© Hannah Wells

October 19, 2003

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

SERMON

A few weeks ago, I heard a statistic on TV that just floored me. It shocked me so much I wrote it down. That is, four times a day in this country, a woman is killed by her boyfriend or husband.

Numbers and statistics don’t work well in sermons, so that’s the only stat you’re going to hear today. Four women a day are killed by their partners.

As hard as it may be, I want us to try to put our defenses down for this topic and begin from a place of total humility. As I was writing this sermon, I realized I kept trying to intellectualize it, and I had to say to myself, “who do you think you’re fooling?” That is, I had to admit that this is a really hard issue to get close to. Sometimes it’s easier to intellectualize an issue in order to keep it at a distance. The truth is I don’t really understand why people are hard-wired to be so violent towards each other, especially people who love each other.

Last week, a member of the church handed me an editorial from the Austin American-Statesman. The headline was ANOTHER REASON WHY DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IS EVERYBODY’S PROBLEM. I’ve included this article in your order of service, and you’re invited to read it at your convenience. What I learned after reading it was something I wasn’t aware of: that apparently the experts have been saying for decades that domestic violence is everybody’s problem. I mean, I know it’s horrible, but what do I have to do with it? I live by myself, I don’t know of anyone who’s in an abusive relationship, and generally I feel powerless to change a statistic like the one I mentioned at the beginning: four women each day get killed by their sweetie. That’s awful, but how is it my problem?

I know this much: domestic violence, whether it’s in the form of physical or emotional abuse, is about power and control. It’s also very much about learned behaviors and the ways we learned to deal with anger growing up. We’ve all heard about cycles of abuse, and how history tends to repeat itself, as people grow up and become like their parents. What does it take to break the cycle of violence and abuse in a family?

I believe this is where religion can help. Because breaking the cycle – any cycle – takes a lot of work and courage. It involves saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know where this rage comes from. I don’t understand it. I need help.” It also involves letting go of trying to control people and giving up the illusion of power. One has to surrender the compulsion to control people. The need to control others comes out of a deep insecurity and fear. Fear that one’s weaknesses may be exposed, or fear that in order to not be hurt, one must hurt others first.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t people who are just plain brutal and cruel – there are, and they tend to have anti-social personality disorders. But I think it’s safe to say that all of us, to some extent, have developed defense mechanisms designed to protect the most vulnerable sides of ourselves. The question is, are these defenses healthy or volatile? Is the defense more like offense?

The reason religion has a role to play here is because our belief system can have a profound influence on our actions – our religious beliefs can help us to change. When we are most spiritually fit is when we are most likely to be honest with ourselves. What does being spiritually fit mean? I’m just talking about honesty here, plain and simple. The honest person is free of guilt, anxiety, and is especially free of fear. Sometimes that honesty is between you and your God, but in relationships, that honesty is how you stay morally accountable to your loved ones and to yourself.

I’m not sure, but I think at the heart of the issue of domestic violence is how to take responsibility. As religious people, we try to be morally responsible. Even though the Bible is full of violence and mayhem, I think its transcendent purpose is to try to teach people how to be morally responsible to one another. That’s what religion is for, whether or not we use a creed.

All we really have is each other and our relationships, the people we love the most. Life is about constantly working toward right relationship, and it sure isn’t easy sometimes. You are only yourself in relation to others and in relation to God. But the point I want to especially drive home is this: everyone, whether they are an abuser or a victim, is a child of God. In fact, it is specific to our tradition, Unitarian Universalism, that no one is damned. The Universalists refused to believe in a punishing God, and we still believe this is true. Everybody can find their way home and be forgiven.

Forgiveness and saying I’m sorry is a big part of all this. One reason why it’s so hard for abusers to change is because there’s such a social stigma around this. Ideally, religion can serve to help an abuser change by offering forgiveness, not punishment. If we are as non-judgmental as possible, a religious community can support an abuser on the road to recovery.

Because the truth is, throughout our lives, we are all likely to move across the boundaries of abuser and victim. That is, at times we fill the role of victim – especially as children, and other times the role of abuser. If you’re saying in your head, no, I don’t think I’ve ever been in either role, I would really question that. Abusing and being abused at some point in our lives is part of the human condition – and maybe that’s why domestic violence is “everybody’s problem.” Because so many of us know about these frightening power dynamics all too well.

