Beyond Categorical Thinking

January 23, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers

Rev. Keith Kron

UUA Director of Ministerial Transition

January 23, 2011

You can listen to the sermon by clicking the play button at the bottom of the page.

Reading

“Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros

What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two and one.

And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t.

You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today.

And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are – underneath the year that makes you eleven.

Like some days you might say something stupid and that’s the part of you that’s still ten.

Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mother’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five.

And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like you’re three, and that’s okay.

That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three. Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next. That’s how being eleven years old is.

You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say “Eleven” when they ask you.

And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is.

Reading

“The Possum” by Cynthia Rylant

from The Van Gogh Cafe

Kansas is not what one would call picturesque. It is flat. So flat it could make some people a little crazy, people who need a hill now and then to keep their balance. But in Kansas at least things get noticed. The flatness makes everything count and not one thing slips by. That is why, if a possum was going to choose to hang upside down somewhere, Kansas would be a good choice. People would notice. And if the possum chose to hang outside the window of the Van Gogh Cafe in Flowers… well then, everyone would start talking about magic. And that would be good for the possum, too.

The Van Gogh Cafe is owned by a young man named Marc and his daughter, Clara. Clara is one reason for all of the magic in the cafe. She is ten and believes anything might happen.

Marc and Clara open up the cafe at six every morning except Sundays, when they sleep until ten. Clara takes breakfast orders for MarcÑwho is the cookÑfor half an hour on school mornings, then she goes to their apartment across the street to get ready for school. Clara likes taking orders because everyone is sleepy and sweet and all they want in the world is a cup of coffee, please. Clara thinks morning is the kindest time of day.

Most of the people who come to the Van Gogh Cafe are Flowers people and know each other: “Hi Ray.” “Hello, Roy.” But sometimes someone is new, for Flowers sits near I-70, which people take when they are escaping from an old life in the East to a new life in the West or the other way around. Clara has met many people between six and six-thirty on their way to something new.

But she has not met a possum until today. Today is Saturday and she’s working a couple extra hours for her father, and it is eight o’clock in the morning when suddenly a possum is hanging upside down in the tree outside the cafe window. Right on Main Street. A minute ago it wasn’t there and now it is.

Clara sees it first: Look, there’s a possum. Coffee cups go down, heads turn, and outside a little gray possum enjoys being noticed. It scratches its nose and blinks its eyes and stares back at all the faces.

No one sitting down can say hello to a possum. So everyone in the cafe gets up and stands in front of the window. Now, this is the magic of the Van Gogh Cafe: not one person says, “Amazing! A possum upside down on Main Street!” No, everyone is not all that surprised. They, like Clara, have come to believe anything might happen, because they have been having breakfast at the Van Gogh Cafe all their lives.

What they do say is, “Hi.” Many of them wave. Ray asks Roy what possums eat. And, with their usual curiosity about every new person in Flowers, they all say, “Wonder where he’s from?”

Well, it’s hard to know a possum’s story before he does something magical, but after he does, there’s story and more to tell.

One of the first stories is that the possum starts coming back to the Van Gogh Cafe every day. Eight in the morning, he’s up in the tree.

But that’s a small story.

The possum begins to attract people, and this is the bigger story because he attracts people who haven’t been getting along. Best friends who had a fight the day before: today they’re standing on the sidewalk next to the possum. The possum is hanging upside down and blinking, and the two friends are talking, and suddenly they’ve got their arms around each other and are coming into the cafe for some pie.

A young husband and wife: the day before they’re yelling in the front yard, the next day they’re kissing beside the possum.

Two neighbors: the day before they’re arguing about loud music, the next day the possum is watching them shake hands.

The story becomes even bigger when people start bringing food out of the Van Gogh Cafe, food for the possum. Half an English muffin here, two pieces of oven-fried potatoes there, a cup of milk. They can’t help themselves; they want to give it some food. The possum isn’t hungry. But a stray dog from the other end of town is, and he starts stopping by for breakfast. So does a thin cat and two baby kittens. And a shy small mouse. Several sparrows. Even a deer.

And this goes on for a while until the biggest story happens. A story that will enter quietly into the walls of the cafe and become part of its magic.

For a man whose wife has died drives through Flowers, Kansas, one morning on his way to something new. He is sad. He really isn’t sure where he’s going.

But passing the Van Gogh Cafe, he sees the possum. He sees the possum and he sees all the hungry animals standing beneath it, eating the scraps of muffins and potatoes. And the man sees something else there, too, something no one has seen until now. And because of what he sees, he turns his car around and drives back where he belongs, back to his farm, which he turns into a home for stray animals, animals who come to him and take away his loneliness.

Since that day the possum at the Van Gogh Cafe has disappeared. One minute it was there, the next minute it wasn’t.

But the customers still bring food out of the cafe every morning, leaving scraps beneath the tree in case anyone hungry happens by. There is always a new stray dog, a new thin cat, sparrows.

Clara is not surprised the possum has gone away. Things are always changing at the Van Gogh Cafe, and something new is sure to happen soon. Perhaps when the silent movie star arrives…

Sermon

The Van Gogh Cafe

Not surprisingly I was unpacking children’s books at the time.

My principal, Jay Jordan, walked into my classroom and closed the door. He surveyed my room and shook his head, definitely a Keith Kron fourth grade classroom–a few books here (well, more than a few books), a few chairs there, two bulletin boards scattered all over the floor, my desk already swamped with papers. And school would not start for two days yet.

We looked at each other, and I knew I was at the OK Corral. I wasn’t sure what I was about to be shot for, but I knew something was up.

Perhaps you have seen the face and fidgeting of a nine-year-old child who lied to you twenty minutes before about having to go to the rest room and now really needed to go. My principal looked somewhat less composed than that.

He asked me if I had gotten his message from the day before about wanting to talk to him about something. I told him I had. Silence. More fidgeting. I began to have an inkling about what this conversation was going to be about.

“I am glad we’re on your turf,” Jay said. He looked at me for a minute. I nodded. Silence. Jay took a breath.

“You know Tristan Burke is no longer on your class list.” I nodded again.

“His mother made me take him out of your class.” Jay looked down and then back up. I nodded again. Tristan’s mother was president of the PTA that year. I only vaguely knew who Tristan was–and the only thing I knew about him was that he was the most effeminate boy I had encountered in five years of teaching.

“His mother made me take him out of your class because she says she knows you’re a homosexual. I don’t know how she knows it, but she knows it.” Jay looked at me. I looked at him and could see the wheels spinning in his head. I would wonder later if he could see the wheels spinning in mine.

Fortunately, and sadly, I had prepared for this moment. I had no doubts it would come at some point. Years of thinking about it had almost kept me from going into teaching, but the call to teach had won out.

I knew to say nothing. I knew to wait to be asked, then I would answer yes, and only then. I raised my eyebrows back at him. More silence. Part of me was hoping he would ask, that I would be given an opportunity to tell him, that I could finally tell my story.

He didn’t ask. He broke the silence. “This is ridiculous. You’re not the type to harm children.”

We looked at each other. I nodded quietly, realizing the support I was getting. It was a bittersweet moment for both of us. Jay finally mumbled, “I shouldn’t have pulled him out of your class.”

“She would have made your year horrible. Mine, too, for that matter.” I paused. “It’s okay.”

Jay nodded quietly back at me.

“We did reading groups today. Tristan will be in my class for reading. It’s an hour each day.” My voice trailed off.

Jay was firmer now. “You’ll get my backing. She’ll just have to deal with it. There’s another parent concerned too. I’ll deal with him too. We won’t talk about this again.” Jay surveyed my room.

“Now get this room cleaned up. I don’t know how you are going to be ready to teach in two days.” He spun on his heels and turned toward the door. He opened it and turned to me.

“I’m glad we did this on your turf,” he repeated.

He looked at me one last time, tried to smile, and left, closing the door behind him.

For the next four years, I never heard any of those complaints again. Tristan and I got along famously. I invited his mother into my reading class to help out when she could. She did, and we laughed a lot together. From me she learned the fine art of teasing children–and probably a few other things.

It occurs to me to tell you why I am here–why I do the work now as Director of the Office of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Concerns for our Unitarian Universalist Association–and not teaching fourth grade anymore.

I left because I was afraid.

It is more than being found out and fired because I was a known homosexual, though that’s certainly part of it. The longer I stuck around the greater the odds were that my private life would become public knowledge.

My parents, who have not used the words “gay” or “homosexual” in the twenty plus years I have been out to them, are a part of this story too. My dad was a principal in the same school system as I, and my mother taught first grade in Lexington as well. I never had the opportunity to think of fighting this battle alone, and my folks had given a lifetime of modeling to know how to overprotect people. Any public battle I chose there would have included them.

I lived four lives in Lexington, Kentucky. I lived a work life where I loved the work of teaching elementary school. I lived a family life where I had dinner with my folks once a week, visited my grandmother a lot, and overspent on my young relatives at Christmas. I lived a gay life where I hung out with friends, led a support group, and played volleyball. I lived a religious life where I sat on every committee in my home UU congregation and moved on to district and denominational work beyond that.

I even managed to begin to see some overlapping. Certainly my work life and family life overlapped some. And as I came out in church, my gay life and my religious life began to merge. I worked very hard at making my church a welcoming place for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. I worked very hard at bringing gays, lesbians, and bisexuals into my church. And it happened.

It happened in part because I started telling stories in church. I was able to tell the story about having a crush on Mr. Gardner, my high school drama teacher, and then telling him about it. I was able to tell the story of being in very Southern Baptist church as a teenager and having my “Anita Bryant” type Sunday school teacher ask me if I agreed with her that homosexuals were sick people.

I was able to tell the story of coming out to my parents and having my father ask me if I was going to molest children while my mother cried. I was able to tell the story of meeting a Unitarian Universalist minister in a gay bar and that’s how I became a Unitarian Universalist.

I was becoming aware that not only could I be eleven and ten and nine and eight and seven and six and five and four and three and two and one, but I could talk about them as well. You see, my real fear was not that someone like my principal would ask me if I was gay, would ask me my story. My real fear is that I would never get to tell it.

This is what the radical right wants–to control our society so that only certain approved stories can be told.

I was afraid I would never get to have a life. I was afraid I would always have four of them.

My fear was not that my private life would become public knowledge. My fear was either that it never would, or it would happen only on someone else’s terms.

When I hear people say they want to make sure they have a private life and a public life, I wonder, “Do they really want two lives?” Categories for human beings are really a bad idea.

I think I learned that during my conversation with my principal.

As an aside, I do understand that people are talking about control and choice when they make the point about having a private life. I’m all for that. I just believe human beings do better when they only have one life to juggle. It’s more than enough to do.

So it was after this conversation with my principal when I began to know the need to make a change. I looked around me and became sadly aware of the number of people leading more than one life at a time.

My teaching colleague who had been married to a man with a sexual addiction for children.

My father who tried to pretend he never had a father and never talked, or talks, about him.

My friend Steve who quit playing the piano because he became a librarian.

My friend Saundra who told no one about her live-in boyfriend, Dick.

All of these people and so many more who never got to be eleven. It was hardest for me to see in the children I taught. Children who came to school and then went home and cooked and cleaned for younger brothers and sisters. Children who knew they could not fail. Children who went home to wars. And by the time they were nine years old they knew to keep these lives quiet.

Religious Educator Maria Harris talks about implicit education–what is taught without saying it. I knew I was implicitly teaching these children to have more than one life. There had to be a better way.

I looked at how I might make it a better way. I learned of cities that had nondiscrimination policies for teachers. I did not trust that those were real.

I looked at the amount of work I had to do. And I thought about the fact that I often spent more time documenting what I taught and how I taught it and who was there to hear it, than I did actually getting to teach.

So I decided to look elsewhere. The person I saw doing the most teaching was my minister and the other ministers I knew. And they didn’t have to fill out report cards either.

I remembered Jesus was a teacher in many ways. Rabbis consider themselves as teachers. I watched the UU ministers I knew and I watched the way they taught the people around them–by telling stories, often their stories.

At the same time I was leading homophobia workshops in UU congregations–not how to have more of it, mind you, but how to have less. I learned quickly three things about teaching adults.

1) They don’t necessarily have longer attention spans than children. They just do a better job of faking. Usually engaging people on an emotional level increases their attentiveness.

2) Adult learning is as much about unlearning as it is about learning.

3) The product isn’t nearly as important as the process.

So how do you teach people to be less homophobic? You are explicitly teaching them about homophobia. You are implicitly teaching them about vulnerability.

That’s where the possum shows up. That’s where the magic happens. As people let themselves become more vulnerable, they become stronger and less homophobic. I did this through telling stories–sometimes my stories. And I was blessed with the stories of others.

I saw the possibility for having one life.

A friend of mine from seminary and I were talking one day and she said you could learn a fair amount about a person by asking them these four questions:

1) When did you stop singing?

2) When did you stop dancing?

3) When did you stop playing?

4) When did you stop telling your story?

For the record, I stopped singing in third grade in music class when Mrs. Rice told me I couldn’t sing–though I still hum to myself when I think no one is looking.

I still go dancing.

I still play.

And as I told my friend, “It’s more a matter of when I started telling my story than when I stopped.”

I stopped telling my story at fourteen. It would be ten years later that I started telling some of my stories again. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve not had to figure out what story I could tell where.

Like the story of the possum, one story leads to another. And when we hear our story in another’s story, well, that’s the magic. That’s when we encounter mystery.

What are your stories? Have you stopped telling them? Do you only tell them in certain places, in certain lives? How well do you know the stories of those around you? The stories in this room–your stories–are magical. I hope you are not afraid to tell them. They are your life and they let you be fully eleven or whatever age you are.

A final story from the Van Gogh Cafe’ and then I will close.

