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Victoria Shepherd Rao

26 June 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER: Prayer for the End of Things

May we find peace at the end.

At the end of a conversation with a friend or a stranger, may we find peace.

At the end of a period of hard work, when we have struggled to complete a task or tried hard to find an approach to work together with others, may we find peace beyond our fatigue.

At the end of an outing, or an event we have been looking forward to, or a vacation we’ve planned endlessly for and lived through in the seeming blink of an eye, when it is time to return again to the regular rhythms and routines of our lives, may we find peace in the ordinary.

At the end of the day, when we retire to our beds, let us reflect on the fullness of our being, recounting our moments of strength and failure, and may we seek peace beyond our stories- peace for ourselves and peace for our world.

And at the end of our lived, whenever our time comes to the still, breathless place where we must let go, let us find us beyond this life.

So be it.

SERMON: Farewell Musings

First off, I want to share a few impressions of GA – the annual General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association – that is taking place right now in Fort Worth, Texas. I attended for three days of the multi-day extravaganza. It is a lot like a film festival: there is so much going on – lectures, workshops, exhibitions, annual meetings, worship events – that you must decide what you want to do most, because you cannot do it all. It is a real exercise in expressing your priorities as a UU and it completely overwhelmed me at first. Then I decided: I wanted and needed to hear different UU theologies, and I did, everything from the universalism of John Murray-meets-Thomas Potter to Thandeka on the theology of land, water, food and place.

I wanted to participate in mega-church hi-tech worship with thousands of others, all singing together. I wanted to hear some award winning sermons being preached. I wanted to learn more about the credentialing process of ministers in our tradition. I wanted to get information about international liberal religious ministries and networks of interfaith ministries. And all of these things I did.

The offerings and possibilities of GA are many. I want now to encourage you all to make the pilgrimage for yourselves one year. One of the best experiences for me was to see old friends greeting one another. Possibly these friendships were built and have been sustained by the annual reunion. But to see peoples’ eyes light up, their enthusiastic waves, their running to embrace, it was such an upper! It was fun to meet with the folks from here among the crowd. There were about forty people from “our church” who went. I also met up with Hannah Wells (who is here among us today – welcome!) and I met Cathy Harrington too, both your interns before me.

It’s exciting to think that I’ll be one of the lucky ones running to greet old friends in the years to come. I treasure such a vision of belonging to the wider community of our faith, especially at such a time as this, as I prepare to take my leave from you.

This will be the last time I speak from your pulpit as your intern and I would like to take the time to address a couple of questions which have been asked of me in response to my sermons from the last few months.

These questions came from two long time church members, both former board presidents. One asked a question: What is so great about serenity? This came from a man who introduced me, the first time I met him, to the qualities of character he considered most definitive of Texan culture: resourcefulness and independence. He clearly valued these traits but he wasn’t so sure about serenity.

Serenity is like tranquility, and describes a calm or peaceful state. It is associated with serene weather – clear, fair, like a cloudless sky or a calm sea. In a person, serenity means to be free from disturbing emotions. I see serenity as a sign of an inner resourcefulness that can make some space in a person between their inner emotions and their outward demeanor. It makes the difference between being reactive and responsive: a serene person is a person who is aware of her emotions, not controlled by them; a serene person values her emotions, learns from them, but is not defined or determined by them. Then the emotions become a resource for such a person, not the source of their well-being, or lack of it.

So, what is so great about serenity? Well, maybe as someone trying to develop pastoral skills, I have been giving a sub-textual message that serenity is great – great for a minister or a chaplain, someone whose job it is to reflect others’ state of being back to them as a mirror. But then again, we come from a tradition of the ‘priesthood of all believers,’ and that means we all are called to show and demonstrate with our lives the love of God, or the benevolence and possibilities of Life. And we are all better able to do that from an inner landscape that is calm and undisturbed by stormy emotions. So serenity then is good for connecting to our own truth beyond our emotions, and for connecting with others. And I’ll own up to my bias that in life, it is connecting with others that seems great to me. It is a calling into significant, meaning-filled relationship with people, that’s what ministry means to me. So, what’s so great about serenity? It can facilitate real, deep connections between humans. That’s my answer.

The other question I wanted to deal with was a direct response to a particular remark I had made in a sermon wherein I wondered about the experience of being hit by a car and lying injured by the side of the road. I had said that I hoped I would be able to rest my cheek on the ground under me, whether it was dusty or greasy or bloody, knowing the earth as an inalienable mother, upon whom I might safely rest, trusting death as much as I have trusted life. It was this last idea that sparked the question, how? How do we learn to trust death?

Trusting death – that is perhaps a novel way to view death. We might intellectually accept the inevitability of death but chances are we’d rather not think about it if given the choice. No, we deal with it when we have to – when we are confronted by it, or stopped short in our tracks by it – and then our mix of emotions is heavy isn’t it? Shock, disbelief, anger, sadness, confusion, uncertainty, regret, anxiety, an overwhelming complex of feelings envelope us as we move along the series of events unfolding in bedrooms, hospital rooms, and funeral homes. Indeed, is there any trust there in that picture? Death is the unwanted visitor separating us from our loved ones and sometimes, from our hopes and dreams – how can we, why should we, trust it?

People of conventional faiths may trust that death is the beginning of eternal life, ‘dead in Jesus, alive forever with God,’ or that death is the transition point from one life into another as within Hinduism or Buddhism with the tenants of reincarnation. Atheists may also share a kind of faith in death as a merciful nothingness where there can be no pain because there is no thing at all. Other, even less conventional views, wonder about the after-death experiences reported by people who have actually been clinically dead but who have returned to life: the whole white-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel scenario; the your-whole-life-flashes-before-your-eyes; the feeling of encompassing love. Such compelling stories as these can enchant open-minded religious liberals, encouraging an understanding of death as some kind of a passage between worlds or realms of being. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, no less, became such a believer, who, at the end of her career, twelve books after her famous 1969 book, On Death and Dying, asserted that death did not exist, but was merely “a portal” to another stage. She said, “Death is only a transformation from a physical field of energy into a psychic field of energy.” (Globe and Mail obituary, Aug.26, 2004) And so, there are many ways to trust death and our worldviews or religious views matter to our understandings. And they always have.

We can look at whole heritages surrounding the care of souls at the end of life. I refer to the ancient traditions as revealed in various ‘books of the dead.’ The ancient Egyptians were entombed with such books. Theirs were like instruction manuals to help navigate the journey from life to death. The Celtic tradition of death mid-wifery, which influenced later monastic infirmary practices around Europe at the turn of the first millennium, was a set of practices for giving active care to the dying based on the understanding that people needed coaching a the end of life in much the same way as women need coaching through the process of childbirth. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which has become quite popular recently in the West, there are detailed instructions for the dying and for their companions and care-givers at the end of life including many prayers to be read to the dying person during the different stages of their transition from life to death to life, to help confront especially fearful emotions, and facilitate a calm and clear state of consciousness throughout the process.

There is a collective wisdom on the universal experience of dying to be found in these traditions. Their varied cultural and religious roots do not point to different but to recurring approaches to death. And we can learn from the repeated patterns in the teachings that have helped past generations to trust death. So, let’s review the principles which emerge.

First, there is the basic idea of a good death. That would be a peaceful death and it is achieved through close attention to the actual process of death through its many stages. Kubler-Ross identified the stages of grief in the dying process, you probably know them, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. In hospices today, care-givers recognize the final “active dying” stage. In the Tibetan tradition, there were over forty different stages identified and each stage was met with particular sets of practices, prayers and rituals, all designed to support the dying person as well as their companions. A good death included constant care-givers so that the one at the end of life would not be alone in approaching death.

Another consistent teaching in these traditions was that it was necessary to prepare for death throughout the course of a lifetime. That the art of dying was not radically different from the art of living but brought with it some powerfully transformative opportunities to review our lives with new perspectives and to heal our souls. “Dying is nothing to fear,” echoed Kubler- Ross in our day, “It can be the most wonderful experience in your life.”

The earliest hospices in Europe, the scattered monastic infirmaries, were places where people from all walks of life, and religious traditions, went to die. They were treated with a variety of physical and what we might call psycho-spiritual techniques. Music was used extensively- in fact, there is some evidence that the West’s musical scale emerged from these institutions, medicines were used to control pain and maintain lucidity, chants were used to regulate breath through pain and discomfort, and psalms were used to give expression to the full range of the dying person’s emotions – including anger at God.

Death was consistently viewed as a sacred end-of-life transition, and it presented a unique opportunity for significant spiritual healing. The vision of the good death was in play then and it is in play still – 82% of Americans would, upon being told they had very little time to live, prefer simply to go home. They want to die in their own beds, surrounded by family, in a setting that feels natural.

But because we don’t dwell on [death], and because we haven’t thought about it, the system that has sprung up to care for the elderly and the terminally ill is neither medically nor ethically consistent. In different regions of the country – even among hospital rated the best- there are huge variations in the kind of treatment given to dying patients. It seems that the most important factor in determining whether a particular region has a high rate of medical intervention on behalf of the terminally ill – risky operations, respirators, artificial feeding – is not local religious practices but the local availability of hospital beds and the number of local doctors. (Washington Post editorial by Anne Applebaum, Mar 31, 2005)

So, how then can we learn to trust death?

Well, we can be proactive about all the practical concerns: make our wills, make sure we give legal rights to folks who understand our wishes for our end-of-life care. This congregation has a great resource for such tasks with AMBIS, the Austin Memorial and Burial Information Society, a church-affiliated consumer organization dedicated to a consumer’s right to meaningful, dignified, and affordable end-of-life choices. We can join the new movements towards at-home funerals and after-death care in the home. We can take the radical step of beginning to attend to each other, our families and friends, at the end of our lives – to sit with one another in death vigils, and attend to the profound experiences of caring for the dying, learning the lessons they can teach us about living.

We can take seriously our own spiritual pain before death’s shadow falls, asking ourselves: Is my life filled with meaning and purpose? Do I have a sense of reconciliation within myself and with others? Do I have a deep sense of connection with the people and things that matter most to me? The answers to such questions are in us, and they can guide us in seeking out the spiritual healing that will build lives worth living and set us up for a good death – a peaceful, conscious letting go- surrounded by a circle of friends, or lying by the side of a road. We can then take the courage we’ve cultivated in living fully into the end-of-life experience, whatever we conceive it to be, claiming for ourselves a good death that we can trust. “Dying is nothing to fear,” said Kubler-Ross, “It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you have lived.”

But let’s face it, none of us know when we will die, it could be tomorrow, it could be tonight. So, we need to make an effort to trust, life and death, and to live in the only moment we can- in the now- in the now, and with each others’ blessings, let us endeavor to trust, as people of faith, we are called to nothing less.

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© Victoria Shepherd Rao

Cuileann McKenzie

29 May 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER:

From Singing the Living Tradition, #496

From arrogance, pompousness, and from thinking ourselves more important than we are, may some saving sense of humor liberate us. For allowing ourselves to ridicule the faith of others, may we be forgiven.

From making war and calling it peace, special privilege and calling it justice, indifference and calling it tolerance, pollution and calling it progress, may we be cured.

For telling ourselves and others that evil is inevitable while good is impossible, may we stand corrected.

God of our mixed up, tragic, aspiring, doubting, and insurgent lives, help us to be as good as in our hearts we have always wanted to be. Amen. — Harry Meserve

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

Cuileann McKenzie, Worship Associate

While considering Sally’s idea that knowing your nugget, your core values, is helpful to navigate the freedoms and choices that face us, I was struck by the paradox that in my life, it often has been facing choices that has helped me discover and define my nugget. Indeed it seems that choices and values are somewhat interdependent. Choices push us to contemplate values as well as the other way around.

I got my B.A. in a program titled “Rhetoric and Professional Writing” – rhetoric being given the classical definition of the “art of persuasion” rather than the contemporary, popular meaning of someone seeming to deceive. The program’s courses provided a broad foundation for a writing career in any number of areas, from writing those wonderful software manuals, to political speech writing, to advertising copywriting, and so on. However, we all were reminded, particularly in our introductory courses, that once we accepted a job, our focus would be on helping our employer get their message across convincingly, whether we agreed with the ideas or not. It all seemed too mercenary for me – like we were just “communication guns for hire.” I discovered that at my core, it was important to have personal meaning in my work – to help others and to foster independence in thinking.

With this nugget in mind, I chose to go into teaching. It was when I was completing my Bachelor of Education, that the notion of having integrity when teaching was introduced by my professors. At that point in time, preparing to teach high school nine years ago in Canada, teachers were given quite a bit of freedom and trust in developing their own teaching style and evaluation methods. We were encouraged to be creative and thoughtful, giving students many choices to suit their individual strengths, as we developed lessons and assignments. But as we all know, knowing your nugget and then consistently living by it are two different things, and there’s the rub. In the “real world” of full time teaching, it seemed that many of us, at least some of the time, followed along well-worn traditional paths simply out of default rather than thoughtful choice. It’s hard to find the energy to be creative, when you’re buried in essays that need marked and with exams coming up soon.

Now I’m writing a novel, and knowing my nugget is becoming even more important to me, as a book invites a world of criticism and comments. Along with (hopefully) some people who will like my book, I know there will be some people who won’t. In my mind, I can already hear some of the comments, and I have thought about how I’ll respond to them. My nugget seems pretty clear to me. In writing my novel, it’s been a priority to create characters who are complex and conflicts that are complicated. In short, I’m aiming for the book to reflect real life. No character is wholly good or wholly bad and everything isn’t cheerily wrapped up in a completely happy ending. Real life is messy, real people are messy, and our complicated world is something to be both examined and celebrated – that’s the nugget of truth that has guided me in writing my novel.

In the upcoming revising process, I recognize as well that working within your nugget does not mean rejecting all criticism; rather, knowing your nugget can guide you in recognizing the constructive suggestions that will strengthen what you’re putting into the world. When I start working with an agent and editor, I anticipate doing re-writes, adding or deleting sections, and I’ll make these changes eagerly as long as the writing is made stronger and the nugget of the story remains intact.

To me, at this point in my life, knowing my nugget means writing with integrity. In my life overall, I’m thankful for the role that choices and freedoms have played in helping me discover, and live by, my core values, my nugget. Likewise, I appreciate the guidance that these values will give me as I make important decisions in the future. I’m sure as my life moves on, my values and choices will continue to influence each other. As time passes, we grow, we evolve, so my nugget ten years from now might be different. Hopefully, over time it will swell with wisdom, and glow with guidance.

SERMON: Knowing Your Nugget

Victoria Shepherd Rao, Intern Minister

What does this cutesy sermon title mean? Knowing Your Nugget? When this worship topic was suggested at the winter meeting of the Worship Associates program here at this church, it was expressed as “survival skills.” This topic is one of the very few which were suggested by one member of the Worship Associates group and taken on as a writing assignment by another member in the group. Sally Dennis, a young woman who teaches for the Austin School District on the eastern side of town suggested the topic. She wanted the issues of taking on roles and responsibilities, something we all do as functioning adults living in families and working in the community, to be examined including how hard it can be to find a core self there in us, somewhere underneath all the roles. I think it is a concern many of us can relate to. Knowing our religious center is something Davidson repeats over and over again to everyone who is listening, like a mantra. The core of our being or the nugget of truth of our own unique, individual, authentic being . Is there such a thing? Is it always there waiting for us to notice? Can we recognize it, quiet down and relax enough to sense it? Or does it speak to us regularly? Is it the guiding light of your life, the key to your priorities and the source of your motivation?

You have heard Cuileann’s reflections on the possibilities which come from knowing your nugget, and I want to share a story too. It is the story about how I came to know my last dog, Shef. I first saw Shef one day as I walked along the sidewalk of the industrial neighborhood where I worked in downtown Toronto. I worked in a fancy artsy animation studio in a large renovated warehouse, but across the street from the studio there was the gated yard of a stone mason. It looked pretty rough from across the street. Corrugated steel walls, barbed wire atop. Rundown. The gate was a standard frost fence. Off to the side there was a steel shed. There was a mountain of peat moss in big square bags off to the rear, large ground moving equipment parked haphazardly. I would never have noticed any of this except one day I happened to look over and saw Shef.

He was sitting at the gate. Sitting quietly and watching the street. He was a pup, maybe four months old. He looked like a German Shepherd with a big solid body, huge upright ears, a dark face and muzzle and light brown eyes. He didn’t notice me any more than anyone else on the street but from that first moment I could not forget about him. The next day I went up to the gate to meet him. He was happy for the attention. He was chained to the shed with a bare wire, sharp ends jutting out, attaching his collar to the chain. I felt concerned for him. I started to wonder about his owner or caretaker, was it the owner of the yard?

The studio had a cafeteria at the front of the building on the second floor, overlooking the yard opposite. It was a somewhat bleak foreground view but with quite a spectacular city scape view with the CN Tower in the background. It provided me with a great vantage and I began to spy on the operation across the street. It did not take me long to learn a crew of men arrived early in the morning, parked their vehicles on the street, prepared loads and took one or two trucks out all day, returning around six o’clock. The pup was acknowledged in a minimal way. It was fed in the evening. Open a can of dog food, push back the lid, throw it over to the dog. I could not see any sign that the dog was cruelly treated and he expressed no fear when I visited with him through the gate.

