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Rev. John Buehrens, Former UUA President
August 14, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Former UUA President John Buehrens is serving us as Consulting Minister for Leadership Transitions. His sermon will be dedicated to the late Prof. Charles Harshorne, the distinguished process philosopher who was a member of our congregation.

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

Now let us worship together.

Now let us celebrate the sacred miracle of each other.

Now let us open our hearts, our souls, our lives to blessings both mysterious and transcendent.

Now, let us be thankful for the healing power of love, the gift of fellowship, the renewal of faith.

Not let us accept with gratitude the traditions handed down to us from those that came before and open ourselves to begin anew for those that will follow.

Now let us worship together.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

– Rev. John Buehrens

Everything is in process. Even the seemingly solid bedrock of earth has gone through enormous changes since it was star-stuff, then magma. Nor is reality quite as the ancients saw it: changing combinations of earth, fire, water and air (or spirit). Nor is it made up chiefly of mass and space as in Newtonian physics. What seems to us to be “things” are just packets of energy, related for a time. They are events, actual occasions. So are we. Darwin, Einstein, and quantum mechanics all confirm this view of a universe in constantly process. The philosophy needed for our time is a process philosophy. If we dare to address or name Ultimate Reality, the theology we need is a process theology.

Second Reading

– Howard Zinn

Everything in history, once it has happened, looks as if it had to happen exactly that way. We can’t imagine any other. But I am convinced of the uncertainty of history, of the possibility of surprise, of the importance of human action in changing what looks unchangeable …

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

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.

If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

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

Sermon

ON TRUSTING THE PROCESS
A Sermon Delivered at
The First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin, Texas
Sunday, August 14, 2022
The Rev. Dr. John A. Buehrens, Past President of the UUA;
Consulting Minister on Leadership Transitions

It’s good to be here! I’ve known this congregation longer than many of you may realize. First when I was minister in Dallas in the 1980s. Then as UUA President. I remember preaching here some 25 years ago. In the front row sat your illustrious member Prof. Charles Hartshorne, then in his mid-90s. I felt honored by his presence. I knew him as America’s leading interpreter of process philosophy and theology. That afternoon, I called on him at his home. Charles had recently lost his dear wife, Dorothy. But when I raised the issue of grief, Hartshorne began to talk about being a hospital corpsman, during World War 1. About learning to accept what he could not change and trying to change what he could still effect. What a mensch! He died at 103.

He also spoke about what he had read while in Flanders, amid the carnage around him. Wordsworth. Shelley. English poets who anchored their hope in reverence for Nature and in that long arc of human history that we must try to bend toward justice. Hartshorne’s process thought, in books like Reality as Social Process, and Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, influenced my own theology. Yet he was as much a scientist as a philosopher and felt that his very best book, was Born to Sing, grounded in scientific ornithology, and showing show that not all birdsong can be accounted for as simply establishing feeding territory or as mating behavior. Some of it, especially the dawn chorus greeting the new day, simply has to do with the joy of being alive. Which itself may help in survival. George Santayana – another philosopher with Unitarian ties – said as much in his book, Skepticism and Animal Faith.

Which reminds me of a story my friend and colleague Ken McLean tells. A congregant once asked him what he thought Unitarian Universalists had most in common. Ken answered, “Well, we’re inclined to be skeptical.” The man snapped, “I don’t believe that for a minute!”

So when I stand here, daring to preach to you “on trusting the process,” I don’t expect you to suspend all your skepticism. I think that the Creative Mystery and Process behind our shared existence deserves a certain awe, reverence and even trust. Yet not every process we human beings come up with is a creative process. Some, in fact, seem almost designed to stand in the way of progress. Just think of the many undemocratic processes built into our democracy. The privileging of small states over large in the Senate, the filibuster, gerrymandering, and laws aimed at voter suppression.

Every group or tribe, anthropologists tell us develops its own peculiar faith and fetishes.

For Americans, liberals especially, and therefore especially UUs, process becomes a bit of both. As UUA President, I sometimes impatiently quipped, as we voted to tweak our bylaws for the enth time, “Ah, how process threatens to become our most important product!” Amid debating resolutions about matters over which we had precious little real control, but on which we wanted to make our collective conscience heard.

One year, around the time I was last here in Austin – I think it was 1995, when our General Assembly was in Indianapolis, I even deliberately interrupt a deliberative process in the interest of really making a difference. The debate was over which three of many “resolutions of immediate witness” would come to floor of the Assembly. One was an issue on which I saw we were almost uniquely qualified to lead. It involved opening civil marriage to same-sex couples. For decades, we had been openly blessing such unions in our own communities. This involved advocating for a new civil right, out in the political world. It was not yet a popular cause.

“Madam Moderator,” I said to my dear colleague in leadership, the late Denny Davidoff, “May I rise to a point of personal privilege?” When she recognized me, I then invited everyone present involved in a same-sex union to join me on the platform, whether their partner was there or not. I was not among them. My wife Gwen and I have now been married for over fifty years. Yet I wanted others to see the faces of the one hundred plus UU delegates who then joined me, as their ally. That resolution then not only went on the agenda, but also passed overwhelmingly.

Predictably, some said that I had abused the process as set out in Robert’s Rules of Order. That was true. “Yet without a vision, the people perish,” as it also sayeth in scripture.

At a later General Assembly, I even said this: “I know, I know, some of you are unhappy that we aren’t growing faster. You think, like Thomas Jefferson, that every intelligent person in America should become a Uu. But think of it this way: in this age of the therapeutic, we have become the oldest, longest-lasting, most widely dispersed therapy program for people with authority hang-ups that America has ever seen!” The crowd laughed in self-recognition.

Once I even interrupted myself, during my President’s Report, to have delegates watch an ad from the Super Bowl that year. It showed a group of cowboys herding cats across a river, then gathered around an evening campfire. The leader then pulled out a lint roller, to get the cat hair off his clothes. “Yep,” he says, “it ain’t easy work, herding cats. But there ain’t no other work Ah’d rather do!” When the lights then came back up, I held up the lint roller, which I promised to hand to my successors, along with a tin cup, as symbols of the role of being UUA President. Bear that in mind. We elect a new one next year. May we and be merciful to him, her, or they.

While I’m here, I want some credit for encouraging your last senior minister, my friend Meg Barnhouse, to come here to Austin. As said to the voice of Radio Free Bubba, “Meg, honey, Austin! That place has your name on it!” She later said she had to choose between a bunch of New York banker types and a slightly drunk cowboy bunch. She chose you, friends! Be grateful! I hold her in my heart today, as I’m sure you do, wishing for her both good health and her self-deprecating good humor and creativity. God knows we all need them both.