I’d like to share a little bit of my own experience. I grew up with a parent who tended to – well, ‘explode.’ There was the occasional slap across the face or spanking, but it was really the screaming and yelling that characterized the scariest moments of my growing up. It was a kind of verbal intimidation. I noticed that in some of the first romantic relationships I had as an adult, I tended to do the same kind of thing. I’d let little things that bothered me add up until, boom, the anger could no longer be contained and I’d explode. After a while, I really disliked this about myself. It reminded me so much of the fear I felt sometimes growing up, and that feeling of being out of control scared me.

It was pretty easy to blame my upbringing for this at first. But part of growing up is realizing that ultimately you can’t blame anyone for anything. It was up to me if I wanted to change; I had to take responsibility for myself.

And what I’ve discovered is that, even though I believe I have learned some healthier tools to deal with anger, I’ll never really be “cured.” I’ve learned to be direct with people so anger doesn’t build up, I’ve learned to take time outs, to sleep on it, to meditate, to try to put myself in other people’s shoes. All this stuff helps a lot. But I don’t believe I’ll ever really be cured of the ‘explosion syndrome.’ I’m always going to have to work at the solution. Having learned that behavior from an early age, it’s potential to emerge is always going to be there. Which is to say, that, I’m always going to have to be vigilant when I’m dealing with conflict, which is hard work. I’m always going to have to be honest with myself, which is also hard at times.

For me, the only way I can stay honest is by being spiritually fit. Spiritual fitness is different for everyone. For some, it means building a vibrant relationship with God. For others, it means nurturing a spiritual practice, whether that’s journaling, meditation, taking walks, yoga, or whatever. The main thing is that you’re finding quiet time for yourself, quiet time that can reveal your growing edges – the areas of your life you need to attend to – such as your closest relationships.

Domestic violence is an issue that touches everybody’s lives because no sector of society is immune to it. People of the highest and lowest classes, of any race, of any education level qualify – the whole of humanity is susceptible to it. It’s like a disease, a behavioral disease. It’s a compulsion. And like alcoholism or addiction, it can only be self-diagnosed. No one can make another person change; one has to be willing to change.

I don’t want to downplay the horror of domestic violence. I’ve been talking about how we can empower ourselves to change. We can – but the children who have to witness it and live with it and be victims of it – they don’t have the luxury of choices. A lot of times women don’t have this luxury, either. It’s very complicated why women can’t get out of these relationships. I want us to think about how easy it can be to judge the victim. I know I tend to judge when I don’t understand something, and I admit I’ve wondered why women can’t leave an abuser of their own will.

But one thing I know I can’t judge or question is the total powerlessness of the children who are stuck in these abusive situations. And I think this is probably the number one reason why domestic violence is “everybody’s problem.” Because the society we can be proud of living in is the one that protects its children, whether or not they’re ours. It DOES take a village. Not only do the children suffer, they also learn to keep the cycle of abuse going. And, they learn not to trust.

Violence breaks relationships because it destroys trust. The reason why our society continues to become more distrustful is because there is violence all around us. It’s hard to escape – you hear about it on the news every night, it’s all over the movies and television. There must be, like, five crime shows on TV that focus exclusively on murder and rape.

It’s also very much a part of our foreign policy. I’ve decided the only way to make sure this sermon isn’t a total downer, is to try to make it a little politically feisty.

I’m not picking on George Bush, I’m picking on his administration and whatever menace is pulling his strings. Certainly our government has been teaching us lately that violence is their preferred method of “problem-solving.” Much of the national budget goes for “security,” which is a euphemism for troops and weapons to fight wars abroad and kill people.

What about the wars that go on in millions of households right here at home? If religion is the area where we examine the values we live by, and if politics is the area where our leaders’ values are given the power to control our society, then any religion that doesn’t address its country’s political situation is living in a separate reality.

As I perceive things, the Bush administration for the past three years can be summed up like this: spending billions of dollars on problems that never existed, while pretending the real problems don’t exist at all. The real problem of the economy has created more financial anxiety in the household, anxiety which worsens domestic violence.