Now I was working those days. I was a production coordinator for one of the preproduction departments at the animation studio. I managed the storyboards for all projects going through the studio. I had to stay “on top” of a lot of revisions but I certainly had time to watch the yard, visit with the pup, and obsess over whether I should try to improve his lot. It was clear that he was set in place to become a guard dog, alone and largely neglected for his whole life. Yet it was equally clear that he was, by nature, neither fearful nor mean. I felt my concern for him grow to enormous proportions in my life. Should I call the Humane Society? I wondered if I should try to steal the dog? Should I try to make friends with the owner and take care of the dog?

It wasn’t long before I was trespassing. I found a way in, climbing over a rear gate one afternoon, and I approached the pup from the inside of the yard. He was happy to see me, clearly excited by the prospect of some company. I sat down on the gravel and dirt beside the shed and pet him. He drank it in. I pulled out an apple and offered him a few pieces of it. He gently explored the bite-sized pieces with his nose and ate them all up. Then he lay down right beside me, and laid his head in my lap and fell asleep. This experience for me was akin to epiphany, the experience of seeing God. Webster’s defines epiphany as “a sudden, intuitive perception of reality or the essential meaning of something, often initiated by some simple commonplace occurrence.” The feeling I had was joy and at the presence of this pure being of love who had just laid himself down on me with a perfect trust. It was a perception of bliss. Unexpected, but unmistakable. I sat there and let him rest on me for a while and then I had to go. I did not want to get caught. It was painful to separate from Shef. From that first time our being together was so palpably life-giving, as if we physically nourished one another. Back in the office, the implications were confusing and they became more urgent. I asked everyone what I should do about this wonderful pup: my parents, my sisters, my friends, my coworkers. Mostly people had a hard time understanding why it mattered so much, why I was so impassioned. I could not rest until I responded to the nugget of truth which I witnessed in this creature. It reminds me of the feeling St. Augustine expressed about finally finding rest in his connection to God. I had to respond to this dog. Should I call the Humane Society and subject him to the impersonal safety of an institutional cage? Should I try to make friends with the owner and take care of the dog with his permission?

To make a long and involved story short, that is what I did. I made friends with Manual de Costa, a gentle Portuguese man who owned the yard, the trucks and the dog and I asked if I could help to take care of the dog. I am not sure what he thought about me but he agreed and gave me a key to his yard. I visited Shef before work, on my breaks, after work and on weekends. I replaced the wire with proper hardware. I fed him his dinner and started taking him out for walks. I encouraged my dog-loving coworkers who watched all of this while they were drinking their coffees and eating their lunches, to take their turn in walking Shef, buying him treats, donating old towels, etc. I kept the leash in my desk and folks from all over the studio dropped by to pick it up and take Shef out. Shef became a social butterfly and I got to know many new people at the studio. When winter came on, my father (bless his sweet soul) made Shef a wonderful two chambered, insulated doghouse. On the coldest mornings, I would take Shef cooked rolled oats and hot consume each morning. After work, we would play in the yard and walk the whole neighborhood together until my feet would be so frozen that I would could stand the pain no more. But those were very happy times. Shef and I wandered everywhere, old warehouses, parking lots the meadow hills above the rail tracks and yards. We went into the deserted exposition grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition and from there across to the parklands along the shoreline of Lake Ontario. For hours every day, we explored. I felt safe with Shef. He was eighty-five pounds full grown with an alert, intense gaze. Parting each day was still terrible. Shef knew the routine and that I would be back the next morning, but he would always bark his protest until I was out of earshot. The seasons of a full year passed with this lifestyle.

Once, Shef de Costa escaped the yard by climbing up the peat moss mountain and jumping down the ten foot wall to an adjoining parking lot. I remember a frightening search around the warehouses and on the tracks, finding him, and then beginning a slow project of convincing Manual to neuter him to curb his wondering instincts. I was amazed when he agreed. It was the beginning of Manual understanding that Shef had become my dog and when he finally gave Shef to me, he came home to stay. And that is where I’ll end my Shef story for now. I wanted to tell it to you this morning as an example of how natural and unpredictable and radical it can be to follow our bliss or the core of our truth- ‘knowing our nugget.’ The truth for me was the fact that the little pup sitting at that gate was a stellar canine, good as gold. The truth was that I could get as involved with him as I was willing to, no holds barred. The truth was that I could take care of his needs from across the street and that my heart was as thirsty as his to drink in the simple joy of reliable, trusting companionship. There was nothing better, nothing more humanizing, nothing more soul-satisfying for me to do.

Now, to switch gears, let us identify and distinguish between core values of a religious kind versus those of a social or political kind. Davidson has much to say in this area as well. He figures many Unitarian Universalists, including myself, are pretty confused about the nature of their core values. So, let’s take a look at a value we likely all share, that all people be treated with kindness and respect regardless of the religious ideas they hold. In terms of the purposes and principles this value touches on the first principle that affirms the worth and dignity of all persons, and the second principle that upholds equity and compassion in human relations, the third principle of the practice of acceptance of one another, and the fourth principle which upholds individual, free and responsible searches for truth and meaning. Now, how can we tell whether that is a religious value or a social or political value?

Let’s take a clearly religious idea to see if we can clarify the nature of our core values. Let’s say I believed the purpose of my life at the time I met Shef was to devote myself to this dog. If I was to meet you after church and reveal this to you, chances are you would not share this same orientation, you wouldn’t all of a sudden decide to follow me, but you, as a good UU, are still willing to worship with me because you want to have the freedom to hold unconventional beliefs too. We both value this freedom, maybe even more than we value the religious ideas about purpose and meaning themselves. We value the basic assumptions: that you and I can both handle experiments in thinking; that we can be trusted with trying on different worldviews; that we will not lose our grip on life; that we will not be damned to hell through our inquiry; that we will not hurt others with our thinking, but indeed, hope to make a positive difference in the world with the doing which flows out of our thinking.

The UU principles can be understood as a kind of infrastructure of affirmations to ensure that we have support from our communities regardless of the conventionality of our religious values. We make a commitment to equity and acceptance in relations with each other to pave the way for personal freedom to wonder about life. I take a path of communion with a befriended guard dog, and that is the core truth I bring to the table. You witness another religious idea that you do not necessarily buy, but you stay committed to equity and acceptance. That does start to sound like social and political values social in the concern for the well-being of all, political in the implied sharing of power by all But why? Is it because we believe the individual search for truth and meaning will result in people finding their core religious value and living it? How did Davidson say it last week, What do we serve with our time? What Gods or what high ideals do we dedicate ourselves to? What truths about life do our lives amplify? Life is good, healing is possible, prayer is transformative, love is surprising and expanding. My adventures with Shef revealed other nuggets of truth too, that people are trustworthy, that we can do a lot with small efforts, that love never faileth. Liberal religious values are served by our commitments to socially and politically empowering relationships but we also need wisdom to recognize our core religious values. We all need a North star to orient us and help us to navigate through life according to the most fundamental truths of our being. This has been the role of religion through the ages, the function of religious values.

Now I want to return to my story about Shef and take a look at the guidance I received at the time from a source of human wisdom, the I Ching. The I Ching or The Book of Changes is one of the most ancient texts of China. It is a complex book which likely emerged out of centuries of divination and oral tradition, with legendary authors, and layers of commentary revealing Taoist, Buddhist and Confucian worldviews. It was said that Confucius himself wore out three copies of the I Ching in his lifetime. I was introduced to the I Ching by a coworker friend, an older woman who was a free thinker, a martial artist, a dramatic person who understood life as a stage. She gave me The I Ching Workbook by R.L. Wing and a set of color-coded beads with which she taught me to use the book as an oracle. I did not ask her for these things, it was not for a birthday present. It was a case of pure grace. She herself used the I Ching for guidance through confusion and difficulty and I learned from her how to consult the text and how to frame questions in making an inquiry. I began to use the I Ching in the spring of 1987, not long before I started to work at the animation studio. It was that following October that I asked the question: What is the best approach to take to Shef? How much of my time do I give to him?

Now by that time I had already decided to get involved in his life, but I felt I needed guidance in determining how he should rate in terms of my priorities. Without going into a technical explanation of how answers are found in the I Ching, I want to share the answers I got to this particular question. The first was the answer the oracle gave was concerning the idea of Subordination. Subordination is a necessary condition for many people in many situations, whenever they are subject to conditions over which they have no control. Often the roles we play in family and organizations require our subordination. The time of subordination is one where it is wise for us to be content with fulfilling our role. Our capacities to plan and execute our plans must wait until circumstances change. The guidance I took from this was to continue with the role I had taken on as Shef’s caretaker within the limitations of his continuing role as guard dog for the stone mason, Manual de Costa.

The second answer the oracle gave concerned Great Power. When the oracle offers a second idea to consider, it is understood as an indicator of future developments on the subject of inquiry, so the notion of Great Power following subordination held promise. Great power is understood to be a true test of a person’s character. Wisdom dictates that the possession of great power can lead to progress and enlightenment or to chaos and evil, therefore it is important to have honorable motives and demonstrate correct behavior at such a time, always considering the demands of propriety and goodness. The promise of great power is that by bringing progress to others, you strengthen your own sense of well-being. The guidance I took here was to proceed naturally in the relationship with Shef with care and to trust the process of our growing friendship, and accepting whatever flowed from it with discernment.

As you can see, the nature of the answers and the guidance given by the I Ching is open to interpretation and is very much oriented to contemplation. Over the years, I have found that very helpful. When I get to a place which feels stuck or when I have to face a situation that confuses me, I have found consulting the I Ching, the process of retreat and ritual required, the reflection required to articulate the central question and the contemplation required to ingest the answers, to be a very comforting and reliable source of guidance. And that may be because it is in the tough personal work of framing our own questions that we have the chance to recognize our own deepest yearnings and highest calling.

More than any other ancient text, the I Ching has provided for me a sage perspective to the small troubles of my life. Like the wisdom traditions of all the world’s religions, it offers the observations and intelligence of countless generations. But the I Ching expresses some far eastern cosmologies which I want to highlight for you because they have provided for me useful variations on the western religious worldview which has a separate creator god showing up to make and control everything. There is still a divine realm, the realm of the invisible to which humanity is connected. There is the earthly realm as well where we dwell. Humanity itself becomes the connection between the two realms, complete with all the impulses and instincts of our nature, as well as the limitations and fates of our individual lives. Cosmic Order is a real possibility in this worldview. It is a matter of the harmony possible when the development of the individual matches the needs of the cosmos, or the condition of heaven and earth immediately around him or her. The Source of such cosmic order is envisioned as a well: deep, inexhaustible, a source of nourishment. The town can be moved but not the well. No, it must be returned to. The source contains and is born of the collective truth of humanity. It receives from the individual’s experience and gives to the individual’s nature. Penetrating the source of human meaning can be seen as the major theme of Chinese philosophy just as loving God can be seen as the major theme of the biblical religions. (I Ching)

Just listen to the bittersweet sentiment of a Rabbi who knows his nugget:

While I was young, when I burned with the love of God, I thought I would convert the whole world to God. But soon I realized that it would be more than enough to convert the people who lived in my town, and I made an effort for a long time, but was not successful. Then I realized that my agenda was still too ambitious, and I focused on the people in my household. But I could not convert them either. Finally, I realized: I must work on myself, if I’m really going to have something to offer God. But I didn’t even accomplish this. (From The Sun Magazine, Sunbeams, pg 48, March 2005)

In this one sad cry we hear the core religious value of love of God and the core religious value of always cleaving to the truth of the self in relation to God or to the cosmos. And religions are expressions and servants of the human quest to reach out beyond the horizon of self and self interest, no matter how badly they fail or we do. Knowing your nugget might not be easy or straightforward or even possible at times, but if we can become acquainted with the truths which connect us, as quirky individuals, to the whole enterprise of living and dying, and follow them amidst the whole mixed bag of life, and if we can keep connected, always returning to the truth, we will find guidance as we negotiate the freedoms, roles and responsibilities life presents us all with.

What is it you have to offer to God, or how is it you might serve your highest ideals, or the truth of your own authentic being? What are the epiphanies of your life? Are you ready to know your nugget? I will end with the popular mystic poet of Islam, Rumi’s advice when it comes to recognizing the religious values at the core of our being. He said:

Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.

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Victoria Shepherd Rao

Marsha Sharp, Worship Associate

17 April 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

Excerpted from Manitongquat’s Prayer,

 in Honoring Earth: A Seventh Principle Project Worship Resource

O Humankind, are we not all brothers and sisters,

 are we not the grandchildren of the Great Mystery?

 Do we not all want to love and be loved,

 to work and to play,

 to sing and dance together?

But we live with fear.

Fear that is hate, fear that is mistrust, envy, greed, vanity.

Fear that is ambition, competition, aggression.

Fear that is loneliness, anger, bitterness, cruelty

And yet, fear is only twisted love,

love turned back on itself,

love that was denied, love that was rejected.

And love.

Love is life – creation, seed and leaf

and blossom and fruit and seed.

Love is growth and search and reach and touch and dance.

Love is life believing in itself.

And life life is the Sacred Mystery singing to itself,

dancing to its drum, telling stories, improvising, playing.

And we are all that Spirit,

Our stories tell but one cosmic story that we are love indeed.

That perfect love in me seeks the love in you.

And if our eyes could ever meet without fear

we would recognize each other and rejoice,

for love is life believing in itself. 

So may it be.

Manitongquat is a medicine man of the Wampanoag Nation. He delivered this prayer at the First Rainbow Gathering in 1971.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH: “Wealth”

Marsha Sharp

What is the first thing that pops into your head when I say the word WEALTH? I’ll bet it had something to do with money. In our U.S. culture, when one speaks of wealth, most of us are trained to think in terms of monetary values.

The “wealth” I’m speaking about today includes not only money, but also health (both physical and mental), natural resources, friends, family-our relatively high quality of life.

As a nation, we crab about the cost of gasoline, but look at how many cars are on the road and how many cars are parked in one driveway. We grouse about the cost of health care and the lack of health care. We support one colossal weight-loss industry and yet we are probably the fattest nation in the world. Even many of our poor, when compared to the world’s poor, are wealthy.

I recently finished a fascinating book by Jared Diamond called “Collapse.” In it he relates how ancient and modern societies succeeded or collapsed. What happens when a society strips its natural resources such as forests and minerals? What happens when populations explode beyond what the society is able to support? What happens when non-native species are introduced into an eco-system that has developed over millennia? How do people survive who are so wedded to their native cultures and customs that they are unable to adopt survival skills in order to survive in a foreign land? In all of these situations, cultures and populations live on the brink and then finally fail. What all of these situations have in common are the issues of survival and quality of life.

Every day we interact with people who grew up in other cultures and are striving to have better lives than the ones they left behind. The world is truly global. All those Third World nations now have televisions and the internet and are discovering what they’ve been missing out on all these years. The world’s resources can only go so far. In order for everyone-and I mean EVERYONE-to have the standards we have, we will have to lower our First World standards in order to even begin leveling the playing field. Are we willing to do that? What are we willing to give up in order to have equity in the world? To find equity just in our own country?

I will be the first to admit I love my creature comforts. I like having a car, a warm, secure home to live in, indoor toilets, running hot and cold water IN my house, plenty of food, nice clothes, a job. What am I willing to give up? I never lived as my grandparents did as children-growing everything they ate, living hand to mouth, no retirement, outdoor plumbing, well water, making everything they wore. They, and my parents, strived to make things better for their progeny and they succeeded. Our generation strives to do the same.

But in light of all the desires and needs of the rest of the world, what will happen? Will the next two generations after ours strive to lower the standards for their offspring in order for the entire world to survive? Have we already begun to train our children not to expect more? Or have they, like us, become well-trained to indeed expect more?

And what is that “more?” Is it just monetary? I hope it includes taking care of oneself to reduce preventable health problemsincludes healthy relationships with family and friendsincludes using our resources prudentlyincludes limiting our populations. I believe it makes a difference what that “more” is.

Now, what is the first thing that pops into your head when I say the word WEALTH?

SERMON

Happy Earth Day and congratulations on your Green Sanctuary certification. Cathy has told you about the Green Sanctuary Program of the Seventh Principle Project, an affiliated organization of the UUA dedicated to helping UUs walk the talk of the association’s seventh principle, the one that calls on us to “respect the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”

There is something about the phrasing of this principle that seems belabored. I like the way it is expressed for the kids better: “We care for Earth’s lifeboat.” Now that arouses some vivid imagery. Like we are all in a giant Noah’s Ark, drifting around the vast universe together. It presses the point that we are all completely dependent on our little blue green vessel. That is the truth of our existential nature that we dwell on the surface of this amazing biosphere. It is strong and steady with an amazing capacity to recycle natural materials and renew itself. The variety of life forms and the adaptability of them to their environments it is not just Darwin’s evolutionary idea, it is a profound source of human joy and awe.