Over the last two years, as the Covid pandemic has hit our congregations, and caused many of my colleagues to retire early, so that the “great resignation” has hit the ministry almost as hard as it has hit the restaurant industry. (With which we clergy have a great deal in common, BTW. Meg said as much in her famous piece about how working in a diner is a good preparation for ministry, saying, “Sorry: not my table, hon.”

It has made me recall what Darwin once said, “In evolution, it is not the strongest of species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the ones most responsive to change.” Those who trust the process.

Tomorrow morning, or this coming week, some of you will trust the educational process enough send your children off to school. That’s a good thing! You have already trusted your Board of Trustees to bring together a team of ministers to serve – not only you, but also your transformative mission this city, this state, this nation, but in the world at large. Oddly, it all has to do with better democratic process! They are all committed to that mission. You are as well.

So this is the wisdom I would leave you with. During the year ahead, please, please do not try to micro-manage them. If you have concerns, voice them directly. I am their consultant on process of leadership transition. It is not one a rigid one, yet it does require trust, patience and direct address.

You will be working with a team of interim ministers, all dedicated to bringing out the best in your own souls and the best in the influence of this congregation and its core values on the surrounding culture, and on its regrettable and reactionary politics of oppression and exclusion.

You are free to question or even disrupt the process, if it too feels truly misguided, or missing some important point. I only ask that you have a VERY good reason for doing so. Recently I’ve been interacting with Nesan Lawrence, your President, your board, your staff. There is an openness there to hearing concerns that I hope you will trust. I know! Some of you may be saying, “Let’s just cut short all this interim process.

Believe me, the experience of the congregations throughout our larger family of faith suggests that you would be better served by taking the time to do some serious self-reflection. That’s what we don’t often do enough these days. We fire off an instant tweet, an email. Reactive, rather than thinking how best to influence the covenantal process we pledged to trust. Which is what we do when we covenant together in religious community.

At the end of this service, you will meet the three devoted UU ministers who will serve as your interim team in the months ahead. I have pledged to be their consultant on difficult issues, simply as a matter of collegial courtesy and concern. In an era when so many seem to have succumbed to the siren song of trust no one, don’t trust democracy, I ask you to give these, my reliable colleagues, at least the benefit of your skepticism. They have theirs as well, I’m sure!

Trust does have its limits. I think of many stores here in Texas that posted this warning: “In God we trust; all others pay cash.” Or Winston Churchill saying, “Democracy is the worst of all systems of government; except for all the others that have been tried.” Yet there is a greater, ever-changing Creative Process, of which we are the often critical, even whining, beneficiaries.

I say, let us give thanks that we ourselves are still in process. For if we are honest, we are not as yet the people we hope to be, nor have we yet contributed to the world around us what we might yet do. Supported by fallible, imperfect people just like ourselves – in the ongoing struggle, also imperfect, we now try to realize what Dr. King called “the Beloved Community.”

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 22 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

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Rev. Lee Legault
June 26, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Life requires us to make sense of difficult times, large and small. We have all been through a collective trauma with the pandemic. Victor Frankl Austrian psychiatrist, philosopher, and Holocaust survivor offers a framework for making meaning constructively in the most difficult of circumstances. Let’s reflect on how our thinking can transform our reality and set us free.

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

The prayer of our souls is a petition for persistence not for the one good deed or single thought, but for deed on deed, thought on thought until day calling on to day shall meke a life worth living.

– W.E.B. Duboise

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.

Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him–mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom–which cannot be taken away–that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

– Viktor Frankl

Sermon

The second source of wisdom in our faith is words and deeds of prophetic people which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love. Dr. Viktor Frankl was such a prophetic person. He belonged to the Jewish faith and he started practicing medicine–neurology and psychiatry–in Austria in 1930. He quickly made a name for himself in those fields. In parallel Hitler’s regime was rising.

Frankl’s prominence kept him and his family safe for a time. He tells of being summoned to the office of an SS officer, but instead of being arrested–as he had feared– the SS officer asked if Frankl could give him some advice–for a friend, because of course SS officer’s have their lives totally together and do not need therapy. But the SS officer’s “friend” apparently had lots of issues, and Frankl offered services for about a year–which Frankl credits as buying some time for his family. But it did not buy enough time, and Frankl ultimately spent years in four concentration camps and lost all his family members, except for a sister who lived on another continent. He survived and wrote Man’s Search for Meaning immediately afterward in nine days in 1945. A 1991 Library of Congress survey found Man’s Search for Meaning to be one of the ten most influential books in America. [MSFM 125] Victor Frankl died in 1997 at 92 years old.

Frankl’s life in the concentration camps is perhaps the most extreme example of finding meaning through the attitude taken towards unavoidable suffering. The problem of meaninglessness, though, arises in the everyday. It exists perhaps more often than it does not. Frankl knew this before he spent time in the camps. He had been studying what drove people to existential despair and suicide before his incarceration. After his liberation, he returned to this theme having catalyzed the heart of his theory from his own experience.

Frankl explains his term for meaninglessness–the existential vacuum– like this: There is a double-fold loss that comes with humanity in the 20th century. First, people have lost much of their animal instincts that used to regulate behavior, and now people have to make choices. Second, traditions with embedded values are rapidly disappearing. “Now no tradition tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he doesn’t even know what he wishes to do. Instead he wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).” [MSFM 86]

According to Frankl, we can discover meaning in life in three different ways:

1) Through our creative gifts, such as by creating a work or doing a deed. Your vocation, work raising a family, or your effort cultivating a relationship would all fall under this category.

2) through our experience of the love for or from someone else, or our wholehearted appreciation and joy in the good and the beautiful, such as nature and art.

3) most importantly, by the attitude we take towards unavoidable suffering. When we can’t change a situation, we can transcend it and find meaning in it through our response to it. Frankl called this attitudinal shift “tragic optimism.”

I want to be careful to call out that Frankl did not glorify suffering for suffering’s sake. He said, “let me make it perfectly clear that in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning. I only insist that meaning is possible even in spite of suffering–provided, certainly, that the suffering is unavoidable. If it were avoidable, the meaningful thing to do would be to remove its cause, be it psychological, biological, or political. To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic, rather than heroic.”

Major places where you come against some unavoidable suffering are in aging and illness. In other times and places, elders have been given honor and asked about their late-in-life experiences as revered fonts of wisdom. Not so much in our time and place. Aging, illness, and end of life are minimized and or little discussed. Our elders are not honored for what they are going through so much as they are made to feel embarrassed that they are going through it.