I bring up politics and the Bush administration because there is an absolute connection between going to war internationally and loved ones hurting each other at home. I mean, talk about power and control issues! There are many instances in the Old Testament where the God behaves essentially like an angry, abusive pimp. It seems to me that our current foreign policy has been modeled after such a God. We seek to dominate and control what happens in the world, and use physical force to this end. I would not be surprised if people in other parts of the world think of the US as a bully on the playground, or as an abusive father. It is truly disheartening to think about what this loose canon kind of violence has done to the level of trust within the international community.

I have a friend who defines evil as “the breaking of relationship.” As hard to swallow as this may be, we model ourselves after our leaders. Violence is sanctioned from the top down in our society. And all I see right now in our national leadership is a lot of breaking of relationship, breaking of trust. I don’t think this is going to change until we get a new administration.

In the meantime, we can work on building and healing relationships in our homes, with each other. That’s how we can change things. It is scary what’s going on in the world. It’s scary how much of our tax dollars go to high-tech killing machines while women are being killed every day in our country because they have don’t have enough social services to turn to that can protect them.

Can I really blame domestic violence on our government? In terms of how money is spent, yes, I think I can. So many things in life come down to money, and domestic violence is no exception. Money does equal power and money can equal change when it’s well spent.

The Bush administration has put domestic violence at the very bottom of its list. When I Googled domestic violence on the web, I came across a Fox news article published on October 8th. George Bush talked about a 20 million dollar pilot program that will set up “family justice services” in 12 different communities. He had to throw a bone for domestic violence awareness month.

Now, first of all, these centers don’t even exist yet; the program is in the application stage. I wonder how long that will take. Second, 20 MILLION DOLLARS? That’s IT? Twenty million bucks doesn’t even cover a day in the life of the US war machine, maybe not even an hour. Third, at the end of this article, we find out that this piddely amount of money isn’t even coming out of the US treasury. It’s being raised through the sale of STAMPS by the U.S. Postal Service! So I guess if you want these services for battered women and children to happen sooner, stop emailing and start snail-mailing.

And that’s it – attention to this country’s REAL problems happens at a snail’s pace. So it’s like any other major social justice issue. We have to ask, is this the best we can do? We have to make some noise. The message needs to be sent to our nation’s leadership loud and clear that 20 million bucks from the post office just doesn’t cut it.

It’s time for this country to stop fighting wars abroad and start fighting the wars raging on American soil. We have millions of domestic refugees who need asylum.

On a world scale, I really do believe that the continued evolution of humanity is dependent on finding alternatives to violence. There is a better way – there is almost always a better way. But we can’t begin by looking for these alternative solutions on a world scale. We have to begin on the personal scale: with ourselves and with each other, here at home. The Buddhist prayer has it right: Let peace begin with me.

Let peace begin in this country, this amazing, beautiful, powerful country. Let peace begin in each American household, in each family. Let peace begin in each mother, father, and child. Let peace begin in each one of us.

Let it be so.

© Hannah Wells

October 12, 2003

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

SERMON

I am what they call a “lifer.” No, I don’t mean a convicted felon, or even a career military person. I mean a life-long Unitarian Universalist. My parents found the church when I was a year old in Deerfield, IL, north of Chicago in suburbia. As a typical UU kid, I went to Sunday school sporadically until we had the pre-cursor to the OWL – Our Whole Lives – sexuality program. It was called AYS back then, About Your Sexuality. I still think of those filmstrips sometimes and cringe. Barbaric or not, I know it kept a good group of us Junior Highers returning faithfully each Sunday for a year. Soon after, we all went through the Coming of Age program under the instruction of the same teachers we had for AYS, Tim and Claudette Dirsmith, a young married couple.

All in all, I have to say that my childhood UU curricula wasn’t all that great, but I think the commitment of the youth advisors made a bigger impression on me than anything else. There wasn’t much to the Coming of Age program when I went through it, but I definitely remember the Affirmation ceremony we had one Spring Sunday morning when I was 14 years old. We got to share a little speech with the congregation and I was excited about that.

I hold here before you the actual hand written affirmation speech. To be affirmed is the UU version of being confirmed; it’s a recognition ceremony of continuing status as a UU into adulthood. I had no idea at the time that I was going to be where I’m at today, on the path to ministry. But apparently, shoddy or not, the Coming of Age program planted a seed that I believe kept me coming back. I’m going to share now what I shared with my home congregation 16 years ago. . . .