One of my favorite bible lines is from the gospel of Mark. Jesus is teaching about the realm of God, or the source of all creation. He said, “The [realm] of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The Earth produces of itself.” (Mk.4:26-28 NRSV). I love the admission of the limit to human understanding. We do not know how life comes into being (though fantastic progress has been made in understanding the mechanics of life with DNA and genome research) and we sure do not know why. When we ask these basic questions, we have to confront the limits of our human condition and the mystery which is at the center of earthly existence. Whether you believe in Creation or evolution, it is impossible to avoid mystery. In the face of the unknowable we more easily turn to a deep sense of gratitude for life, thankful for the gift of it, conscious of the grace by which we live and are sustained in this world.

Yet we hear it in the news daily, it is all bad news when it comes to the environment. Pollution is killing the life in the oceans. Scientists don’t expect the coral reefs to last past 2050. The pollution from gas emissions is warming the atmosphere and the planet, melting the glaciers, melting the polar ice caps, causing violent weather changes, including hurricanes and flooding. Wilderness is sacrificed to development. Species are losing their habitats, becoming extinct and upsetting whole ecosystems. The human population is pressing the supportive capacity of Earth. The nuclear waste from reactors is vulnerable to terrorist attacks and could poison whole regions rendering them uninhabitable for tens of thousands of years. Global free enterprise and corporate interests are given access to national markets and the rights to profitable business enterprise trump the human rights of workers to a basic living wage, growing the gap between the richest and the poorest in every nation and part of the world. Scientists can measure how and make projections on the rates at which humanity is destroying this biosphere. They have been calling out warnings for decades. Environmentalists have joined in the chorus to remind us that there is nowhere else to go. We know it even if we often deny it or ignore it.

There is no way to bail out and if we want to live, we are stuck here, together, on Earth. The nineteenth century’s most influential theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher, had a definition of religion which aptly develops the lifeboat imagery, he said religion was about having “the consciousness of being absolutely dependent.” It is the kind of uncomfortable consciousness which would come quite easily if you were indeed cast adrift in a lifeboat on the ocean, your ship sunk, the horizon wide, no land in sight. That’d be kind of a sickening feeling, wouldn’t it? You can see yourself: trying not to panic, trying to think clearly, taking stock of your situation, the available resources, utilizing them rationally, making plans and taking steps to increase your chances of survival, and doing it all because of an indwelling hope that you will be rescued, you will be saved.

It is much more difficult to imagine the Earth as a lifeboat but this morning I want to try to do that so that we can get to a more religious perspective of our home planet, a religious perspective which includes not only a sickening, panicky feeling of total dependence on what might well be a sinking ship, but one that also includes clear thinking, and taking stock, utilizing resources rationally and making plans to take steps which will increase our chances of survival, and all because of an indwelling hope in a future for our children on Earth. We must claim this hope and we must express it in the way we live whether we are optimistic about environmental issues or not.

So happy Earth Day?! It’s sort of like turning the birthdays of middle age. Happy 43rd Birthday! Happy 57th! Happy 66th!! Well, yes it is a birthday, but happy? Earth Day is another one of those more recent holidays you may not know too much about. It always falls on April 22nd. It was founded by a US senator, Gaylord Nelson, in 1970 after almost a decade of effort. He was also a governor of Wisconsin and he wanted to somehow bring the issues of pollution and environmental degradation into the field of national politics. He envisioned a special annual day dedicated to education and agitation for environmental causes in the style of the teach-ins which occurred on college campuses to protest the Vietnam War. The first Earth Day involved some 20 million Americans across the nation. He had definitely hit onto something that mattered to people. Twenty years later some 200 million people were observing Earth Day in 141 countries and it is the most celebrated environmental event world-wide. And as our world becomes more endangered more people join in. In 2004, 500 million in 180 countries.

The awareness raising effect of Earth Day led to important legislation being passed in the US including the Environmental Protection Act, The Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act. It helped established the idea that we need as a nation to protect the resources upon which we depend. Now the problems of environmental damage clearly transcend national borders and the whole world needs to act together to deal effectively with our lifeboat.

The First UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro on climate change and species extinction called together heads of state to forge this global approach. The Kyoto Protocol to limit CO2 emissions is an example of such international cooperation for the sake of the planet’s health. Rejecting the Kyoto Protocol was one of the first signs of President Bush’s unwillingness to put the well being of the biosphere ahead of the interests of the Unites Sates. He said limiting emissions would limit the economic growth of the nation and that was that.

But is economic growth so vitally important? Let’s pick up on a few of Marsha’s points.

First, what is the true nature of wealth? A lot of people are asking themselves this question, in fact it is a whole societal subculture asking. In Europe, in North America, in the UK, people all over the industrialized West in fact, are taking this question to heart, What truly enriches my life? The answer is simplicity, or the Simplicity Movement. This movement is made up of people like you and me who have disposable income which we are free to spend. Simplifying is a matter of consciously questioning our assumptions about how to spend that income. Do we want more and more stuff? Do we derive satisfaction from our consumption? What is enough? What is the personal cost of working a sixty hour week? Do we need to work so long and hard for the endless gadgets, toys, fashions, and trends? The objective of simplifying is not to just stop consuming but to consume only that which brings you enjoyment and satisfaction. For many people it is taking a step off the bandwagon where the basic assumption that more is better – more income, more property, more stuff. The people who choose to simplify have decided that more time to enjoy with family and friends leads to much greater satisfaction than more income.

Enough is not a concept we relate to all that well but in a world of limited resources, it is an idea whose time has come. North American culture is much more attuned to the notion that enough is not really enough. We don’t want just enough, we want more than enough. Didn’t Jackie Kennedy say you could never be rich enough or thin enough?

I started to notice how the understanding of enough worked in India. We had some Muslims neighbors and when they were over and I was offering them refreshments, I noticed that when I would offer them more, they would not say, “No thank you,” they would say, “Enough.” I thought about this and discovered the subtle difference of perspective behind the manners. There is something beyond a sense of individual entitlement in the determination of enough, there is a consideration of the possibility of sharing with others. If this is enough for me, then I am satisfied. If there is more to be had, let it be for the satisfaction of others.

I think we need to learn what may be some new and strange skills. We need to become aware of the levels and degrees of our own satisfaction, to identify what in our lives truly has the capacity to satisfy us, and how to measure our satisfaction, to get an idea of what is enough. Think of eating dinner. How many of us keep our awareness on when exactly we feel our appetite is satisfied and how many of us allow that sufficiency to end our meal? Now you may be thinking, “If I have paid for this buffet, I am going to eat all I can!” But we all know how that can work out. We eat too much, get uncomfortably stuffed, have to take a nap. Years of this kind of overeating lead to weight problems and it is not good for our health. Now, if we eat too much at a buffet it does not deprive anyone else from eating we think. But as a principle applied to all aspects of our lifestyle, consider: recognizing sufficiency can guide us to some sense of our fair share.

Marsha talked about how her grandparents provided for themselves by growing their own food and sewing their own clothes. Not only did they meet their basic needs but in the process of doing so they became wealthy in their sense of their own capacity to produce and rely on themselves. They exercised their ingenuity and developed their skills. They depended on the land and each other. That seems to describe a lifestyle much richer in the potential for finding satisfaction and relationship than the familiar pattern of commuting, working at a job for eight or ten hours a day, going shopping and keeping up with the bills. Granted, our lifestyle is less physically demanding and more comfortable but is ease a true standard by which to judge the quality of life? I think our lives are enriched with realness in relationships and in personal challenges.

William Ellery Channing wrote these words which speak well to these issues of what adds to our quality of life:

To live content with small means,

 to seek elegance rather than luxury,

 and refinement rather than fashion,

 to be worthy, not respectable, wealthy, not rich,

 to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly,

 to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart,

 to bear all cheerfully,

 do all bravely,

 await occasions,

 hurry never-

 in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,

 grow up through the common.

 This is to be my symphony.

This brings us back to the common. Our world, Earth. A beautiful, finite biosphere. Marsha wondered what we would be willing to give up in order to have equity in the world, so that everyone could hope to have their basic needs met. She asked what we in the First World [sic] would be willing to give up? The US uses 25% of the world’s fuel and is the least willing, as a nation, to give up economic growth for the sake of Earth’s continued health. “Donald Rumsfeld said that his mission in the War Against Terror was to persuade the world that Americans must be allowed to continue their way of life.” (Arundhati Roy, “Come September” in The Impossible Will Take a Little While, pg. 239) But will the world be persuaded to live with greater hardship and scarcity for this land of plenty? I guess that’s one of the reason why this nation is spending more than twenty percent of its wealth on its military might. But might does not make right. And we know that it is immoral to continue in the lifestyle of overconsumption and waste. There is a world beyond America.

Let us be very proud of the Green Sanctuary certification of this church. May this be the beginning of a continuing trend among us to seek out ways of life that are both enriching and sustainable. It is true that the environmentalism of our day is apocalyptic and there is not too much in the news to feed our optimism that things will get much better very soon however, please remember that there is a difference between optimism and hope. “Hope is an active, determined conviction that is rooted in the spirit, chosen by the heart, and guided by the mind.” Journalist Mark Hertsgaard reminds us that: “Hope has triumphed numerous times in recent human history – think of the falls of apartheid and the Soviet Empire – and it is indispensable to humanity’s chances of creating an environmentally sustainable future.” (“The Green Dream” in The Impossible Will Take a Little While, edited by Paul Rogat Loeb, pg. 254)

So, claim hope. Try to develop your sense of what really gives you satisfaction in your lifestyle and try to discern how much is enough for you. Go on with your recycling and adopt a new green practice at regular intervals. If you do not recycle and want to begin to reduce the imprint of your lifestyle on the environment, check out the Earth’s Ten Commandments printed on the insert of your order of services to get some ideas. Support the work for a sustainable future and teach your children to worship our mother, Earth. She is beautiful, precious, fragile, mysterious in her ways, in her origin and in her destiny.

Amen.

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© Victoria Shepherd Rao

Clare Tilson, Worship Assistant

06 March 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER:

From the Qur’an, Umm Salamah’s verses (Surah 33:35):

“Lo! Men who surrender unto God, and women who surrender,

and men who believe and women who believe,

and men who obey and women who obey,

and men who speak the truth and women who speak the truth,

and men who persevere, and women who persevere,

and men who are humble and women who are humble,

and men who give alms, and women who give alms,

and men who fast and women who fast,

and men who guard their modesty,

and women who guard their modesty,

and men who remember God much and women who remember –

God has prepared for them forgiveness and a vast reward.”

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

Women’s Work

Clare Tilson

I was watching TV with my grandfather while my grandmother scooted around cleaning. I asked him if he ever helped her and he said that THAT was Women’s Work. He didn’t just mean that being traditional was his way of life. He meant to convey that he was superior to that sort of work. Yow. This was the first time I’d heard the term, Women’s Work. Since then, the term has been redefined for me.

As a graduate student of Animal Behavior, a professor asked if I thought the traditional parenting roles taken on by men and women were influenced more by nature or nurture. I gave an answer that Gloria Steinum would have been pleased with. In short, such behavior was mostly learned. But he politely disagreed; that there must be quite a bit of hard wiring to such a behavioral pattern since it was so prevalent among animals. I chaffed at the way his logic bound me to a certain life. Ha! Now, I am immersed in the reproductive part of life where men’s and women’s roles tend to polarize. I have to say that this women’s work feels pretty hard-wired, and is the most perfect fit for who I am of anything I have ever done. And, contrary to what my grandfather thinks, life as a stay-at-home mommy is far from inferior, menial work. In fact, it is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I bet he couldn’t do it.

But, there were other times in my life where I have done women’s work or witnessed the benefit of women’s work and wisdom.

Davidson sent me a New York Times article about cutting-edge scientists examining personality in animals. He sent the article to me because I had once told him about the personalities I had come to admire in my study animals when I was a master’s student. My study animals weren’t cats or dogs or something charismatic like that. They were moths. Big moths that I had to hold and hand-feed every day. Some were more fearful, some were gutsy fighters, and some were quicker at learning the routine. I still remember one moth in particular. She had long outlived her experimental usefulness, but I continued to feed her every day because I had grown fond of her. She was exceptionally sweet-tempered. I remember telling my advisor about my observations. He was incredulous and condescending. Whatever. I was right. Now, studying animal personalities is cutting edge.

And there are plenty of other female scientists influencing science. I remember hearing a seminar on befuddling bird hierarchies. They couldn’t figure out why one male was top bird one week and then dirt the next. Until, that is, a female researcher looked at the same data and said, the hierarchy you seek is among the female birds. Male status was a function of which female the male associated with.

So science is evolving under the influence of women’s work and wisdom.

But what about business and politics and religion? I think women have even more room to do their work in these fields. And when they do, it’ll be amazing. Won’t you just love it when business is less about greed and more about making sure that one’s success is not at the expense of our children’s world? Won’t you just love it when there are no more wars, and the most aggressive thing that happens among nations is an occasional catty remark shot across the desks at the United Nations? And won’t you just love it when God is no longer used as a tool to justify violence and intolerance, and instead used to exemplify the nurturing, accepting, forgiving way we all could live?

SERMON: Women’s Wisdom, Women’s Work

International Women’s Day – March 8th

Today I want to tip the hat to International Women’s Day, and celebrate women’s work and the contribution women’s work makes to our quality of life. Now Women’s Day is technically March 8th, this Tuesday, although for the purposes of the marches, protests, conferences, forums, art shows, performances and gatherings which typically mark the day all over the world, any convenient day in the beginning of March is acceptable. Typical of women’s ways, the actual day is less important than the fact that it suits the participants.

Let me ask some questions of you now. I have been surprised at how many folks are not familiar with the International Women’s Day. How many of you, and I am asking both men and women, have celebrated, at some time in your life, International Women’s Day? How many have never heard of it?

For myself, I was always drawn into its observance by my first cousin, who was more like my sister as I was growing up. She would always march in the Women’s Day parade in Toronto and then get together with all her close women friends for a shared meal. It was, as far as I could tell, not as much about fighting the good fight for gender equity and woman’s equality as a simple celebration of our own womanhood. Joining together to support one another as women.

Now I have spoken to the young adult group here, and not one of them had ever heard of Women’s Day. I have also spoken to two women from among the congregation. One has had a history of gathering together with an international group of women to celebrate the day and the other had spent a recent women’s day dressed in white and dancing for peace. She hadn’t the heart to celebrate this year since the invasion of Iraq.

And what about you? Work is certainly not something only women do, nor is wisdom limited to the female half of our species. But the tip of the hat is special consideration I want to give this morning to the work which we typically associate with women, no matter the age they lived in or the culture they were born into – and that can be described as the work of homemaking, the provision of food in the form of meals in the homes, and caring for others in the home, whether children, adults or elderly family members. This is not only women’s work. It must be acknowledged that men are also responsible for the provision of this work, at least paying for these services, if not executing or managing them.

But let’s see: Who here, personally, takes care of a home? Who has the responsibility of providing meals in the home? Who is actively engaged in providing care to children, or dependent adults? Is it mostly women’s hands that are raised? One more question: How many of you who have raised your hands to any of these last questions, also work outside the home?

I want observe Women’s Day because it gives us the opportunity to celebrate the worth of the work of women to the quality of life we experience and share.

International Women’s Day got its start in this country in 1908 with a march of Socialist women in NYC. They were demonstrating to call for the vote and the political and economic rights of women. Two years later at a meeting of The Socialist International in Copenhagen, the international nature of Women’s Day was established to honor the move towards women’s rights including the right to vote. In 1911 more than a million women demonstrated in European nations, not only for voting rights but for the right to hold public office, the right to vocational training, the right to work outside the home, and the right to be treated as equal workers. Now the Industrial Revolution was a fact of life, so was child labor and these demonstrations underlined the need for all workers outside the home to be treated fairly. In the same year, shortly after Women’s Day, there was a terrible fire in NYC in which 140 working girls, mostly Italian and Jewish immigrants, were killed while on the job. The timing of this tragedy so soon after the IWD highlighting of the need for including women workers’ interests, had significant impact on labor legislation in the US.

Since those early days, IWD has become a day of global celebration for the economic, political, and social achievements of women, and the societies they live in. It is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by women and men who have played extraordinary roles in the history of women’s rights. And in keeping with this, today I want to tell you the stories of two women who have uniquely expressed the synthesis between traditional women’s work, the home-making and the procurement of food, and the hard-won power which comes from breaking free of traditional women’s work enough to become educated, articulate, free-thinking problem-solvers and leaders. I offer these portraits to you as examples of the incorporation of women’s wisdom into domains far beyond the reaches of the household, into the affairs of whole peoples and states.

First, the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, Wangari Maathai. I am sure most of you have read about her. I had, though I hadn’t bothered to pronounce her name until now, I realize. She is a Kenyan woman, born in 1940. Educated. Went to school in the West. Became a Zoology professor. She married and had three children. She divorced her husband in the 1980’s. Her former husband described her as “too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn and too hard to control.” Right on. Seems to me that’s just what my cousin and I celebrated on women’s day. It is interesting to note that no one would ever think of describing men as too any of these things. We admire men who are too educated, strong, successful, stubborn and hard to control.

Wangari Maathai started the work that was to lead her to Nobel recognition in the 1980’s when she became concerned with the then government of Kenya’s policy of deforestation and the negative impact it had on the soil, and the lives of women. The traditional work of women in Kenya was and is to make the meals, and keep the fires burning under the pots. But because of the deforestation, women were having to hunt farther and farther afield for their firewood. This took them away from home for longer and longer periods, leaving children and homes unattended. So Wangari Maathai not only protested the government policies, she also came up with the idea of planting trees. If the Kenyan women could plant trees close to home in their villages, they could start cultivating and harvesting their own firewood. Thus in control of their fuel, such women would not remain powerless even with autocratic husbands and village chiefs, even with ruthless presidents.

Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement. She organized women in villages to plant trees. It was found that to plant trees in groups of one thousand not only produced sustainable wood for cooking, it effectively combated soil erosion, as well as enabling women to work close to home, where their responsibilities lay. Now there are six thousand tree nurseries in Kenya, and it is estimated that the village women in the Green Belt Movement have planted between twenty to thirty million trees in Kenya. The treeplanting confronts big problems: it has slowed the desertification of the land, it preserves the habitats for wildlife, it provides sources for fuel and building materials, and with fruit trees, food for future generations. It shifts power from policy makers and enforcers to the women who want to take care of their homes and families.

Wangari Maathai, like many leaders, made huge personal sacrifices for the work she has undertaken. She was jailed for fighting the single-party state and protesting for its end. When Kenya allowed new political parties to form, she established the Mazingira Green Party. She has been beaten for her efforts. Yet when Kenyans finally did get a choice for their government in 2002, she was elected with a huge majority for her region’s seat in government and there was dancing in the street when she was appointed Deputy Minister of the Environment.

Her insight led her beyond the concerns of the traditional work of women to the larger and more complex issues of food security in the era of global free trade, with its pressures to export food as commodity and as dept repayment to the international money lending interests. Such concerns are national in scope but they reach into every home and village. And it is there that the wisdom of women leads them clearly in the priority of their work. The tee-shirts of the Kenyan Green Belt ladies reads, “as for me, I have made a choice” and that choice, once made available through the work of this leader, is about taking control of their living environment, cultivating, planting and managing trees, re-establishing kitchen gardens and indigenous crops using organic methods, wherever and whenever they can. Such are the choices of an empowered Kenyan woman, an empowered citizen.

Wangari Maathai likes to retell the old seven-day Creation story this way: If God created humans on the Tuesday instead of on the Saturday of the first week, the humans would have been dead on Wednesday because there were not all the essential survival elements in place yet. So, just to explain that abit, on the third day of creation there would have been light and sky already made and that’s it not yet the land, not yet the seas, not yet the plants or animals, none of the things without which we could not live on this Earth. Human life needs the land, the water and the plant life to survive.

The Nobel Peace prize was awarded to Wangari Maathai for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace. With this award the Nobel Prize committee reveals a new understanding of how peace is constituted. Instead of trying to end armed conflict, they are acknowledging that peace on Earth now depends as much on our ability to secure our living environment so it may, in turn, sustain our lives. Wangari Maathai has a neat way to say the same thing of her work, she says, “We plant the seeds of peace.” We all do. She did it by organizing ordinary women into undertaking homemaking on a new, broader scale, not confined to the hut or house, but with a view to the common good. We cannot all be Nobel Peace prize winners but we can appreciate in her leadership how her non-traditional education and public service is intimately connected to the more traditional forms of women’s work and wisdom. Too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn and too hard to control for what?

Another woman I want to tell you about is Vandana Shiva. She is an Indian woman, born in 1953, in the Himalayas of North India, in a fertile valley where she grew up on the family farm. Her father was a forest conservator and her mother was a former government official. Vandana Shiva remembers that her mother taught her that there was nothing beyond the reach of a woman, and that education by itself did not make you a better human being. Vandana Shiva always loved and yearned to know more about nature. Albert Einstein was her hero and so she studied physics “to figure out a little better the patterns of nature’s laws.” Like Wangari, Vandana was privileged with an extended education. Also with studies in the West. I was surprised to learn that she studied at the University of Western Ontario, in Canada. In her work as a nuclear physicist she learned first hand about the practice of what she calls “one-eyed science”, science that looks only at the benefits or profitability of its discoveries and not at the costs.

In the early eighties, Vandana became involved with a grass roots Indian women’s initiative which succeeded in stopping commercial logging in the Himalayas. Then the Indian government asked her to do an impact analysis on mining in her home valley and her work became instrumental in shutting down mines and other polluting industries there. So, in 1982, she founded an organization in her hometown with the goal of working with local communities and social movements to promote sustainable agriculture and combat genetic engineering, water privatization, and factory farming. The independent Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology would work with such communities and movements by providing the scientific research and technological understandings needed to mount their challenges effectively in business meeting rooms and legal chambers, the places where men have traditionally made the decisions.

In 1991 she stated Navdanya, a national movement in India to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially seeds. In the late nineties she initiated the international movement Diverse Women for Diversity which acknowledges the role of Third World women as seed conservators and as experts in the use of medicinal plants.

Vanadana Shiva has written many books on agri-business, the dangers of industrialized farming, and biotechnology. She is a leader in the social-justice and ecology movements. Here is a quote:

“I care deeply for people’s right to food. I devote my life to ensuring that we have sustainable agriculture . and the efficient use of scarce resources. Biotech, or genetically modified seeds, fails the sustainability test because the intellectual-property-rights system perversely treats plants and seeds as corporate inventions. What is supposed to be the farmers’ highest duty – saving seed and exchanging it with neighbors – has become a crime If enough people practice alternative forms of political organizing and present a different political message, it can add up to a sound loud enough for the deaf to hear. And the more we start taking power into our own hands, the more we shrink the power of lifeless capital to destroy life on the planet.”

Shiva still lives on her family’s farm. She is not living in a traditional family structure. She lives with her brother, sister and her grown son. When she is not flying all over the world giving lectures, she is there farming and writing. Traditional women’s work dedicated to the procurement of food but supplemented with the non-traditional work of thinking, researching, writing and problem solving.

If it is women’s wisdom and women’s work to focus on the provision of food, on the preservation of forests and soils, and the integrity of the living environment around us to sustain our lives and homes, and if it is men’s wisdom and men’s work to consider the science, and the possible use of technology, to make the decisions, and to make the rules, then Vandana Shiva’s work is an example of the way women can add the world of women’s wisdom to the playing field of “a man’s world.”

Now, you may have a garden, and I know that there are some members here who take gardening and growing food very seriously, but we are not concerned for the most part with seed conserving or planting or harvesting. We shop at HEB, or at Wheatsville coop. Our lives as women are as far removed from the productive soil as the men folk among us. Women’s work here is about getting up and getting everybody else up, dressing, feeding, dropping off, working our jobs ’til we pick up at daycare. Come home, maybe shop on the way, get dinner, deal with the homework situation, limit TV, manage the bath and bedtimes, clean up dinner, tidy up house, do laundry, make calls, attend to necessary arrangements, get ready for the next day, get to bed. It is busy and sometimes it is crazy busy. But we have managed to get ourselves here this morning for rest and worship and a meaningful message. So, what has the work of these two foreign, accomplished ladies have to say to us?

Here are my answers: Our world is made better by the work you do as homemaker and meal-maker. The quality of the lives of your partners, children, parents, is enhanced every time you knock yourself out to make things nice: good food, clean clothes, paid bills. Thank you for doing this women’s work, whether you are a woman or a man. I wanted to highlight these two ladies to inspire you.

Their work is grounded in the concerns of all women and men, the common needs we all have for food security, and the shelter of a livable environment, whether that means accessible firewood, or a functionally de-cluttered car interior.

Their work also exemplifies the wisdom of women, to work with what you’ve got, to understand the limits you labor under, to work with others building relationships which are as sustaining as food and land, and more precious in the end. In Kenya and in India women with much less social mobility and much less economic power than any of us can imagine are working together to protect and restore their lands. They are not all landowners but they know they are stakeholders just as we do. They know also that they cannot and will not turn away from their work as women, wives, mothers, daughters. And in that can anyone, can any woman be too educated, too strong, too successful, stubborn or hard to control? I don’t think so. These are good traits for the ladies, and too much of a good thing is a better thing. Much better.

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Victoria Shepherd Rao

Hillary Hutchinson

23 January 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER:

Psalm 139 (NRSV) Excerpts: verses 1-10, 13-14, 19-24

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from far away.

You search out my path and my lying down,

and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.

You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol [Hell], you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.

For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.

O that you would kill the wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me-

those who speak of you maliciously, and lift themselves up against you for evil!

Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who ride up against you?

I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.

See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Amen.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

Hillary Hutchinson

Good morning. My name is Hillary Hutchinson, and most of you know that I have been a member of this church for a very long time. June 1987 to be exact. Some of you may also know that I was raised along with my three siblings as a Unitarian. This does not mean that I find being a member of a liberal religious denomination easy, or the practice of faith automatic. I think in some ways, it has actually made it more difficult for me, as I have struggled to be a conscious human being – conscious of both my own limits and abilities, conscious of my impact on those around me, and even conscious of how my life, and my own life style choices, can impact those on the other side of the world that I do not know personally.

Today’s sermon topic is “Beyond Tolerance.” Tolerance is a word I feel is used entirely too loosely by Unitarian Universalists. What does it really mean to “tolerate” something? Are we pronouncing our acceptance of differing views? Or are we merely “putting up” with difficult, irritating, unpleasant people and situations until we can get away from them? As in, something we all recently experienced, “I’ll just have to tolerate all these weather related traffic delays since I cannot do anything about them.”

On a personal level, what do we tolerate in ourselves? Are we willing to really look hard at our own dark sides, the part of us that is racist because it is in fact a natural human reaction to people that are different from us? Can we look at ourselves directly and acknowledge our own capacity to commit evil? In one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as she prepares to kill one of her mortal enemies, he stops her cold by asking, “Does not your power come from the dark side: without vampires, there would be no need of a vampire slayer.” The vamp has a point, I think. Fear and anger provide tremendous assistance for survival. All these parts, good and bad, co-exist in us and need to be balanced.

The psychoanalyst Robert Johnson refers to this dilemma as needing to own the shadow side. Johnson’s simple definition of the dark side is socially unacceptable feelings and/or behaviors. For instance, a child makes you angry, so you hit her. It could be that her statement, “You are so stupid, Mom” actually touched a very raw nerve, and lashing out was actually a response to an internal feeling of inadequacy. In my own case, I have a tremendous fear of failure. The message tape that plays in my brain is: “You are not good enough. You will never be good enough.” I can trace this message back at least four generations in my family, to a fire and brimstone Baptist preacher forebear, whose given name ironically was, “Reasoner.” By returning to school to pursue a PhD, I am challenging myself in a way that I never have before, and am terribly afraid I will be found wanting. As if I am playing bridge, and bluffing by attempting to show more suit strength than I actually have; or think of poker, where you keep betting though you are actually holding nothing worthwhile. I am terrified that the bluff will be discovered, and I will be found wanting when the time comes to lay my cards on the table.

Given this level of insecurity, how do you think I react when someone challenges me in an academic setting? Being scared, I am as likely to be rude as to answer graciously. Or end up exploding inappropriately. Or worst of all, freezing into myself, unable to muster any defense at all, only to explode later at the grocery store checker for nothing at all related.

I want to suggest that worship, which Davidson has told us come from the old English and means, ‘worth shaping,’ can be a path for integrating the shadow side. Think again about the way a card player holds his cards close. The rules of the game can literally allow space for holding our dark idiosyncratic ways within safely prescribed boundaries. To play the cards well, a strategy invoking secrecy may be necessary. The conscious symbolic exercise, or exorcize if you will, of our own dark side, can help us manage all these aspects of our being.

Dr. Johnson suggests small, ritualized behaviors to get rid of the shadow, such as writing down a some personal bad behavior and burning it. Lighting our candles of hope and memory can be a personal ritual of purification. Lighting and then extinguishing the chalice provides a frame for the dark and the light within the context of our services. We can also use Sunday morning sermons to shape our character, giving voice to anger, resentments, fear, and frustration in a manner that increases our compassion, instead of diminishing it. By going beyond mere acknowledgement to actual integration of our dark side, we can expand and extend our compassion for both ourselves and others. The conscious creation of a whole, or healed character, be a strategy allowing the play of dark in our life but within a rational and relational set of priorities. We can choose our reactions, if not what actually happens. Or as my own grandmother would say, “It’s not the cards you’re dealt, it’s how you play them.” So, here I am, telling you once again that we are all in this game of being human together. We all have our own shadow and our own light. And that, at least, is very comforting.

SERMON: Finding Our Way Through The Dark

What are the parts of us that we would rather not see? The lazy parts, the selfish parts, the sad parts, the angry parts, the defeated parts, the weak parts, the fearful, the needy, the hurt parts. They are there but we try hard, don’t we, to hide away, so they wont bother anyone too much. I bet we could all do a little inventory and identify those antisocial and uncivilized parts as well as a natural resistance to go there. Or maybe we have lost sight of our own capacities to be wild, or undependable, or unpredictable or violent, or vindictive and doubt or deny that we are anything but well-intentioned. We might not go so far as to say we are pure goodness, but haven’t we convinced ourselves of the saintliness of someone who loved us well? It is comforting to dwell on our capacities for giving, for being enthusiastic and positive and seeing the best in others, but does this tendency serve any purpose beyond ourselves?

If others knew how lazy, angry, sullen or despondent we can be they might not want to work with us or live with us or be our friends. So we do our best to contain these difficult or ugly aspects of our being, we put them in the closet and hide them in the shadows. It is a common human experience. We all do this and we do it to get along and function the best way we can as members of families, religious communities, as members of staffs or teams or professions, as members and citizens of our society.

This morning I want to speak to these dark sides of our being and crack the closet door open and see what happens if we go ahead and look at the parts of us we would rather not see, or have lost sight of altogether. Because we might discover that it is not only the foibles of our characters that have got shoved into the shadows over the years but some great parts too which were hidden just because they were inconvenient or unwanted or threatening to others.

The wholeness of our weird and wonderful beings is something we come into the world with and which we spend a good portion of our life carving up to suit our life circumstances only to slowly reclaim as we are able and as the demands of this life ebb and free us from the constraints which we have allowed to define us. It is the older and wiser among us who have the most insight into this process. And they are the ones who are the most likely to see the paradox inherent in being human. The ones who have learned that there is a time to speak and a time to remain silent, that it is good and right to have goals and dreams to strive for and that it is also good and right to sacrifice those same goals and dreams and to let them go.

When Hillary suggested the topic of Owning Your Own Shadow in the Worship Associates meeting way back last September, I was unfamiliar with the little book she was making reference to by Robert A. Johnson. He wrote the book in 1991 with the full title, Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche. He is a great synthetic thinker who combines sociology and comparative religion in his psychological interpretations of the human condition. How many of you have read his books? He is a Jungian analyst and he works with the notion that we all operate from both conscious and subconscious impulses and that all human beings are co-inheritors of the collective unconscious, deeply embedded symbols which speak to the human condition. Hillary wanted to share his basic message that we can maintain better control of our natural human tendencies towards violence, aggression and bigotry by acknowledging the wholeness of our individual natures, including all the nasty qualities we’ve tried to disown and giving them symbolic expression through religious ritual.

I was drawn to the topic because I have come to believe that evil, or the human capacity to do harm to others or ourselves, is inherent, as natural to our being human as the capacity to nurture and to love. And I hoped that there would be something to be gained by our recognition of this potential, if I could persuade you of its truth, whether it be a greater vigilance in the way we examine our motives, or a greater awareness of the import of every decision we make in the way we lead our lives. It seemed to me, and it still does, that we are less likely to fear evil if we can recognize it as something so close at hand. That we would be less likely to see it as the fault of another if we could see it as a possibility for ourselves.

And reading Johnson partly affirmed this hunch. Let me briefly outline the progression of his book. First, he says that the process of disowning those parts of ourselves is natural. A baby learns not to bite. A child learns slowly to control her temper. In school, kids learn to reign in their energy and sit still. Exuberant free play gets shaped into focused attention as the skills and rules of sports are acquired. The capacities of the child to bite, to lose her temper, to play wildly are still there, but they are contained. Later in life, the socially acceptable ways of behaving as a lady or a gentleman are adopted as the adolescent strives towards recognition as an adult. Then the demands and the constraints of a job identify which character traits are to be given fuller expression. In most fields and professions for instance, it is much more important to be reliable than spontaneous. It is more desirable to be careful and competent than daring and experimental. As with the child, the underlying nature of the person remains intact and complete. They have just abandoned some of their qualities in favor of others in order to participate in their culture. Johnson calls it an inexorable law that all aspects of the individual’s character endure. It is just a matter of cultivating the qualities which help us function in our world and hiding the ones which don’t.

Johnson then identifies the problems that can creep up. For instance if we try to ignore the shadowy parts of ourselves and pretend they do not exist we will resent being reminded of them and might well despise the same qualities in others, projecting onto others aspects of our own unwanted being. Johnson says that this can happen collectively and whole societies can be similarly driven by such subconscious rejection of their disowned qualities. We must believe we are freedom-loving and dedicated to the ideals of democracy so we condemn or attack societies that we accuse of tyranny and feel it is somehow righteous to impose our chosen form of governance on them. We must believe we are peaceful and peace-loving and we fail to recognize the expression of our own rejected nature in the constant stream of horror films, violent television shows, and digital war games. Can we continue to accept the lie that fighting wars is necessary to achieve the peace we love so well? What would happen if the skeleton in the nation’s closet was to be revealed? Maybe the aggression and the will to dominate could energize the rebuilding of this society?