How different would it be if we honored the person’s suffering itself as a fertile ground for meaning, encouraging the person to feel purposeful in the ways they may be able to respond to the unavoidable situation. I see Frankl’s philosophy applied in my work at the hospital. I learn much about the world when I ask hospitalized people what has been hardest for them, what has surprised them, and what they take away from their experience.

Frankl’s approach also honors aging through its emphasis on the “granaries of the past.” “For as soon as we have used an opportunity and have actualized a potential meaning, we have done so once and for all. We have rescued it into the past wherein it has been safely delivered and deposited. In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured [:] . . . the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with dignity and courage.” [MSFM 121]

From this perspective, our elders lead more meaningful lives than young people ever could because elders have abundant granaries of the past–potentialities they have actualized, meanings fulfilled, and values honored and lived. And nothing and no one can ever take those things away.

You may be thinking, Reverend Lee, uum, I’d like to have meaning in my life without going through intense unavoidable suffering. Weren’t there two other ways to do it, like by creating a work or doing a deed or by wholeheartedly appreciating something? Tell me more about those paths.

Well, that’s a whole other sermon really, but here are some questions that can point the way to those two other doors to meaning:

–what brings you joy?

–what strengths and skills flow easily within you?

–Putting those ideas together: What are you good at that you love so much you would pay to do it?

–If you had only 6 months to live, what would you do with your life?

–If you had all the time and all the money in the world, what would you do?

–If you were guaranteed to succeed and knew you could not fail, what would you do?

–Imagine it is your memorial service. What do you hope will be said in the eulogy? How do you want to be remembered for giving your gifts in service to your family, your community, and to the world?

If this exercise is evocative and you want more, know that I got these questions from my very favorite–and free–website called Optimize by Brian Johnson.

If the answers to these questions point to things already present in your life–like your relationships, your deeds, or your pastimes– then you are likely already actualizing meaning. If the answers point to deeds, experiences, or people not present in your life, then explore those answers because they are probably tied up with your purpose. In either case, take action–a little every day–in line with your meaning and purpose. Be not anxious. Purpose and meaning are big words. You don’t have to figure it out once and for all today–or ever, explicitly. You want to be working on it, working towards it. Embarking on missions that you sense may be on the right track. You don’t have to solve the world. Your meaning and purpose will be unique to you and does not have to make sense to others.

And, clutch Frankl’s tragic optimism to your heart. Even if the pleasant parts of your life never give you the tiniest twinge of meaning or purpose, there is always that Door Number Three that we talked about first: unavoidable suffering. Hard things have happened to all of us. More hard things are coming. But “there are no tragic and negative aspects [to life] that cannot be–by the stand one takes to them–transmuted” into meaningful experiences, beacons of dignity, or kickstarters of purpose.

Amen and blessed be.

Benediction

My wish for each of you is that you find the unique meanings of your lives and rarely experience the existential vacuum. I also charge you to witness to the meaning you see in others lives, mirroring for others the inherent worth and dignity– the meaningfulness–you see in them.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 22 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Lee Legault
January 16, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Lee Legault weathered the winter and summer 2021 COVID surges as a chaplain resident at Ascension Seton Medical Center of Austin, feeling privileged to walk beside patients and their families in the pandemic. She brings a grab bag of thoughts/advice/admonishments/assurances based on her time working with COVID patients and their families. As the Omicron variant rages, let’s learn and grow together to the benefit of the interconnected web of existence of which we are all apart. Lamenting together, we may take heart that we are never truly alone.

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

My work is an ourpouring of laughter through age-old tears.
It is an uttered anyhow through grief enduced fear.
It is a song of praise being sung in uncertain, unknowing lands.
It is a warmth shared behind half-masked faces and gloved hands.

My work is seeing you how I want to be seen.
It is talking honestly and openly, but not being mean.
It is trusting in those who stand to my left and my right.
It is fighting with we all win, not just fighting to fight.

My work is your work if you believe too,
that we all work together to make everyone free.
That together we can weather the struggles we face,
That God loves us, even hears us whenever we pray.

– Rev. Jane Evans

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

We pause this hour to remember those whom we have lost those whom we fear losing those from whom we are separated those to whom we would offer a helping hand a caring heart and the will to live. We pause this hour also to hope for life and good living for love and kind words for reconciliation for the support of family and friends and for meaning in the struggle for wholeness. May our memories and hope renew us for the days and nights to come.

– Rev. Susan Milner

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

Most sermons during the past 22 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

First UU Youth Group
August 8, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

First UU Youth group bridging ceremony. Each year, as our Senior youth prepare to bridge to young adults, our middle school youth to high school and all in between, we celebrate the lives of the youth in our midst through a youth-led worship service. Join the First UU Youth as they explore nature versus nurture on some hot social topics.

Chalice Lighting

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

Homilies

Text of this service is not available.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Sage Hirschfeld & Bear W. Qolezcua
July 25, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In a world where trusting others feels harder each day, remembering lessons of trust and letting them guide us is an act of revolution. Join our RE Intern, Sage Hirschfeld, and Director of Communications, Bear Qolezcua, as they explore the topic of trusting in others and ourselves.

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

WAITING
Marta I Valentine

Step into the center
Come in from the margins
I will hold you here.

Don’t look back
or around
feel my arms,
the water is rising.

I will hold you
as you tremble.
I will warm you.

Don’t look out or away
Life is in here, between you and me.

In this tiny space
where I end and you begin
hope lives.

In this precious tiny space
no words need to be whispered
to tell us we are one.

You and I,
we make the circle
if we choose to.

Come, step in
I am waiting for you.

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

Trust is earned in the smallest of moments. It is earned not through heroic deeds or even highly visible adtions but through paying attention, listening, and gestures of genuine care and connection.

– Dr. Bene Brown

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Guest Speaker Rev. Bill Sinkford
First Unitarian Portland
May 2, 2021

When the justice system is bent against black lives, those black lives lose faith in justice until there is proof it is served. They hold their breath, bated and unsure, waiting to finally exhale when justice rings true. We have all been changed, we are all grieving, there will be more lives lost but perhaps there is still evidence for hope.

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

THE HILL WE CLIMB
Amanda Gorman
(Biden inauguration poem)

When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We’ve braved the belly of the beast
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn’t always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished
We the successors of a country and a time
Where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one
And yes we are far from polished
far from pristine
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect
We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious
Not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid
If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made
That is the promise to glade
The hill we climb
If only we dare
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy
And this effort very nearly succeeded
But while democracy can be periodically delayed
it can never be permanently defeated
In this truth
in this faith we trust
For while we have our eyes on the future history
has its eyes on us
This is the era of just redemption
We feared at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation
Our blunders become their burdens
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation
and every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

COULD WE PLEASE GIVE THE POLICE DEPARTMENTS TO THE GRANDMOTHERS
Junauda Petrus-Nasah

Could we please give the police departments to the grandmothers. Give them the salaries and the pensions and the city vehicles, but make them a fleet of vintage corvettes, jaguars and cadillacs, with white leather interior. Diamond in the back, sunroof top and digging the scene with the gangsta lean.