After I finished reading this credo statement, I pressed play on a boom box and sure enough, Joan Baez sang the cover of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young.” The sanctuary was very still, and I noticed people were starting to cry. Staci Banta, my Sunday school friend who I’d known since I was two, and I sat there dry-eyed while the song played, bemused. I know we both sensed a power we hadn’t felt before. It wasn’t just a day recognizing our faith, it was a day the adults recognized US.

Do you remember that moment in your early teens? When the adults who you grew up around really saw that glimmer in you of what was to come? Or when you first did something that impressed the adults, and it gave you the first taste of what it feels like to be acknowledged as a person, regardless of your age? This is a moment of ‘coming of age,’ when you become aware of the extent of your own worth and dignity as a human being, by way of the world simply noticing you.

Maybe some of you did a Coming of Age ceremony when you were 14, but it was in a different faith. Maybe you didn’t get a chance to address the congregation. What if you were given the chance to go back in time and address a liberal church faith. What religious beliefs would you have said were most important to you when you were 14? What beliefs are most important to you now? Have you considered which beliefs you held as a youth informed the adult that you have become? And what about the times in your adulthood that you’ve welcomed such a significant amount of change in your life that it, too, was like a coming of age? Often we don’t acknowledge that the difficult yet positive changes we make in our lives can be thought of as rites of passage.

I didn’t mind leaving my home church behind when I went to college because I was ready to get away from anything “home related.” I was ready to embark upon the adventure of life after leaving home. Since I was little, I have had itchy feet. I loved going away to camp for 2 weeks every summer. I finagled overseas travel before I was 16. I decided on Kalamazoo College in Michigan for my under grad solely because they offered a 3-week adventure trip in Ontario for Freshman Orientation. At some point my family started to joke that I have wheels on my posterior.

This adventuring spirit followed me after college, when I decided to move to Oregon to fight forest fires for the summer. How perfect, the glamour and mystique of a dangerous vocation rewarded with thousands of dollars by the end of the season that I would proceed to fund my trip around the world with. But my parade was literally rained on when there were no big fires to fight that summer and no big bucks to be made. That is called a “bad fire season” from the firefighter’s point of view. So I rode my bike to the San Juan Islands and went hitchhiking to Santa Cruz instead. I went broke, and, broke up with my parents’ fantasy of a future husband, Ed, who was slaving away for Arthur Andersen in Atlanta. I was destined to begin a five year stint in the hippie capitol of the United States: Eugene, OR. You might think Berkeley is the hippie capitol but it’s Eugene because there’s not even a third of the money there is in Berkeley in Eugene.

My attitude toward life at that time reminds me of the Alanis Morrissette song, “Hand in Pocket.” . . . . “I’m free but I’m focused, I’m sane but I’m overwhelmed, I’m tired but I’m working, yeah . . .” Mostly I was right about the part that I hadn’t got it all figured out just yet. I learned a lot of hard lessons about the real world between 1995 and 2000. While many people were benefiting from the country’s economic boom I was trying to get my rent paid on time with the variety of odd jobs I had, and I do mean odd. But it all seemed worth it at the time; it was the trade off for living in a beautiful town with liberal-minded, friendly people. Or, what many people – certainly my family – called the hippie lifestyle. I tend to wrinkle my nose at this label, for if I was a hippie, I was at least one of the cleanest. But to make a point to the young people sitting in the congregation today, let’s say it was the modern day hippie lifestyle, with all its stereotypical trappings. I am here to say that, I admit, it is overrated.

One day you wake up and you realize you are hanging out with people who really aren’t going anywhere. You may share some values in common, but you notice there are a few very important ones missing, such as integrity and a sense of accomplishment. You think, maybe participating in society isn’t such a bad idea after all. Fresh out of college, I had mistaken this transient community I was a part of with something I wanted very badly: a community that shared the same values I had grown up with and wanted to live out.

In retrospect, I can see now that I romanticized the so-called hippie lifestyle for a few reasons. I was reluctant to leave the anything-goes community of Eugene, OR because I was reluctant to come to terms with who I really am. I am a well-educated Euro-American young woman who grew up Unitarian Universalist on the North Shore of Chicago. I represent a fairly small slice of the American social strata. The world is my oyster, but because of this, I feared that I would become an elitist, and the socialist in me who has great compassion for the poor did not want this to happen. In order to not fulfill the destiny that was surely mine for the taking, I felt I needed to stay “down with the people.”