It is winter at the cafe’.

Marc is in the back cooking, though the restaurant is empty. Clara is putting napkins into the napkin holder when a man walks in. He is tall and slender and moves like water. He is strikingly handsome and a fabulous dresser. Black cloak, black cashmere scarf, black wool gloves, black cane.

His white hair sets it off perfectly. He must be 90. Clara takes his order.

“Tea, plain. Boiled egg, please. Thank you.”

Clara thinks there is something romantic about him.

After his food is served, Marc comes out looking for his watch. He looks around and sees the man. Marc stops what he is doing and stares. He is staring because he knows who this elegant man in the cafe’ is.

He is a star.

Clara doesn’t know, of course. She has watched the old movies with her father, but, except for Chaplin, doesn’t know their names. Only their movements.

And it is perhaps the way the elegant man has moved through the cafe’ that reminds her of something she has seen before. Reminds everyone. But none can quite place the memory.

The breakfast hours pass and people go their way, to work, to the mall at the edge of town, back home.

But the elegant man stays on. He has hardly touched his egg. His teacup is still half full. The door of the Van Gogh Cafe’ opens and closes, opens and closes, and he stays on looking out the window.

Marc cannot help himself. When there is no one left in the cafe’ except the silent star, Marc walks over to his table. Clara, curious, shyly follows.

Marc offers his hand and the man gracefully takes it. They shake.

“I know you work,” Mark says softly. “I love it. I love all your films.”

Clara’s eyes are wide. She has not known until know that a star is in her cafe’. The old man blushes and smiles.

“Thank you,” he says.

There is an awkward moment, then graciously, he offers Marc and Clara the two empty chairs at his table. Happily, they sit.

Marc and the silent star talk about the old films as Clara listens. There is an innocence in her father’s face she has not seen before. He is like a boy. The silent star seems pleased, quietly thrilled, to talk of his work with someone who who understands so well–to finally tell his story. He laughs and sighs and even trembles slightly, reliving it all.

There is a moment or two when each is quiet, catching a breath.

“Why, sir, are you at the Van Gogh Cafe’?” Marc gently asks. Clara waits.

The old man seems glad someone has asked. He reaches into his coat and pulls forth an old photograph. He hands it first to Clara, then to Marc.

It is of a beautiful young man in a waistcoat and top hat, standing before an old theater. Marc looks carefully at the building in the picture.

“Is this…?”

“Yes,” replies the silent star.

The building is the Van Gogh Cafe. In 1923. When it was a theater.

“He and I did some shows here together, the summer we met.” The silent star smiles and puts the photograph back inside his coat.

“Today I am waiting for him,” he says.

Clara’s heart is pounding. She feels that she herself is in a movie. Every gesture the man makes, each word he speaks is so beautiful to her. She knows the cafe remembers this man. She can feel it drawing in to him, reaching for this man who has been a part of its first magic, on the stage of the old theater.

Oddly, not one person has walked into the cafe to break this spell.

Marc offers the star a fresh cup of tea and a piece of apple pie, which is gratefully accepted. Then Marc and Clara leave the old man to his waiting.

The lunch hours come and go. Then the dinner hours. The silent star waits. Occasionally Clara or Marc offer him something, but he politely declines. And they find themselves watching the window, watching the door, for a beautiful young man in a top hat and waistcoat

Finally, it is time to close and still the old man is waiting. He seems very tired now. But unworried. He asks Marc if he might sit by the window a little longer

“Of course,” says Marc, though he offers his guest room to the man, offers to take him home for the evening and return him to the table by the window the next day.

But the man is certain his friend is coming very soon.

“Very soon,” he says.

So Marc takes Clara home and returns to the cafe a few hours later, to check on the old man.

At first Marc thinks the man is asleep. Then Marc realizes that he has died. In the old man’s hand, Marc finds a newspaper clipping, cracked and yellow. The clipping shows the face of the beautiful young man in top hat and waistcoat. It reports that he has drowned, in 1926.

And in the old man’s other hand is the same photograph that Marc and Clara were shown. But now the photograph is changed. The beautiful young man is gone, and there is only a soft empty light where he was standing.

Marc and Clara keep the photograph and the newspaper clipping inside a small box near the cash register, and on Christmas Eve when everything is quiet, they look at these again. They each think how perfect that the silent star has died where he found his true love. That he came to the Van Gogh Cafe and waited for his friend to take him home.

Whatever forces are against you, whatever pain and suffering is yours, whatever joy you have, whatever your story is, my wish for you is that you share your story whenever and wherever you choose–whether you are 11 or 90 or somewhere in between.

Sing. Dance. Play. Tell your stories. Listen to the stories of others. Live your one life. Feel. Feel its magic.

Apologies for 2011 – Viva la Resolution!

January 2, 2011 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Michael LeBurkien, Sermons

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Rabbi Michael LeBurkien

January 1, 2011

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the Play button in the Podcast window to listen.

The Work of Christmas begins

December 26, 2010 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Lena Breen, Sermons

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Rev. Lena Breen

December 26, 2010

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A Unitarian Universalist View of Prayer

November 28, 2010 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Nell Newton, Sermons

Nell Newton

November 28, 2010

Do you pray? Really?

Is there “something” you do – almost automatically – in certain situations?

I mean, outside of the times, when midway through our service we are invited to “join in an attitude of prayer” and someone reads something worthy of pondering. Do you really pray? Or do you just adopt an attitude?

If you do pray, would you admit it to anyone else — to the person sitting next to you in these pews? Would you tell me?

Our practice has no fixed liturgy of prayer. We have no cannon, no formal recitation of holy words to use in times of turmoil to calm our hearts, or focus our thoughts. If you walk into any Unitarian or Universalist church in North America, you will not hear the same words spoken in the same way at the same part of a service. We have no shared doxology for giving thanks or acknowledging blessings. We have freed ourselves from any requirements that would dictate how and when, or even IF we should pray. And, for the most part we seem to be getting along okay.

In fact, some of us are probably pretty glad to be done with certain prayers. (Our father who art in heaven… hmmmm…, lift up his countenance… uh hunh… , and it is in dying that we…. hmmmm….) It well might have been in the middle of a standard prayer that you stumbled, and were caught up short when you realized I Cannot Say That And Mean It.

So what DO we say?

Maybe we don’t. Maybe prayer isn’t a part of your life. Maybe, you are a pragmatic person like my Aunt Ruth. Ruth lives outside a small town in southern Michigan. While her family is not particularly religious, plenty of her neighbors attend the many Christian churches. One day, while fixing supper for her family, Ruth collapsed on the kitchen floor in an epileptic seizure. It was a one-time thing, it never happened again. But it meant countless trips to medical specialists, and the inconvenience of losing her drivers license for a whole year. After the initial scare, she heard from too many members of the community “Oh Ruth, we’re praying for you.” It wore on her patience. She told me “I don’t want their damn prayers – I want someone to help me pick up my kids from school and take me grocery shopping!” Like I said, she is a pragmatic woman.

At its worst, “We’re praying for you” carries a whiff of condescension. As if the speaker can plainly see from your sorry condition, that your own prayers have been insufficient, so they’ll lend you some of theirs.

Perhaps that is why UU’s tend to shy away from that particular exchange.

From the get-go, that type of prayer is beseeching and calling upon a god for intervention or intercession. Could you lend me a hand down here? In its most immature, prayer is wishing – wishing for a puppy, a sparkly pony, a good grade on the test. Up one level comes the bargaining – “I’ll give up cussing and taking your name in vain if only you’ll…” And many of the wordiest of prayers amount to flattery: “Oh all powerful and merciful god…” The speaker is but a humble servant buttering up a vain and capricious deity. I’ve had some bosses like that, and, for me, such a character is not a god worth serving.

So we’ve grown up and we’re past the wheedling and pleading prayers. We’re not waiting for god to bring about changes we’re not ready to make for ourselves. We know better than to bargain with the universe. If we are going to make a personal connection to a greater power, it better be one we respect. And for several of us, god simply does not fit into a deity-box. And that’s where it gets a little complicated… To what address should we send such messages?

And what do we say – almost reflexively, after the first gasp of sadness follows bad news? What do we say when someone has had a loss – a death – and there is nothing one can do. And yet there is the wish to affirm for that person’s well-being and the longing to offer healing. These are the times when prayer would be a traditional response. What do we say when our heart is pained with sympathy? Do you have prayers to offer? Would you consider them of any value to offer?

I’ll stop asking you questions and quickly tell you straight up. I do pray. And it is a physical and quiet practice with almost no words – only names. Each day I pray specifically for a family I know. Earlier this year Jim died from a brain tumor. He left behind his wife and teenage sons who now must reconstruct their lives without him. Each day I still my body, clear my head, and think of each one of them completely, and open my heart to hold them all. Do they know about this? No. Should they? No. Do my prayers have any effect upon them? Honestly, that’s not the point. But this action keeps them present in my life, and makes it easier for me to pick up the phone, invite them over to dinner, offer to pick the kids up from music lessons, and be of some real use.

Frankly, the efficacy of prayer has yet to be proven definitively. There have been assorted studies that mostly show the placebo effect is alive and well. Many have tried to measure change in patient outcome following intercessionary prayer, and when the double-blind data is reviewed, prayer does not seem to improve the sick people who are prayed for.

But like so many studies, I wonder if the researchers were measuring the right part of the process. Perhaps, rather than measure the outcome of the people prayed for, perhaps we should measure the outcome of the people who are praying for someone else. Or we might examine the outcome of the family members who know their loved one received prayers.

Reverend Ed Brock told me how upon the death of his wife’s mother their family received many kindnesses from friends. The most unusual was a special gift made by two nuns they know professionally. They sent a card that said, in effect, we have made a gift to a convent in upstate New York and for a year the sisters in this convent will give payers for your family.

There was nothing in the note suggesting a wish for conversion, or that the prayers would produce any specific outcome. But to Ed and Alphise it seemed like and felt like an act of love. The idea that out there, amid the crazy frenzy of society, a group of people somewhere were simply mentioning her name daily — that idea was powerful. It wasn’t the potential supernatural dimension, but the caring dimension that touched them.

There is the other type of common prayer – the act of giving thanks. As Meister Eckhart explained “If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is “thank you,” that would suffice.”

My favorite instruction came from my Korean martial arts master who was raised in a Buddhist temple. In his broken English, he scolded us: “Before you eat the pig, thank the pig! Because, if they could, the pig’s family would sue you!!”

As UU’s we’re a bit more comfortable here. Giving thanks doesn’t presume that we’re flawed, or helpless, just appreciative and observant. And we can be munificent in our thanks to the animal, the farmer, the cook!

In stopping to give thanks, we allow ourselves a moment to experience beauty and bounty more fully. Who wouldn’t want to spend time in this type of prayer? But do we – other than for formal occasions? Do you offer thanks over the morning’s oatmeal or the leftovers eaten at your desk? Have your kids ever seen you pause at breakfast on Tuesday and say “thank you” before the fork touches the food? What would that be like? Are you really up for three-squares of thankfulness every day?

Years ago, I worked as the Kitchen Manager and cook at a Quaker residential house on Beacon Hill in Boston. It was the Quaker custom of that community to have a good solid minute of silence before we ate our evening meal. There was nothing structured and no one led us with instructions or guidance through that silence. As the cook, it was generally the first time I had sat down in 6 hours and the first few times, if god spoke to me it was through bone-deep fatigue and if I gave thanks it was for the chair under my butt. But in time, I found myself placing a final blessing upon the food. It had passed through my hands, and was about to be received by people (who were grateful that they had not had to cook), and who would use the energy it gave them to study medicine, choreograph new dances, arrange flowers, build houses, and change their world. Eventually I found whole afternoons of chopping onions, crimping pie crusts, washing pots became an extended action of prayer. Living in an intentional community can do that sort of thing to an impressionable young person.

However, these days, I’m like most folks, hurrying to fix dinner, with NPR telling me about the horrible state of the world. I snap off the radio and fling the food at my tired and surly family who generally do not bother to thank me, the pig, the farmer, or anyone else. It is not ideal, but at least we have a place to work up from…

Just as many UUs have started to reclaim the language of god-talk, some of us are starting to reclaim prayer on our own terms. Perhaps there was a baby in that bathwater. But to rescue it we’ll have to do more than simply deconstruct or demythologize the practice. In short, to understand it, we’ll have to do it.

One splendid Unitarian Universalist woman I know set out to develop her own ritual of prayer and tied it to her every day. She turned some of her daily actions into sacred rituals. Each morning, first thing, she scoops up a handful of birdseed and steps out onto her patio. She scatters the seed in a small mandala marking the four directions and recites a scrap of a Navajo prayer “There is beauty before me, there is beauty behind me.” She fills in her circle with peanuts for the blue jays, and pauses just long enough to feel connected with nature. Then, every evening, after the dishes are done, and the dog is walked, she stops and simply gives thanks for her guardians who have helped her that day. She calls for blessings on her children and grandchildren. She calls for blessings upon her animal companions and asks that the presence of love be with people she knows who are having troubles in their lives. This is simply what she does.

I came to prayer sideways – through meditation. They aren’t the same thing, but they improve one another. In meditation, a person looks inward to consider their actions and find where they might be wanting. Once the internal landscape has been surveyed, then the individual is ready to connect to the outer in prayer. Many time I found that I might dive down into meditation only to rise up in prayer — prayers of resolve and prayers of remembrance — prayers of thanks and prayers of acceptance. Sometimes a deity is referenced, and sometimes not. And that last detail, so far, has not proven injurious to my health, or limited the usefulness of the practice.