Let the cars be badass!

You would hear the old school jams like Patti Labelle, Stevie Wonder, Anita Baker and Al Green. You would hear Sweet Honey in the Rock harmonizing on “We who believe in freedom will not rest” bumping out the speakers. And they got the booming system.

If you up to mischief, they will pick you up swiftly in their sweet ride and look at you until you catch shame and look down at your lap. She asks you if you are hungry and you say “yes” and of course you are. She got a crown of dreadlocks and on the dashboard you see brown faces like yours, shea buttered and loved up

And there are no precincts.

Just love temples, that got spaces to meditate and eat delicious food. mangoes, blueberries, nectarines, cornbread, peas and rice, fried plantain, fufu, yams, greens, okra, pecan pie, salad and lemonade.

Things that make your mouth water and soul arrive.

All the hungry bellies know warmth, all the children expect love. The grandmas help you with homework, practice yoga with you and teach you how to make jamabalaya and coconut cake. From scratch.

When your sleepy she will start humming and rub your back while you drift off. A song that she used to have the record of when she was your age. She remembers how it felt like to be you and be young and not know the world that good. Grandma is a sacred child herself, who just circled the sun enough times into the ripeness of her cronehood.

She wants your life to be sweeter.

When you are wildin’ out because your heart is broke or you don’t have what you need the grandmas take your hand and lead you to their gardens. You can lay down amongst the flowers. Her grasses, roses, dahlias, irises, lilies, collards, kale, eggplants, blackberries. She wants you know that you are safe and protected, universal limitless, sacred, sensual, divine and free.

Grandma is the original warrior, wild since birth, comfortable in loving fiercely. She has fought so that you don’t have to, not in the same ways at least.

So give the police departments to the grandmas, they are fearless, classy and actualized. Blossomed from love. They wear what they want and say what they please.

Believe that.

There wouldn’t be noise citations when the grandmas ride through our streets, blasting Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Alice Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, KRS-One. All that good music. The kids gonna hula hoop to it and sell her lemonade made from heirloom pink lemons and maple syrup. The car is solar powered and carbon footprint-less, the grandmas designed the technology themselves.

At night they park the cars in a circle so all can sit in them with the sun roofs down, and look at the stars, talk about astrological signs, what to plant tomorrow based on the moon’s mood and help you memorize Audre Lorde and James Baldwin quotes. She always looks you in the eye and acknowledges the light in you with no hesitation or fear. And grandma loves you fiercely forever.

She sees the pain in our bravado, the confusion in our anger, the depth behind our coldness. Grandma know what oppression has done to our souls and is gonna change it one love temple at a time. She has no fear.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Bear W. Qolezcua
January 31, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

If you knew that your next meal was your last, what would you choose to eat? Imagine, instead, that we would sit around the long table of humanity and feast on the finest, most filling meal our souls could crave.

Chalice Lighting

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

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Call to Worship

Meditation Reading

We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been – a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.

-Starhawk

Sermon

One of my favourite Christian texts in the Bible is found in the book of 1 Corinthians 13: 1-8 (more or less). So, these verses they say “If I could speak any and every language of humanity and beyond but there is no love within me? Then anything I would say is nothing but noise, noise, noise.” The clanging of cymbals, the bashing of drums is how the Bible explains it.

“I could give away everything I own, sell it, give it to the poor. Give all my food to the hungry, my clothing to the naked. I could give up my very life for someone else. But if I do it with no love, if that place is not found within me. Then it means nothing. Love is patient, Love is kind. It has no jealousy, it is not arrogant. It has no ego and it does not inflate itself.

Love is not shameful. It is not selfish. It is not rude. Love does not demand that it gets its own way. It does not lash out. And it is absolutely not unapproachable.

Love doesn’t celebrate cruelty. It doesn’t celebrate injustice, or pain, or heartache. But only ever rejoices in true equity, in mercy, in goodness, humanity, and truth.

Every mystical gift, every power under the stars within this vast universe, every insight, or fact, or piece of wisdom that has ever been or ever will be will someday end. But love will endure far beyond. Songs will fade, stories will cease, and every good deed ever done will fall.

Even when all I am and all I have ever known is lost to history forever, three things will remain: Faith, Hope, and Love. And the most important, the most powerful, the most enduring, the greatest of these is love.”

A friend of mine put a post out that asked a sillyish quick question, that asked one of those “give me the first word off your head” just to engage the community he had built up there. He asked “if you knew your next meal was your last. What would you eat?”

I was in one of those moods where I chose to sit with the question and really consider it. I chewed on it until it had no flavour left and then I stuck it behind my ear for later. I wanted to think about the impact a last meal could make. 

 I’m pretty sure no one ever meant for those quick little questions to be anything remotely close to philosophical or theological. There I was, waxing toward the poetic and the philosophical and the theological. And I’m sure my friend was just absolutely thrilled to bits.

So, a feast of love. Taking in this never-ending source of power and goodness always leaves me both open to more love and also completely filled by it, so much that my own then pours out from me and into all the ones around me.

I cannot imagine a more generous gift we can give to one another than that.

I wrote about my illness in my early 20s that on good days I enjoyed things like chicken with lemon and garlic, or chili, or brisket, brussels sprouts, pumpkin, asparagus, beans, salads made from celery greens and fresh cucumbers. The food had very little to do with what was nourishing me, what was keeping me full and energetic enough to stick with it. To not just want to give up.

In those times, with my little extended families (and I had several), as I drifted in and out of consciousness or had to excuse myself… after a while everybody just kind of learned to leave me be and then pick up once I was back with them like nothing stopped. It became familiar. They knew what to watch for. To check on me. 

They were patient, they were kind, they were not selfish. They did not want their own way. They were, in my life, the embodiment of love. 

Uncomfortable and fearsome as those parts of my life were. They did teach me something. I don’t care what’s on my plate in the end. I don’t care and yet, I do. I do care.

What is served at the table for my feast of love matters the most of anything I will ever have. So far in this life I have learned to appreciate so much that has crossed my spiritual and physical plate. Things that had always brought comfort or, as I would learn, would bring it. But it was more where it came from and what came alongside it that fed me.