But to stay down, I realized, meant, to stay down, and that was not who I am. I know now that I am extremely fortunate to possess the gifts and blessings life has given me, and it would be an injustice to my own life, I feel, if I did not use these gifts in service to others. My gifts have called me to the UU ministry. And though I would not generally label UUs and other religious liberals as “elitist,” in many structural contexts of this society, we are. Elitist or not, I believe in our sincerity to condemn injustice. We are hard working, civic-minded citizens who represent the badly needed liberal end of religious belief. Learning how to be a minister to you will be a great honor; I am serving my roots. And so I have discovered that it is only through acknowledging the truth of who I am that makes it possible, in the end, to serve others. In this way, I have come home to myself.

I look forward to that community I have searched for since college – the one that shares my values and lives them. It is ironic to me now, that in all my adventuresome spirit of my young adult years, I have been running away from what I want the most: this sacred, reliable community I can call home. I often used to wonder how my older brother could stay so close to home after college and his three best friends from High school, who all live near each other in Chicago. Now I see that a lack of community with roots was the trade off for experiencing more of the world. It reminds me of the question Forrest Church poses in the reading I read to you earlier. “How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?” I am still learning about this, and I am certain it has something to do with being at home within myself, wherever it is I may find myself.

So – some beliefs of mine have changed since I wrote that affirmation speech, but not a lot. They’ve really only gotten more specific. When I was 14 I wrote, “And I think that’s what Unitarians are about. Knowing how you feel, who you are, having a clear picture of what you believe in, seriously considering the values that are important to you and how to use them properly. It gives me the chills to think that I am so lucky to know these things are important.” – It still gives me the chills to think that I am so lucky to know these things are important. Because it seems like, no matter how much change or transition is in my life, no matter how scared I get, no matter how tough the decisions are before me, no matter who or what I lose, if I can remember that this is who I am and where I came from, I’m gonna be okay.

Speaking of transition, I just turned 30 years old, and I don’t care if 30 still sounds young to some of you, losing my 20’s is a loss! But it’s also a coming of age. And I look at moving from the laity to clergy as involving some loss too, but I know it’s also a rite of passage. What changes and losses in your life can be considered rites of passage? I invite you to recognize them as such. Because when you do, you acknowledge your dignity and worth as a human being at a particular point on the path of life. This is especially important when the changes are hard, because it’s a good way to love yourself in the midst of pain. No matter how old you are, life is a continual process of coming of age.

And if you look at the life of this church, First UU Church of Austin, it too is coming of age in many ways. There are growing pains. It’s large enough now and there’s enough youth that it’s high time for its own Coming of Age program. The very first of its kind will be launched this January. How exciting! What’s exciting about it is that the church is ready to recognize its youth as valuable members of this community. That we are making a point of saying to them, we want you to be a part of Unitarian Universalism’s future. You are our future. We want your spiritual journey home to lead you HERE. But what’s even more exciting is that we “adults” are going to get a chance to learn from them. Our youth possess the power of seeing the world with fresh eyes, and therefore can offer some of the most authentic expressions of our liberal church faith.

Coming of age. It’s part of coming to our full humanity, of claiming our promise. It’s something we’ll all be doing here this year, and I’m excited to be a part of it with you. Together, we’re going to have a great year.

© Hannah Wells

September 28, 2003

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

SERMON

This is a sermon about money. I had nightmares about preparing this sermon because, frankly, I’m not very experienced with money. I’ve never had a lot of it, and I don’t know anything about investments or credit cards. When I do have money I tend to spend it on myself – on stuff like travel and books and cds. It’s only in recent years that I began giving money to my church in Berkeley because I became a member. I did a lot of pro-bono preaching toward my pledge. What could I possibly preach to you about money that would hold any weight? What I have to offer to you today is what I’ve learned in exploring this issue in my own life. Maybe you’re not good with money either. Maybe we can all learn something together here.

It’s a time of anxiety in our country. I meet people who are out of work all the time. Some of them saved during the dot-com years and some didn’t. I’m not out of work now, but next year I will be. It makes me nervous – to think I might not even have much luck finding a temp job. I’ve gone through unemployed stretches in the past. The worst thing about it is all the restless time you have on your hands, day after day. Time to feel anxious. But also time to think creatively, if you let yourself.