When I pray, I am not asking for anything, I am not expecting any change in the world, only a change in myself. If I surrender anything, I offer up my ego and selfishness, and invite Grace to enter and fill that space. And afterwards, I take my changed self forward, with that small spark of the divine inside me, burning just a bit brighter.

So, how do you pray? How might you take old words and blow new breath into them? Have you created a ritual and observed any changes within you? When faced with a crisis, would you have the humility and trust to open up and allow a caring person to pray with you, to help fan your divine spark so that it might burn a little brighter as you go forward to face what you must?

Now, I have an assignment for us here. You see, this topic is too big for one sermon and I need your help.

Honestly, I suspect that many of you do pray, in your own fashion, and for your own purposes. Being the humble and private people you are, I’ll predict yours are humble, private, prayers. But, if you could, please tell me about them. Tell me how you might have retained or reclaimed prayer. Where it fits in your day, and what you say when life rises up and threatens to overwhelm you. Tell me about it. And in another couple of months, I’d like to be back up here, and I’d like to share some of your stories about prayer.

Until then, if prayer isn’t in your life, be a diligent UU and at least question why. And then question “why” again. For those who would consider “why not?” may I invite you to bring along your god, your breath, and your willingness to be changed.

Blessed Be

Play above what you know

November 7, 2010 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Rev. Lena Breen

November 7,2010

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Unmasking Courage

October 31, 2010 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Chris Jimmerson

October 31, 2010

Happy Halloween! One of Halloween’s main themes is fear. On this Halloween, what do Unitarian Universalists fear as a religious community and where do we find courage, one of our churches values, in the face of those fears?

I’ve been studying our earliest Unitarian predecessors and have found in their stories remarkable examples of courage – courage in a religious context, what we might call “spiritual courage”. So, I’ll ask you to indulge me for a bit, as we travel back to the 16th century, Reader’s Digest version.

Very frightening things are happening. The Gutenberg press has allowed for the wide scale printing of the bible, so people outside the Catholic Church hierarchy can actually read it! The protestant reformation has begun. The Renaissance in literature, arts and sciences has begun. Those scary Humanists have started studying things. Now, all of this is a great threat to the Catholic Church, so the Inquisition is in full force also.

It is a time when the power and wealth of governments and that of the Church are tightly intertwined, and biblical interpretation, doctrine, has been a major role of the Church in this power structure.

So, to protect their own influence (not to mention to avoid becoming victims of the inquisition themselves), the leaders of the larger reformation movements have expressed their differences with the church as points of practice, not essential doctrine.

Into this volatile situation, a book appears, On the Errors of the Trinity, by a Spanish Scholar in his early twenties named Michael Servetus, questioning one of the sacred creeds of the Church – God in Trinity; the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

The year was 1531, and young Servetus had published his book hoping to convert the Reformers to his position that there was but one eternal God. His hopes were dashed. The Reformers quickly reaffirmed the Trinity. After trying and failing again with a second book, Servetus realized his books had put him in danger, changed his name and went into hiding in Lyons, France. He eventually become a medical doctor and is even mentioned in medical history texts for having elucidated the pulmonary circulatory system – like a good proto-Unitarian, he couldn’t be satisfied with only one field of excellence.

However, also like a good proto-Unitarian, Servetus had a little trouble letting go of things, and so, 15 years later, in 1546, he began another book AND, using his assumed name, struck up a correspondence debating theology with none other than John Calvin, the influential Protestant reformer who had established a powerbase in Geneva.

Calvin was courteous at first but quickly grew exasperated and sent Servetus his own views, as set out in Calvin’s, “Institutes of the Christian Religion”.

Upon receiving Calvin’s seminal book, Servetus responded with one of the first recorded instances of a long and beloved religious tradition still practiced in Unitarian Universalist churches across North America even today. He scribbled disparaging notes in the margins on where he thought Calvin was wrong and sent it back to him.

This may not have been wise.

An incensed Calvin, realizing he had actually been corresponding with Servetus, wrote to a friend that if Servetus should ever come to Geneva “I will not suffer him to get out alive”.

In 1553, Servetus published his new book, “The Restoration of Christianity”. By April 4 of 1553, the French Inquisition had arrested and jailed Michael Servetus for heresy, with evidence for the charge supplied by Calvin.

By April 7, 1553, Servetus had escaped from jail. After convincing the jailer to let him out so he could relieve himself in the jails walled garden, our proto-Unitarian ripped off his nightgown, and fully dressed underneath, scaled the wall and ran away. Inexplicably, he headed to Geneva. This most definitely was not wise.

In Geneva, he was recognized, arrested and convicted of spreading heresy, in a process largely manipulated by Calvin.

On October 27, 1553, Michael Servetus was burned at the stake. They used moist, green wood so that it would burn more slowly and prolong the suffering. They placed a crown sprinkled with gunpowder on his head.

And as the flames grew and the terror consumed him, as flesh was slowly turned to ash, Michael Servetus cried out in agony, but he never renounced his beliefs.

I wonder if today our religious beliefs could cost us our lives, could we summon that kind of courage? If facing that kind of terror, could I? Of course, I’m just speculating, because in modern America, such a situation seems to be a long ago and far away threat.

On September 21, 2005, the DuPage Unitarian Universalist Church received a bomb threat because of their support for marriage equality for gays and lesbians. It would be only one of many such threats against supporters of marriage equality.

On July 27, 2008, Jim David Adkisson walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and opened fire with a shotgun, murdering two people and injuring several others because “he wanted to kill some liberals”. Not so long ago. Not so far away.

Perhaps the crazed acts of disturbed individuals. Perhaps the consequences of a growing rhetoric of violence over disagreement in “modern” America.

Michael Servetus left two legacies; 1. His execution led to a slow growth in religious tolerance and 2. His writings influenced many to reconsider some of Christianity’s most central doctrines, including the Unitarians in Poland and those in Transylvania.

The histories of both are fascinating and contain lessons in spiritual courage.

The Socinians, as the early Polish Unitarians came to be known, thrived for a while in the 16th century protected by the Polish minor nobility, even establishing their own township. However, it was not to last. The Catholic Counter Reformation, a series of invasions by surrounding peoples and shifts in economic and social influences led to growing persecution, until by 1660, the Socinians faced a choice – recant their beliefs, leave Poland or be but to death.

Many did recant. A few gave up all they owned and left, seeking the freedom to practice their beliefs elsewhere, some eventually joining the Unitarians in Transylvania. After only a little over a century, the Unitarian religious movement in Poland had all but perished.

Again, having to make such a choice – to have to summon the courage to migrate, destitute to a foreign land in order to remain true to our religious convictions – may seem like a distant and remote possibility to us now.

Any yet, thousands of people from throughout the world come to the U.S. every year seeking asylum, having fled religious persecution in their home countries, having made exactly that choice. We imprison most of them as soon as they arrive here and, since 9-11, fewer and fewer are seeing their asylum requests granted, especially those we consider to have the “wrong” religion.

Even closer to home, a group calling themselves “Repent Amarillo” has been attacking our Amarillo UU Fellowship, using techniques learned from the “New Apostolic Reformation”, an international organization that provides training on, quote, “taking communities though militant spiritual warfare techniques” — mapping whole geographic areas to identify where the sinners are located (such as in UU churches apparently) and either convert them or “drive the demons out”. Now in case you’re picturing me wearing a rather large tinfoil hat at this point, consider that, before his disgrace, the Rev. Ted Haggard in Colorado Springs adopted these same techniques to harass people he had decided were witches. Ten of his 15 targets sold their homes and moved away because of the harassment.

Last week, Reverend Brock spoke about America’s rising intolerance toward Muslims. Interesting then, that the Unitarianism that exists in Transylvania today was able to develop in the 16th Century because of the tolerance extended to them by the Sultan of the Islamic Ottoman State and because an intermixing of Islamic and Christian cultures bred an ethos of religious acceptance.

Their history is a long one, and religious tolerance toward the Unitarians in Transylvania has waxed and waned, as governments and societal influences have changed, yet they have persisted, providing us lessons in courage.

One such lesson is that spiritual courage requires standing up for religious tolerance. Our Amarillo Unitarian Universalist Fellowship knows this! You see, on September 11 of this year, the head of Repent Amarillo, part-time Reverend David Grisham, had planned to burn a Koran in a public park. The UU Fellowship organized a counter demonstration.

As the good Reverend doused his copy of the Koran with lighter fluid and held it over a barbeque pit preparing to set it on fire, the counter-protesters held their hands over the pit to stop him. Twenty three year old skateboarder, Jacob Isom, an avowed atheist, came up behind the Reverend, grabbed the book from his hands, said, “Dude, you have no Koran,” and ran away with it.

And so it came to pass that thanks largely to a bunch of Unitarian Universalists and a skateboarding atheist, no holy books were burned in Amarillo Texas that day.

A second lesson is that courage is not always one short act in time – that courage may be required over the long run, in the face of societal challenges and changes. We must practice a vigilant and a persistent courage. Only a few years ago, the Texas State Comptroller at the time, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, some of you may have heard of her, denied non-profit status to the UU church in Denison because they did not have one system of belief.

The Texas State Board of Education has been busily rewriting the rules for our childrens’ textbooks to, among other things, strengthen requirements for teaching the “Christian beliefs of the Founding Fathers” and to deemphasize Thomas Jefferson because he was a deist.

At the national Values Voters summit this year, attended by several of the nation’s most well-known politicians, the following statements were issued: that the U.S. should ban the construction of any new mosques anywhere in America; and that the 1st amendment to the constitution does not justify the separation of church and state.

Of the politicians attending, several of whom stand a chance of becoming our next President, not one of them disavowed these statements.

How are we to have courage in light of such challenges? How we do we avoid becoming discouraged in a culture filled with dogmatism and intolerance?

Well, research has found that practicing small acts of courage in our daily lives, such as reaching out to those with whom we have disagreed, builds confidence and prepares us to act with courage when confronting far greater risks.

Research has also found that discerning our values, and reflecting on them often, provides a higher purpose and the impetus for acting courageously. And this idea of finding courage in our values is why, this Halloween, I have resurrected our Unitarian ancestors; although, saying ancestors is a stretch. For the most part, Unitarianism in the U.S. developed independently of that in Europe. Still, each embraced a set of strikingly kindred core values, a shared religious DNA if you will, which UU historian Earl Wilbur identified as commitment to religious freedom, unrestricted use of reason and tolerance of differing views and practices.

This religious DNA is still a key element in the blueprint for Unitarian Universalism today, when we proclaim, “One religion, many beliefs”, or when we affirm our 4th principle, “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning”. This religious DNA drives our congregation’s support of individual spiritual practice and growth.

You see, this foundational core of our belief system requires that we not only work for religious tolerance in the outside world, but that we practice religious freedom within our very religion itself.

And that is good news. That is a saving message that people, whether secular or spiritual, need in our world today.

It demands that we proactively invite people into a place of spiritual exploration without creedal requirements. It compels us to evangelize. Now, I know this idea of UUs evangelizing is controversial. Nonetheless, I will risk being branded a heretic even among Unitarian Universalists by advocating for evangelizing!

Evangelizing is controversial because we’re afraid of it. We don’t even like the word. For many of us, rightly or wrongly, it carries connotations of an irrational, overly emotional form of religious worship; of fundamentalism and restrictive dogma; of conversion and coercion, promises of heaven and threats of eternal hell.

Those of you who are Star Trek nerds like me will understand when I say that the evangelism practiced by the small-town Baptist church I grew up in felt more like a “church of the Borg” – “Resistance is futile. Freedom is irrelevant. You will be assimilated.”

We are also afraid of evangelism, because if we bring to the world our good news (what evangelize means by the way), people might just join us, we might just grow, and growth means change and change can be scary. We are afraid of it because we are much better at talking about what we do not believe than what we do believe. But what we do not believe is not a saving message. Taking about what we do believe takes a lot more courage, but we might start practicing it with our UU principles or our churches’ values: “We find meaning in acceptance of one another, justice, equity, the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process.”

“We believe there is eternal beauty in transcendence, community, compassion, courage and transformation.”

“We find there is God in the inherent worth and dignity of every person; in the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.”

Wherever your personal beliefs meet those of our shared religion, that is our faith. Our core values, our religious DNA, will not allow us to keep it to ourselves. As the President of our denomination Rev. Peter Morales so aptly demonstrated in a recent sermon, there is a tremendous need for a safe community within which to explore life’s deeper questions.

After I found this church, I realized that I have been a Unitarian Universalist all of my life and just had never known it. I’ll bet many of you had the same experience or have heard the same thought expressed. Sometimes, we seem almost proud of this, but I think it is heartbreaking. I wonder how many more people have never found community with us because they have never heard of us; never heard from us.

If we were to evangelize, if we were to radiate the light from that chalice out beyond these walls and into our community and our world with our saving message of religious freedom, hope, dignity, peace, love, justice, compassion — the sacred beauty of shared existence, well, we might just transform the world, reclaim this paradise we have been given. Here. And now.

And that is what terrifies us the most.

“How DARE we dream that?” we ask ourselves. We dare it because our most deeply held values compel us to do so. We have the spiritual courage. It is in our religious DNA.

The Joy of Giving

October 10, 2010 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Nell Newton

October 10, 2010

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Prayer:

After performing the miracle of the loaves and fishes, Jesus and his disciples made a quick get away in a boat to leave the Pharisees to themselves. Once in the boat, the disciples realized that someone had forgotten to grab one of the seven baskets of extra bread, and there was now only one loaf of bread among them. While Jesus warned them against the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod, the disciples got fixated on their one loaf of bread. Jesus was not impressed. “Were you not paying attention? Do not you yet see or understand?”

Now, you and I do not perform miracles. If there is a great crowd who have nothing to eat, we cannot break apart seven loaves and expect more than crumbs to reach every mouth.