At my last meal, I would make sure I was completely surrounded by the people who have filled my heart so much more than I have ever needed to fill my belly. My feast took a long time in my life to be recognised and to share. And there have been times that I stepped away from the table because I couldn’t handle what was being served. But that meal comes from living a life full to the brim with the sweetest treats anyone could ever taste. The people I gathered to me.

The communities I am a part of.

The family I have created for myself.

They would be my honoured guests and they would be the last thing I would ever need in this lifetime.

Find your feast my Beloved, Beloved Community. Find your feast. If it is here in this community, good. Find it, enjoy it, and share it. If it is in some other group of souls, good. Find it, enjoy it, and share it. Wherever your table is set. Wherever you find yourself seated. Wherever that dinner bell is rung, go. Go to it! Celebrate it as much as you can, with as many people as you can, as fully and richly and deeply as you can. That table is set for YOU and it is yours to take in all that has been poured out there. Fill your cup to the brim. Let it overflow with the goodness, the peace, and the comfort, the contentment, the hope, and the communal sharing of all that is good and all that isn’t as good in this life. Joy and sorrow do exist together. But they are better shared. 

If there comes a time, and I truly hope there is, that you find that your table is so full you cannot contain what is on it… Don’t close anyone out. Don’t build higher walls, build a longer table. More seats, more people, more love. Let it flow. Celebrate your feast of love. Let it be the food that carries you through when you feel so hungry for something more. Let it be what fuels you through this life. 

Bon apétit.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

August 2, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Rev. Meg is back from her study break and starting off strong with sermon questions from a box. Join Rev. Meg as she answers your questions.

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

Yuval Noah Harari

People throughout history worried that unless we put all our faith in some set of absolute answers, human society will crumble. In fact, modern history has demonstrated that a society of courageous people willing to admit ignorance and raise difficult questions is usually not just more prosperous but also more peaceful than societies in which everyone must unquestioningly accept a single answer. People afraid of losing their truth tend to be more violent than people who are used to looking at the world from several different viewpoints. Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question.

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Meditation Reading

Rainer Maria Rilke

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

Sermon

Text of this service is not yet available.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Lee Legault, Ministerial Intern
July 19, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Stoics were warriors of the mind who trained to build unbreakable will and character. Roman emperors, enslaved persons, and Vietnam POWs alike have dealt with challenges using Stoic techniques. What might we learn about surviving in this day and age from the ancient mindset of the Stoics? Are your habits helping you build your Inner Citadel, and do you even want one?

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

LABYRINTH
By Leslie Takahashi

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

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

INVICTUS
William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Sermon

The other night, as I was getting ready for bed, I broke two of my persona! rules for spiritual health–rules I have broken too many times these past few months: (1) I consumed news after four PM, and (2) I consumed news on a portable electronic device. In doing so, I encountered a story about a boy from Mongolia who had died from Bubonic plague after eating an infected marmot. Then I jumped to other stories about a squirrel in Colorado who tested positive from the plague, the current global statistics on death and disability from the bubonic plague, and what the heck a marmot is.

I think this is what is called doomscrolling, and it prevented me from doing the next right thing for my soul, which was to get a good night’s sleep and recharge my wells of love, hope, and compassion. I found myself muttering, “I have Got to get back to Stoicism.” I said this much the same way I mutter to myself most Januarys that I have GOT to get back to the gym.

Stoicism is an ancient philosophy that offers timeless tools for cultivating our will by turning obstacles into opportunities to exercise virtues. Virtues like compassion, courage, patience, and resilience. Stoicism started around 300 BC in Greece. For about three hundred years, Stoicism dominated the philosophy of tile Roman Empire, thanks to the teachings of notable Stoics such as Seneca, Epictetus, and Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Stoicism is about using mindful vigilance of thoughts to maximize the empowered agency of action. Obstacles change with the times and vary from individual to individual, but the general response of undisciplined minds to adversity remains the same: fear, helplessness, frustration, anger, confusion. The energy we spend on these emotions depletes us. Weakens us. Burns us out. By contrast, stoicism urges cultivation of virtues that empower us: strength, service, humility, flexibility.

Stoics were warriors of the mind, using hardships, insults, problems, pain–anything and everything–as fuel for the inner fire of their will The friction of struggle serves Stoics as catalysts for their chemical reactions of character, propelling them to new, higher levels of functioning and empowerment. Through training and practice, they honed what they called the Inner Citadel, a kind of internal stronghold that each of us must build over the course of our lives that houses our unbreakable will and character. Imagine the Inner Citadel as a kind of a soul fortress that protects your will and character, that no amount of external adversity can mar.

There are three steps in the Stoic Process of creating the Inner Citadel. First, to strengthen this soul fortress. We focus only on what is under our control. What Stoics called Externals are NOT within our control. Now, externals are a big bucket in the stoic mind. All actions of other people are externals. What happens to you is an external. How people react to what you do is an external. BIG bucket.

What we can control–internals as Stoics call them — fit into a considerably smaller container: Our own words, our own thoughts, and our own actions.

The second step in building the Inner Citadel is focus on right action. For the Stoics, right action is choosing the most empowering action available Right Now,. Flex your agency however possible. When faced with a seemingly impossible boulder of adversity, break it down into pebbles of discrete possibility. What task lies before us that we Can accomplish? Choose to do that one small thing. Do it well and then move on to the next pebble of possibility that is within your control.

Third, accept what comes. Stoics call it the art of acquiescence. We don’t control outcome (that is an external); we only control our own internal process. Stoics believe that, once we’ve used our will, agency, and character to the best of our ability, tranquility and joy follow. The art of acquiescence does not mean giving up going forward, only that, in that individual moment on that individual battlefield, we find a spot of peace–knowing, regardless of external events, we built Our Inner Citadel. In the next moment, turn back to the work. Repeat the process. As golfers say, play it where it lies.

When a situation arises that is truly, unchangeably awful, the Stoics show us how to transform it in the fire of the Inner Citadel. Transform it into a learning experience. Transform it into an opportunity to army our empathy. Transform it into a chance to comfort others.

The late Admiral James Stockdale provides a remarkable contemporary example of the Stoic Inner Citadel You may remember Admiral Stockdale from his time in 1992 as Ross Perot’s vice-presidential running mate. Whatever your feelings about his politics, we can see the awesome practical power of Stoicism in Admiral Stockdale’s story of his seven years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

In his essay, Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus’s Doctrines in A Laboratory of Human Behavior, Stockdale tells us he came to philosophy at middle age, when the Navy sent him to graduate school at Stanford. Stoicism spoke to Stockdale, particularly the compilation of Epictetus’s teachings called the Enchiridion. Enchiridion means “ready at hand”, so we would probably call it the Stoic handbook, but the Stoics meant it in the sense of a tool or weapon, available to be used quickly in any situation.