That brings up the main question I want to talk to you about today: how can we take care of ourselves the best way possible in these times of social and economic uncertainty? It has to do with staying focused on what matters the most to us, and doing all we can to keep nurturing our sources of wholeness. How do we know what that is? We’re grounded enough to know that life isn’t just about what we do for a living – most of us know that we can’t ultimately define ourselves by the status of our career. But what is this life about?

For me, life is about loving our selves, our lives, and others, in that order. It has to be in that order because you can’t love others until you love yourself. The life force of nature actually seems to be hard-wired this way. In the film, “Adaptation” the character who plays the orchid thief, John Laroche, explains the way nature designed pollination to take place between insects and orchids. He says,

” . . . what’s so wonderful is that every one of these flowers has a specific relationship with the insect that pollinates it. A certain orchid looks exactly like a certain insect so the insect is drawn to this flower that’s double it’s soul mate, and wants nothing more than to make love to it. And after, the insect flies off and spots another soul mate flower and makes love to it, thus pollinating it. And neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the significance of their lovemaking. I mean, how could they know that because of their little dance, the world lives but it does – by simply doing what they’re designed to do, something large and magnificent happens. In this sense, they show us how to live, how the only barometer you have is your heart. How, when you spot your flower, you can’t let anything get in your way.”

The metaphor here suggests that nature has designed each being to be attracted to itself to ensure attraction to others. So what we are drawn to in life is a reflection of the beauty we see or know about in our kind. The more beauty we see in ourselves, the more beauty we can find in the world. The more we love ourselves, the better we are able to love others. When we deny that we are beautiful, the world becomes colorless as well.

This concept of life can be applied to the lives of institutions as well. People are drawn to institutions that reflect their own qualities. A healthy church attracts healthy people. We love the qualities in a church that we love in ourselves, qualities such as compassion, openness, courage, honesty, a willingness to explore the aspects of life that are difficult. We support the life of a church because it reflects what is most important to us in our own lives. We choose to support those institutions that we think are a positive presence in the world – institutions that function in the community as we ourselves wish to but that no individual alone could.

When you look at the state of the world now, supporting the non-profit organizations, whether it’s churches or social service agencies, is one of the best statements of hope you can make. You’re saying that you believe in a better future, that you believe in people finding comfort in caring for each other. You’re saying that, despite the uncertainty and anxiety, that this is what really matters – that people continue to have caring institutions to associate with. Because it’s questionable whether many of us will have social security benefits in the future; it’s questionable if the middle class will ever stabilize. A lot of us don’t have basic health insurance right now; it’s a national crisis.

This is the reality, folks. But it’s the churches and non-profits – our grassroots institutions – that represent a woven tapestry of faith and hope. These support networks are what we need to feel like we can count on wrapping around ourselves like a blanket when we need to in the future, or even right now. I don’t have much faith in the government these days, but I do have faith in the people. The government may not seem to care about us as they sign another multi-billion dollar bill to fund the damage done in Iraq, but I know the people of this country care about each other. WE care about each other.

But all this goes beyond the importance of supporting the church. Everyone here already understands why that’s important. What I want you to leave with here today is thinking about better ways to take care of yourself in uncertain times. At one point in “Adaptation,” Susan Orlean, the character who plays a writer, says, “I suppose I do have one un-embarrassed passion. I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.” Do you know what you love passionately? Do you really? Because if you do, that means you are loving yourself well – if you know this, you can get through times of anxiety, you can remember what’s most important in life. If you care about something passionately, you don’t forget it and it keeps your life focused.

So what I’m suggesting here, or trying to encourage, is to love this church passionately! OR decide what you DO love passionately! Know what it means to love with passion. Find the freedom of heart that gives you permission to love passionately. Financial support is an expression of love – figure out what you love and love it well. Let yourself be the first thing you love. Doing so will lead you to support the institutions that are good for you and good for others.

Later on in the film the character Susan Orlean comments, “there are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go. I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.” This is an argument for simplicity, but it’s also saying that there are really only a very few things in life that you can love passionately. When we prioritize just a few things to love with all our strength, it actually helps make life more manageable in a world that can seem overwhelming.

