by returning to those Facebook comments about finding balance through community, relationship, loved ones.

I think this applies very deeply with our church community.

We can help each other know harmony.

My beloveds, we are sacred companions on a holy journey together, as we seek to know and co-create the divine.

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
July 26, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Engaging our creativity may be one way we can deal with living through a pandemic and sheltering in place. What are some creative pursuits you might like to engage? How might we creatively enhance our spirituality?

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.

-Cynthia Heimel

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say “It is yet more difficult than you thought.” This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings,

-Wendell Berry

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 5, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In this challenging time through which we are living, it is important that we offer ourselves and others many blessings. Let us comfort one another and accept one another’s comforting. We do not have to pretend everything is ok.

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

So what then does it it mean to offer a blessing – to be a blessing? To bless something or someone is to invoke its wholeness. To help remind the person or thing you are blessing of its essence, its sacredness, its beauty. And to help remind ourself too. Blessing doesn not fix anything. It is not a cure. It does not instill health or well being or strength, instead, it reminds that those things are already there within us.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

From MY GRANDFATHER’S BLESSING
Dr Rachael Naomi Remen

A blessing is not something that one person gives another. A blessing is a moment of meeting, a certain kind of relationship where both people involved remember and acknowledge their true nature and worth, and strengthen what is whole in one another.

By making a place for wholeness within our relationships we offer others the opportunity be whole without shame and become a place of refuge from everything in them and around them that is not genuine. We enable people to remember who they are.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
June 21, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

One of First UU Austin’s stated values is compassion – which we defined as “to treat ourselves and others with love”. What does living out that value look like, especially in these challenging times?

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

ON THE PATH OF COMPASSION
Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Begin with gratitude
for all you have received,
that you see and that you do not see.
Let your gratitude grow into trust
that you are included in a great wonder;
and entrust yourself to the grace you are given.
Let your trust blossom into compassion
for all those who are also part of this oneness
who have been excluded, used or targeted.
Let your compassion flourish into solidarity,
knowing you are one with those who suffer
and that their wholeness is part of yours.
Let your solidarity bear fruit in justice,
working for freedom and fullness of life for all,
against all evil and oppression.
And when you are most challenged
by the forces of injustice,
most weary and discouraged,
return to gratitude
that you are guided, accompanied,
empowered and saved;
and entrust yourself to the undying love of God.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

GATE A-4
Naomi Shihab Nye

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.”

Well – one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing.

“Help,” said the flight agent. “Talk to her. What is her problem?

We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.

“Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit- se-wee?”

The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day.

I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just later, who is picking you up? Let’s call him.”

We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours. She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies – little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts – from her bag – and was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo-we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend – by now we were holding hands – had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere. And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate – once the crying of confusion stopped – seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

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