Finally Johnson points to the healing mechanism of religious ritual to re-unify the different parts of ourselves and restore a wholeness to our being. It can do that he says by giving symbolic representation to the darker aspects of life in a context which allows for both the expression and the containment of the destructive as well as the constructive aspects of our nature. Johnson talks about the gory imagery of the Christian mass or communion ritual. The participants celebrate the eating of their savior’s flesh and the drinking of his blood. The image of the tortured man hanging on the cross is glorified as the means of their salvation. The paradox of a persecuted, dying man having the power to save all who would confess his name contains healing. Johnson says any mechanism by which two separate and divergent forces are joined together can heal. He says the joining of two people whether in a glance or in sexual union can be so healing.

Christianity is not the only religion that incorporates images of destruction to serve the purpose of integrating the dark parts of human nature. In Hinduism’s godhead, Shiva is understood to be the God of destruction in counterbalance to Brahma, the God of creation and Vishnu, the God of preservation. In this arrangement there is a full acknowledgement of the dynamic nature of existence. There are creative, sustaining and destructive forces, and they each are honored and recognized. And all the worshipers can then acknowledge such divergent forces in their own being. This is one of the reasons I have valued the Hindu Goddess Kali. She is a truly frightening warrior Goddess, depicted with severed human arms strung around her waist and severed human heads hanging from her neck. She holds a bloody knife and wags a long obnoxious tongue in the air. Yet she is worshiped as a mother, loved and supplicated by her devotees. They expect her to be as giving and loyal to them as they are to her, though they know she can be dangerous. Now, that is a depiction of integration. Loving mother and wild woman. Kali does not give license to her devotees to follow her example but she does offer them a paradox which they can use to try to find a balance between the dispirit qualities of light and dark they experience in life and in themselves.

We need to be encouraged towards integration and wholeness. As religious liberals we need to bring together the parts of our being which we may have lost connection with. But we don’t take communion, and we don’t go to confession. But confession is probably closer to our religious tendencies than worshiping gods and goddesses. And this is where we turn to the therapeutic effects of talking. Not so much in dialogue with another but out loud with the sense that we are being heard. Talking out whatever is burdening us, honestly we can come to a place of greater self understanding and hope to reclaim those parts of ourselves that have been to wretched, depressed, enraged, or frightening to own up to. We do not need a priest to mediate this confession but we do need a safe and contained place to begin to sort out the wholeness of our being.

Here is a story told by Rachel Naomi Ramen about the power of her grandfather’s blessings. When she was a little girl she went to have tea with her orthodox Jewish grandfather every week. These are her words:

After we had finished our tea my grandfather would set two candles on the table and light them. Then he would have a word with God in Hebrew. Sometimes he would speak out loud, but often he would close his eyes and be quiet. I knew then that he was talking to God in his heart. I would sit and wait patiently because the best part of the week was coming.

When Grandpa finished talking to God, he would turn towards me and say, “Come.” Then I would stand in front of him and he would rest his hands lightly on the top of my head. He would begin by thanking God for me and for making him my Grandpa. He would specifically mention my struggles during that week and tell God something about me that was true. Each week I would wait to find out what it was. If I had made mistakes during the week, he would mention my honesty in telling the truth. If I had failed, he would appreciate how hard I had tried.

These few moments were the only time in my week when I felt completely safe and at rest (pg. 23, My Grandfather’s Blessings).

I love how well this story expresses the power of acknowledging our weaknesses and connecting them to our struggles to be good. It is healing to be known in the fullness of our being and deeply reassuring to realize that our wholeness can encompass our foibles without leaving us beyond the hope of another’s love and care.

We Unitarian Universalists do not enter so fully into the language of ritual. We come together to worship and light a chalice. And the flame does reveal both the power of light and the power of transformative forces but it does not speak powerfully of the dark in our lives and I think we might need more to help us come to terms with the darkness in our world and in ourselves.

There is a symbol which could speak to the paradox of the different and opposing parts of our nature. I am sure many of you are familiar with the Chinese Yin and Yang symbol. Here it is. The circle represents the whole of existence, the cosmos. Within the cosmos, there is a duality that can be seen in all “the ten thousand things” in the world and in the forces of nature.

This duality is represented by the equal sections of black and white. These forces are opposite in nature but contain within themselves the seeds of the other as represented by these two dots (the black dot in the middle of the white field and the white dot in the middle of the black field. There is a dynamic quality to these dual forces. They both seem to be moving into the other and this is a representation of the constancy of change in the world. In this symbol there is an acknowledgement of the profound relatedness of all apparent opposites. It suggests that integration is the nature of all things and there is less need to draw together the good and bad, the active and passive, the creative and the destructive, and more need to become aware how all qualities of being find their complete expression through their relationship to their opposite, how all states are impermanent and will move, change and even completely transform with time.

I want to finish this morning with another story from Rachel Naomi Ramen. This one is about an emergency room physician named Harry and how he was surprised into recognizing a greater wholeness to his being. Like all medical and other professionals, Harry was trained to be competent and expert and was used to putting his emotions in the shadows where they could not reveal his hopes, fears and vulnerabilities to his patients.

One night he was on shift and a woman was brought in by ambulance, a very pregnant about to give birth woman. He examined her and called her OBGYN but it was just a

courtesy call. He knew it was likely too late, that he’d be delivering the baby. So the woman’s husband was brought into the emergency room and the nurses prepared quickly for the birth. Harry was pleased as he liked delivering babies. This baby came very quickly with no complications at all. Harry was then holding the newborn along his arm with her little head in his hand, and as he was using a suction bulb to remove the mucus from her mouth and nose, suddenly the little girl opened her eyes and looked right into his eyes. Harry had a moment of discovery. He realized that he was the first human being that this little girl had ever seen. He felt his heart go out to her in welcome from all people everywhere and tears came to his eyes. Later, as he reflected on this, he realized that although he had delivered hundreds of babies in his career, he had never let himself experience the meaning of what he was doing until that one birth. In a sense he felt that that was the first baby he had really delivered as both a physician and as a human being.

I want to leave you with a reassurance that life can surprise us with unanticipated opportunities to grow in the fuller expression of our own being and that far from endangering those around us with the possibility of our shadow sides, we can reveal more powerfully the depths and the truths of our shared humanity. We need to be careful and intentional in inviting the shadow parts into the light of day, but we can also trust, that to the degree that we dare to bring the wholeness of our being into the circle of light, into the company we keep, and into the consciousness with which we make our choices, to that degree we can hope to make a difference.

Embodying the paradox that light and dark coexist in us and all around us and demonstrating the power in the human capacity for honesty. As religious liberals we mostly reject the idea that humans inherit original sin but can we deny that evil is inherent to our being? Let us commit ourselves to living up to our assertion of the worth and dignity of every person with an understanding that it is by the decisions we make that we are ennobled or debased. We are all like the child in today’s story (Nicolai’s Questions, adapted from Tolstoy), asking how to be a good person. We want to be a good person but we don’t always know the best way to do that. But like the story said, if we can remember that the most important moment is now, and the most important person is the one you are with, and the most important thing to do is to do whatever you can for the one by your side, then we will be alright, regardless of the shadows and in despite the dark.

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© Victoria Shepherd Rao

Sloan McLain

09 January 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

 Sloan McLain

I know that my connection to the divine, resting in the source of all that is loving, peaceful, and mindful, is what ultimately makes life worth living. Having a daily practice that connects me to the source of my spirit – be it meditating, praying, or practicing yoga – wakes me up to life’s purpose.

So, if having a daily practice is so important to me, I have to question: Why don’t I prioritize those spiritual rituals that open my heart and give me insight into the purpose of life and my place in it?

Several years ago, when I lived in San Francisco, I tasted life with a daily practice. I did yoga every morning and meditated with prayer each evening. My life was troubled at times, but through my practice, I had the peace of mind to ride with ease the ups and downs. My practice gave me faith in the cycles of life and death and opened my heart to live mindfully. I experienced the fruits of a faithful practice, and so naturally I assumed I’d keep it up.

But in the past few years, days and weeks go by, and I suddenly realize I’ve forgotten to meditate, my yoga mat’s been sitting still, and praying hasn’t crossed my mind. Why is that? Why don’t I take more time for my spiritual practice when I’ve experienced what it can manifest, when it means so much to me? How is it that my practice falls to the bottom of my to-do lists again and again?

I have an alter in my living room where my Buddha sits on my grandmother’s Bible, my yoga mat perched nearby; and another alter in the bedroom where a box of daily intentions is surrounded by pictures, statues, rocks and writings that have helped me grow into the person I am today.

The “stuff” to assist my practice is ready and waiting, my heart wants to connect to the God I believe in, but still, my practice is inconsistent. If I’m willing and ready, what’s stopping me? Does this happen to you, too?

The reality is I’m solo-parenting my 3-year-old son while working full-time as a first-year AISD teacher to kids in poverty on top of attending school at night and on the weekends. I barely have time to eat, so where’s the time to meditate, pray, or do yoga for an hour a day? But how can I afford not to have time for what I believe is the single most important reason for my existence: to connect with the God I believe in?

I wanted to share this with you because I suspect many of you have this same struggle: you want to feed your spirit but it’s hard to find the time, and maybe it feels better to know you’re not alone. I also hope that by confessing all this to you, I’ll motivate myself to practice, even if its just 10 minutes a day. As I said earlier, I know that my connection to the divine is what ultimately gives my life purpose. If that’s my truth, and I know my spiritual practice opens this connection, I have to center myself and make time.

PRAYER:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

By Marianne Williamson, From: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles

SERMON: On Spiritual Practices

There was once a beggar who sat on a box by the roadside, waiting for alms from the passersby. Year after year he sat there on his box until one day, a wise man came by. The beggar asked for some coins and the wise man looked at the beggar carefully for a long minute. Finally, the wise man asked the beggar what was inside the box. The beggar had never considered what the box he had been sitting on for so long might contain. Curious, he got up and had a look. Much to his amazement he found the rough box contained a treasure trove of gold.

I think spiritual practice is a lot like the wise man coming along and urging the old beggar to look inside. It is a way to seek out what we have always possessed.

Now, spiritual practice is nothing new to any of us.

Does anyone here pray?

Who here was taught to pray as a child?

Who has taught their children to pray in turn?

Does anyone here have an alter at home?

Who has some embarrassment with these questions?

Traditional spiritual practice is not something many of us try to make time for, though I am sure there are many here who have experimented with a few forms like yoga, chanting, or walking the labyrinth.

How many of us have learned a couple of different ways to meditate?

And how many of us actually do meditate? Any daily meditators?

As Sloan has said, it takes time to enter into a spiritual practice. And perhaps more problematical than finding the time for a daily discipline, it takes some faith. Faith that there is a connection between us and whatever is ultimate, that there is something to be gained by time spent in repose. You need to believe in the treasure hidden in the box.

But I want to propose that we do undertake spiritual practices and even incorporate them into our daily lives though maybe without fully realizing it.

Before I go any further I want to clarify what I mean by spiritual here. It is one of those nebulous words, almost automatically gets your guard up. The difference between walking down the street and seeing a sign posted, “dog found” and feeling sure you know the situation described, and seeing another sign posted saying, “God found” and having to wonder who found what.

Not to get too theological about it, when I use the word spirit, I want you to think about a horse, in the way it seems designed to run, or a child, in the way it is given to play. The quality each of these express in their being is the quality I am talking about when I say spiritual. It is a cluster of characteristics: vital energy, flowing single-minded focus, which is not forced but free in following whatever attracts, and avoiding whatever unnerves or frightens. It is the quality of being alert and alive.

So when I refer to spiritual practice I mean any practice which inspires and arouses in us this quality of vitality and sensitivity.

You can probably think of someone you know, or have known in your life who expressed this kind of natural vitality, who demonstrates exuberance, who laughs at every chance, who cries without shame, who is caring, unafraid, available to help out, never too distracted to listen. I hope you have known someone like this, someone who can give witness to the invisible forces which connect them, and all of us, to life, and to the enterprise of living it fully.

Now different people will be drawn to different practices according to their beliefs and culture, and the presence of people such as I have just described. Sometimes we need to feel our way into life-giving practices. Sometimes it can be very surprising just how sacred everyday tasks can be. For me, dog-walking was like that. It takes time every day. You have to just stop whatever you are doing and out you go. The first great gift is the break, the punctuation you have just experienced in your day. It is a kind of spaciousness from which you can gain a new perspective. Outside, you immediately reconnect with the way things are in the neighborhood: the feel of the air; the quality of the daylight; the colors of the trees. You walk, you think, you reflect, you watch the dog, delight in the dog play, in the pleasure he experiences in a good sniffing around, you greet the passersby, sometimes you talk and strangers become acquaintances. And all of this is beside the real spiritual treasure of having a dog companion who provides you constantly with a simple demonstration of unconditional love. Oh, the true spirit of a dog on his daily walk – natural, flowing, fun-loving, aimless, eager to share any pleasure. To me its like spiritual treasure on the end of a leash, dragging me along.

Yet we have to make a distinction between the connection to life or God which is both the beginning and end of all spiritual practice and the practice itself.

There was a man who was reputed to be a Zen master. He never had teachings to offer people. His practice was only to carry this large sack on his back from village to village. When he arrived at a place he would put the sack down and open it up and hand sweets out to all the children. Then he would close the sack and lift it back up onto his back and leave. Whenever anyone asked him for a teaching he would just laugh and continue on his way.

One day another Zen master decided to see if this wandering man was indeed a real master. He asked him, “What is Zen?” and the man stopped and put down his load and looked at him, saying nothing. Finally the Zen master asked, “What is the philosophy of Zen?” This time the man looked at him and then picked up his sack again and walked away. He was found to be a master after all for one who has a practice and who can let go of it as easily he can pick it up again is truly free with or without it.

When we were in India, there was an annual day-long ritual that took place in the city of Trivandrum that was for women only. The priests were the only men who attended the day. Basically, every year, each woman, homemakers all, comes out of the house to make sweets as an offering to the Goddess. Each and every woman, and we are talking tens of thousands of them, constructs her own fire and stove, brings her own pots and spoons and in the blazing sun of the midday, makes her treats. The priest come around and accept and bless the offerings on behalf of the deity and the women, after a hot day of cooking and socializing, collect their goodies to give to friends and family as prasad, or “blessed offering.”

The first year I witnessed this event as it was conducted around the temple close to where we lived. We drove by and I saw all the small fires and terra cotta stoves side by side by side. The simultaneous order and chaos of the process was deeply impressive. The second year we were there, the gathering place was around another temple and I only read and saw photographs of the happening in the newspaper. Our housekeeper had arranged to take the day off work to participate and she brought some of the sweets she had made for us the day after. I remember how incredible it seemed to me that these ladies would carry all these bags of supplies, fire wood, stove, pots and the ingredients for their sweets, and cook on open fires in the blazing sun, with humidity high and crowds on all sides. But it was a day apart from all the others, and a special day just for the ladies. When they could break away from the everyday routines of their homelives and do something different. They could chat with friends and feel good that they had made their offering. They believed their faithfulness to the Goddess would be reciprocated by the Goddess’s faithfulness to them and their prayers.

With the heat and the crowds, this spiritual practice would be sheer agony for me, as far from the solitude of a dog walk as is imaginable. But it taught me to give up evaluating the ritual practices of other people on the basis of my own spiritual inclinations.

Of course that is not to say that the practices others devise to suit their own spiritual inclinations cannot work for me or you. If there is an appeal in what someone does, why not try it out? Non-conformist religious liberals tend not to look to conventional forms of spiritual practice but we should not be blind to the ways and means of our coreligionists. I look around at First (UU) Church (of Austin) and I see folks engaged in spiritually sustaining activities of all kinds. There are the hallmarks of the Protestant tradition such as the gathering together for worship each week, listening to poetic words and music, singing and engaging with the sermon or public forum, eating together, working together, seeking together to make manifest a collective vision of spirited service. There are also alternate forms of spiritual practice being undertaken here and in the other UU congregations in the city. At First Church there is yoga, Chi Gong, folkdancing and Kundalini yoga. At Wildflower Church there is a covenant group dedicated to experimentation in spiritual practices. At Live Oak, there is a weekly silent meditation gathering.

And individually, we can witness the spiritual practices of our fellow congregation members: folks who make their bumper stickers a form of ministry; folks who ride bikes because they can and feel they ought; others who drive with nowhere to go just so they can rethink and reframe ideas (that would be Davidson); people who take listening to others as a calling to go deeper into the human condition and because they believe in the power to heal (that would be the Listening Ministry folks at First); and people who write cards to show they care. There are so many varieties of spiritual practices going on, and time is made for them all, somehow.

I had a minister in California who understood recycling to be a spiritual practice. For her, it was a sacred time and a personal discipline. It expressed her valuing of intentional living and responsible consuming. I think recycling is a spiritual practice for a lot of people for the same reasons though I don’t think too many yet understand it as such. Yet consider the amount of time you spend clearing out the paper clutter that appears daily on your desk or table. If you undertake the same chore as a positive act of redirecting resources instead of just collecting the trash, don’t you feel the transformation from time wasted to time well spent?