I know a lot of people in their late 20’s and early 30’s who could really find some solace in this idea. So many of us haven’t heard the call yet in regards to what to DO with our lives. Vocation comes from the Latin verb, vocare, to call. Therefore, ministry is not the only profession one has to be ‘called’ to. All of us have a call to something particular in life, something particular to who we are, to what our gifts and talents are, to what are passions are. I keep thinking of that image of the insect bee-lining for its flower. What is your flower? If you are a bee, what is the flower you are drawn to that, once spotted, you can’t let anything get in your way? I suggest that we can hear this call most clearly when we let ourselves be certain about what we love most. If you are discerning what you are called to do, it’s no time to be modest and humble. That comes later, when the steady paychecks are coming in.

Yes, back to money. I think all of us can probably remember a time when we spent a lot of money on something and later on, we didn’t feel good about it. But have you ever looked back on the money spent on a charitable donation and felt bad about that? It’s taken me a while to learn this, but giving to the causes I believe in feels good. It helps me to feel good about myself; it’s actually good for my own sense of well-being. When you think about what you want to give to the church, think about the amount that later on you can feel good about. Don’t give until it hurts; give ’til it feels good! Or it feels right.

The climax of the movie “Adaptation” is the line one brother says to another brother toward the end of the film. The bizarre twists and turns of the film has led them to being fugitives in an alligator-infested swamp in Florida. Charlie Kaufman is a miserably panicked and constantly self-berating screenwriter. They are hiding behind a felled tree in the dark when his twin brother says to him, “you are what you love, not what loves you. That’s what I decided a long time ago.” You are what you love, not what loves you. I love that line, and I think it’s true. Think about it: you are defined in really lovely way by what you love and support. With the economy suffering the way it is, this becomes more important than ever.

It is so easy to be seduced by this culture into thinking that we can only know who we are through the perceptions of others. If people think you have the right job, the right clothes, the right body, and you think you are loved because of these things, then who are you living for? If you don’t have the money for these things, how can you be loved?

Now, I’m going to use a phrase that I know my peers are familiar with, but I acknowledge may be a bit risque for some of you, so I thank you for indulging me here. I have a girlfriend who just had a boob job. I got an email from her, “I got boobs,” as though she bought a new car. She is a very sexy woman, but has a notoriously difficult time meeting men. She thinks this will turn her luck around. But it seems like if she put her energy into loving what she loves, that love could more easily find her. She seems to be defining her self worth by what she can attract. How will she ever find a love that’s good for her this way?

All of us are susceptible to being seduced by enhancing our self worth through material means. It’s part of being American. But the purpose of good religion is to save us from this illusion. It’s to remind us that we are what we love, not what loves us. If we are what we love, and we love this church, then we are the church, and we love it well because we know that caring for the things we love is the freest and most healthy way to live.

If you’re not finding any of these spiritual incentives to give to the church compelling, here’s something for those of you who prefer practical incentives. And this is hopeful news about our government. A few weeks ago the house overwhelmingly passed a new bill called The Charitable Giving Act, or House Resolution 7, HR7. Its purpose is to encourage more giving to churches and non-profits, especially for those folks who don’t itemize on our taxes. For every 250th to 500th dollar you give to non-profits, you get that back in your tax return. Which essentially means you get back in your tax return half of what you donate to charity.

This isn’t just great for non-profits, this is great for those of us who are furious with the way the government is spending our tax dollars these days. It means we can take back some control of how the government spends our hard-earned money. With the way this law works, the more you spend on institutions you care about, like your church and your favorite non-profits, then the more control you reclaim on how the government spends your tax dollars. Let’s pray that the Senate passes this new law that could provide renewed faith in our country’s leadership and combat apathy. This is great hope for healing democracy.

So whether you decide to give generously to the church because it’s good for you or good for your tax return, just keep this in mind: we are the church – it is a reflection of what we collectively hold most sacred. It represents the hope we have for the future. It represents the faith we have now in the high standards of justice we seek, faith in the freedom of the unencumbered search for truth, and faith in the deep caring we have for one another. Let this be what you love.

I love that image of bees and insects teaching us about life. They see this flower that looks like what they love, and “bzzzzzzzzzz,” they go for it and they find it and life gets a jump start.

Can you see it? You find what you love in yourself. You find that expressed and supported by an institution – like, this church. You set your sights on it, you let nothing get in your way, you go for it.

“Bzzzzzzzzz . . . “