Stockdale’s Stoic hero, Epictetus, was born an enslaved person and spent years working in the palace of the infamous Roman Emperor. Nero, before he became a free person and Stoic teacher. Stockdale says he particularly admired Epictetus because Epictetus “gleaned wisdom rather than bitterness from his early flrsthand exposure to extreme cruelty and firsthand observations of abuse of power and self-indulgent debauchery.”

In 1965–three years after leaving Stanford — James Stockdale was shot down over Northern Vietnam and parachuted away from the wreckage of his airplane, floating down into enemy territory. Stockdale vividly recalls, “After ejection I had about thirty seconds to make my last statement in freedom before I landed in the main street of a little village right ahead.” “And so help me, I whispered to myself: ‘Five years down there, at least. I’m leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.’ “

Admiral Stockdale’s essay also tells us that, when he crashed, he understood that he would be the highest ranking US military officer in the prison, that the enemy would know this and single him out for extra copious torture and reprogramming, and that his single goal was to give his fellow prisoners the best leadership he could provide as long as he survived.

His initial assessment proved accurate. As soon as he hit the ground he was badly beaten and left with an injured leg that never healed properly. Stockdale said he would later take comfort in the fact that Epictetus had a disability and wrote in the Enchiridion, “Lameness is an impediment to the leg, but not to the will”

Before he even gets to his experience at the prison, Stockdale has offered a powerful articulation of the Stoic process of forging the Inner Citadel. He’s acquiesced to external consequences over which he has no control (that he’s going to be a prisoner, probably for five years, which was his personal opinion of how much longer the war would last). He has broken down the overwhelming obstacle of imminent imprisonment into small parts over which he can exercise empowered action and agency. And he’s set a goal for his internal condition that is worthy of his Inner Citadel: He vows to use his years in imprisonment to help the other prisoners.

Once he arrives at the prison, which he describes as a cross between a psychiatric facility and a reform school, Admiral Stockdale sees that the most effective; torture technique his enemy has is the fear, anxiety, guilt, and helplessness that the captured soldiers felt about the possibility they might give up information under duress. He says,

“It was there that I learned what ‘Stoic harm’ meant…”
Epictetus [said] ‘Look not for any greater harm than this: destroying the trustworthy, self-respecting, well-behaved man within you.’

Admiral Stockdale seems frustrated in his essay that other people do not immediately grasp the gravity of Stoic Harm, and insist on asking about lesser issues, like what types of physical torture he endured and what the food was I like. He wrote that he got questions about the food all the time. Drove him crazy.

To help alleviate the psychological and spiritual harm suffered by his four hundred fellow soldiers, Stockdale established a system of coded communication between the prisoners, set up a chain of command, and most importantly, he gave them orders. Orders like “Unity over Self:” which translated practically into avoiding accepting favorable treatment at the expense of a fellow soldier. His system of shadow orders allowed the soldiers to minimize their anxiety and guilt and maximize their empowered agency. Stockdale’s orders normalized that they would probably all give up some information under torture, but allowed the soldiers to take action to build their Inner Citadels by exercising their discretion to follow Stockdale’s Unity over Self directive as best they could, given the external circumstances. That small amount of agency brought the soldiers a measure of peace and freedom inside prison.

Admiral Stockdale writes poignantly of a note left for him by a fellow soldier when Stockdale returned from a long bout of solitary confinement. (He spent four years in solitary confinement, all told) “Back in my cell, after the guard locked the door, I sat on my toilet bucket–where I could stealthily jettison the note if the peephole cover moved—and unfolded Hatcher’s sheet of low-grade paper toweling on which, with a rat dropping, he had printed, without comment or signature, the last verse of Ernest Henley’s poem Invictus:

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate.
I am the captain of my soul”

Sometimes the triumph of Stoic inner citadel over adversity bears little resemblance to traditional victory. Sometimes it manifests instead as spiritual survival. You cannot see spiritual survival on the outside. Not externally. But the presence of a person whose Inner Citadel is strong enough for spiritual survival illumines for countless others the Internal worth and dignity of every person, regardless of External circumstance.

As we walk in our Unitarian Universalist faith through this time of adversity, there will be opportunities to use the wisdom of the Stoic sages: to break challenges down so their hugeness does not paralyze us, to exercise our empowerment muscles by tackling actions within our control to preserve energy by wasting as little as possible on unproductive reactions to externals, and to transform obstacles into opportunities to build compassion and resilience.

Amen and blessed be.

Benediction

May our Inner Citadels shine brightly as beacons that ignite spiritual survival in all who see them.

Peace be with you.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above. Text of the homilies are not available.

Senior Youth Group
July 12, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We celebrate our graduating seniors as they transition to young adults and welcome our Middle School kids into High School with our annual bridging ceremony.  Join our senior youth group as they lead worship and explore the theme of Sanctuary.

Chalice Lighting

Love is the spirit of this church and service is its law. This is our great covenant: to dwell together in peace, to speak the truth in love, and to help one another.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Call to Worship

WHERE WE BELONG, A DUET
Maya Angelou

In every town and village,
In every city square,
In crowded places I searched the faces
Hoping to find Someone to care.

I read mysterious meanings In the distant stars,
Then I went to schoolrooms
And poolrooms
And half-lighted cocktail bars.
Braving dangers, Going with strangers,
I don’t even remember their names.

I was quick and breezy
And always easy
Playing romantic games.
I wined and dined a thousand exotic Joans and Janes
In dusty halls,
at debutante balls,
On lonely country lanes.

I fell in love forever,
Twice every year or so.
I wooed them sweetly,
was theirs completely,
But they always let me go.

Saying bye now, no need to try now,
You don’t have the proper charms.
Too sentimental and much too gentle
I don’t tremble in your arms.

Then you rose into my life
Like a promised sunrise.
Brightening my days with the light in your eyes.
I’ve never been so strong,
Now I’m where I belong.

Bridging Ceremony

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Kye Flannery
June 28, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

A celebration of pride from the perspective of queerness and queer theologies – exploring belonging, solidarity and deep acceptance of our collective history, and the possibilities of our collective power.