If we can give ourselves the freedom to feel out what does and does not feed our spirit, our inner connection to this life we all share, then we can give ourselves credit for all that we do already in the course of our daily lives to keep ourselves reminded of that which is vital and real.

Let us become ever more aware of these non-traditional forms of spiritual practice and hold them close. It is true that to adopt many traditional forms of spiritual practice means to devote ourselves and our time to the path of spiritual growth. It is also true that time is limited and we will be constrained to meet the requirements of a demanding spiritual discipline, maybe even driven to justify a pursuit with such intangible rewards as peace of mind or faith in our life’s purpose. However, we are here together now for a reason, and it is the same reason which propels others to cloister themselves in monasteries, or contort their bodies at yoga retreats all over the world where they are able to devote all their time to spiritual practice. Either way, it is about the human inclination to recognize the mysteries which connect all living creatures and to find some way, according to doctrine or not, to express that beautiful mystery authentically in the way we live and the way we love.

Finally, I want to thank Sloan for the courage she has shown in making the affirmation which began our treatment of this topic of spiritual practice and the time we make for it. She said, “I know that my connection to the.source of all that is loving, peaceful, and mindful, is what ultimately makes life worth living the single most important reason for my existence.” It is this faith, this inner knowledge of connection, however gained, which has the power to transform, heal, and provide us with insights to the purposes of our lives and the power to understand what is real and what is illusory. Like the treasure hidden under the beggar’s seat, such faith is waiting to be uncovered in every heart, to enrich every life with the quality of true spirit.

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© Victoria Shepherd Rao

05 December 2004

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

As Christmas time approaches, we pray that all flights, drives and trips will be safe and sound. May angels of mercy abound in the midst of any and all mishaps.

As the cold weather sets in, we pray for the homeless. We pray there is enough cheer to go around – enough money and food donated so that all the children of man and God have at least one moment of delight to awaken or confirm the spirit of hope in their lives.

We pray that reunions of families and friends are gentle and filled with sympathetic understanding and coherent conversation. We pray that this be a season of connection for all souls.

And we pray for all the ones who are alone, isolated or neglected, and for those who are away from home and missing it. We pray for everyone who is aching with loss, overburdened with work, and struggling with failure. We pray for everyone who is sick and dying. We pray for everyone who is just now being born.

May we each of us be given the power and courage to befriend strangers amid the busy-ness, and sometimes the loneliness, of the season. It is Christmas let us learn how to let its magic bless us.

Amen

SERMON: Birthing the Sacred

Today is the second Sunday of Advent. In the traditional liturgical year, Advent is the four Sundays previous to December 25th. High church custom lights a candle each week, making a full circle around a wreath – three white candles and a colored one for last. Of course Christianity is not the only religious tradition which lights candles this time of year.

We celebrated Devali last month, the Hindu festival of lights, where rows of candles are lit at the entranceways to homes. This week the Jewish festival of lights, Hanukkah will begin on the 8th. It is an eight-day candle lighting ritual. The ninth candle in the center of the holder, or Menorah, is used to light the other candles, lighting them from left to right, one new candle each day.

You may also see Kwanzaa candles later in the month. That is a seven day candle lighting ritual to honor and celebrate indigenous African values such as unity and self determination and cooperative economics. It begins with the lighting of the black candle in the center of the kinara candleholder and then the red and green candles in turn, again one new candle each day until they are all alight.

For the sake of the sacred rituals of humanity, the beauty and the discipline and the mystery of them, I have lit all these candles on our alter today. They are lit symbolically to join us with others in the observance of December 25th – the coming of the winter solstice, the return of the sun to our daily lives, to celebrate that the world keeps on turning, that we are together.

There is a birth story at the center of Christmas, the holiday that marks the birth of Christ. But I thought we’d start off this morning with a birth story you probably don’t know already- the birth story of the Hindu God, Krishna. Now Krishna is one of the most popular and well-loved of the gods and goddesses in the Hindu pantheon. Krishna was born as a human although he was understood to be an incarnation of the more primordial god, Vishnu. As all humans, Krishna had a regular birth and death, though his life was full of extraordinary deeds designed to rid the world of demons and guide humanity to fullness.

Krishna was born to an imprisoned couple. His mother was Devaki and his father Vasudeva. These two had been imprisoned by an evil king named Kamsa. Kamsa was a bad guy. He was shrewd and cruel. He usurped his fathers kingdom and threw his cousin Devaki and her new husband into jail after being warned by a sage that the eighth child of the couple would kill him and put an end to his evil tyranny.

So, Kamsa had guards watching at all times and every time Devaki delivered a newborn, Kamsa personally arrived into their cell to take the child from them and to smash it against the stone walls. Hard to imagine the experience but crazy-making comes to mind. Devaki and Vasudeva begged Kamsa to spare their babies.

They even promised to hand over the eighth but he would not be moved. Finally as the time came for the eighth child to be born, a heavenly voice told Vasudeva that the child Devaki would deliver was a divine being and that he was to take the newborn to a certain neighboring village, where he would find another newborn with which he should make an exchange before returning to the prison cell. The voice faded before Vasudeva could ask, “How?”

Kamsa had doubled the guard knowing that this child was his potential killer. As Devaki went into labor one evening, a terrible storm developed with lightening and loud claps of thunder.

Around midnight, all the prison guards fell into a deep sleep. Not even the crashing of the storm could rouse them. Devaki delivered a beautiful little baby boy at the stroke of midnight and much to the astonishment of the tortured couple, in the next moment all the doors of the prison swung open of their own accord. Vasudeva collapsed unto his knees and praised god and took the babe and ran through the rainstorm to the village where he did find another newborn with which he did make the instructed exchange. This was a newborn baby girl and she smiled knowingly at Vasudeva as he ran back to the dungeons.

Once he arrived back, the doors swung closed again and all the guard awoke. Kamsa was notified that the baby had been born and he arrived to do his thing. Devaki and Vasudeva pleaded for the babe’s life, but Kamsa was again unmoved. He grabbed the baby by her feet and started to dash her against the floor, but she slipped out of his hands and flew up.

The whole place was filled with the scornful laughter of a woman. The babe had turned into the goddess Durga. This fierce warrior goddess addressed Kamsa and told him that the eighth child was safe and that Kamsa would live in terror until the day he would be slain by the child. So saying, the goddess disappeared.

Kamsa lived in torment, always scheming to kill Krishna. Krishna, meanwhile, grew up happily in the village, destroying any demons he encountered effortlessly.

Quite a story. It’s got villains, heroes, and heroines, disembodied voices, and divine appearances. All the supernatural events like the guards falling asleep and the dungeon doors opening on cue, only add to the fascination.

It is the story of the birth of god, incarnate as a human being, just like Jesus. But unlike the biblical stories of the birth of the baby Jesus, Krishna’s is not offered to listeners as historical fact or even as the “real-true” undergirding of their faith. It is another rich story about another beloved god. It is easy for us to hear this story when we can categorize it as clearly “make-believe.” How much harder it is for us when it comes to the gospel stories, in a religions tradition that has always taught the biblical stories as though they were literally true.

The birth story of Jesus is one of the best known and most celebrated of the Christian religion. Even though the biblical accounts are pure fiction – right out of the religious imaginations of the gospel writers – they are LIVING myth, real to people as all good stories are.

So, here’s Matthew’s story about the birth of Jesus. It is not the same as Luke’s story, which we will be retelling in the upcoming pageant on Christmas Eve. Luke has the angel appearing to Mary to let her know what’s in store for her. He has the whole birth story of John the Baptist described. He sets up a journey to Bethlehem for the expected parents – all for good confessional reasons, to present the birth as the fulfillment of the Old Testament, to present Jesus as a messiah.

Matthew’s birth story starts with an elaborate genealogy to connect Jesus to Abraham. Then he gets right to the point.

Matthew 1:18-25, NRSV (ISA 7:14;8:8)

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

I like Matthew’s direct style here. He takes a lot of care to be very clear about the sticky situation around exactly when and how Mary got pregnant. With a marriage custom which had a couple formally betrothed or engaged for a period of time before legitimately lying together as husband and wife, the timing of her condition was awkward. It seemed Joseph needed to be persuaded to keep with Mary. Thank God for that angel speaking up for her. Mary could have been dismissed. Pregnant and dismissed by her almost husband. Sounds bad. But Matthew, or whoever the gospel writer is, didn’t bother himself too much about Mary. Joseph’s honor is not threatened by the Holy Spirit. He comes through with the support Mary needs. And Mary bears him a son, and he named him Jesus.

Now, it is worth noting the very sparse elements of truth which must have been part of the real, true birth of the baby Jesus. His mother was named Mary by all accounts. Who was his father? It may have been Joseph the carpenter, or maybe it was a Roman soldier? Experts, like Davidson, in the area of the historical Jesus, accept either as equally unverifiable. In the gospels, the gospel truth, is that Jesus had siblings. Four brothers and two or more sisters. He may not have been the first born to Mary. Nothing is really known or reliable until Jesus’s ministry began decades later. Hmmm. But then there’s no magic. No away in the manger. No stars guiding the way of the wise men? No.

There was a birth though. There was a woman. Mary. She had seven kids and who knows how many pregnancies and miscarriages. Her son Jesus became a wandering preacher. He must have been a pretty good kid because she did seem to love him as a man even though he was downright rude to her, saying to her that he considered his real family was “whoever did the will of God.” He was crucified. She saw him on the cross.

She bore him into his life and witnessed his death. Whether or not he was conceived by man or holy spirit, Mary gave birth to Jesus. Did Mary have midwives? Sisters? Mothers to help her give birth? Did she have love or respect for the father? What about her mothering?

What about mothering – birthing a newborn, nursing a baby, cradling and cleaning and holding – feeding and watching and teaching and helping and waiting and repeating and showing and listening and hoping and worrying and letting go. Birth is miraculous. It makes many new people beyond the baby. It turns women into mothers, men into fathers, mothers into grandmothers, wise women, fathers into grandfathers, wise men. It turns brothers and sisters into aunts and uncles and best friends into god parents. Many new people with every birth.

So Jesus was born – is it something for us to celebrate, we the demythologized? He had a remarkable following as a wandering preacher who tried to teach everyone about the Kingdom of God. Was he an incarnation of that god? Was he the messiah the prophets of the Old Testament spoke of? Was he the leader of the Jews – to rescue them from the occupying imperial rule of the Romans?

What is he to you? A teacher who tried to wake people up to the immediacy and possibility of God’s love to transform human existence on earth and to show a way to bear our humanity the way a mother bears a baby: it takes submission to mysterious forces that can become overwhelming at times; it takes courage to bear the pain; it takes faith that no matter what happens, it will be well; it takes hope for the new life to emerge and to commit yourself to being there for another’s sake, and for the sanctity of life, or the love of God.

So, we can contemplate the unknowable true story but what should we do with the other story about the babe in the manger under the dazzling star, with the shepherds gathering around and the wise men arriving to give precious gifts and bow down? It is such a pretty picture and it may be an ultimate fiction for us still.

The whole plan to do the Christmas pageant here at First Church has revealed some interesting generational differences where this Christmas story comes in. For instance, if you are somewhere around sixty years or older, chances are you have seen or participated in some form of re-enactment of the traditional birth stories of Jesus. But if you are say, closer to forty, chances are that you’ve had little or no such experience. Is this true? If it is true for you, let me see your hands. This is true for me. Though I was familiar with the whole nativity scene from playing with creche sets, being unchurched, I just never had the exposure to a play about the birth of Jesus. And yet, only two generations before me, it was a common religious thread woven through the fabric of our society.

So doing the Christmas Pageant here at First Church this Christmas Eve will provide different experiences for these two different groups of people. For some it will feel like a returning to earlier days, maybe it will stir memories. That’s always a risky business. For others, especially for the children among us, it will feel like a discovery, a magical story, I hope vividly re-enacted. Whatever it may be for you, it is offered that you may find new insights into the story at the oft-hidden center of what has become such a frenzied season. Because stories are important to this holy day as it has been observed in the generations before us.

Maybe it is too difficult to think of the biblical stories with unfettered appreciation. They are too loaded with baggage – personal and cultural – you’d rather leave behind. So let’s take a look at some other important Christmas time stories that repeat the birth of the sacred theme, not about the birth of gods, but about the emergence of human spirit.

Now, everybody knows about how the Grinch stole Christmas, don’t they? In Dr. Seuss’s story, the Grinch lives way off up the mountain all by himself. He hates all the joy and merrymaking at Christmas and decides he to put an end to the celebrations one year. We find that the problem is that the Grinch’s heart is too small. But then his hard heart gets cracked-open a bit, warmed by a gesture a little Who girl makes which shows him the true human spirit of generosity. Then the Grinch’s heart grows two sizes and he ends up enjoying what he once hated.

And in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, don’t we love to see Scrooge squirm when the ghosts of Christmases Past Present and Future show him what a miserly soul can expect of a lifetime – don’t we delight at the realization that convicts him and transforms him, that life can be as easily packed with love and joy as it can loaded down with bitterness and resentment.

These are beloved Christmas stories. Pieces of fiction. Not true in any literal sense but no less powerful or real than if they were. We love the lessons to be learned from them. We need the lessons. We need generous hearts. We need the cracked-open and growing hearts. We need to be reminded of how surprisingly joy can rush in and grab us, warts and all, any moment in this life. We know too well that tragedy can strike too, that evil exists, that sorrow can linger. To be alive is to risk it all. Birthing the sacred, our better, more alive and compassionate selves, is a wide-eyed life-affirming thing. Something to celebrate.

It is a kind of a test at Christmas. Not a test to see if you can decide whether any of these stories are true. You don’t ask that question when you watch the Grinch stealing Christmas, or Scrooge growing wise after his big night out. No, it’s not that kind of test. It’s a test to see whether you can enter into these stories, and let them inside of you.

The real miracles of Christmas are as open to non-Christians as they are to Christians. Hidden among all the shopping mall Santas, the incessant stars, angels, and wise men, there is a question. The question is: can you let these old stories work their magic on you? If you can, there may be some great gifts for you and for those you touch. For you never know in whom the sacred may be born. It could even be in born in you.

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© Victoria Shepherd Rao

Rema Undavia and Atul Rao

14 November 2004

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

For this service the front of the sanctuary was decorated with images of Hindu deities: Ganesh, the elephant headed God; Lakshmi, the Goddess of prosperity; Krishna, the flute-playing incarnation of the God Vishnu; and the characters from The Ramayana story which is at the center of the Devali celebration – Rama, Sita, Laxman, and Hanuman. Elements of a typical Hindu worship ritual or puja, were arranged on a table in front of the deities: flowers, fruit, sweets, water, fire – all good gifts which are offered to the deities for their blessings.

An Introduction to Devali:

Rema Undavia

Devali is the Hindu Festival of Light. The celebration is in honor of the return of Rama and Sita to their kingdom after fourteen years of exile, a story from the beloved Indian epic, The Ramayana. It is also a celebration of light over darkness. During Devali people offer prayers to the Goddess Lakshmi and place rows of lights called diyas to welcome her into every home. The name Devali means lights. Devali marks the new year so people pay off debts, get new clothes, clean their houses, and make beautiful patterns with colored powders on the ground at their door, called rangoli, to receive the blessings of Lakshmi. Many times there are fireworks and parties and people give sweets for the new year to everyone.

PRAYER: Gayatri Mantra

O God,

thou art the giver of life,

the remover of pain and sorrow,

the bestower of happiness;

O Creator of the Universe,

may we receive your supreme,

sin-destroying light;

may you guide our intellect

in the right direction.

Amen

SERMON: Reflections on Devali

by Victoria Shepherd Rao

As you may already know, I lived in India for almost two years before coming to Austin. We lived in the extreme south of the subcontinent on the western shores in a small state called Kerala. Kerala is semi-tropical. Its a coastline state on the Arabian Sea. Very very verdant, there are coconut trees everywhere. Its a beautiful, hot, humid place to be. It is one of the most densely populated areas of India. This sari that I am wearing today is from Kerala and is typical of their traditional wear for the women – the very fine, unbleached cotton with gold threads woven through. This one was given to me by friends in Kerala and it has the motif of the lotus flower woven into it with the gold thread.

So, today I wanted to talk a little about how we can recognize God, sometimes even in the very foreign ways of other cultures, and also why we might consider joining in on the celebration of Devali this year, even if it is just to send our blessings along to our merrymaking neighbors.

I was very happy that I was invited by one of the book discussion groups in the last little while to visit with them as they read a book by Diana Eck, called Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras. Eck is a professor of Comparative Religion at Harvard University and I highly recommend this book. In it she talks about her experience of pluralism – that is this experience of recognizing God in the rituals and ways of others’ religions, and so by extension, recognizing the legitimacy and the validity of these other religions as paths to the numinous.