So instead, let us gather the flour and water to bake more bread. Let us share our leavening among our neighbors. And let our efforts fill the hungry empty places in our world with love.

Great Spirit, I ask that we might each know the comforting weight of a small smooth stone in our pocket, waiting for its chance to become soup.

I ask this in the name of every thing that is holy, and that is precisely every thing.

Amen

Sermon:

Have I told anyone recently how much I enjoy being the past president of our church? It’s really quite nice. As past president, I attend all of the board meetings, but don’t have a vote. Instead I simply serve as advisor and offer insight when asked. And if anything goes kaboom, I genially defer to our current president Eric Stimmel who will smilingly attend to the clean up. It’s really very relaxing. And it’s allowing me more time to do other things that I enjoy around the church, like washing dishes, greeting guests, and assisting with our worship.

+++++++

From an imaginary posting on a website for Unitarian Universalist ministers:

“Fun-loving, plus-sized church seeks compatible minister for long-term commitment and growth. Turn-ons: stimulating Sunday morning chats and community engagement. Turn-offs: Calvinism and put-downs. Must like self and others. Ability to nurture souls, transform lives, and do justice a plus. Please, only serious inquiries.”

Or, so that is how I imagine how it might read if our search for a settled minister read like a personals ad.

Instead our Settled Minister Search Committee is preparing a detailed congregational report and a fat packet of information that will make the rounds of ministers in search. Many will pore over it and try to imagine what it might be like if they came here. Some will quickly realize they are not up to the challenge, but several will lean forward and re-read some sections excitedly and wonder “What would it be like to be with First Church Austin?”

But, let’s back up a bit…

Susan Smith is our district executive overseeing the Unitarian Universalist churches in the southwest, and in a conversation she explained that in some ways the relationship between a minister and congregation is a bit like a marriage. It is a covenantal relationship, with shared goals and mutual respect. Like actual marriages, the joys are mixed with tough spots – but the agreement to stand in right relationship with one another helps keep both partners on track.

And, like actual marriages, the relationships generally end in either death or divorce. At the end of our last settled ministry, some of us wondered if we would ever feel such a connection again. Others felt we might not even deserve such connection. And still others were ready to find someone new right away.

But, have you ever been on a date with someone who is on the rebound? Over a plate of otherwise good fettucine, you get hear about that person’s last love’s awful habits or endearing charms, and then all of the disappointments, betrayals, and bitterness that accompanied their parting. It’s enough to put you off your pasta.

Congregations can behave much the same way, which is why the advisors from the Unitarian Universalist Association recommended we spend at least two years with interim ministers before calling our next settled minister. We were encouraged to play the field, so to speak, before making a serious commitment. Bring some new voices into the pulpit – they told us. Try out new ways of doing things, take some classes, look hard at some old habits, and dream about your future!” And that is exactly what we’ve been busy doing for the past 18 months.

But all along, we have been looking forward to finding a special someone to share our dreams and journey with.

Unlike in other denominations, our congregations and ministers do not have arranged marriages. Our ministers aren’t sent down from a central authority. There is no bishop to play matchmaker. Instead, like modern marriages, UU congregations and ministers choose one another after careful consideration. So, into the documents the search committee has prepared, they have compiled our most appealing attributes, but have also been frank about our weaknesses. Yes, we’re attractive, but we’re also modest, and good company.

The report and packet are almost ready, and they will be sent out by the end of this month. They tell a rich story, and you are all in there! Your dreams are included in there because you’ve already given so much of yourselves. You participated in groups to build our covenant, name our weaknesses, define our values, and shape our mission. You completed a survey of what is important to you in a minister. Your voices will come through loud and clear to anyone who will read through the pages. Many thanks to our Settled Minister Search Committee for the hours they spent compiling them. I know they will represent us well.

Now, like a small town, in our small denomination news travels fast and most of the ministers know that First Church Austin is entering into search. Some have been waiting to see our documents for a long time. “Would it work out between us?” they wonder.

There are several months of more work ahead for the Search Committee. They will read many packets posted by ministers in search. They will listen to countless sermons. They will eventually travel to see the strongest candidates preach and have many conversations. By next spring it is likely they will recommend a candidate for us to consider.

What do the rest of us do in the meantime? Well, there are a few specific things we can do – keep up with the self improvement – our leadership development classes, our move to policy-based governance. And, while this might not be an arranged marriage, there are a few traditional touches that it is time to attend to. Namely, the trousseau and the dowry.

Like birds and mammals that line their nests by pulling fluff from their own breasts, this fall we will be making a nice soft, warm budget to hold our vision and welcome our new minister.

Now, in traditional communities, there are uncles and aunties who make sure that a good arrangement is made, and they will put up the extra resources to seal the deal. While the bride-to-be weaves and sews the linens she will need as a wife, the extended family sets aside extra resources to give the new couple a good start. One uncle provides a few extra goats, another buys a modern stove for the couple’s home. Aunties sew coins onto the ceremonial garments and set aside extra food for the feast. With all these preparations, family alliances are secured, and everyone deepens their commitment to the community.

We are now in the middle of our stewardship campaign, and each of us has the chance to be the aunties and uncles whose commitment to the community will seal the deal. Several of us have already dug a little deeper than usual to make our congregation’s next budget look healthy and attractive. The search committee’s documents will include a proposed budget based upon the results of the stewardship campaign. You can be sure that interested candidates will look closely at that detail. And who would really want us if our budget were scrawny and underfunded?

Are you in? Will you set aside a few extra goats? Will you help stuff grape leaves for the feast? Will you raise your pledge a bit to secure your family’s alliance, and deepen your commitment to this union?

Ask yourself: What will you bring to the feast and are you ready to be fed?

Benediction:

Ean Huntington Behr

You are in the story of the world.

You are the world coming to know itself.

May you trust that all you will ever say or do

Belongs in the story of the world.

Salvation – A UU View

August 29, 2010 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Mark Skrabacz, Sermons

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Rev. Mark Skrabacz

August 29, 2010

Yesterday was the 47th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have Dream Speech.” He gave his soul-stirring message to 200,000 on the Washington Mall in what has been called the crowning moment of the Civil Rights Movement. It was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address.

I suppose you know that yesterday Fox Network Commentator Glenn Beck held a Tea Party Rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Beck says Christians should leave their social justice churches. He says social justice is a code word for communism and nazism. I don’t know if Beck is just strange, or just trying to be controversial, or just trying to make money. But in any case, what he has said attacks the very heart of Dr. King’s message and of the Christian faith, and I wonder how many Christians will express their faith by no longer watching his show, and even decrying his rally, since Beck denies one of the central teachings of the Bible, and Jesus and Dr. King — that of social justice.

Of course Unitarian Universalism is largely a social justice advocacy movement. The fact that we meet as a church and in a church building just might cause many of our neighbors to wonder exactly what it is our church believes. No doubt some of us have searched for ways to express our UU experiences and, hence, I continue to speak about our roots, practices and understandings. No doubt our UU views can appear as disperate as the contrast between Dr. King and Glenn Beck. Today, I’m going to entertain the notion of a controversial topic, that of salvation, salvation from a UU View.

Are you saved? This is a question that is usually only asked by evangelical Christians. What, if anything, might a Unitarian Universalist answer?

If we’re feeling facetious we might be tempted to respond with something like this, “Saved from what? or Saved for what? or Saved by whom, or what? ” But those answers might end the conversation. And if, like me, you believe that Unitarian Universalism has something marvelous to offer a tired and troubled world, you might want the conversation to continue. I would instead offer something like “Yes, I’m saved, but I’m not sure we mean the same thing. What do you mean when you say saved?” And I would ask the person to tell me his or her salvation story. And then I would tell mine.

Because you see, I am saved, just not in the same way fundamentalist Christians mean. That is the reason I am here in this pulpit today, proclaiming with enthusiasm the good news. So what do I, a Unitarian Universalist, mean by salvation?

Well, part of my answer has to do with theology, and goes back to our roots in Universalism and Unitarianism. In America, both began as reactions against the prevailing orthodox Calvinist doctrines of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These said that human beings were “totally depraved,” with no free will and no ability to make choices that would bring good into the world. The God of Calvin and many Biblical literalists had elected from the beginning of time which humans would be saved and which would be damned to suffer in a fiery hell for all eternity. Jesus was crucified and died in order to pay the penalty for the sins of the elect. The way to know whether a person was one of the elect, who would be saved and resurrected in the new and perfect world that God would create at the end of time, was to read the “signs.” One of these signs had to do with how much material wealth a person had; prosperity was therefore a sign of election. Perhaps this theology describes part of Glenn Beck’s view of what a true Christian should be about? There would be no need for social justice if humans were merely pawns in God’s chess game of life. Besides who could possibly do good and just things for another when only God can effect such goodness?

Two of our best known Universalist preachers were John Murray and Hosea Ballou, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They could not accept the Calvinist conception of God. For them, God was a good and loving father. This God would no more condemn any of his creatures to an eternal fiery hell than a loving parent would place a child in an earthly fire. Further, a God who would require the cruel and tortured death of a beloved son as atonement for the sins of some of humanity was not fit for our worship. Ballou argued that God’s purpose was to “happify” people, sending Jesus to teach us by example how to live a happy, healthy and holy life. If we lived in accordance with God’s purposeÑto love God and God’s creation and one another, yes, and practice social justiceÑwe would be happy. If we did notÑif we lived, instead, separated from God and from each otherÑwe would be unhappy. We, ourselves, would create our own heaven and hell here on earth.

Now, here is what I think is the essence of Ballou’s theology, the part that rings as true today as it did two centuries ago. And this very same idea was argued by Unitarians William Ellery Channing and, a generation later, Theodore Parker. It is this: what we need to be saved from is not original sin, and not the fiery pits of hell. What we need to be saved from is the concept of the angry, vengeful God who redeems humanity through violence and divides people into the saved and the damned. Ballou, Channing, and Parker argued that since people model their own behavior on what they imagine God to be, this concept of a wrathful, bloodthirsty God results in earthly hell. It results in the division of people into the worthy and the worthless, and it sanctifies violence against and oppression of those deemed to be worthless. This theology causes people to live in and from fear. A theology of a loving God would enable people to live in and from love.

Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way: “It behooves us to be careful in what we worship, for what we are worshipping is what we are becoming.” For Ballou, the critical thing was to liberate people from fear so they could live in love. And fear resided in what Ballou called the carnal mind, by which he meant in the body. Fear resided in the body. So Universalist thinking in the nineteenth century made salvation not about where our individual, personal souls go after we dieÑthat was a non-issue. Instead, salvation was a collective enterprise. In both Universalism and Unitarianism, this enterprise meant attending to conditions in the here and now, in this world. If we could liberate people’s bodies from fear of hunger and violence, they could live in love.

We North American UUs can proudly remember the heroes and heroines of our heritage of social justice, like Benjamin Rush and his timely defense of social equality in the late 18th century. And Theodore Parker’s passionate advocacy of abolition in the mid-19th century. We remember Adin Ballou and his critique of the industrial society, and William Ellery Channing with his abhorrence of poverty. Olympia Brown was ordained into the ministry in 1863, the first denominationally ordained woman minister in the US. We remember her along with Red Cross founder Clara Barton, women’s sufferage pioneer Susan B. Anthony, and Dorothea Dix, a social justice activist on behalf of the indigent insane who, through a vigorous program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first generation of American mental asylums. During the Civil War, she served as Superintendent of Army Nurses.

The UU view of salvation is for life here and now, in love. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “I come that they might have life, and have it abundantly.” Present-day Unitarian Universalism still reverberates with these ideas about salvation. While some of us believe in a personal deity and some do not, we agree in our covenant of seven principles that are underpinned by the following theological notions: the equal belovedness of every person, the importance of caring for this beautiful world here and now, the need to live in love and not fear.

This is part of my explanation of what I mean by salvation, but only part. Why do I say so joyfully that, yes, I am saved?

I grew up as the eldest son in a family whose Catholic roots were generations deep. Our image of God was that portrayed as the rule maker and law enforcer in the sky and of the fear of the final judgment. I began more than 20 years of formal Catholic schooling before I was 5, where I was taught that people are inherently sinful because Adam and Eve disobeyed God at the beginning of creation. Still I tried my best to be good and do everything right, but still I felt that God was angry with me and I was motivated by fear. In order to redeem myself and reach heaven someday, I must do all I could to be like Jesus. I must suffer, and forgive, suffer, and forgive. I was smart, and strong-willed, and I loved earthly things like Nature, and my friends and all things artsy, and it was hard for me to focus on getting to heaven. But I wanted more than anything to be good enough to be loved, so I did my best. I suffered and I forgave. Some fundamentalist Christians would say that this Catholic view of God is inaccurate and that basically all I have to do is accept the sacrifice of Jesus and his Lordship over my life and that all will be well, because God will only see Jesus when looking at me.

Perhaps this next part will sound familiar to many of you because this is your story too, and I have heard it from you many times. When I first began to attend a UU church in Midland during breaks from college I was overwhelmed that people cared enough to listen to me…and I didn’t have to worry about towing the party line. I found I was encouraged to develop my own ideas. This was in the late 60s and I was upset about the conflict in Vietnam and the continuing racial prejudices supposedly righted by integration, yet when I went to the UU church, I could express myself and be heard. That meant a lot to me. Sometimes I’d go to church services and just sit in the back and cry. There was a lot of stuff in my life to process, much of it from my Catholic upbringing. Then I started participating around the edges a little bit, joining demonstrations and small groups to discuss and act on social justice issues.

Finally, years later at the same Midland UU church, after my father’s death in early 1986, I started a men’s group, in which we gathered around and talked with each other and listened to our real stories. When it was my turn, I couldn’t resist being open. The other men had shared deeply, and their stories were riveting. No one had been judged, no one had been rejected. So I told my truth. And instead of turning away from me in disgust, the men leaned in and listened, nodding in recognition of what they heard. It was the first place I had ever been where I felt I could be my whole self, and be accepted for it — truly loved. My community looked into my face and saw light there, and reflected it back tenfold — a hundred fold.

In this way was I saved. Unitarian Universalism taught me that I have inherent worth and dignity, and that I am a beloved member of the interdependent web of all existence. The community that embodied this theology liberated me from fear by gathering around me in love. It gave me the ability to break out of the cycle of codependence and violence in which I was trapped for so long. I finally developed the strength and courage I needed to pursue my dreams and clarify my intentions. I also had the help I needed: my community showed up, with meals, work, rides when my car broke down. People visited me in the hospital when I had surgeries and held my hand when the stuff of life appeared bleak. This was redemptive.

Learning I was inherently lovable helped me to accept the profoundly generous love of others. Knowing all people have inherent worth and dignity helped me share my life in ways that bring me closer with others and to get upset when their freedom is limited. My community helps me create a life that is worth living. This is what I mean by salvation. This religion saves lives. And I think it can help save the world.

At this moment in time we are in the midst of economic, ecological, and political chaos that is unprecedented in our life’s experiences. We know that the sheer scale of change means that nothing will ever be the same again. We have no road map for the future. Some of us have lost many of the securities we were accustomed to. I’ve learned that whenever the human organism is confronted with sudden, potentially life-threatening change, its first response is fear. This is automatic. And right now fear is rampant in our world, as the religious fundamentalists and persons like Glenn Beck and others in many countries and many religions skillfully use apocalyptic rhetoric to manipulate people into acting from their deepest fears rather than from hope or love. This strategy has and is working very well in American debates on health care, immigration and economic reform, as people are manipulated into thinking their individual lives are endangered by changes that may actually benefit the whole.

But shall we have a little compassion for these people who ask us if we are saved? Their God would cast them into the depths of a fiery hell for all eternity if they do not believe just the right thing. They are sore afraid. They are alone and far from home; salvation for them is so individualized, and involves going to a world that is not this one. But we can offer something different in this time of crisis. We can offer real liberation from fear, and a fall into love. We can offer a theology that recognizes our interdependence with each other and with the larger community of life, in which salvation is collective and involves healing this world. We can embody this theology by doing what we do best: gathering together, and listening to each other’s stories. Singing songs, speaking words that matter and making life and art that give us hope and courage. Let’s help each other imagine what might come next. Then, show up to help.

My friends, we have here a religion that could be the salvation of the world, if we will but claim its power and take it to the streets. The stakes are too high for us to hide our light under a bushel. What do we say in the face of a culture that preaches salvation from hell and damnation? We could echo the words of John Murray, “Give them not hell, but hope”

I hope today’s message will encourage you to think, what will you say? I hope today’s message will encourage you to act, what will you do?

Abner Kneeland and Freedom of Religion

August 22, 2010 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Luther Elmore, Sermons

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Luther Elmore

August 22, 2010

READING

“PHILOSOPHICAL CREED” (Abner Kneeland – 1833)

… I believe that the whole universe is NATURE, and that the word NATURE embraces the whole universe; that GOD and NATURE, so far as we can attach any rational idea to either, are synonymous terms. Hence, I am not an Atheist, but a Pantheist; that is, instead of believing there is no God, I believe that in the abstract, all is God; and that all power that is, is in God, and that there is no power except that which proceeds from God. I believe that there can be no will or intelligence where there is no sense; and no sense where there are no organs of sense; and hence, sense, will and intelligence, is the effect, not the cause of organization. I believe in all that logically results from these premises, whether good, bad or indifferent. Hence, I believe, that God is all in all; and that it is in God we live, move, and have our being; and that the whole duty of man consists in living as long as he can, and in promoting as much happiness as he can while he lives.

SERMON

Freedom of religion is a concept that we in America claim to have achieved and practice. Is that true? Do we have freedom of religion, legally and socially, and do we as a society really believe in it?

In this country we have a long history of religious intolerance. The early colonists in Massachusetts Bay certainly did not believe in freedom of religion. Thousands came to America in the 1630s and 1640s to escape religious restrictions in England, but once they arrived in New England, they did not allow it. Religious doctrine and practices were established and non-conformists were punished.

By 1648 the colony had organized its laws into an alphabetized code called the “Lawes and Liberties.” These Lawes and Liberties specified rights and responsibilities as well as penalties. For instance, Baptists or anyone else who “openly condemn(ed) or oppose(ed) the baptizing of infants” were banished. The law also provided for the banishment of Catholic priests. If a banished priest returned, upon a second conviction he was “put to death.” You could also be banished for denying the immortality of the soul or the resurrection of the body, or that mankind was not justified by Jesus’ death and resurrection.

These restrictive laws continued throughout the colonial era into the early years of American independence. In 1782 – with independence not yet won – the state of Massachusetts made it illegal to “blaspheme the holy name of God… his creation, government or final judging of the world…or the Holy Ghost, or…the Holy Word of God.” Punishment could be up to one year in jail.

Of course, the first amendment to the US Constitution adopted in 1791 provided that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Early on the Supreme Court interpreted this amendment literally, that is CONGRESS shall make no law, states – if they chose – could, and regularly did.

Into this world of laws and intolerance, Abner Kneeland was born in 1774. Born in Massachusetts, at about age 21 he moved to Vermont, worked as a carpenter, taught school, and served as a Baptist lay preacher. He came across universalist writings, met Hosea Ballou, and became a universalist. At the age of 31 (1805) Kneeland was ordained as a Universalist minister and called as the settled minister in Langdon, New Hampshire. He became active in the New England Universalist General Convention, serving as its standing clerk and as its treasurer. He also served two years in the New Hampshire Legislature. Along with Hosea Ballou he compiled a universalist hymnal, with Kneeland writing 130 of the 410 songs. (Our hymnal has none of them). He subsequently served churches in Charlestown, Massachusetts, Whitestown, New York, Philadelphia (1818) and in 1825 (1825-1827) Prince Street Church in New York City.

During this time, he was as busy as a bee. He served his churches, published a second hymnal, published a new spelling book (The American Pronouncing Spelling Book) which used phonetics and removed all silent letters, edited a monthly magazine (The Philadelphia Universalist Magazine and Christian Messenger) and completed a translation of the Greek New Testament.

Kneeland’s social thought also began to change and he became in the eyes of some a radical. He met and became supportive of the utopian socialist Robert Owen. Owen was a wealthy Scottish industrialist who had made a fortune in cotton mills, but came to see problems in the newly emerging industrial society. Owen called for small socialist communities where people would combine agricultural and manufacturing enterprises, live in prosperity and harmony, and avoid the ravages of a changing world. He purchased 20,000 acres on the banks of the Wabash River in Indiana and established New Harmony. By 1825 about 800 people were living in his new community. Within 2 years New Harmony had failed, but not Owens’ idea. Across America up to 20 Owenite communities were established, including one on the Red River in Texas. But Owen had caused a stir in addressing the inequalities of wealth and the problems of the early 19th century

A friend and fellow traveler with Owen in his radicalism was Francis “Fanny” Wright. In her early 20s, she visited the United States from Scotland and eventually became a US citizen. Concerned with the situation of slavery in America, in 1825 she established an interracial communal society in Tennessee, named Nashoba, where slaves were purchased and then allowed to work off the purchase price of their freedom. As you might imagine, this interracial community in Tennessee was not well received in the South. Rumors circulated of interracial sex, marriage, and free love at Nashoba. On July 4, 1828, Wright shocked much of America when she publicly spoke at a mixed meeting at New Harmony. Like Owen, Wright backed the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, equal rights for women, public education and cooperative care for all children, and birth control. Wright also attacked capitalism, greed, and religion, becoming known as “the red harlot of infidelity.” Kneeland embraced the radical proposals of Owen and Wright and in 1828 had Fanny Wright speak from his pulpit.

Wright and Owen organized The Association for the Protection of Industry and the Promotion of National Education, a group that sought to establish “state guardianship” of children. Here all children in the country would be fed, clothed, and educated at public expense. Abner Kneeland became president of the association.

Opposition to Kneeland within Universalist churches increased. Many passed resolutions denouncing him as one of their ministers. At the time Universalists themselves were under attack with many conservative Christians fearing their message of universal salvation. After all the thinking went, if there is no punishment in the afterlife for an immoral and licentious life, why should humankind be restrained from living the most immoral life imaginable? This mindset was so pervasive that the state of Connecticut passed a law in 1828 that testimony by Universalists in court was not to be accepted. In May of 1829, having served as a Universalist minister for over 20 years, at the age of 54 Kneeland resigned from the pulpit of his church, never to return to the Universalist fold.

He did not, however, abandon his public career. He moved to Boston and established the First Society of Free Enquiry. The Society of Free Enquiry had Sunday and Wednesday services and both soon drew about 2,000 people. One attendee described the sermons as tending to “ridicule the Christian religion to persuade the congregation that there is no God, no future life, no soul.” Instead of reading from the Bible, Kneeland often read passages from Voltaire or Thomas Paine. On one occasion he read a passage from the Biblical book of Leviticus, passages referring to women’s menstrual cycle and a women being unclean for 7 days. Kneeland screamed in response, “that is not true: women are not unclean anytime. They say this is a good book. I don’t think it is a very good book at all in its attitudes toward women.” He then hurled his Bible down the center aisle where it slammed against the back doors. The Wednesday evening services were festive occasions of singing and dancing. As you might imagine, these antics shocked much of Boston.

Almost immediately upon arriving in Boston Kneeland had also begun to print a newspaper, “The Boston Intelligencer.” He stated that the paper would support the abolition of slavery, the rights of women, public education, and the rights of the laboring classes. Soon it had 2,000 subscribers.

In the second issue Kneeland published a “Marriage Cathecism” which read in part: Q: How long is the marriage vow, covenant, or contract, binding on the parties: A: As long as it exists, let that be longer or shorter. It is morally and virtually binding so long as it is productive of the happiness of the parties immediately concerned and no longer.” A few months later Kneeland wrote that women should have equal rights, even extending to equal pay, stating that “women’s wages should be exactly, per week, per day, or per hour the same as those of men.”

He even supported interracial marriage. In August of 1831 he wrote, “The basic principle of society should be the perfect equality as to rights and privileges, totally regardless of sex, and now I will go one step further, and say, totally regardless of color…What! To marry each other: YES, to marry, if they love or fancy each other.”

In addition, to his radical social positions, in front page headlines, he offered a $1,000 reward to any clergyman who could prove to his satisfaction that Jesus had ever existed and that the four Gospels of the New Testament had truly been written by four men named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Kneeland continued to invite controversial individuals to speak from his pulpit. When William Lloyd Garrison – the polarizing abolitionist – moved to Boston to begin printing his abolitionist paper “The Liberator,” the first place he gave a lecture in Boston was from Kneeland’s lectern. Garrison would later write, “It was left for a society of avowed infidels…not by any of the Christian ministers or churches of Boston…to save the city from the shame of sealing all its doors against the slave’s advocate.”

After two years of a very successful but controversial public presence in Boston, in 1833 he published his “Philosophical Creed.” As was read earlier, he stated, “I believe that the whole universe is nature, and that the word nature embraces the whole universe; that God and nature…are synonymous terms. Hence I am not an atheist, but a Pantheist.” Thus, he clearly separated himself from Christians in Boston.

Within a few weeks Universalist minister and editor Thomas Whittemore challenged Kneeland in his magazine “The Trumpet” and Kneeland responded. Kneeland’s letter to Whittemore was published on December 20, 1833, in the “Boston Intelligencer.” Kneeland wrote:

Dear Sir: You observed to me the other day, that people still consider me a Universalist, and said to me that “if you will acknowledge that you are not, I will publish it.” I told you, in substance that in some respects I am still a Universalist; but that in others, I am not… I still hold to universal philanthropy, universal benevolence, and universal charity, in these respects, I am still a Universalist. Neither do I believe in punishment after death; so in this also I agree with the Universalists. But as it respects all other of their religious notions in relation to another world, or a supposed other state of conscious existence, I do not believe in any of them; so that in this respect, I am no more a Universalist that I am an orthodox Christian. As for instance: 1. Universalists believe in a god which I do not; but believe that their god, with all his moral attributes (aside from nature itself,) is nothing more than a chimera of their own imagination. 2. Universalists believe in Christ, which I do not; but believe that whole story concerning him is as much a fable and a fiction as that of the god Promotheus… 3. Universalists believe in miracles, which I do not; but believe that every pretension to them can either be accounted for on natural principles, or else is to be attributed to mere trick and imposture. 4. Universalists believe in the resurrection of the dead, in immortality and eternal life, which I do not: but believe that all life is mortal; that death is an eternal extinction of life to the individual who possesses it, and that no individual life is, ever was or ever will be eternal. Hence, as Universalists no longer wish to consider me as belonging to their order, as it relates to a belief in things unseen, I hope the above four articles will be sufficient to distinguish me from them and them from me…

Ultimately, that statement…”Universalists believe in a God which I do not” would lead to a trial with Kneeland being convicted and sentenced to jail for 60 days for blasphemy. He would become the last man sentenced to a jail term in this country for this crime.

Between 1834 and 1838 Abner Kneeland would undergo five separate trials for various charges relating to his blasphemy. One of those charges involved articles he had reprinted in his paper what had previously appeared in the Owens – Wright journal “Free Inquiry.” The most shocking article compared beliefs among various peoples. It said, “A Parisian would be surprised to hear that the Hottentots cut out one of the testicles of every little boy; and a Hottentot would be surprised to hear that the Parisians leave every little boy with two. Neither the Parisian nor the Hottentot is astonished at the practice of the other because he finds it unreasonable, but because he finds it differs from his own. The Frenchman will ask why the Hottentots allow their boy’s but one testicle, but that same Frenchman, though he be too stupid to understand the laws of evidence, or too illiterate to apply them to history, firmly believes that Jesus Christ was begotten without any testicles at all.”

This reference to the testicles of Jesus was considered so shocking by four of the five judges that they would not let the passage even be read in court.

The second item was from Kneeland’s paper and ridiculed contemporary concepts of prayer. That article, said in part: “Think of the prayers that are offered up every Lord’s Day in this country…one is asking for one thing, another for another, one for rain, another for dry weather; one for an east wind, another for a west wind…Only think of it seriously for one minute…and then say whether you think it possible that there is such a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering god…? Superstition may answer in the affirmative; philosophy will answer in the negative.”

The most serious charge by far was his letter to Thomas Whittemore in which he proclaimed that he no longer believed in God.

His defense against these charges should make any trial lawyer proud. As far as the reprinted articles were concerned, his lawyer argued that, as a matter of fact, opponents of Kneeland had reprinted the articles themselves to help build a case against him. So, if the act of publishing the articles was the crime, how had those individuals escaped trial?

Kneeland also argued that he had been out of town when the articles were printed, that they had been printed in error, and that he obviously had nothing to do with their publication because they contained spelling errors and that he would never have allowed that.

Kneeland also defended his letter to Thomas Whittemore. In this case he argued punctuation. His statement to Whittemore was “Universalists believe in a God which I do not.” That is, he did not believe in the SAME god as the Universalists. Had he meant to deny the total existence of God, he would have placed a comma after god, making the sentence read, “Universalists believe in a God, (comma) which I do not.” He also proclaimed that not only did he not believe in the God of the Universalists, neither did the members of the jury. After all, they believed in eternal damnation and punishment and the Universalists did not. Nevertheless, Kneeland was convicted and a series of appeals followed, ending in a fifth trial before the Massachusetts Supreme Court which heard the case in 1836. The Supreme Court handed down its decision two years later. On his 64th birthday Abner Kneeland was called before the court to hear that the previous guilty verdict was upheld and that the accused was sentenced to 60 days in jail.

On June 18, 1838, gray-haired, 64 year old Abner Kneeland began his sentence for blasphemy in the Boston common jail. Released on August 17, he was greeted by a cheering crowd of 300 people. Although his release caused a temporary stir, the huge crowds at his gatherings began to drift away. By the following April he announced in his paper that his free inquiry group was to be disbanded and that his supporters should “just go to some Unitarian meeting, for the sake of being in the fashion.”

Kneeland was headed west. By May he was in Iowa, trying to establish a new free thought community he named Salubria. He purchased 230 acres, built a home, and advertised for like-minded thinkers. Only about 10 other families would move to Salubria and the community did not grow as he had hoped. They were accepted in the surrounding area, with one neighbor merely saying that the inhabitants at the community just read a lot of books. Kneeland taught school briefly, became chair of the Van Buren County Democrats, and ran unsuccessfully for the state legislature. In August of 1844 at the age of 70 Abner Kneeland died.

So, where do we stand 166 years after the death of this Universalist minister and social critic? Have we left behind the mindset and statutes that in 1838 would send a man to jail for 60 days due to his beliefs and statements? In 1961 (Torcaso v Watkins) the US Supreme Court ruled that there can be no religious test for any office. Although I know of no one who has been tried for blasphemy recently, several states still have statutes on their books -although they have no legal standing- that allow discrimination in religious beliefs and practices. These states include Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, North Carolina and Texas. The North Carolina law is especially of interest to us UUs. It provides “The following persons shall be disqualified for office. First, any person who shall DENY the being of Almighty God.” In Asheville, North Carolina, journalist Cecil Bothwell, a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville, was elected to the city council. He was sworn into office using an affirmation that did not include an oath to God or a Bible. Some local citizens tried unsuccessfully to have him removed from office due to the religious clause in the state constitution. The local newspaper in a satirical cartoon referred to Bothwell as our “Village Atheist.” With this unexpected notoriety, Mr. Bothwell now often travels to UU churches throughout the Southeast telling his story.

Even our own state of Texas has an exclusionary clause in the state constitution that has never been removed. It states, “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this state; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, PROVIDED he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.” Anyone who denies the existence of a supreme being, therefore, cannot hold public office in Texas. However – and this is purely conjectural – if there were a move to amend the Texas Constitution and remove this phrase, what do you think would happen? What type of opposition and rhetoric would emerge? Would a majority of Texas voters remove the requirement to believe in a Supreme Being or would they vote to retain it?

Aside from the legal technicalities of freedom of religion, what about our personal actions? This summer (2010) a Muslim congregation in New York City and a developer plan to build a worship center about two blocks from the Twin Towers where the 9-11 attacks took place. Due to this being an Islamic center, a firestorm of protest has erupted. One has called this proposed building a “sacrilege.” Another has proclaimed that the center is meant to “celebrate” the 9-11 murders. According to syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts (7-22-10), Sarah Palin has called upon moderate Muslims to “refudiate” the idea, although she presumably meant that they should “repudiate” it. When President Obama defended the right of this religious community to built the center, he was attacked. Today, (August 22, 2010) there is a planned public protest in New York City to oppose this center. Some construction workers have announced that they will not work on the job.

Freedom of religion is only one part of a life of tolerance and respect for others. Freedom of religion begins with each of us, in our own hearts, with a lack of arrogance in our own beliefs, and a respect for the beliefs of others. We UUs include that concept in our Seven Principles when we affirm “the right of conscience…in society at large.” That concept is central to who we are.

Today we will have a church-wide discussion of Greg Mortensen’s fine book, Three Cups of Tea. I hope you can attend this discussion which will be led by Religious Education. Toward to end of the book, Mortensen explains why he has spent almost 20 years building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He says, “What motivates me to do this? The answer is simple: When I look into the eyes of the children in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I see my own children’s eyes full of wonder-and I hope that we will each do our part to leave them all a legacy of peace instead of the perpetual cycle of violence, war, terrorism, racism, and bigotry that we adults have yet to conquer.” Freedom of religion, if truly felt in our hearts and applied to our lives, allows more than the right to believe and worship as we choose without being thrown in jail. It also helps combat religious hatred, violence, and bigotry.

Abner Kneeland was a man ahead of his times. He was a bold, but divisive, figure. During his first trial the judge asked his attorney that if the defendant was not an atheist, then what God did he believe in? The attorney retorted, “That is an affair between him and God, and not between him and your honor.” That is the way it should be. Abner Kneeland’s stand for freedom of religion in the 1830s is a message that the world still needs to hear today.

Thank you, Abner Kneeland for your beliefs and for the courage to stand your ground. Thank you for a message that the world needed to hear then and needs to hear today. Thank you for seeing more clearly than most of those about you. Thank you for standing for freedom of religion. May we do the same. Thus, let it be.

PARTING WORDS

We are taught (Matt 5:16) that no one lights a candle and hides it under a basket, but rather places it on a candlestick so that all may see. Let your light so shine that it may show the pathway to those around you. Go in love. Go in peace. Amen

Forgiveness is for Giving

August 15, 2010 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Mark Skrabacz, Sermons

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Rev. Mark Skrabacz

August 15, 2010

Elwin Hope Wilson is 73 years old, lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina and suffers from severe diabetes. Last year he became something of a celebrity because, after a lifetime of racist rhetoric and activity, he had a change of heart.

As a young man, Wilson assaulted civil rights Freedom Riders. Later in life he threatened a real estate agent who had sold a nearby home to a black family, and another he time vehemently protested the desegregation of the local cemetery where his parents were interred. On yet another occasion he hung a black doll by the neck in his front yard and dared his neighbors to remove it. He regularly embarrassed his children and grandchildren by loudly repeating racial epithets in restaurants and other public places.

But then, last year, all of that changed. Having decided that his previous behavior had been horribly misguided, Wilson began the painful process of issuing apologies. He traveled to Congressman John Lewis’ Washington DC office to personally apologize for punching and knocking down the former Freedom Rider in 1961. He has visited black churches and offered public declarations of repentance. He has sought reconciliation with black citizens in his community.

Many have greeted Elwin Wilson’s apologies with surprise and pleasure, but others have been more skeptical. As one Freedom Rider allowed: “In the back of my mind I just keep thinking, ‘Why now?'” Why now, indeed. Although it’s always hazardous to render judgments about another person’s motives, one thing is clear: Elwin Hope Wilson, beset with serious health problems, was scared. “I’m going to hell,” he despairingly told a friend, to which his friend replied: “The Bible says that ‘If you truly ask forgiveness and you mean it in your heart, you can be saved.'” At that moment Wilson felt that perhaps he could escape the hellfire he believed was awaiting him.

So, what are we to make of Elwin Wilson’s attempt to reconcile himself to his victims? How legitimate were his apologetic gestures?

There can be no doubt that the man had a great deal to be sorry about and that a sincere and heart-felt apology for his egregious offenses was in order. And there can also be no doubt that Elwin Wilson went the extra mile. Like those medieval penitents who were ordered by Catholic confessors to undertake lengthy, arduous pilgrimages in order to atone for their sins, Wilson has made a strenuous effort to demonstrate remorse in many places and before many people, including members of his own family.

Elwin Wilson’s apologies have made him the object of considerable attention, and now he receives regular requests to speak publically about his conversion Ð a role he doesn’t really relish. He isn’t interested in publicity and, having said he was sorry, just wants to be free of a painful past and gain some measure of hope for the future.

This brings up at least one issue having to do with forgiveness. If the injured party senses that the apology is not an expression of empathy and compassion for their suffering, but only an attempt to assuage the perpetrator’s pain, it may fall on deaf ears. A genuine apology focuses on the feelings of other people rather than how the one who apologizes is going to benefit in the end. The words must communicate the desire not so much to be ‘saved’ but to be in right relationship, which is why Elwin Wilson’s apology to people of color, though powerful, still feels unsatisfying.

“Genuine” or “authentic” apologies include these essential elements:

A clear admission of fault or blameworthiness for specific injuries and, without excuse of justification, an unambiguous acceptance of responsibility; A sincere expression of remorse and regret for the damage our words or actions caused; An appropriate offer of reparation or restitution for said damage; A commitment not to repeat such behavior in the future.

Yet if the apology is half-hearted or seems inauthentic, how might it be reflected? The victim might simply say, “I’m sorry, but I need a better apology than that” which invites the offender to engage in more self-scrutiny and deliver a new message in which all or at least more of the important elements are present.

Now, you can say anything you want to yourself or to other people about forgiveness. But we’ll probably all agree, saying doesn’t necessarily make it so.

True forgiveness requires much more. It requires mourning, transformation and insight — some (as in the Jewish tradition) would add restitution, too. For while forgiveness may be freeing, it isn’t cheap. One way to misconstrue forgiveness is to promote a cheap and easy version of it.

You see, forgiveness is not the same as forgetting. Past experiences and the pain they cause have a great deal to teach us, so that we can try to avoid those patterns, and better yet, change them in the future. For forgiveness to function in a life-enhancing way, it more often requires remembering rather than forgetting.

Forgiveness is not approving or condoning. Forgiving someone often involves making some effort to understand them, but even if we come to fully understand them, we do not thereby conclude that their actions were acceptable. True understanding cannot occur when I in any way deny, minimize, justify, or condone the actions that harmed me.

So let’s be clear about a few givens. Forgiveness is not cheap, it’s not easy. Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting, or condoning, and it is not a form of self-sacrifice.

As we move into considering what forgiveness actually is, I’d like to invite you to get in touch with a situation or a wound that still has a hold on you; that diminishes you. I’d like to move this sermon out of the abstract and into the practical. I’ll give you a moment of silence to go within. (Pause)

What wound still has a hold on you? Some of you may have chosen yourself as a focus. Which brings up a good point: we all need our own forgiveness, for things we have done. And looking at it from another perspective, we need to forgive ourselves also about the situations in which WE have been hurt. We need to forgive ourselves for not having been able to stop whatever happened — for having limits to our control. For not having more information or making different choices. We are often reluctant to admit just how much pain we have and how much our life has been altered. In the aftermath, we have to engage our own feelings of vengeance and so on. This requires bountiful compassion for oneself, even as we hold ourselves accountable for our past actions.

I imagine that some of you chose another person or set of people who hurt you. We are in great need of intra-personal forgiveness. Showing compassion for the perpetrators of injustice or pain is a tall order. It’s a natural human response to ask, “Why should we be concerned about compassion for the perpetrators?” We feel we must focus our efforts on those who have suffered the injustice, not those who’ve caused it. But there’s no such thing as wholeness for me or wholeness for you or wholeness for “The Deserving”. Either there’s wholeness for everyone, or there’s no wholeness. Compassion that has to be earned by good behavior isn’t compassion.

Injustice and lack of forgiveness wounds the perpetrator as well as the target. And our compassion isn’t like some scarce medicine that we have to hoard lest we run out. Compassion begets more compassion. Every time we show compassion, the doors of our hearts swing open wider.

And this is not about condoning oppression or going easy on those who are hurtful. Everyone has to take responsibility for the consequences of his actions. We can insist on that and at the same time show compassion toward the perpetrator.

And I imagine some of you chose a Higher Power, however you experience it. Many of us have anger at the larger structure of things because of unfair personal losses we have experienced. I know that it was this sort of forgiveness that was most on my mind as I wrote this sermon. I remember when I lost my father as a young man. It was almost unbearable, and I was so angry. I wasn’t done with the relationship with my Dad. I cried and raged and cried and raged for a year. Eventually, I got the lesson that I had to forgive. I had to, once again, let go of the way I thought things were supposed to be, how things ought to work. I had to come back into relationship with Life itself. So some of us may haven chosen the Universe itself as what we need to forgive.

We know that letting go is a difficult practice. Yet for those who have let go, isn’t it amazing to know how that experience makes room for something new to show up. We have to let go of something that may be killing us in order for new life to emerge.

As I come to the end of my remarks, I want to emphasize what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is a turning to the good in the face of a wrongdoing or injustice. It is a merciful restraint from dwelling destructively in resentment or in thoughts of vengeance. Not that resentment or thoughts of vengeance are always bad . . . Anger need not vanish for forgiveness to be real; it need only cease to prevail as the main focus of our attention. Forgiveness involves the overcoming of injustice with good. We must come to wish ourselves, or others, or the universe well. In spite of everything, we wish betterment and flourishing of the subject of forgiveness. As we give the gift of forgiveness, we ourselves move toward healing.

Forgiveness is a process. In fact, the Institute for Forgiveness Studies in Madison, Wisconsin, has determined that forgiveness is four-phase process with twenty steps! I won’t go over the twenty steps, but their four phases are actually quite helpful.

The first of the four is the “Uncovering Phase.” In this phase, the individual truly encounters the pain that has resulted from a deep injury. Feelings of anger or even hatred may be present. Confronting these emotions and honestly understanding the injury is emotionally distressing, but it is the beginning of healing. So when we are experiencing the pain of an injury, we are often more assisted by a friend who helps us engage the pain and understand the injury than by one who initially encourages us to forgive.

The second phase is called the “Decision Phase,” and when I think of this stage, I think of an old story from the people of our First Nations. In this one a grandfather is speaking to his grandson. He says, “There are two wolves fighting inside all of us – the wolf of anger and vengeance, and the wolf of compassion and forgiveness.” The grandson asks, “Which one will win?” Grandfather replies, “The one we feed.”

In the Decision Phase, after coming in touch with the pain, the anger and vengeance, the individual realizes that to continue to focus on the injury and the injurer may cause more unnecessary suffering. The individual entertains the idea of forgiveness as a healing strategy. The individual, then, commits to forgiving the injurer who has caused such pain. Complete forgiveness is not yet realized, but the injured individual has decided to explore forgiveness and to take initial steps in the direction of full forgiveness. He starts weaning the wolf of vengeance, and actively nurturing the health of the wolf of compassion and forgiveness. In so doing, the individual enters the “Work Phase.” Feeding the urge toward forgiveness may involve forming new ways of thinking about the perpetrator.

An adult I know who was abused by her mother as a child went from seeing her mother’s abuse as malevolent and powerful to seeing it as weak and pitiful. She strove to understand her mother’s childhood and the suffering of abuse at the hands of her father, and put her own injurious events in context by understanding the context and pressure her mother was under. This new perspective did not excuse her mother, but helped the daughter see her as a member of the wounded human community. Some significant amount of empathy and compassion was generated.

In the “work phase,” this woman also did the work of accepting the pain she bore as a result of her mother’s actions. She had no sense that she deserved the pain, and knew it had been unjustly given. Still, she decided to not pass the pain on to others, nor very importantly to pass it back to her mother. Eventually this woman began to offer goodwill directly to her mother, and there was some reconciliation. In so doing, this woman moved toward growth and toward embracing life again.

The fourth phase is that of “Deepening.” The individual realizes a gain of emotional relief from the process of forgiveness. They may be able to find some kind of meaning that has emerged through their bearing of pain. They may discover a renewed purpose in life and an active concern for others, which they did not fully realize was missing. “Thus, the forgiver discovers the paradox of forgiveness: as we serve others by giving them the gifts of mercy, generosity, and love, we ourselves are healed.” This inspires today’s sermon title: “Forgiveness is for Giving.”

In closing, forgiveness is hard work and a long process. Forgiveness is free, yet it is not cheap. It may be a good idea to visit our injuries and resentments regularly to see if forgiveness is in order. I invite you to choose one area in the coming week in which you’d like to walk a little further on the path toward forgiveness. A sage once prayed, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Indeed, may our trespasses be forgiven by those we have harmed, and may we be the first to do the difficult and whole-making work of forgiveness. May it be so.

Born to Run

August 8, 2010 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Eric Hepburn, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Eric Hepburn

August 8, 2010

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.

Surrender as Spiritual Practice

August 1, 2010 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Guest Speakers, Ron Phares, Sermons

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Ron Phares

August 1, 2010

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What Do Fundamentalists Know About Religion That Unitarians Have Forgotten (and Need to Relearn)?

July 26, 2010 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Gary Bennett, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Gary Bennett

Member, First Unitarian Church of Austin

Sermon, delivered Sunday, July 25, 2010

The title of this sermon is a bit deceptive. Today I wouldn’t use the term “fundamentalist” to mean evangelical, conservative or traditional, and these are the religious groups I really want to talk about. Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Saudi Arabian government are fundamentalist, as are Pat Robertson, various recent presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention and a host of others who have done such outrageous things as praise terrorist attacks on Americans, plot political takeovers in church services, foment the murder of abortion providers, spit on mourners at funerals for fallen soldiers and advocate revolutionary violence against the United States. They are a recent phenomenon, a cancer on most major world religions, an attack on all modern thought and values; they are Fascists who masquerade using traditional religious language. In contrast, the denomination I was raised in, Southern Baptists before 1979, was by basic principle apolitical; members tended to be politically conservative, but people like Jimmy Carter, Bill Moyers and my parents had no trouble fitting in.

Why should we be interested? These are, after all, the traditions that many of us feel we outgrew; if anything, we think we have a bit to teach them. Perhaps we do, but demographics have not been kind to us in recent decades. We are grouped with liberal or “main line” Protestant groups, which also include the Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran and Presbyterian churches. We all share one problem today: we can’t convince our own children that what we do is worth preserving. UUs have mostly made up for these losses with adult conversion, which has so far kept us out of the other denominations’ apparent race to extinction; but we are still in trouble. Politicians have taken notice, of course; and where in 1960 it was main line Protestant voices that they used for moral cover, today it is usually conservative Catholics, evangelical Protestants or Mormons, even outright Fundamentalists, that dominate the public forum. It is not that these groups are especially successful at proselytizing our children, who mostly become unchurched and thus invisible as far as the political culture goes; but the conservatives at least are keeping most of their own children. For some groups, like the high birth rate Mormons, that alone would be enough for rapid growth. If these changes in American culture and politics bother us, and I think they should, we have lots of serious ‘splainin’ to do. We think that we have a better approach to religious experience, but it is they who do the better job of convincing the children that what they have is important.

From the beginning, human beings have been bonded into groups by all believing in the same “six impossible things before breakfast.” Once these groups started stepping on one another’s toes by living together in cities or traveling to far places, religion began to be something distinct from the overall culture; religion was where you met with your support group. You would still prefer to shut up those fools who disagreed if you had the power to do so, but the religious group helped you to endure if you could not. Christianity by the 4th century had its own share of crazy ideas and also the power of the Roman state to shut up everybody who disagreed. Despite the fall of the Western Empire, this state of things persisted in Europe until a century of religious wars between Catholics and Protestants ended in the 17th century in a peace of exhaustion; neither group had been quite able to exterminate the other. By the late 18th century in places like the English colonies in America, toleration came to be seen as a virtue in itself; the idea was that different religious groups could scream all that they liked, but had to leave the swords, battle-axes and torture chambers at home.

Today UUs profess not to feel threatened by all these competing ideas, believing that our ideas are strong enough to survive out in the marketplace. Our advertising campaigns try to persuade the unchurched that they are very much like us; we are at one with the larger intellectual world, with science, human reason and American moral values. But traditional religious groups feel more alienated from the overall world of ideas. Their beliefs are quite distinct from those of the larger world and from those of each other. Small doctrinal differences are assumed to be important. For us Baptists, we asserted our lack of a creed, but at the same time accused other Christians of getting the rite of baptism all wrong. We, like most traditional Christians, believed that salvation was by the grace of God, rather than by good deeds of human beings; but I and my Church of Christ cousins, little lawyers all of us, went round and round on whether Grace was enough or whether participation in the rite of Baptism by the One True Church — that was them — was also necessary. What, said I, if you are saved by grace on Monday, but die before you are safely baptized in church the following Sunday? I will spare you various other Great Ideas Seminars we conducted. The point is, if the UU view of matters is pretty much the same as that of most of the secular world, why bother with church at all? Why not sleep in Sunday mornings, read a good book, go to a public lecture? If you are blessed to move in an academic environment or live in a cosmopolitan city of great cultural offerings, why do you need a UU church at all? But if you are an Evangelical, you will not get much reinforcement of your “six impossible beliefs” except in your own church group. You will need to spend a lot of time there, perhaps attending every time the church doors are open; and at other times, you might want to limit your socializing to other church members.

Then there is moral behavior. For UUs, ethics is about helping others: helping the poor, the sick, the elderly, children and other victims of social injustice; when we collect “pennies for peace” and try to build schools for girls in remote Asian villages, we are acting in the great ethical tradition. We have support in the teachings of Jesus, of the Hebrew prophets, of Mohammed, of Confucius and of many other seminal religious teachers. But for evangelical religions, most of these things are not so much morals but political issues on which good Christians can differ. As a young Baptist, most of my time in church and Sunday School seemed to be spent in being warned against various “gateway” evils: gambling was wrong because it led to playing cards, promiscuous sex was wrong because it led to dancing and smoking marijuana was wrong because it led to tobacco. There were never any lessons on the evils of racial discrimination, poverty in the midst of wealth, unjust wars, the rape of the world’s resources or other environmental disasters. Religious morality was about individual perfection, about keeping the temple of your body pure for God. UU moral positions tend to integrate us into the larger society in which we operate; evangelical Protestant positions tend to separate us into little self-absorbed clusters. And these all become more reasons to structure your life around other church members, people you can socialize with and not imperil your immortal soul.

Traditional religions require constant work on the part of their members. Orthodox Judaism has seemingly an endless list of requirements of diet, clothing and other rituals. Jewish friends have tried to explain to me how the laws of kosher are perfectly sensible; it seems the bans on eating pork, shellfish and mixing meat with dairy products were all put together by ancient nutritionists, protecting people from trichinosis, oysters out of season — do Hebrew months provide any rules comparable to r’s being safe? — and we all know the grim truth about eating fast food bacon cheeseburgers. Stuff and nonsense: the lawgivers wanted people to have to think about their religion every single day, in even the most trivial actions, just as my Baptist morality was designed to remind me of who I was, not to accomplish good. For Jews the result was a tough faith that people preserved in even the most extreme circumstances, for thousands of years of living in isolated ghettos surrounded by hostile societies. Few things have threatened Jewish identity more than living in religiously tolerant America over the last generation or so, where their declining numbers are similar to those of liberal Protestants. A rabbi once told me he considered UUs the greatest threat to Jewish survival, as we gave shelter to couples in mixed Jewish/Christian marriages! In an old fable, the sun and the north wind bet on which is the more powerful. The north wind tries to blow a traveller’s cloak off, but he only wraps it ever more tightly about himself; then the sun comes out, warms the land, and the traveller removes the cloak voluntarily.

Other religions have also found ways of making life tough for members. Devout Moslems have to stop whatever they are doing five times a day to humble themselves before God; the fasting month of Ramadan and the required ultimate pilgrimage to Mecca are also hard. Mormons require two full years’ missionary work from every young member as a rite of passage into adulthood. I have seen firsthand how much more serious and religiously committed a person can become after that experience. And then there are the Amish, who make their religious beliefs central to everything that they do in daily life.

And let us not forget the early radical Protestants. Medieval Hell might have been a terrible fate waiting after death, filled with every juicy torture and humiliation a fevered imagination could come up with; but at least Catholics could feel safe as long as they remained obedient to and in good standing with the Church. These Protestants took upon themselves the burden of finding the way to avoid Hell, without ever being sure they were right. They became puritanical, self-denying, hard-working people who, by all work and no play and by avoiding idle hands, the Devil’s own workshop, might hope to escape damnation. There was of course no room for compassion in this — if other people were mostly bound for eternal torture after death, any extra suffering they encountered in this life was trivial anyway — so it tended to generate a lot of excess wealth that came to be called capital by economists and ultimately to our rich modern society, all as a trivial side effect. Children brought up in such hard faiths knew the seriousness and importance of what was going on, and usually continued to practice them in adulthood.

I haven’t talked as if the theological content mattered much in the success or failure of these religions. Not entirely true: some things obviously do matter a great deal. The doctrine of Hell tends to grab one’s attention; for an imaginative child who has been exposed to it, anxieties can last a life time, even if he has rejected the idea of it in his head. Heaven is more like an afterthought for most believers, whether it is supposed to be souls singing hymns for eternity — a prospect mercilessly satirized by Mark Twain — or if is supposed to be filled with the reward of 40 virgins — which can double as the place bad virgins go to be punished, some suggest. Anyway, whatever goodies await, it is all kind of a bonus to go along with the biggie of avoiding Hell.

Above all, successful religions demand the belief that there is something that is greater than us, something before which we must humble ourselves. Arrogance is the opposite of real religious sentiment, something to remember the next time you encounter a swaggering televangelist with an obvious financial or political agenda. That we humble ourselves is more important than what we humble ourselves to. Our own tradition is mixed. Universalists supposedly thought God too good to condemn humanity to Hell, and Unitarians, that humans were too good to be condemned. If I have to choose, given what I have seen of human behavior, I really, really hope the Universalists were right.