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

SCANDALOUS GOD
– Enfleshed LBGTQ Liturgy Group

Divine Presence,
Scandalous One,
Versatile God,
You have been called the worst of names,
tossed aside by the hands of tradition,
met with violence and neglect by stranger and kin alike.
And still, you do not conform to the expectations of power
or polite your way into halls of destruction.
You, the ultimate transgressor of norms
that harm or confine,
bear witness to the glory of Strange.
You, Queer One, reveal the gifts of falling outside the lines.
You, Wild One, break open possibilities –
within us and around us –
whispering in our ear,
“See me. Feel me. Desire me.” You help us come alive again.
Beauty is your passion.
Love is your motivation.
Courage is your center.
May your spirit be awakened in every heart, every church,
every space dull with repressed delight,
That we may choose to live into the riches
of this peculiar life together.
Embrace us, O God,
and lead us in the ways of your love,
so promiscuous,
so deviant,
so free.
Amen.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Beloved Community Moment

Those in privileged identities — take a moment to think of what it is to come to identity slowly as a child and then a teen with the mirrors of your behavior — joining in a game on the playground of “the queer” where the last person holding the ball is tackled and pummeled — what it is to add to this an authority figure in the background who when we really speak from a place of joy, when we let loose, says “don’t be queer” or “you have to wear a dress to church, or you’re grounded” — and add to this the knowledge that your family are just trying to keep you safe, that as a person of color your family needs to protect you and themselves from actual violence —

Today we celebrate our Pride, as a community which seeks always to love better, always discover more about ourselves and our neighbors — in the new testament someone asks Jesus “who is my neighbor” and that is a question I think we are confronting deeply right now as a nation — as in, who do I SEE as my neighbor — and HOW do I see my neighbor — and who is my neighbor — what is it that my neighbor experiences? Who are they, really? And is there actually a “they” at all — today, now, in this historical moment, as always, our Pride is bound up in our yearning, in our pain, in our relationships, our justice commitments, our intersectional identities, our shared humanity — today, — where gender shifts, where identities we are bio families and chosen families, we are LGBTQIA… we are allies, in many stages of growth —

Meditation Reading

ASK MOLLY
Heather Havrilesky

I am an appliance that rattles and spits out sparks and blows every fuse. I used to serve some function but now I prefer not to. Place me on your kitchen counter and watch life become less and less convenient. I will trip you up. I will make you question what you meant by that. You will open a box of cereal and wonder why you do the job you do. You will stand in the middle of the floor and suddenly need to know what happened to that kid on the bus who taught you about Run DMC. You will mourn all the people you could’ve known better, including yourself.

Welcome this unraveling. The less efficient you become, the better. Break all rote habits and build your life out of satisfying pauses between action. Now eliminate all action. Pull on this strand until the days on your Google calendar skitter across the floor like dominoes. What do your cells crave? Who loves you? When you speak, who feels your words on the soles of their feet, behind their eyes, under their fingernails?

Don’t grieve the ones who can’t see you clearly. Grieve the years you spent refusing to see yourself, or refusing to feel your cells whispering for more. Grieve but don’t say that time was wasted. All mistakes and dead ends led you to this moment.

Now you can finally feel the truth: Mourning is slow but it’s the straightest path forward. The question is “How do I break this appliance permanently? How do I become an inconvenience to myself and others? How do I swear off efficiency forever? How do I keep losing the thread over and over? How do I remain out of the groove, off the map, in the zone, flexible and reflective, shimmering and cool, examining the high stakes of tiny moments, encouraging communion, forgiveness, expansion, invention?

Sermon

Do you remember the toaster? The joke used to be that, if you were gay, and you ‘converted someone’ you got a toaster. Younger people think that started with Ellen coming out on TV in the late 90s — weird to be in my 40s where I can say to someone, “No, sonny, now back before you were born…”

Like so many creative strong persistent countercultural ideas, the toaster was born in response to deep, ugly fear, Anita Bryant mid-70s cultural crusade – “they’re out there and they’re after your children.” So we flipped that script.

Yes, went the campy response, it’s like when you sell Mary Kay! Only instead of a houndstooth tote, top salespeople receive a toaster! That camp saved us, taking the mickey at homophobia, fear, nudging at the idea that capitalism might tie in with attraction —

This is the verb of queer — “to queer” — had been used as a pejorative — making something broken — queering a deal meant making it sour, driving people away — but what it means now is to look at a thing through a queer lens, find the meaning the thing did not know it had, to claim that meaning and find a new connection — a Yes, And — bringing a thing into the circle, adorning it with love and self-acceptance. Like the Fab Five from Queer Eye.

The word “queer.” – Scary. It meant “other,” not one of us. It was a word, weaponized — One of the scariest things we can experience — YOU! Out of the group of mammals you need to survive. These older generations opened up space for us, with their hearts in their throats, bloody with fighting for their lives and their friends — not knowing if it would work, terrified — in contrast, I have usually been able to pass– to read what others are most comfortable with and like to look at — no matter who I was in love with, I could be, in many settings, undercover. It was only when I lived in Boston, where I began to explore my gender expression… What made me feel strong? What made me feel brave? What colors could I fly? …I got to explore they/them pronouns. Genderqueer.

Rather than the 1950s version, I like the 1500s — odd, peculiar, eccentric.

Vonte Abrams: NY
“My queerness encompasses my voice, as a Black, male-assigned, non-binary individual… I embrace “non-binary” because I am naturally androgynous – puberty gave me a physical and emotional blend of masculine and feminine traits. I’ve learned over time that navigating societal rules of binary presentation is always going to be a unique challenge for me. “Queer” helps me face that challenge.”

“Queer” gives courage! And a way of claiming ourselves.

And yet — queering is not an answer that stays for always. It doesn’t give us the final story. It gives us… another part of the story… a richer part of the story…

When we look with queer eyes at religious traditions, we can find the refusal of gender — such as Avalokitesvara buddha, the most compassionate, who is pictured as masculine, feminine, androgynous… might use the pronouns “they”… or delving into Genesis to find the Hebrew pronouns for God and realizing we’ve assumed an awful lot

Rev Irene Monroe:
“The first night of the Stonewall Inn riots played out no differently from previous riots with Black Americans and white policemen. African Americans and Latinos were the largest percentage of the protestors because we heavily frequented the bar. For Black and Latino homeless youth and young adults, who slept in nearby Christopher Park, the Stonewall Inn was their stable domicile. ” The second night is where the broader gay community got involved, white folks, folks with economic privilege, stepped in and went into battle with and for one another —

Queering narrative means we want to know the messy version of the story — our neighbors’ view of the story, and frequently we center our neighbor’s view — after all, only one in one in 7.8 billion stories gets to be about me, and that number is bigger when we count all living things, not just humans. We don’t miss the “We” that is bigger than I — and also “I” is allowed and encouraged to sing —

Queer means looking to the collective, to the many voices, to the fringes, to the tentative, to the unself-conscious, to that which does not know how to market itself and doesn’t care to — What I love about queer theology is that it isn’t about purity, it isn’t about the idea of being washed clean — beauty and the divine is found in the dirt, in the earth, in our body’s functions and our body’s desire — this is not a love that knows all answers, or hides in bluster, but a love which wants to know more — a love which offers, above all, attention.