Eck was studying Indian pilgrimage when she went to the place where we lived in India, a city called Trivandrum, or Tiruvananthapuram. There is a major temple there, very very old, called Padmanabhaswamy Temple. I couldn’t pronounce it at all the whole time we were there. She went to this temple and she writes about it in this book. As a preface to that, I’ll just say that she is asserting that recognizing God is not an easy task, “It is not the simple affirmation that all these visions of God are the same. They are not.” Eck admits as a Christian that there are lots of places where she does not recognize God. But what I am going to read you now is about her visit to this temple where she attended a puja ceremony in the inner sanctum where the main deity is installed – in this case, an eighteen foot long statue of the God Vishnu reclining on a multi-headed snake. There are three doorways that open up from the inner sanctum and offer partial views to this long figure of the God. These are Eck’s words:

I lined up with the other women at the north door of the central shrine as the time approached for the arati, the evening offering of oil lamps. The drums began to beat and the bells clang; the reedy nadaswaram so typical of South Indian temples began to whine. The attendant drew back the bar and we all seemed to move en masse, propelled by the surge of a wave of bodies, into the inner sanctum. As the bells rang with an increasing sense of crescendo, suddenly the central pair of doors to Vishnu’s chamber were flung open to reveal part of the huge reclining image. Then the pair of doors to the left were flung open, revealing the upper portion of Vishnu; then the doors to the right, revealing his feet.

I could not see the image very well at all, but as the many different multi-wicked lamps of arati were waved to honor Vishnu, I could see the suggestion of his presence there. It was a sense of enormous presence, dimly seen, illumined for a moment by oil lamps and by the intermediary grace of the priest who moved the soft light before the long body of the Lord.

Seeing that tryptich in the temple in Trivandrum, with its three glimpses of a God larger than one could fully comprehend, was a moment of recognition for me, and the experience of God’s presence there was describable only as worship. My experience as a Christian was surely different from that of the Hindus pressed against me on either side. But we shared the sense of delight and revelation as the doors were opened, and perhaps some sense of both the majesty and mystery of the Divine. — Pg. 77,79 Encountering God

When I was in India and visiting many beautiful temples, I learned that my own way of worship is quite “western.” I have a strong preference for coming into a place where order prevails, where I can choose a seat, and I can sit still, and I can have some privacy in that sitting still. And I can have this privacy to pray or worship in the way that I need to and I can be happy because I have friends and familiar faces around me and they are doing the same thing too. At least I think they are. So, I had a hard time settling down when I went to visit temples and worship was very difficult for me to settle into there. But I still loved observing it.

Now this morning, you’ve seen pictures of the deities and all these elements of the puja. You’ve had sort of a smorgasbord, or a sampler of Hindu worship, and I just wanted to address the question you may be sitting on’ which is why?

How does foreign festival follow fascism? Who was here last week and heard Davidson preach on fascism? A lot of people. So, last week you heard your minister had a very heavy prophetic message for all of us. The times do seem bleak. This time after the election has half the country ebullient and half the country quite depressed. I have heard people say that they have felt hatred when they have seen bumper stickers for “the other guys” and there is a sense of worry, wondering how its going to be in another four years.

Veterans’ Day was also difficult. My son’s school had a whole week of celebration and it was a glorification of the armed services if not war. My son and all the kids in that school listened as their principal told them that all these armed services folk were “over there” fighting for their freedom. I hope, for the sake of all the people who have died, and had their lives torn apart, Iraqis and Americans, I hope there is some element of truth in that assertion. But the heaviness is real and the gloom is felt. So why are we celebrating Devali?

Devali is a new year celebration. It is a new year based on a lunar calendar, an ancient Indian calendar that is still used for worship, but we know about celebrating new years and maybe we need to be reminded of it. New years- its about hope. It is about letting go of those things you need to let go of from the last period of time and starting over. Celebrating with raised spirits or celebrating because we need to raise our spirits and be reminded of our highest aspirations. Right now, I think we all need some of that.

Devali is about light- candlelight, lamplight. The lights we put out to guide our loved ones home. The lights we put out to give cheer. We know about this too. It is Christmas lights- especially when they came out just once a year. They raise our spirits, don’t they?

Devali is also about the celebration of light over darkness. I think we could all use some stories about how that happens. In fact, I think we should all collect such stories and tell them to each other whenever we meet. The story of Rama and Sita, as it is told in the Ramayana, is the story of good overcoming evil but it is also a story that is filled with tragedy. So, even as we celebrate the light, let us not forget that tragedy is a part of life, and let’s try to not be too afraid of it.

In the Ramayana, Rama slays this terrible and powerful demon who has robbed the world, and beyond!, of all the riches and has enslaved countless people, besides kidnapping Rama’s wife, Sita. So Rama is up against a very formidable foe. He is terrifying and masterful and poor Rama is at his lowest point. He has a broken heart from missing his beloved wife and he’s sick with worry over her. But he has righteousness going for him, and he also has some very loyal friends. Fine possessions, really. His army is almost dead from the battles, but as it ends up, Rama’s arrow kills the demon and rescues the whole world from the darkness and enslavement which were mere reflections of this demon’s reign. It all disappears at once. Now, isn’t that a good story for us right now? It is a good story and it has been a good story for people to hear for all time and that’s why it has been told since at least the 4th century BCE all over India in every conceivable form of art.

Rama is the model being. He is dutiful to his parents, devoted to his brother, in love with his wife. He is not a fearless leader but he is a true leader. That is, he has the love and the trust of his followers. Don’t we need such a vision of leadership to capture the popular imagination of this world, this nation? It is not our story but it is a good story and maybe we could find some sustenance in it. I recommend the retelling of the Ramayana by R.K. Narayan for any who are undaunted by a five hundred page read.

Finally, when we lived in India, there was one small religious ritual that always touched me very deeply every time I saw it. We had a whole series of drivers when we were living there. They were all Hindu and they were all natives of Kerala. Some of them would have little deities on the dashboards of their cars and they would adorn them with flowers and sandlewood paste. And on many days, they would show that they had been to the temple with the sandlewood paste markings on their foreheads and necks. But the thing that would always touch me though was that when they were driving and we would go by a temple, no matter how big or how small, and some of the roadside shrines were very small, they would always keep what they were doing, keep watching the road, keep in conversation, but they would always touch their heart. They would very lightly take their hand and touch the tips of their fingers to their chests and this moved me. This moved me because what I saw was that there was always a part of their consciousness that stayed steadily on God, and remained with her or remembered to return to her. And that was more impressive to me than almost anything else. Just that gesture, that small private gesture, connecting the person to the source of all creation.

When we, whenever we, remember that we are connected to all living creation, we are. There may be no physical change caused by our remembering, there may be no metaphysical change. It is just a realization of connection that can reorient us. And we must remember to remember that we are connected, constantly, “prayer without ceasing” as St. Paul said. Every time we pass a temple, or a church, or the Town Lake, or a tree, let us remember to remember.

So let me draw the ends together. We seek to recognize God, or our highest truths, and we have our own familiar ways to do that. And when we see the different ways of others, sometimes we may find our own Gods, our own high truths, there in the ritual and worship of another tradition or culture. Staying open to this as a possibility is adopting a genuinely pluralistic attitude. Devali, with its affirmation of the power of goodness to prevail against great odds, is a celebration of a universal theme – the eternal hope in the capacity of the human soul to stand against tyranny. It is a theme that is relevant for us today. And so there is a good reason for us to devote our worship today to join Hindus in India, all over the world, and especially in our midst, in this celebration of light. So, Happy Devali.

Rema offers us this Sanskrit prayer as our benediction:

May God protect us.

May God nourish us.

May we work together with great vigor.

May we acquire brilliance from our study.

May we not hate each other.

Let there be peace.

Let there be peace, peace, peace.

Amen

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Victoria Shepherd Rao

Don Smith

17 October 2004

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

We will remain together in silence for a moment or two after these words of prayer.

(SLT #505 Thich Nhat Hanh)

Let us be at peace with our bodies and our minds.

Let us return to ourselves and become wholly ourselves.

Let us be aware of the source of being, common to us all and to all living things.

Evoking the presence of the Great Compassion,

let us fill our hearts with our own compassion-

towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

Let us pray that we ourselves cease to be the cause of suffering to each other.

With humility, with awareness of the existence of life, and of the sufferings that are going on around us,

let us practice the establishment of peace in our hearts and on earth.

Amen.

AN AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

Don Smith

When the first Worship Associates meeting was held in the fall of 2003 I proposed “A Proper Response” as a service title. In trying to express the idea behind the title, I used this example:

You’re driving to work; you have an important meeting to attend when you get there; you’re running a little bit late, and you’re a little tense. You hear a siren and are forced to pull over to wait for an ambulance to pass. How do you respond? You probably check your watch and wonder why, of all mornings, this had to happen this morning. That’s a very natural response, but is it the proper response? The person in the ambulance may be fighting for their very life, and minutes–or even seconds–might make the difference. How does being late to a meeting-regardless of how important that meeting may be-compare to the struggle the person in the ambulance is dealing with? Maybe a proper response would be to hope that the person is OK; to care about their well-being, maybe say a little prayer if you’re inclined to that sort of activity.

Well, the title “A Proper Response” quickly morphed into “Dealing with Traffic” and was then rejected by the group. Probably a good decision, but it made me think that I need to find better ways to express what I mean. I presented my idea again this year and it made it to the short list, with the title “Reflections on Road kill”. It’s one of the mysteries of life, but I digress.

In the same way that I can improve my ability to say what I mean, I can also improve the way I respond to people, events, and the challenges that life puts before me. I would like to have the proper response be my natural response. The only way to affect this change is to become the kind of person who responds the way a person ought to respond. Is that too circular?

I read a book many years ago that demonstrates this point better than I ever could. Psycho-Cybernetics, written by Maxwell Maltz, an internationally acclaimed plastic surgeon, was published in 1960. He realized that no change he could make with a scalpel was as important as the self-image of his patient; that how we see ourselves determines who we are.

The main theme of this book, as I recall it, was that we can be whatever we want to be, and that the way to become the person we want to be is to imagine ourselves as that person. This is all about visualization and is based on the premise that the subconscious mind cannot sort real experiences from imagined experiences. If one spends an adequate amount of time envisioning themselves in the role they want to play, they will become that person.

The book leads the reader through a series of exercises wherein the ideal person is imagined in every detail, over and over again. He imagines himself as that person, living the life of that person. What does that person do first thing in the morning? How does that person dress? How does he interact with others? What kind of car does he drive? What kind of house does he live in? And on, and on, and on. The point in all of this is to convince oneself that they are that person and to see themselves, over and over again, acting as that person acts. With time, the subconscious believes it, and the transformation is complete.

To my mind, that’s sort of what coming to church is all about. I come here to think about what makes one a better person, to associate with others who would also like to be a better person – who desire to live life more fully, be more of a blessing to those around them and the world at large. If I can then imagine myself as that better person, I can transform myself.

Sometime I wish I needed less work, but I still hope that someday I’ll make it through a day and have all of my natural responses be proper responses.

When we respond, we do so from our center – from our values. What we value is what we worship. We worship what we value. It’s the same thing. Therefore, as Emerson said, “it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”

I can’t wait to hear how Vicki responds to road kill. It just might tell me everything I need to know about her.

SERMON:

Reflections on Roadkill and the Imagining of A Proper Response

Or What To Do When You are Dead on the Road,

based on Worship Associate theme: A Proper Response

by Don Smith

Since we have been in Austin we have had our share of car troubles. Our little Honda Civic is an ’88. She’s a true blue Canadian vehicle with the kilometers per hour on the speedometer and huge rust holes to prove it. My mother got her brand new in ’88 and gave her to my husband and myself when we set off to California ten years later.

We towed her here to Austin behind our Uhaul. It felt at the time like we were doing something quintessentially continental and North American’. Not exactly as awesome as the folks who bumped their way across the roadless land in wagons but still, a sort of adult rite of passage. Anyway, all that to say we sure were glad we didn’t try to drive our old car the distance. She broke right down once we got here. The car was in the shop for the better part of two weeks and I rode my bike down here to work each day.

It was a nice ride down Grover Avenue from Ohlen Street. Twenty minutes of wide road, sparse traffic, small intersections and best of all, a slight downhill slope that let you glide pretty near the whole trip. One day I was gliding by and came across the smashed remains of a turtle. The body parts were scattered but most of the hump back shell was intact so you could see how big the creature had been. I was characteristically disturbed at the sight. I stopped there and lingered awhile.

It was a nice stretch of the road. There is a soccer club field, not too big, surrounded by mature trees and a good amount of scrub. Between the field and the road was a generous ditch space. The grasses growing were long and the air along there was sweet with mature grass smell. There was a coolness from the area of green. What a good place for creatures to live I had thought before I ever saw the turtle’s body.

The next day the whole roadkill tale was swept away with the streetcleaner, all except for the oily patch on the asphalt. Those stains stay a long time on the roads. As if the Earth holds onto the trace and memory of that life’s passing, even if most of the people passing by don’t notice.

Another time, I was peddling along Grover, right behind McCallum High School. There at the back utility entrance to the school, right where the driveway melds into the gutter at the side of the road, was the body of a dead full grown cat. Unlike the turtle, this cat was remarkably intact. It was dessicated, dried up. There was no trace of blood and the black and white fur was just dusty looking. It was the well preserved casing of the creature. It stayed there many days and I always looked for this body. I thought about how many high school students saw it each day and what they thought of it. Were the young people amused, repulsed?

One day, the cat’s body was gone too but it has lingered on my consciousness and got me to think about how roadkill elicits in me a connection with what it means to be alive and to die as a creature of this world.

Let me explain about what it means to be alive and to die as a creature of this world. This is by no means conclusive, just reflections gleaned from roadkill. For one, having a body is great but we have to be careful to keep all our vital organs in place. If we get hit by a car, chances are our body will be destroyed, maybe so badly that it cannot continue with enlivening processes. What to do when you are near dead on the road? I hope I would rest my head down on the gravel and remember that I am at home there, help on the way or not. Trusting death as much as I have trusted life, as mysterious, as sacred.

Twenty years ago or so, I was just out of high school myself and attending a small university in Peterborough, Ontario about two hours drive from my hometown. Half of the trip was on a two lane highway cutting through countryside, farmland and forested land. What folks used to urban sprawl call “cottage country”. I did the trip a lot, liked to go home for the weekend. But I hated the roadkill. Every trip, many times, you would drive past dead creatures: raccoons, rabbits, deer, dogs, cats, hawks. (Now here I have been told the main victim of roadkill is the Armadillo).

Well, it is a story about finding a proper response. There I was doing this trip and every time getting upset and feeling sick about the roadkill. What was it that upset me so? Well there was the road cutting through the countryside, slicing the land and natural habitat up with high-speed death traps. Who’s to blame? Road and highways are essential infrastructure. The speed of travel on highways is fast, doesn’t allow much reaction time. No one tries to run over the unexpected animal in the lane. In fact, I believe most people would try to avoid hitting animals but they simply cannot prevent the event. I used to have a high school French teacher who was passionate about telling his students, many if not all new drivers, that if you are going to hit something in the road, to do it right and make a clean kill of it. His intent was to prevent the needless suffering of the one hit but not killed outright. And I guess that is a more merciful approach, though if I had the chance to do anything I’d try to steer clear.

Yet, he must have had a point. I never asked him if there was a story behind this extra curricular teaching. But I have wondered about the many times that we see the roadkill at the side of the road, just on the shoulder. How did the creature get there? They must have been hit in the middle of a lane. Did they crawl with their last strength and will to a place out of harms way? How many cars roared over them in their injured state?

All these questions would haunt me and I was finally so tormented I realized I had to do something. The core of my being cried out for me to act out, to express the anguish I felt at these dead creatures lying on the side of the road and at the brutal impersonal and terrifying nature of their death. As I thought about what I could do in response to roadkill, it became clearer to me that there was something about car after car after car passing by the bodies, seemingly oblivious to their presence, which was what I could not accept. I could not act as if their deaths on the road did not touch me. If I just winced and shook my head and felt bad and drove on, how was that in any way different from what another person on the same road who didn’t even notice the roadkill would do?

So, I got myself a shovel and determined to remove the bodies of animals I encountered on the side of the road, to remove them from the sight of unseeing or uncaring eyes. I could envision myself lying there, alone and bleeding, terrified by the roar of the cars passing by. Now, if it was a human casualty, there’d be ambulances and sirens and police. But for other creatures, we know death will come.

It seemed important to not only remove the body from the roadside where it came to rest, but to take it to a place which was truly restful. It might be a sheltered place under a tree, or in amongst long grasses. If I could, I’d find a shady spot. Someplace where the body touched the Earth, where the body again bore some relation to the Earth. This seemed right.

And it felt right. No one was too happy about my new activity, least of all my best friend who was going to nursing school and learning too much about germs. She insisted I wear gloves, and sometimes I even wore a mask. I didn’t make a big deal of it. I saw the body, I stopped as safely as I could. I backtracked and I encountered the death scene. I held my sadness and regret as I provided this service. I believed I was doing the right thing, making the proper response and I felt much less anguish as a result. I expressed the value I gave to the lives of these creatures by accepting some responsibility in showing respect for their bodies in death. I did that for a couple of years.

Was that a proper response? How do we make such evaluations? We need to have a standard of truth or value to measure our responses with. And this is where families, religious traditions and communities help. They can help by asking what actions and approaches will lead us to feelings of trustworthiness or integrity, or of being in right relationship to God, or to our highest ideals or values. Is it useful to others and worthy of God?

Now the idea of proper is a bit sticky. As soon as the notion of proper is defined, out goes our radar for everything judged improper by the same definition. There are several definitions of proper. Something might be called proper when it conforms to established standards of behavior. By another definition, something is proper when it is suitable, fitting or right.

If we remember what Don had to say about the proper response to an ambulance going by maybe we can illustrate these different notions of what is proper. You are in the car zipping along to the next meeting and you hear the ambulance siren. Yes, it is inconvenient to stop and pull over for the speeding ambulance but instead of feeling frustrated and annoyed at the delay, Don suggested that a response based on compassion for the person inside the ambulance might be a more proper response for someone who values people more than time, who seeks right relationship with others more than a perfect record of punctuality. Such a response fits with Don’s values, people over schedules, and vision of compassion.

Ambulance is coming. What do you do? Well, the law defines a proper behavior for the drivers of other vehicles on the road. Slow down, pull over, stop until the emergency vehicle passes. This is the way our society expresses the value we place on human life, the faith we place in effective emergency response. Following the law and moving out of the way for the ambulance is making a proper response. But is it enough?

Do you say a little prayer for the folks in the ambulance? I think it is a compassionate response, a proper or fitting response for anyone who wishes to cultivate loving kindness in the world.

I don’t know for how long now, probably since my son’s birth, we have been saying the same simple one line prayer when we pull over for an ambulance or even when we hear sirens of any sort. We stop whatever we are doing and say, “I hope everyone is going to be alright.” The full text of the message would read something like, “we can hear or see that some emergency situation is unfolding, and chances are some people are in a bad way right now, but we hope the best for them and that they will make it through this trouble.” This response demonstrates our awareness of and concern for ALL people (all living creatures). I know if it was me the ambulance was coming for, I’d be comforted thinking that everyone it zoomed by was wishing me well.

Now if you don’t have compassion for the one in the ambulance, it does not mean you are a bad person but, on the other hand, it is easy to agree that exercising our compassion is a fitting response if we value compassion and mercy in human beings. I do not know what Don does now when he stops for an ambulance, but I encourage him and everyone to hope for the well being of those in distress, to say a little prayer, to move beyond the frustration or inconvenience and try to see the bigger picture, the one where we are all in there together.

In the gospel of Luke someone asks Jesus “Who is my neighbor?” and Jesus replies by telling the story of the Good Samaritan. (Lk. 10:29-37 NRSV) “A man is going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.” Kind of like roadkill, the image of an abandoned injured person elicits feelings in us of pity and revulsion. For there, but for the grace of God, could be me, or you, any of us. Now the story continues, and the poor man lying by the roadside is passed by and ignored, even by religious people. Finally, a foreigner comes across the man on the road and helps him, bandaging and tending his wounds, taking him to a shelter and paying for his care. So, who is the neighbor to the man on the road? Jesus said it is “The one who showed [the man] mercy.” Jesus is very clear in the teaching he does with this story. It is not about being a Jew, in the same tribe, it is not about living in the same neighborhood, no, we are called to extend our mercy to anyone who is in need of it.

This makes us all neighbors to each other, bar none. A bit overwhelming. It may be too difficult to grasp, especially when you consider how often we remain strangers to our neighbors in the urban jungle. Perhaps thinking of others as our brothers or sisters, uncles, or aunts would be more apt to arouse our compassion towards others. In India, it is the custom to use these familial terms with strangers. We lived in a big apartment complex and all the kids would call me auntie and I was amazed at how it changed my sense of relationship. They called me auntie and I became an auntie to them. That is, I got a mind set that had me willing to act as their guardian or resource person if need be.

Now back to another scenario Don talked about. No ambulances but another rushed car drive. This time someone with an old klunker of a car is stranded in the road. And you are there waiting it out. You might be frustrated and annoyed but what is the proper response Don wonders. He thinks maybe gratitude for having a nice car seems like a better response. And gratitude is a good-attitude basic, but as the owner of an old klunker, I’d like to return us to compassion. Chances are good no one wants to hold up traffic or drives an old unreliable car because they love it. We are doing what we can with what we’ve got. Like the bare and beaten man, our vehicular vulnerability is clear to all who care to look on us. And how does one look upon another who is in trouble or need? Is it proper to ignore them as outside our circle of concern? Is it proper to curse them for imposing on us? Is it proper to wish them well with an understanding smile? Is it proper to try to help them? How does compassion call you to respond? What would you be inclined to do if you saw your sister or brother there, an aunt or an uncle?

Imagine the knarl of traffic and all the sullen-faced folks sitting in their cars, gripping their steering wheels, white-knuckled. What would the effect be if a few able-bodied souls got involved to help move the disabled vehicle?

The stranded motorist would have her anger and anxiety transformed into feelings of gratitude and solidarity. Everyone in the blocked cars would be changed, moved from feeling frustrated and helpless to feeling heartened and hopeful. And what about the few able-bodied souls who got involved? They could see themselves as the heroes of the hour, real-life role models, agents of change for the better, witnesses to the simple fact that the power of transformation is at hand at all times.

As religious liberals we are perhaps more free and willing than other religious folks to imagine the range and reach of a compassionate response to the many things in life that touch us and call us to act like the kind of people we want to become. Davidson has a simple way to put it, he says we are here, together as a religious community, to become better people, partners, parents, and citizens. I have spent some time this morning reflecting on how roadkill has moved me in this transformative process. But roadkill, as sad and sorry as it is, is also a somewhat manageable phenomenon to confront. But there are other much more complex situations which prod us to imagine and demonstrate a compassionate response and to which I offer no answer this morning: What, for instance, is the proper response to war? What is the compassionate response to Iraq? Climate change? Corporate-owned mass media? Terrorism? Fascism?

Let us become practiced in compassion, so we can come together and make the seeking after of compassionate responses to such situations our habit as a religious community. Like Don said, we can use our imaginations and, guided by our shared values, envision liberal religious approaches to the circumstances of our age. We need to, because one way or another, we will worship something. Let it be love.

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© Victoria Shepherd Rao

26 September 2004

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Desiderata

by Max Ehrmann

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,

and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,

be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly;

and listen to others,

even to the dull and the ignorant;

they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons;

they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,

you may become vain or bitter,

for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;

it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,

for the world is full of trickery.

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;

many persons strive for high ideals,

and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.

Neither be cynical about love,

for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,

it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,

gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,

be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe

no less than the trees and the stars;

you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,

no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,

whatever you conceive Him to be.

And whatever your labors and aspirations,

in the noisy confusion of life,

keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,

it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

PRAYER:

“A Prayer” by Max Ehrmann, 1906

Let me do my work each day; and if the darkened hours of despair overcome me, may I not forget the strength that comforted me in the desolation of other times.

May I still remember the bright hours that found me walking over the silent hills of my childhood, or dreaming on the margin of a quiet river, when a light glowed within me, and I promised my early God to have courage amid the tempests of the changing years.

Spare me from bitterness and from the sharp passions of unguarded moments. May I not forget that poverty and riches are of the spirit. Though the world knows me not, may my thoughts and actions be such as shall keep me friendly with myself.

Lift up my eyes from the earth, and let me not forget the uses of the stars. Forbid that I should judge others lest I condemn myself. Let me not follow the clamor of the world, but walk calmly in my path.

Give me a few friends who will love me for what I am; and keep ever burning before my vagrant steps the kindly light of hope.

And though age and infirmity overtake me, and I come not within sight of the castle of my dreams, teach me still to be thankful for life, and for time’s olden memories that are good and sweet; and may the evening’s twilight find me gentle still.

SERMON: Desiderating Peace

Good morning. I am sure that many of you are familiar with the long prose-poem entitled, Desiderata, which was read for us earlier. It became very popular in the 1960s and has remained beloved since then. It has been translated into at least thirty-two languages. It has even won a Grammy award. Maybe hearing it again has taken you back in time, and reminded you of some memories or stories attached to this poem. In 1965 it gained national exposure when it was found with its title but with no named poet or author on the bedside table of Adlai Stevenson, right beside him when he died. As if it was the last thing he had read before he died. You may remember this story first hand. If that is the case I hope that you will share your recollections with me after the service. Because Desiderata has been an important poem for me, a teacher I took to heart. I guess I am counting on it having been an important piece for you too and worth remembering. Or, I am hoping that it might be, if you have not encountered it before.

Who here remembers this piece from the sixties? Who remembers exactly where you had it tacked up on the wall? And is there anyone here for whom this is an unfamiliar text?

Desiderata came into my life around the late sixties. I was just a kid, still under ten, when my mother brought a nice parchment paper print of it home from the one mod flower-power type boutique in town. And that was in Oakville, in the Province of Ontatio, Canada. Today I want to spend some time revisiting it because I think of it as a sort of wisdom text for religious liberals, especially Unitarian Universalists.

Desiderata is a Latin word meaning things to be desired. Desiderata the poem is about ways of life which the author has found desirable in searching for and finding a state of inner peace. He starts out by saying go placidly. Placid means peace. Go peacefully amid the noise and haste. In other words, don’t shy away from the bustle of your life but take with you a sense of inner peace. What we might call peace of mind: a sense of well-being, maybe a feeling of relaxation or of faith, or at least a freedom from existential angst-type worries. Inner peace is a common experience but it can is also be elusive sometimes, especially amid the noise and haste. So, while the first injunction seems simple, it is actually a tall order.

In fact, it is a religious pursuit. Silence and stillness can be vital, life-giving. But finding the solitude from which to experience silence and stillness requires determination. Many religious traditions have developed practices to cultivate these paths of silence and stillness to the divine, or to enlightenment – think of the quiet hush of a cathedral, or think of a temple full of Buddhist monks sitting in meditation, or think of the vows of silence, of monasteries which through the ages have sheltered seekers from the noisy demands of life outside cloistered space. Many religious liberals have found their own ways of seeking after this stillness in life, think of Henry David Thoreau living so simply by Walden Pond.

But where do we find silence, stillness and solitude in our busy, over-scheduled lives? Now some folks go hiking and spend time in nature regularly, and some individuals actually adopt a meditative practice, and learn over time to sit still, or chant prayers, training themselves to dwell for short whiles some place apart from the activity of their day to day lives, and most especially the activity going on in their minds. These too are pretty tall orders requiring discipline and determination and the support of others.

The question remains for many though, how can we find enough solitude for the nurture of inner peace? Where are the chapels in our lives, where we can go and rest and discover if not remember what peace there may be in silence.

I think there is a place we can easily go, and I bet most of us have done it. Excused ourselves from the company we were in, and claimed the right of our solitude, even if just for a few minutes. We head for the restroom. There is a place which is safe and private. Where we can cry the tears and dry the tears, where we can lock the door and show the anger, give voice to the fear, take our time to collect our selves. Come to terms with the situation on our own terms. It is not always a crisis which takes us there. But isn’t it always our deep seated sense of the restorative power of solitude? Just give me a minute, I will be okay. Alone here I will dwell with myself and be strengthened. If this is what goes on there I don’t think it’s too crazy to consider the restroom a kind of humble chapel.

Restrooms are not the only such chapels, parks are great, long empty hallways, or the solitary domains inside our cars. Gardens are good for gardeners who find solitude in the planting, weeding, watering. In fact, with enough presence of mind, almost anywhere can become a place where peace of mind can be found. It is the whole Zen-type of approach to things. I will chop these carrots and rest in the calm paying-of-my-attention to this task of chopping these carrots – the practice of mindfulness.

Now I was raised without any reference to God or a Creator who was in any way responsible for life or for the ways of the world around me, but Desiderata was like a prayer for me in my atheistic childhood. I read this poem most everyday, most every time I went into the family restroom where it was tacked up on the medicine cabinet door for years. I knew it by heart but I still read it aloud to myself because I loved to hear it. It told me that I was a child of this universe, no less than the trees and the stars, and that I had a right to be here. And I think I really needed to hear such powerful affirmations about who or what I was. I still do. And I think you probably do too. You are a child of the universe. It’s sort of a universalized version of Jesus Loves You. Well, these poetic and grand existential affirmations touched my little girl’s heart. They gave me encouragement and placement beyond the security of my parents’ love and our family home. And they still have the broadening effect on my outlook and sense of belonging in this world. And part of the reason that this piece was able to inform me to the degree it did was because I encountered it in the sacred privacy of a restroom, where a person’s solitude was unquestionably honored. Where I felt free enough to read with feeling, and free enough to feel that vulnerable need for a God. Because whether or not we believe in a God, can there be any doubt about this vulnerable need we humans all share for a sense of meaning and connectedness?

Desiderata takes a broad view of life and a “how to” approach to addressing such needs. It offers all sorts of commonsense advice about cultivating ways of living which nurture inner peace. Things like being on good terms with people. Things like not comparing ourselves with others. Things like taking our time to say honestly what is on our minds and then saying it quietly and clearly. These are hard-won skills but good habits for the cultivation of our inner peace. When we make up our minds to speak our truth quietly and clearly, we are choosing peace for ourselves and others. When we listen to others to hear their truth, we are choosing peace for them. When we are gentle with ourselves and each other, we are choosing peace.

But what if we are not in the habit of always seeking resolution and good terms with others? What if we are sometimes just too darned tired? And what if we do have well-entrenched habits of comparing ourselves with others?

The poet recommends a path of personal integrity as a reliable basis for building self-esteem and better habits. He says: do not feign affection; be yourself; accept the changes which come with aging, – “gracefully surrendering the things of youth”; nurture strength of spirit to shield you in times of misfortune. It is about knowing yourself. It is about being able to trust yourself one day at a time, gradually building the strength of your character so that whatever sudden misfortune happens, you can hope of keeping “peace with your soul.”

Who wrote Desiderata? The poem has an interesting history as an anonymous text. It has had a life of its own, you could say, with a romantic story dating it back to 1692 and its discovery in Old St Paul’s Church, Baltimore. Actually, it was widely disseminated out of that church, included originally, with a small collection of worship materials one of the Episcopal priests had put together for the congregants. Somehow the year of the church’s founding, which was 1692, got printed at the top of the sheet with the poem Desiderata.

Now I grew up with this old St Paul’s Church origin story, I even believed the piece had been found engraved on a tombstone. Nothing like words being cut into rock to make them seem important. Those exotic words like “vexatious” and “aridity” convinced me into believing what I wanted to believe anyway: that here was a wise and distant voice that had something to say to me which transcended time and space and spoke eternal and universal truths about the best ways to live. And at least that much is true.

But the real story about the poem is that it was written in 1927 by a man named Max Ehrmann. Max Ehrmann was born in 1872, in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was a first generation American, the fifth and youngest son of a couple who emigrated from Bavaria, Germany.

It seems Max Ehrmann was a writer at heart. He called himself an “idealist, philosopher, and word technician.” He edited the school newspaper when he studied at De Pauw University and he wrote for The Boston Herald and various national periodicals when he studied law and philosophy at Harvard. He published his first book at age 26. He titled it Farrago, which means “a confused mixture”. A humble, bold, young man.

Max Ehrmann returned to his hometown after he graduated from college feeling the whole world was there in miniature. He worked as an attorney for a couple of years and then as a credit manager for his brothers’ clothing manufacturing company. He worked all day and took up his pen at night. All four of Max’s older brothers were successful businessmen and they supported him when at age forty, Max quit his day job and took up his writing career full time. Max Ehrmann’s literary career produced twenty books and pamphlets and many essays and poems which were published separately in newspapers and magazines. He never achieved fame or fortune but he did succeed in his aim with the writing of Desiderata. An entry of his diary of 1927 reveals he had hopes of leaving – a humble gift – a bit of chaste prose that “caught up some noble moods”.’ And he did. He left a gift that people all over the world have valued.

Yet I must say I was somewhat deflated to learn that this wisdom text which I have loved so well was not actually such an ancient voice reaching out from a mystical past. So I was robbed of this romantic illusion of my childhood as I was doing the research for this sermon, but I gained something too. I gained a soul mate. A real live man whom I can name. A man who followed his own advice and chose a humble career, for which he had an unfeigned interest, where he could speak his own truth. He was evidently a character who liked and needed to retreat into cemeteries and other lovely lonely places around his hometown to seek out and keep the peace within his soul. I am also fond of cemeteries as places of rest, especially sacred ground. What lovely lonely places touch your center? Where do you go to retreat from the noise and haste? What restores your soul to a sense of peace and connection? These are questions worth taking time to answer for yourself, and my purpose this morning is to invite you into such a reflective process. Tell each other about your inclinations when it comes to seeking peace. We need to learn more about peace, to talk about it and understand the dimensions of its realness.

We cannot always go placidly yet I believe it is always a desirable way to go. And when or if we fail to go placidly, as people of faith, let us continue nonetheless to long for that inner peace, remembering it and returning to it. To desiderate means to long for something of the divine. And I want to encourage you all in desiderating inner peace. I believe the advice Max Ehrmann offers in Desiderata is sound advice for cultivating integrity and sensitivity, the prerequisites of inner peace. It is not too complicated or sophisticated but it points out clearly the ways we can move forward individually, and together here in community, and outside this circle in the wider community, ways which could nurture a culture of peace.

Speak your truth and listen to others. Be yourself and be gentle with yourself. These are fundamental to peace. They may be simple to list but they are not easy to live. O, children of the universe, it is a noble calling to a humble chapel.