I started by asking what traditional religious groups know, and what we can learn from them. Some lessons we will reject out of hand. I cannot imagine UUs declaring war on science and reason. Nor do we want to limit our concept of morality to keeping our bodies healthy while ignoring the world’s problems, and some of us even believe that “purity’s a noble yen, and very restful every now and then.” But I think we do need to make the practice of Unitarian Universalism more difficult, if we want to survive. We need an integrity about our lives, a sense that we are the same people, with the same values, on weekdays as Sundays. We need to be in covenant with one another, so that our disagreements may be resolved without injury to any, and so that members always feel that being here or being with other UUs in any situation is a safe place. We MUST give more; it’s hard to believe your faith is important to you when your giving is so embarrassingly poor compared with conservative churches, so low that they have severely crippled the mission of your church. I know how hard my Baptist parents struggled to tithe — that means 10% of gross income, if any of you are in doubt — in what were often very grim circumstances. Our own household falls far short of that standard. But Jesus’ words are still relevant: where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Contribute to the church’s mission AND to charities AND to just political causes that the church itself cannot involve itself in; contribute money AND time. If Moslems can stop to pray five times a day and Orthodox Jews can expend the effort to keep kosher at every meal, can we UUs not require ourselves to do at least one thing every day that reminds us who we are?

And we must also make religion harder for our children. How we strive to keep them entertained; it would be unthinkable to require them to sit through a boring old church service, or so we believe. Nonsense. Most children will live up or down to consistent adult expectations. Consider family discussions of moral issues; the “pennies for peace” project would seem a perfect opportunity to talk about what the problems are, and what Greg Mortenson is arguing in Three Cups of Tea are solutions. The long term feedback will come in part by what happens in rural Asia, but also by what part of you your children decide in adulthood is worth carrying forward. And that, above all, is what UUs must learn once again about religion, or die.

Mission Possible

July 18, 2010 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Nell Newton, Eric Stimmel, Chris Jimmerson

July 18, 2010

Leaders of First UU Austin present our new mission statement and introduce our new interim minister, Ed Brock.

“At First UU Church of Austin we gather in community to nourish souls, transform lives and do justice.”

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Tiger Woods and the Beer Cart Girl

July 11, 2010 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Timothy B. Tutt

Pastor, United Christian Church

July 11, 2010

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Sermon

Some of you have looked at my sermon title in the bulletin and you think you know where I’m headed with this sermon, “Tiger Woods and the Beer Cart Girl.” Given the Sports news the past few months about Tiger and his off-the-course behavior, you assume you know what I might say this morning. After all, the bulletin also says I’m the pastor of a Christian Church and you know how those Christians are about sex. All I have to say is, “You dirty-minded Unitarians.” I’m not going to talk about sex at all.

But I do want to tell you a story about Tiger Woods and the beer cart girl. First, I may need to explain to you non-golfers – and I’m not much of golfer myself – about beer cart girls. Many golf courses hire young, attractive women to drive around the course selling beer from a golf cart. I know that’s sexist. And I know that’s exploiting women. I didn’t invent the practice; I’m just reporting it. I can also say I’ve never heard of a beer cart boy, but as I tell this story, if you would like to change the gender of my character you are welcome to do that. As I said, beer cart girls are mostly hired for their looks, their charm, and they’re ability to sell cold beverages to hot golfers. So, let’s take an imaginary trip to the links. Tiger Woods is the world’s greatest golfer. He’s won 95 professional tournaments, 4 Masters, 4 PGA Championships, 23 U.S. Opens. He’s the first golfer ever to hold all four professional major championship titles at the same time.

But recently, Tiger has slumped a bit. That happens, I suppose, when your spouse finds out you’re cheating and beats you with a golf club. And the tawdry affairs of your sex life are national news.

So, Tiger goes out to a course to brush up a bit. He needs to get his groove back. So, he goes to a course to practice. Something is just not right. His drives are short, his chips aren’t so chipper, his puts peter out. There he stands, the champion, defeated and frustrated, when up drives the beer cart girl. Now, as I said, beer cart girls aren’t hired for their golfing skills. They’re hired to sell beer with a smile and a laugh. But let’s say this beer cart girls drives up, hops off the cart and says, “Hey, Tiger, if you turn your front foot in just a bit, choke up a quarter-inch on your grip, and drop your back shoulder just a hair, your drive will be straighter. I’ve been thinking,” says the beer cart girl, “and maybe you should switch from a nine-iron to a seven-iron on the fairway.”

Imagine Tiger Woods, the youngest golfer ever to complete the Grand Slam … Tiger Woods, who was golfing on the Tonight Show when he was three … imagine Tiger Woods, the youngest Masters’ champion ever … getting golf advice from the beer cart girl.

Tiger Woods has won 111 Million dollars playing golf. Imagine him getting golfing advice from the beer cart girl, who works for tips. Imagine him saying to the ESPN reporters, “My game is picking up because I got some really great advice from the beer cart girl.” Some off you may remember back to the 1980 Presidential Debate when Jimmy Carter was asked a question about nuclear weapons, and he began his answer by saying, “I was talkin’ to mah daughta Amy the otha day…” Commentators just howled. Imagine the President of the United States getting advice on nuclear weapons from his ten year-old daughter.

That’s not how the world works, right?

Golf pros don’t get advice from beer cart girls. Presidents don’t get advice from fourth graders.

We have a sense of who is right and who is powerful and who is in charge and who is important. We listen to those people, right?

Let me tell you another story. This story is from the Hebrew scriptures. It’s from the Book of Kings, the portion that Christians call Second Kings.

(Parenthetically, let me say that I grew up a Southern Baptist in East Texas. And in the tradition of my growing up, this is where the preacher would pause to say, “Turn with me in your Bible to the Book of Second Kings.” My hunch is that the likelihood of Unitarian Universalist having a Bible at church is about as likely as Tiger Woods getting golf advice from the beer cart girl. Nonetheless, if you’d like to follow along on your Blackberry or IPhone, please log on to Second Kings, Chapter 5…)

In Second Kings Chapter 5, we meet a man named Naaman. Naaman was a general in the Aramean army. The Arameans were the vicious enemies of the Israelites. The Book of Second Kings says that Naaman was “a mighty warrior,” but he suffered from leprosy.

Now, along the way, the Arameans, on one of their raids, had captured a young girl captive from Israel. This girl was a salve to General Naaman’s wife And one day, this young slave girl said to Mrs. Naaman – the writer of Second Kings tells it in such poetic language – the young slave girl says, to Naaman’s wife: “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! The prophet would cure him of his leprosy.”

To condense the story a bit. Naaman decides to take the slave girl’s advice. Naaman goes to Israel, takes a wagon-full of money with him from the king of the ArameansÑafter all, when you’re hoping to get a cure from your enemies, imagine what a little bribe can do.

So Naaman, the Aramean general with leprosy, goes to find the Jewish prophet Elisha.

There are a multitude of angles we could explore in this text: There’s the issue of bribery in military campaigns. Seems like some things never change. There’s the issue of suddenly discovering that your enemies may have the cure you need. Heck, we could even wander off into a discussion of leprosy in the ancient Middle EastÑbut we haven’t had lunch yet, so maybe we should save that.

The issue I would like for you to ponder for bit is this: Naaman – the great general, the mighty warrior, the conqueror of nations – following the advice of the slave girl, a prisoner, a child, a nobody. Naaman was the Aramean version of George Washington or Dwight Eisenhower or David Petraeus. He was a “somebody.” He was in the news, he had his name carved on stone tablets. The slave girl? We don’t even know her name. She was a nobody. And she was triply cursed – a female, young, and a slave – in a day and age that gave few rights to any of the three.

But the writer of the Book of Kings says that Naaman loaded up the caravan and headed off to find Elisha, following the advice of the slave girl.

What if the world were really like that?

What if we paid attention to the nobodies? Or even better, what if the nobodies were suddenly in charge?

I just returned from a week in Ecuador. A group of people from our congregation and from Wildflower UU, along with some folks from the UU Fellowship traveled to Ecuador together for a mission project, a service project.

We worked at a church in the village of Cachimuel, a community of Kichwa Indians, nestled on a steep slope of the Andean foothills. The people of Cachimuel, the Native Americans, are fairly poor people by our standards. Their village has only had running water for 12 years. I saw one tractor and two cars in the entire village. They use outhouses. Pigs and cows and donkeys and sheep wander around in the streets. I didn’t see a child with a single DSI or Xbox or Gameboy. Their clothes were often grimy.

But you know what? They invited us into their homes and served us coffee and tea. This weathered Kichwa woman welcomed us into a room where she was kneeling on the floor and beating reeds flat with a rock and making mats. And she gave me one, because she is a generous.

She was hammering reed mats with a rock, and she gave me one: Because she is generous. Me? I’m neither that hard-working nor that generous, I’m afraid. Another woman was squatting down on the front porch of the church on our first day at work. We were scraping and sanding off old paint. It wasn’t terribly work, but it was dusty and dirty and we were tired. This tiny Kichwa Indian woman, with several teeth missing, was sitting by this big, beat-up aluminum bowl. And as we walked out the door, she invited us to bend down, and she poured warm water to clean our hands. She had heated that water over a fire, carried that big pot to that porch, and was washing our hands.

We’re supposed to be the “somebodies,” right? After all, both Barack Obama and Sarah Palin say we’re the greatest nation on earth. We’re General Naaman from the Book of Kings. But maybe hubris is our leprosy.

Last week, I saw the slave girl, maybe no longer the captives, but still the “nobodies,” poor Indian dirt farmers, clinging to their back-mountain ways – showing me a hospitality and a generosity that I need to learn. Not so much giving me advice to follow, but offering examples to emulate.

Before my wife, Amy, and I moved back to Texas ten years ago, we lived in Washington, DC. There is a remarkable church in DC called Church of the Savior. It is a decentralized congregation, made up of about a dozen smaller churches. Each of the smaller churches has a particular focus. One church focuses on the arts, one focuses on issues of addiction and recovery. But one of the churches focuses on diversity. People must join that church in pairs. To join that church, you must join in tandem with someone who is different than you, someone who is “other.” If you are poor, you must join with someone who is rich. If you are white, you must join with someone who is black. General Naaman would join it with the slave girl. Tiger Woods might join with the beer cart girl. The purpose of that church is to create relationships that break down barriers, where people live with and learn from each other. Rich learning from poor, educated learning from uneducated, old learning from young, powerful learning from powerless.

I have many friends here at First Unitarian Universalist Church. Kathyrn Govier. Brent Baldwin. Donna and Derek Howard. Carol Ginn and several others were in class that I led at UT. It’s really a pleasure to be among so many friends this this morning. I have long been an admirer of this congregation. I am honored to be invited into this pulpit again this morning. With all of those pleasantries aside, let me say, Maybe, in some way, First Unitarian Universalist Church is like General Naaman. You’re smart, you’re well-educated, you’re important, you’re wealthy. You’re powerful in this city. You’re the “somebodies.”

But maybe you have a leprosy of sorts as well.

I know this congregation has gone through a long period of soul-searching, self-evaluation, internal examination. That is important. You are building bridges to the future and having vision-values-and-missions meeting. You’ve had consultants and committees and coffee conversations. Those things may be helpful. But make sure you aren’t just putting a Band-Aid over your leprosy. As you think about your future as a church, are you willing to listen to the nobodies? Are you willing to hear the powerless? Are you willing to load up a wagon-full of gold to follow the advice of the slave girl?

The first three principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association are impressive. The first three UU principles say that you affirm and promote: the inherent worth and dignity of every person; justice, equity and compassion in human relations; acceptance of one another…

Do you really? Do you really affirm the inherent worth of every person? Earlier, I mentioned Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. Do you really affirm the worth of both of them?

Or, what if this slave girl walked off the pages of Second Kings into First UU? What if she was a poor, immigrant who had suffered at the hands of a brutal government? What if she didn’t speak your language? What if she had never heard of yoga or philosophical inquiry or the yew grove moon ritual? I know you would give her canned goods, and you’d probably hire her to clean your home, but would you affirm her inherent worth as a member of this congregation?

Would you make her a Trustee if she’d never heard of Robert’s Rules of Order? Are you really compassionate in all your relations? The second principle says you are. Or do you try to out-vote each other, out-maneuver each other, out-talk each other? What if you gave up strategic planning and, instead, squatted out on the sidewalk with a big, banged-up aluminum pot of warm water and washed each other’s hands – or maybe even your feet – as a sign and symbol of compassion and caring?

You accept one another. Principle three says so. But, do you really? Would you accept the beer cart girl, as readily as you would accept a sociology professor? Would you accept a crack addict living under a bridge, as readily as you would accept that cute young couple that drives their new Prius past that bridge every day? Would you accept the day laborer named Raphael who doesn’t speak much English, as readily as you would accept the activist who has appointed herself to speak on Raphael’s behalf?

General Naaman, with his leprosy, loaded up a wagon of gold to go to find Elisha to see if the prophet can cure him of his disease. So, what happened? Was the slave girl right? Was Naaman cured? Did he find the prophet? What did he do with all that gold? Did the “nobody” become a “somebody”?

Well, you’ll have to log on to your Blackberries or your IPhones, or dust off the Bible that’s on your shelf, or run down to Book People and buy one and read for yourself the rest of the story. The ending is right there in the Book of Kings.

Which brings up another question: What about those kinds of people? People who read ancient faith stories like Second Kings, people who own a Bible or a Koran? Do you accept them? Do you affirm their faith journey? Do you promote their worth and dignity?

People who think stories of slave girls and generals might have meaning for you and your church on this day? Because you never know, the beer cart girl may just have good advice for Tiger Woods. And the slave girl just might cure your leprosy. And the voice of the nobodies may just have the word you need to hear.