If you have loved — really — you know love contains pain and grit, dirt — and sometimes lust dominates and that’s also to be trusted in its way, it’s not a binary, is it lust or love? — It’s both, it’s all. But we work to make sure that in our self-expressions we don’t do harm, we see the other as a being, not a thing — We don’t throw out one part of ourselves because it’s basic or primal.

Queer theorist Judy Butler:
“Condemnation becomes the way in which we establish the other as unrecognizable.” Queerness re-acquaints us with that which we had thought to condemn….. intrinsically universalist —

Queering justice work

Prisons — Black and Pink letter-writing organization out of Boston — nobody is made undesirable because they are rule-breakers, because have been beaten down by a flawed system — power is not the designator… queer theology gets that strength and power are not the same.

In queering we care for everyone — solidarity — there is no “them.” There is a spectrum of abilities, of colors, or strengths, of weaknesses, of visions, of desires — and we learn where we are on the spectrum through connection, through meeting — being a mirror and finding a mirror —

“No one ever came to my door in searching – for you, no one, except for you”
– Canadian poet Cabrisa Lubrin

And I think this is even more threatening to the fabric of business-as-usual. And why does it threaten the fabric?… because queerness pushes us to ask…

Queerness! is communicable?? Capitalism, gender is communicable — it takes us up in its arms and we don’t notice the violence in it — as Bear’s song today illustrates — until it is acted out on us and those we love —

A queer lens makes us look twice — embracing that which is surprising, outcast, celebrating — the voices saying “you are all wrong, too loud, your voice is the wrong pitch–you don’t get to play. What are you?”…those voices are still present but we have taken time to appreciate our own mystery, and yours… what can you say against the power of another person’s mystery?

Mystery – God – goddess – divine – spark

We are here, we are queer, you are queered, no longer feared

Pauli Murray

I have been cast aside, but I sparkle in the darkness.
I have been slain but live on in the river of history.
I seek no conquest, no wealth, no power, no revenge:
I seek only discovery
Of the illimitable heights and depths of my own being.
– Cambridge, 1969

With queerness, I think, we moved to a Broken toaster model –

I am an appliance that rattles and spits out sparks and blows every fuse. I used to serve some function but now I prefer not to. Place me on your kitchen counter and watch life become less and less convenient. I will trip you up.

Welcome this unraveling. The less efficient you become, the better. Break all rote habits and build your life out of satisfying pauses between action. Now eliminate all action… Now you can finally feel the truth: Mourning is slow but it’s the straightest path forward. The question is “How do I break this appliance permanently? How do I become an inconvenience to myself and others? How do I swear off efficiency forever? How do I keep losing the thread over and over? How do I remain out of the groove, off the map, in the zone, flexible and reflective, shimmering and cool, examining the high stakes of tiny moments, encouraging communion, forgiveness, expansion, invention?

May it be so, Amen.

---

Resources

Love is the Spirit of this church:
https://www.uuworld.org/articles/bound-in-covenant

Ask Molly – Heather Havrilesky:
https://askmolly.substack.com/p/loss

Queer theology
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10059955-radical-love

Palimpsest: But this is how history happens, in pastiche — palimpsest — think of an old thick paper used again and again — where our memory fades, and the whispers of what was underneath remain and affect the picture we have now.
https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/palimpsest/

This kind of demonization continues, and people get deported back to places where that thinking is backed by law – do something this Pride month for a person who needs it – Pastor Steven, Ugandan, Angry Tias and Abuelas –
https://www.facebook.com/angrytiasandabuelas/

Vonte and others on what it means to them to be queer: “those who lived through some of the darkest days of legal and societal discrimination are not comfortable using a slur that was sometimes used alongside physical violence.”
https://www.them.us/story/what-does-queer-mean

On how lust and love don’t have to be a binary: Starhawk’s “The Fifth Sacred Thing.” Great book.

Black and Pink
https://www.facebook.com/blackandpinknational/

Pauli Murray:
https://paulimurrayproject.org/pauli-murray/poetry-by-pauli-murray/

“Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold” -history of women loving women in Buffalo, NY

Ellen and the toaster:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTFNK1PQ6jg

Avalokitesvara Buddha
https://bit.ly/3eF2Bux

Gender of God in Genesis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_of_God_in_Judaism

The Kiss-In of 2011
http://themostcake.co.uk/right-on/homophobia-in-the-john-snow-the-kiss-in-self-censorship/

Queer Ecology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_ecology
https://smithsonianapa.org/care/
http://www.jessxsnow.com/ABOUT

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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Bear W. Qolezcua
April 26, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The best laid plans… Growing up a sceptic, I questioned the faith I was told to have and why I would ever want to be a part of it. Join our R.E. Chaplain, Bear W. Qolezcua, as he speaks about atheism and the power of prayer. Where does it have a place and how can we use it when we don’t believe anyone or anything is listening?

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

Impassioned Clay
– Ralph N. Helverson

Deep in ourselves resides the religious impulse. Out of the passions of our clay it rises. We have religion when we stop deluding ourselves that we are self-sufficient, self-sustaining, or self-derived.

We have religion when we hold some hope beyond the present, some self respect beyond our failures. We have religion when our hearts are capable of leaping up at beauty, when our nerves are edged by some dream in the heart.

We have religion when we have an abiding gratitude for all that we have received. We have religion when we look upon people with all their failings and still find in them good; when we look beyond people to the grandeur in nature and to the purpose in our own heart. We have religion when we have done all that we can, and then in confidence entrust ourselves to the life that is larger than ourselves.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

The Book of the Good
by A C Grayling
Chapter 8, Verses 1-12

1. Shall we ask, by what commandments should we live?
2. Or might we better ask, each of ourselves:
3. What kind of person should I be?
4. The first question assumes there is one right answer.
5. The second assumes that there are many right answers.
6. If we ask how to answer the second question, we are answered in yet other questions:
7. What should you do when you see another suffering, or in need, afraid, or hungry?
8. What causes are worthy, what world do you dream of where your child plays safely in the street?
9. There are many such questions, some already their own answer, some unanswerable.
10. But when all the answers to all the questions are summed together, no one hears less than this:
11. Love well, seek the good in all things, harm no others, think for yourself, take responsibility, respect nature, do your upmost, be informed, be kind, be courageous:
    At least sincerely try.
12. Add to these ten injunctions, this:
    O friends, let us always be true to ourselves and do the best in things, so that we can always be true to one another.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS