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Bear W. Qolezcua
January 20, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

In the midst of so much civil turmoil and violence, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. marched hand-in-hand with others. His life and his ministry of reckless love taught us what it meant to truly care for others through the works of our hands and hearts. Let us explore the possibility that lives within us to do the work of nourishing, transforming, and seeking justice to build our Beloved Community.

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Call to Worship

OPEN OUR HEARTS WITH LOVE
By Naomi King

When the world’s violence shatters the joy of a moment 
We pause and reach out for the hands that remain

WE OPEN OUR HEARTS WITH LOVE. 

When despair rises as a monster from the deep 
and drags down one of our own, our answer is that 

WE OPEN OUR HEARTS WITH LOVE. 

When hatred and anger rage in fire and suffering 
We bend to pick up the wounded, to bind up ourselves and

WE OPEN OUR HEARTS WITH LOVE. 

When fear whispers “build more gates” “add more locks” 
“the blessed are those who defend themselves,” 
we rock those fears to sleep and let them rest as

WE OPEN OUR HEARTS WITH LOVE. 

People will do unspeakably cruel and horrible things; 
we know this fact, we live and die this daily, 
all around the world, in every community and every wasteland. 
But we know the answer is found only with one action, and so 

WE OPEN OUR HEARTS WITH LOVE. 

Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone can be healed. 
This is the truth we affirm. 
We live with courage and with a wider and wider circle 
of that force that bends our lives to ones of mercy, justice, and compassion. 

WE OPEN OUR HEARTS WITH LOVE. 

It’s the truth: just by being born you are loved. 
There is something within you and every person that can be loved.

WE OPEN OUR HEARTS WITH LOVE. 

In love, we pray for those families, those individuals, 
all the persons here and everywhere 
who are desperately sure that there is not enough love in the world for them 
to have some, who are desperately sure that they do not matter. 
In love with life, in love with the Beloved, 
we turn to answer that desperation with assurance: 
you are loved, you are lovable, we will and do love you. 
Now, attend to your life’s work: to love. 
It’s the only legacy that matters. 

AMEN.

Reading 

ANYONE’S MINISTRY
by Gordon B. McKeeman 

Ministry is 

a quality of relationship between and among human beings 
that beckons forth hidden possibilities. 

inviting people into deeper, more constant 
more reverent relationship with the world 
and with one another 

carrying forward a long heritage of hope and 
liberation that has dignified and informed 
the human venture over many centuries. 

being present with, to, and for others 
in their terrors and torments 
in their grief, misery, and pain. 

knowing that those feelings 
are our feelings, too. 

celebrating the triumphs of the human spirit 
the miracles of birth and life 
the wonders of devotion and sacrifice. 

witnessing to life-enhancing values 
speaking truth to power 
standing for human dignity and equity 
for compassion and aspiration. 

believing in life in the presence of death 
struggling for human responsibility 
against principalities and structures that ignore humane-ness 
and become instruments of death. 

It is all these and much, much more than all of them, 
present in the wordless 
the unspoken 
the ineffable. 

It is speaking and living the highest we know 
and living with the knowledge that it is 
never as deep, or as wide 
or as high as we wish. 

Whenever there is a meeting 
that summons us to our better selves, 
wherever our lostness is found 
our fragments are united 
or our wounds begin healing our spines stiffen and 
our muscles grow strong for the task 
there … is Ministry.

Sermon 

In preparation for this sermon, I did what every good presbyterian seminary graduate would do and started researching in the easiest way I could think of. It began with me flipping through the dozens of notebooks and journals from my time studying theology hoping that maybe, just maybe, one of the pages would LITERALLY fly out and tell me it was the perfect place from which I might draw my entire sermon without a single hitch … which didn’t happen. 

In all this searching, however, I found St. Augustine, who wrote, “What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and the needy. It has the eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of humanity. THIS is what love looks like.” 

So there I was writing and writing, trying to fight with my overall theme of the holiness of hands … for a sermon that also needed to involve the ministry of Martin Luther King, Jr. For a sermon about uplifting one another and lending a helping hand. For a sermon about mountains and valleys and marches and hope and distress and … I began feeling a LOT like Maria in the Sound of Music … up on that hill, dressed like a nun, spinning around while smiling into the camera at the perfect moment, belting out “the hills are alive with the sound of obvious connections that I’m not seeing”. And I rewrote this thing over 30 times. I’m not one to lead the expedition into theological territory, I leave that to the pastors, but I do believe myself to be an adequate sherpa. 

That’s why there were so many rewrites. I was trying to pack the necessary but bring as little extra weight as possible. The biggest lesson I wanted to impress here is that change begins the moment we decide to touch the divine, using the works of our hands and the strength of our commitment, to lift our world to a higher place. 

With our hands we share our power, our energy, our warmth and coolness. They open our “personal bubbles”, they welcome and guide, they stop and redirect. Hands can break barriers and bring us closer to one another in physical and spiritual ways. 

When I was younger, I used to sit on a big metal stool and watch my mother’s mothers, Trella and Noni, make challah, or my father’s mother, Maria Josefina, make tortillas. 

I often sat quietly on the floor as my father played his guitar or worked on his own sermons, poring through concordances. 

I loved watching my mom draw, paint, and sculpt pretty much any pliable material. She chiselled and sandblasted headstones into shape, confidently worked on car engines, built a barn. Her hands clasped together in earnest prayer at temple. They protected me fiercely. 

Hands not only touch … they express some of our deepest emotions in ways our words fail. They show hatred, concern, disgust, grief. 

When I see people protesting … I look for what they are doing with their hands. Are raised in fists of rebellion? Lifted in protection? Begging for an ear or mercy, for a crumb of humanity and compassion? 

I have held hands, both with those I love and those who I did not know I loved, as we marched for our lives, for the rights of others, for the memory of wrongs needing to be made right. 

I have held the hands, still warm but cooling rapidly, of people who otherwise would have been alone at their death. They have said hello, thankfully, more than they have said goodbye. 

I have felt hands raised in anger, in love, in companionship. 

I have picked up children who have fallen, wiped away tears, held sleeping babies, thrown them high in celebration and joy. 

Our calling tends to be fueled by the same fires that flare over and over along our journeys and hands, as you can tell by me repeating the word so much, have informed my own calling in this world in some profound way. They fascinate me. And because of all this, they are the tools I choose to empower our communal calling, tasked to do the work of care, to help support one another in our journeys out of the dark valleys and onto the highest plains and mountains of hope. 

Dr. King once, very memorably, spoke about being lifted up and standing at that mountain top hoping one day for all the people of earth to see the promised land that lies beyond. 

However, in that vision he also recognized that in order to get to the mountaintop we must first make it through the valley. And that valley … is wide and it is a dark place that may feel immeasurably deep from which so many of us feel we will never see ourselves free. 

Dr. King knew a lot about time spent there. His valley moments included three separate 108 mile long marches from Montgomery and Selma, for the right to register to vote. It included threats to his wife, his children, his own life. It included suicide attempts as a child. Depression throughout his life. So many sorrows and heartbreaks and losses but he knew that only in the darkest night can we see the stars. His valley was low, but his vision was high. He saw his ministry as one that represented and fought for the voiceless, the erased, the abused and forgotten. He saw his work as a minister in the light of duty to humanity, to equality, and for compassionate care for others. 

Now, I feel I need to warn you, I am going to quote a few verses of the Bible. However, I’m considering this to be more … “The Bible according to Bear” … 

Dr. King was fond of the parable about the Good Samaritan found in the book of Luke. The story is basically: Jesus was teaching in a temple and a lawyer/scribe … the translation is kinda both … a guy who studied the Torah and knew the WORDS by heart decided to test Jesus on his knowledge and maybe have him slip up on his own teachings about giving ourselves over to the care and service of others … and so he asked “Teacher. What must I do to inherit the promises of eternal life?” 

Rabbi Jesus responded with a question, because that’s how Rabbis do Rabbi-ing … speaking from a LOT of experience … and he asked “What does the law say we are supposed to do?” 

The lawyer/scribe guy replied “Love God with all of your heart, soul, strength, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.” 

Jesus looked at him, probably in some “I am tired, can we please get to the point” but still polite way, and said “you know the answer to your own question. So go and do what you just said you know you are supposed to do.” 

Of course, the lawyer wanted to make sure he heard Jesus ‘correctly’ and asked him “well, who is my neighbor?” 

Ignoring the obvious, probably just blinking in silence for a moment, Jesus then did his Jesus thing and told a parable. 

“A man was walking down the sloped, windy, kinda scary path from Jerusalem to Jericho, and was attacked by robbers who took everything and left him for dead. A priest walked by, probably on his way to the temple, and followed the laws that dictated cleanliness for those who enter the temple by passing on the other side of the road. 

Later, a Levite came along. Levites were usually helpers in the temple so he too was probably scrubbed clean and wouldn’t be allowed in the temple for days if he touched the man. Choosing his work in the temple, he, too, passed by on the other side of the road. 

Then a man from Samaria happened by. He was a different race, a different religion, and not hung up on Levitical law. He saw the man, lying at the roadside, pitied him, cleaned and bound his wounds, put him on his animal and took him away to care for him … ” I’ll skip a bit here … So Jesus looked at Lawyer/Scribe guy and asked “out of the three of these who do you think was the neighbor to this poor man?” The lawyer replied “well, the one who showed him compassion.” Jesus, at this point probably rubbing his temples, finally said “Go and do the same, that’s all that you have to do.” 

Dr. King would stop and ponder the idea of what was meant by the Levite and the priest not stopping to help the man wounded on the side of the road to Jericho. He would propose what others quite often would, that perhaps they were busy, or there were laws forbidding them helping … but he didn’t dwell on that question or castigate the people who were following the laws of their religion. 

Instead, he looked toward the resolution of the story where a man stopped and cared for a stranger in need, lying beaten on the street, naked and bleeding. Dr. King said he saw that unlike the Levite and Priest who asked “if I stop and help what will happen to me?”, the Samaritan thought ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’ 

For the purposes here I choose to see these questions in my own UU-esque secular humanist context of – if we do not take the time to look beyond the small bubble of the world in which we live and see the greater body of humanity that surrounds us, if we do not recognize our own neighbor, then how will we fulfill our mission, our own principles, and achieve the great aspiration of a truly full, supported, and inclusive human family? 

In our hands, personal and communal, lies the power to see the dream through. To take the ink of our work and tattoo it on our hearts so that every moment of our lives is filled with the lifeblood of love, compassion, strength, and unity. To work together and nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community. “We have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that [humanity has] been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them now.” 

This great power is ours for the giving and the taking and it is our duty as human beings, participants in this world, to reach and touch one another’s lives. To leave an indelible impression of care and faithful works upon the face of this world. To own the good within ourselves and see it manifest outward, like sparks from our fingers. 

Dr. King reminds us that “We have two hands: one for receiving and one for giving. We aren’t silos to hoard away our gifts; we are channels expressly made to share our great wealth of humanity.” 

Dr. King did not want us to dwell in the valley. He didn’t want us to live defeated and lost. That wasn’t his idea of our purpose in life. His eyes saw a higher place for us, only reached by marching boldly forward as we climb up to the mountaintop with our neighbor, the folks who trudge and groan for mercy in their own depths, our siblings in this thing called life, and stand in body or spirit upon the shoulders of those who have come before us and continue to raise ourselves, generation by generation, higher out of our past that kept us separated and closed off from the broad spectrum of humanity … He said of his work, in his final speech, that “We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter … because I’ve been to the mountaintop. (I’ve been allowed) to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! 

We must gasp together at the utter potential and diverse beauty of the world that is then set wide before us. 

Dr. King dreamed that one day we would climb to that higher place and then set out for the promised land of equity and equality and one day sit at the table together, embrace one another in common humanity, as we finally … finally are able to see that together we are free. And all because we chose to reach out, touch another soul, and the do the work required to make a difference. 

Benediction 

“We shall overcome. We shall overcome. We shall overcome someday. Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe we shall overcome someday.” 

Be dangerously unselfish. Do good recklessly. Be kind with abandon. Love brazenly. Be flagrant in your generosity. Dig a deep well from which you draw benevolence. You never know who still dwells in the valley. Don’t make life harder for either of you. Reach out, take a hand, and rise together so that we may all see the dawn break at the mountaintop. 

Go in peace. 

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Most sermons during the past 19 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

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Kye Flannery
August 12, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

So many people in so many ways have said “the truth shall set you free.” What are the truths that set us free? What sounds like truth but doesn’t liberate us at all? Together we’ll be exploring our experience, how we know ourselves, and how we speak from our deep truth to create better relationships and a better world.

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sermon

I must say it’s easy to deliver one’s truth by sermon — pull your argument together, write it out — read it — I get to take 15-20 minutes of your time, uninterrupted — most of the time — 😉 Much harder in real life.

• When you don’t think someone will care
• When there’s no one to help
• When we don’t want to risk a relationship
• When you’re low on the totem pole…

as Ashley Judd, one of the actresses who came forward to help start the #metoo movement — in speaking out about harassment she’d faced from Harvey Weinstein, she pointed to this truth: ‘Were we supposed to call some fantasy attorney general of moviedom?’

No. No such person. It can be hard to tell the truth. It can put us in a place that feels dangerous, or is dangerous. But let’s face it. Our Universalism infuses how we view our own lives and the lives of others. We don’t believe that anybody’s condemned, and we believe that everybody and everything is interconnected. The time is ripe for us to get talking, and sharing our truths — with neighbors and law-makers, family members, oil companies and educators.

And I’ll just say there are a lot of grey heads out there that I bet have been telling difficult truths since I was in diapers. So, I’m sharing my truth today, and I look forward to hearing yours. Let’s start by bringing the spirits of other great truth-tellers into the room… who are they, in your life? Who lifts you up with the way they speak truth?

We’ve gathered those brave spirits into the space, a host of angels around us, supporting and inspiring.

One of the strongest voices of truth I know is a woman who spoke it with such courage, and it was so integral to her character, that she gave herself the name Truth — Sojourner Truth.

When I stop to think about that auditorium in Akron, Ohio — the Women’s Convention – May 1851 five male pastors had spoken — one, a universalist — and all had given theological reasons that it was inappropriate for women to have the vote or speak in public to advocate for themselves.

Nobody asked Sojourner to speak — she just stood up and walked to the podium. Organizer Frances Gage ALLOWED her speak, but all around there were rumbles from white women about a black woman speaking at the assembly. 1

If you were striving for respectability, it was considered unseemly for a woman to speak in assemblies or churches… 2 Olympia Brown wasn’t ordained by the universalists until 1863. But Sojourner stands, and she speaks:

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne five children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?”

Just grok for a moment the courage it took to say that to a room full of white folks, confronting us with our stereotypes about strength, and womanhood, and blackness, all at once —

Book Crucial Conversations – I recommend it – I have been enjoying it and have incorporated some of its wisdom into what I bring you this morning. Here’s how I see the process of truth-telling:

We must first know our truths.
Then we must share our truth while staying in connection.
Then, we must find the path forward.
Courage – Listening – Translation – Creation

We must first know our truths.
Sometimes threats to our health, financial stability, physical safety, immigration status mean it isn’t safe to tell a truth that needs to be told. The first rule of caring for each other is believing that we each know what is safest for us, and to honor that.
But within the bounds of safety…

Is there something you really need to tell the truth about…? It’s possible to shy away from truth, even inside our own hearts, because it’s messy, because we suspect people don’t want to hear it, because we’re ashamed of it, because it’s ugly or painful.

And it takes time to transform the things that might be holding us back.
Truth-telling takes connection. Do we really want connection?
Truth-telling takes fairness. Are we willing to be fair?
Truth-telling means working through our fear. Are we afraid?

Buddhist teacher and climate activist Joanna Macy writes about fear of climate disaster, what we’re doing to the planet keeps us from even looking at it. 3 Fear keeps us ignorant of our own motivations and feelings, not to mention the feelings and motivations of others. So, this path to knowing our own truth involves facing fear, being with fear. After all, we can’t ask others to be brave and lay something on the line unless we set the example.

I know I get this *ding* when things fall into place — when I’m seeing from a big enough perspective that both the other person’s truth and my truth can fit there together, when I believe I can see a person’s goodness and good intent while also knowing I have a piece of the truth that they need. 4 And it is my job to walk with them to this truth… starting with what we both want, and showing how I believe we can get there.

I want to share words from a woman who is masterful at this.

Rigoberta Menchu — 1992 Nobel acceptance Speech… “Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and peoples… We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism… It is said that our indigenous ancestors, Mayas and Aztecs, made human sacrifices to their gods. It occurs to me to ask: How many humans have been sacrificed to the gods of Capital in the last five hundred years?”

It’s clear she’s done some very hard work – figuring out what’s in her heart, and also how it doesn’t fit what the dominant narrative said about her people. 5

I hear her facing fear — here’s what they say about us — they say we’re animals, savages — and I don’t accept it.

I hear her walking people along the path, from the end goal – peace – back to its roots — respect for the cultures and identities of all peoples…

There’s something so strong and undeniable in our words when we face our fear.

I really believe that we can’t connect with others on the issue racism unless we’ve connected to our own racism… I want to tell you a story about that.

There was a man I met at a church where I worked in Boston. He did cleaning in the office. We became friendly over time and I learned that his family was from the Dominican Republic. He’d had some brushes with the law, but was now doing better. He had a lovely little boy who I met once or twice. I was just getting to know him. I liked him, he was soft-spoken — eager to learn new things — One morning he came into the office late and he… I couldn’t figure out what was going on with him. I asked him the regular questions, how are you, how was your weekend, how’s your son — but he didn’t seem to comprehend my questions, he was barely able to answer them. I let him be and went about my day. I started to wonder in that moment if … maybe he wasn’t very smart. Did he not understand my questions?

There was a listening circle that happened later that month, talking and listening facilitated circles on the topic of race. I learned what happened that morning. That morning he had been driving a green car, and there had been a call about a crime, they were looking for “a black man in a green car.” He’d been stopped by the police in his car, put face-down on the pavement in the rain in front of his 1.5-year-old son, who was in the back seat of the car.

Suddenly I felt that grief and horror WITH HIM — anger — such a sense of loss — what would it have been like if I had been a trusted person for him to talk to —

Him telling his truth was me Claiming sorrow that had been mine all along, I just didn’t know it — Cultural grief. And we need to be able to both share this and hear this from our people.

Francis Weller, therapist, grief counselor in California 6

He writes about grief and conducts grief rituals, encouraging us to get in touch with the grief we are all carrying. He writes: “We send into the shadow the parts of ourselves that we deem unacceptable to ourselves or to others, hoping to disown them… The lack of courtesy and compassion surrounding grief is astonishing, reflecting an underlying fear and mistrust of this basic human experience… We must find the courage, once again, to walk the wild edge of grief.”

If we don’t even know how to feel one another’s pain when they’ve had a death in the family, how can we grapple as a culture with the effects of slavery, of failing refugees and asylum seekers, how can we willingly get into the imaginary space of truly GETTING what we’re doing to the planet, minute by minute? There’s that courage again —

We shape our lives to get away from discomfort! But as Pema Chodron puts it: “That’s the definition of Ego, just trying to get away from our experience, which never adds up to inner strength…it just makes us more scared and more uptight. And saddest of all, it isolates us and cuts us off from each other…” 7

We actually move away from each other because we’re afraid we can’t handle the things others bring up in us.

BOTTOM LINE:
When pursuing truth, we must do those things which cultivate our courage.

What gives you courage?

Jumping in the springs gives me courage. Everytime, I dread it, and everytime I do it, I’m glad I did.

This leads us into sharing our truth, while staying in connection.

(Translation)
WHEN I TELL THE STORY I just shared with you — about my friend who was harassed by the police because he was a man of color driving a green car– it becomes easier for people who haven’t understood how racism functions in our society to understand how deep it runs — how much it hurts — both of us — him, and me — and how UNTIL I KNEW ABOUT IT, he was carrying all the grief and heaviness of that experience. He was the only one who knew. One of us was living in a police state, the other wasn’t.

So I’m not often going to tell someone the “truth” about their own racism. But I will tell them the truth of my racism, and that’s opened up more than one conversation. Because that is MY story, my vulnerability, my shame and grief.

Jungian psychologist James Hillman 8 — INDIVIDUATION — “Transparent Person, who is seen and seen through, foolish, who has nothing left to hide, who has become transparent through self-acceptance; her soul is loved, revealed… she is just what she is, freed from paranoid concealment… her transparency serves as a prism for the world….”

I like this idea. When we have courage to be seen and seen through, we become prisms. You know how being around a truthful person is like being around a clear light, when they use their power for good and not evil? I think that’s what he means. Sometimes, a truth is simple — that doesn’t mean it’s easy to say.

• “I don’t like the way this conversation is going”
• “I’m sorry, I don’t think it’s at all fair to say that Muslim people are dangerous, I don’t see evidence that this is the case.”
• “If you want to talk seriously, we need to talk in terms that are serious and respectful.”
• “I see the changes happening in our environment and I’m afraid for us… I see our planet and our species in danger.”
• “I don’t feel that you’re doing your share of the work, and I’m tired of picking up the slack.”
• “I know you’re a spiritual person, and I expect more compassion from you.”

For me, this is the hardest part — engaging with another person’s truth without resorting to SILENCE or VIOLENCE.

Silence
Purposely withholding information from the dialogue, to avoid creating a problem.

• Masking – understating or selectively showing what you actually think
• Avoiding – not addressing the real issues, shifting the focus to others
• WIthdrawing or even exiting

Violence
Convincing, controlling or compelling others to our view

• Controlling: Cutting others off, overstating facts, speaking in absolutes, dominating the conversation
• Labelling – stereotyping, name-calling
• Attacking – belittling or threatening the other person

As truth-finders, we run into our own discomfort, As truth-tellers, we are likely to run into our own AND OTHER PEOPLE’S cognitive dissonance – ” The discomfort experienced when we simultaneously hold two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values.”

For instance,

• How could we be walking through everyday life like things are normal if our planet is in crisis?
• How could a man I’ve been friendly with cross the line into assault or harassment? How could it be that I have been a predator for 40 years?
• I always thought other people were racist. What if I am too!?

AT THAT POINT our work is three-fold: not to get hooked on our own emotion, not to get hooked on other people’s, and to help them try to disentangle if they’re stuck.

Creating safe space
Those who are terrible at it: Ignore the need for safety, express without regard for how it will be received
Those who are good at it: May sense that safety is at risk, but do the wrong thing — water down content, which avoids the real problem
Those who are best at it: Step out of the content of the conversation, make it safe, then re-enter
Stepping out of content and then moving back into the content of the conversation.
When someone (including ourselves) begins to move into silence or violence, we recognize it.
Say, hey, what’s happening for you right now? Address the kind and generous soul in front of you who’s not feeling safe. How can you help to reduce this, without stepping away from truth? 9

I’ve done this with my mom — Ha, this was a pretty funny conversation, if you have a daughter or a mom you can probably hear how this went in your head 😉
Mom, can we talk about what this is bringing up for you?
“Don’t you chaplain me!!”

I didn’t stop chaplaining though. In a really defensive place, a person is wanting to be able to relax and trust, but can’t. We have to establish — sometimes over time — that our approach is loving and dependable — Marge Piercy: “fight persistently like the vine which brings down the tree”

Being aware of the other person’s emotions and our own emotions!! Being able to hold both of those at once! 10 Tonglen Practice. This is breathing in what’s difficult, and breathing out something lighter. Breathing in what’s difficult, breathing out something lighter. Breathing in what’s difficult, allowing it to open our hearts and wash over us and the situation, lightness and peace.

In that spirit, we find the path forward.
The examples of this peaceful courage are in this congregation and all around us

Isabel Pascual is a 42-year-old strawberry picker, She was interviewed in Time Magazine , when Time named the #metoo ladies their Person of the Year. Isabel is not her real name. Isabel was harassed in the workplace by a man who threatened to harm her and her children. “That’s why I kept quiet,” Isabel said. “I felt desperate. I cried and cried. But, thank God, my friends in the fields supported me. So I said, ‘Enough.’ I lost the fear. It doesn’t matter if they criticize me. I can support other people who are going through the same thing.”

Isabel spoke out about sexual harassment while working without documents. Her courage gives me chills.

Part of the creativity of finding the path forward is going where we don’t normally go, where others reside, (#metoo is a movement of both movie stars and migrant workers) — people continuing to put themselves on the line for others — courage and creativity go hand-in-hand.

When finding our path through truth together, we pratice courage — listening — translation — creativity — and, I believe, we must cultivate cheerfulness —

In Shambhala Buddhism there are several sources of energy and power for the self — different sources of life force. The one they call Windhorse: “gallantry, cheerfulness, upliftedness, gentleness” (Thea!) “Primordial confidence” — Let’s just breathe with our windhorse right now — deep breaths, bringing up that primordial confidence, gallantry, cheerfulness — 11

Taking up the path of truth doesn’t mean we are perfect In fact, if we are perfect, we probably aren’t practicing very much. 12

Another favorite mystic: Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul “The soul becomes greater and deeper through the living out of the messes and the gaps — this is the negative way of the mystics”

COURAGE – Listening – Translation – Creation

What’s the worst that could happen? What do the voices tell you? That we won’t be liked or respected? That we’ll lose our words? And there is a voice inside me that says if I speak out I’ll die — for some people that may be true.

But for me, in most situations, it isn’t. So if that voice speaks to you, too, I leave you with some words from sister Sojourner: “I’m not going to die, I’m going home like a shooting star! ”

Benediction

(are you holding a truth that needs to be told that will bring healing?)

In the tradition of UU ordination, we lay hands on ministers to offer them strength,e energy, courage. I say, let us join our hands right now and bless one another as we move forward into the world as ministers:

We bless each other as seekers of truth. We start with the courage to listen. In the words of John O’Donohue:

To all that is chaotic in you, let there come silence…
Let there be an opening into the quiet that lies beneath the chaos,
Where you find the peace you did not think possible,
And see what shimmers in the storm.

We bless each other as sharers of our truth — It is in us to offer safety for ourselves and others in our words. In the words of Audre Lorde:

…when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.

Let us bless each other as finders of the path forward — in the words of Rumi

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

May it be so, Amen.

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1 There are only a few accounts of this speech, version I’m going with was shared by Ms. Gage, 12 years later, in her autobiography. So take it with a grain of salt.

2 Though there are some itinerant women preachers from this time who were supported by specific communities… three of them left behind autobiographies… Sisters of the Spirit, Indiana Univ Press

3 She created an activist community to check out online: “The Work that Reconnects”

4 “Every time God’s children have thrown away fear in the pursuit of honesty, trying to communicate, understood or not – miracles have happened.” – Duke Ellington

5 International Indigenous People’s Day was this week — August 9 — gratitude for Rigoberta, the water protectors still doing the work of protecting the earth and our water supply here in the U.S.

6 Francis Weller “The Wild Edge of Sorrow”

7 Staying with Discomfort From Fear to Fearlessness

8 “Myth of Analysis”

9 It’s totally possible to do this badly! I remember speaking directly to a man who shouted at me and cut me off once in a board meeting — pulling him aside when we took our break and asking him what was going on, and saying that I didn’t feel that was appropriate, asking if we needed to talk about what feelings I was bringing up for him. Unfortunately, this set him off again — my tone, rather than helping him to feel safe, threatened his sense of calm and safety, which he was keeping by dominating the conversation. I think this made him feel shame and anger to boot.

10 When deepening engagement, we must cultivate Tolerance/Patience/Khsanti – Tonglen practice

11 Windhorse energy “Warrior’s gentleness: this is elegance, not arrogance. This is fearlessness, not heavy-handedness. Genuineness is not trying to convince ourselves something is there when it doesn’t exist. Gentleness is not being polite… Windhorse could be described as a bank of energy, which is the product of genuineness…” –Chogyam Trungpa

12 Joanna Macy’s 5 vows of a leader in the climate movement. Mix of our own growth and courage and engagement:

• Committing to the healing of the world and the welfare of all beings. To live in Earth more lightly and less violently
• Drawing strength and guidance from the living Earth, from our brothers and sisters of all species.
• To help others in their work and to ask for help
• To pursue a daily spiritual practice that clarifies my mind, strengthens my heart

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Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 18 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Rev. Erin Walter
June 24, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

How do we nourish ourselves, as caregivers, activists, workers, or simply human beings living in troubled times? How can we put our spiritual values to deep use in our daily lives? Rev. Erin Walter will share lessons from her new ministry with the YMCA and reflect on what we can learn from unconventionally sacred spaces.

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

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 18 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Senior Youth Group
May 20, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

This year’s Youth Service finds the youth exploring their dreams and yearnings. There will be music, meditation, inspirational stories and the Bridging Ceremony of our youth.

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Welcome
Galadriel Logan

Call to Worship
Original poem by Kate Hirschfeld

Affirming our Mission Statement
Julia Heilrayne

Story for all ages
Shanti Cornell

Reading
read by Julia Heilrayne
Mary Oliver “What is beyond knowing”

Homily 1
Julia Heilrayne

Homily 2
Bridget Lewis

Homily 3
Abby Poirier

Music
“Daydream Believer” (Stewart) Will Snider

Bridging Ceremony

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

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 18 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Kye Flannery
May 6, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

As a highly educated and progressive denomination, we think often about what should be and what could be. But sometimes our deepest engagement with what “is” creates the best progress – and the best stories.

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Call to Worship
By Erika A. Hewitt

All of us are welcome here; all of us are loved
All of us are welcome here; all of us are loved

Some of us are bringing our best selves to this space, and some of us are bringing our struggling selves, including pieces we might be ashamed of. All of us are welcome here, and all of us are loved.

Some of us already have open hearts; and some of us aren’t quite there yet, because our hearts have gotten a little beat up this week and might’ve forgotten how to trust and open. Your heart is welcome here, no matter how bruised. We welcome you among us.

All of us are imperfect, but we’re here to drop our defenses and trust that what happens in worship is powerful and life-giving. Together, we affirm that this day — and our being together — can make each of us braver, more compassionate, and wiser than when we woke up this morning. We welcome you here.

Reading
from Dakota
by Kathleen Norris

The desert monks were not moralists concerned that others behave in a proper way so much as people acutely aware of their own weaknesses who tried to see their situation clearly without the distortions of pride, ambition, or anger. They saw sin (what they called bad thoughts) as any impulse that leads us away from paying full attention to who and what we are and what we’re doing; any thought or act that interferes with our ability to love God and neighbor. Many desert stories speak of judgment as the worst obstacle for a monk. “Abba Joseph said to Abba Pastor: ‘Tell me how I can become a monk.’ The elder replied: ‘If you want to have rest here in this life and also in the next, in every conflict with another say, “Who am I?” and judge no one.'”

First, I want to ask you to imagine a mental post-it in your mind. And on it, will you put the answer to these two questions?
What is a mistake?
What’s the worst mistake you ever made?

The last few years I’ve been attending high holidays in the Jewish faith. Learning about Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, has influenced my understanding of mistakes or sins. It’s a day where everybody reckons with their behavior over the last year, and asks each other for forgiveness. The phrase that is used at Yom Kippur is “missing the mark.”

Right now, I define mistakes as a misunderstanding or a forgetting of the bigger picture.

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made was not going to a funeral of a friend when I was 17. It was a person I loved who had died suddenly in a terrible accident — I was a freshman in college — I’d broken up with him… I was dating someone else — I felt unbearably, hideously guilty. I was afraid to face his family — I didn’t have the money to travel to Ireland, where he lived… I had no idea what to do. There was nobody I trusted to talk to about it. I just didn’t go.

And my guilt and my grief… I carried my guilt and my grief for ten years. Those two things, when you try to avoid them, they just clatter along at your heels, and I learned you can spend years just covering your ears, pretending all that din is normal.

I’ve been a chaplain now for about 4 years — I’ll start soon working with the Texas Organ Sharing Alliance, a nonprofit which meets with families when someone is extremely sick and could be a candidate for organ donation.

One of the best gifts of being a chaplain is that you get real comfortable with making mistakes. Going into hospital rooms, these are like people’s living rooms. And you just walk right in. No idea what you’ll find…

Once i asked a young man in his 30s in a cardiac ICU if the patient in the bed was his mother, when it was his wife. They were a lovely couple, both ministers, and I hope they’re doing well, that she’s trucking along w.o complications — You don’t make that mistake too many times.

You come at an awkward time, walk in on somebody turned over in bed with their bum being wiped. You stop hanging on to embarrassment, yours or theirs —

I’ve learned that the more comfortable I am as a chaplain with my own missteps and mistakes, the more I can give the gift of understanding to other people’s mistakes.

Making mistakes – and walking into the room knowing you’ll make them – takes courage.

• Brene Brown talks a lot about this.
• She and others have suggested we must “fail better next time”
• “You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.” -Winston Churchill
• There’s a difference between honoring our mistakes and our growth and whitewashing — Watching all the lies of this administration after a mistake is made — when we lie about a mistake, that’s not courage. And it’s also not acceptance. I’ve met a lot of people in difficult circumstances, life and death…

I remember a woman who died at the hospital — a mistake I made there was speaking to her only in Spanish. People had told me she only spoke Spanish. That wasn’t true at all. She was bilingual. So she suffered through my tentative Spanish… Like a parent, you just suck up your mistakes and move on — chaplaincy in an intense situation can be a lot like parenting, in fact. You need to be okay, because you need to be able to ask everyone else in the room if they’re okay.

She wasn’t supposed to die that day. Her family wasn’t there, they were coming from hours away. I stood with her as she struggled for breath and sang to her and held her hand. One thing you know when you’ve been with a person as they’re dying — it’s not about saying “the right thing,” at all. It is about saying, “I care, and I’m here, I’m not leaving you.” And that’s pretty much it.

What you are left with as a chaplain is not “How can I not make a mistake here” but “Given all the things that are happening that nobody wanted, how can I just be decent to this patient and this family, treat them like I’d want my family to be treated?” It is a kind of love which amounts to Fearlessness. Applies to a lot of life I think.

So people just kept showing up for this woman who was dying — three of her exes showed up at the hospital.

In Texas, when you’re a chaplain, you know you have built trust with a family when they will acknowledge some of the more complicated truths: “My mom was a lesbian.” “She raised hell when she was younger.” “There is this crazy incident where somebody lost an earlobe.” “She had such a temper.” But also, “She’d do anything for you.”

Another patient whose family I got to know told me a great story about a family white water rafting trip.
Somebody’s planning was off, or the river itself didn’t go quite as they thought it would. This flotilla of rafts… just ran aground.
So, this man, he hopped out — turned a cooler top into an impromptu tray for drinks and said, “I’m your wader/waiter.” It was a brilliant move.

This is a story that was told at his funeral —
So much of what defines our character is what we do with something unexpected, our mistake or another person’s —

At the time when we die… what do we expect to have someone say at the funeral?
What is your wish? To live so authentically and lovingly that our Exes show up?
Maybe not ALL our exes 😉
But — is it really our deepest wish to have a funeral where people say, “Nothing to see here, mistakes were made, but not by her…”

I was a chaplain for a year to a mom who was in her early 30s. She died last year, leaving behind a small child, just two years old. A funny, loud, strong little girl. And her mother, my patient, knew it could be dangerous for her to get pregnant, but she went ahead with it, and ended up with this terminal disease.

This young woman, her heart was enormous. She was broken-hearted, but so courageous. She knew she was dying for almost a year. Her body had stopped being able to process nutrients. She was starving, slowly… She knew she was going to leave her little girl with her husband, her mother, their families. And I just remember … my dear patient, grooming her own Mom to be mother to her baby. This wasn’t the mom she’d have asked for — many of the things my patient had made of her life, her motivation, her enthusiasm, her schooling — she’d grown into these things in OPPOSITION to her mother — and yet, she knew her boat and her mother’s boat and her daughter’s boat were tied together. So she worked to teach her mother what she knew about being a good mother.

Everybody in that room was mothering each other the best way they knew how.

Many times at the hospital, you’re confronted with the question, … often accompanied by anger and fear… Am I doing enough? Are we doing enough? Is this other family member doing enough?

And what you learn in walking with families in this scenario is that… we all do our damndest to make the best decision we can in the moment with the energy and information we have.

Being with people in this way makes me think there really are no mistakes when you’re coming from love.

Alice Walker’s rewriting of the Beatitudes features this line: “HELPED are those who love the broken and the whole; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them.”

I love that! If our hearts are big enough, our lenses are big enough, and we take in all parts of ourselves and each other.

One of the biggest things we fear in our imperfection is that we do not deserve respect and love.

That if we reveal ourselves as imperfect, we will not be offered Dignity – Belonging. Someone will say — YOU! Out of the pack. You’re holding us back!

Part of what I like about being UU is that we work to make space for many kinds of people in the pack.

Poet and mystic Marianne Williamson — writes about the dangers of “playing small” — we give others freedom, she says, by living out loud:

“We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

What I admire about a child is not that she gets everything right, I’m willing to forgive selfishness, thoughtlessness, wrong words…

I admire her “is-ness” — not measuring what she is against what others think, but nurturing a direct and profound and observational relationship with ls… Tao…

No movement is perfect, no people are perfect.

Pauli Murray… stubborn bus integrator… gender-queer person who did not get to be the face of the civil rights movement because she dressed in a masculine way and loved women.

Likewise, Bayard Rustin… MLK’s right-hand man… Meet the gay activist behind Martin Luther King Jrs civil rights movement “Not a problem for Dr. King, he was under such scrutiny, but it was a problem for the movement…”

Women’s suffrage movement 1880s where white leaders agreed not to pursue black folks’ right to vote — leaving black women and men disenfranchised —

No movement is perfect, no people are perfect. But part of respecting learning is not avoiding mistakes — we have to get it out there before it’s “perfect”

I think this connects to the Buddhist concept of Shunyata – emptiness, no-self. Is it a dodge for personal responsibility? “Mistakes were made, but not by me?” I don’t think so —

Shunyata is a way of dealing with mistakes as impersonal. It means we don’t have such hard edges that rub us wrong or cut us when we make a mistake.

Like when you get someone’s pronouns wrong.
Immediate feeling: (blush, terror) “This is going on your permanent record!” It can call up anxiety like at report card time — will I be judged and found wanting?
A students? B students? C students? Do we have feelings about that?

I’ve been an “A” student for most of my life — but in the last few years I’ve started to embrace my inner “C” student. C students of the world unite –!

I have a friend who says — a friend who’s intensely brilliant and also struggles with ADHD, so has had to do a lot of work on deep acceptance of imperfection — “There’s nothing I like so much as having been wrong about something.” Notice the tense. I was wrong, now I know better.

I sometimes present in a more gender-queer way (maybe not as much in Texas — it really depends), and a friend whose daughter I was babysitting asked me point-blank if I’m a girl or a boy. That was surprising, but cool. Her mom was mortified — But really it was okay with me. When we can be a safe space for people who are struggling with a question, that’s the best.

A friend of mine who is trans* feels the same way. He says, “I don’t mind kids asking questions, I like it,” he says. “I’ll ask them back, ‘well, what do you think I am?'” And kids will have the chance to think about signifiers of masculinity and femininity.”

It also brings I think new light to Jesus’ question: “Who do you say that I am?” Because we notice too in that passage that what the answers people bring to the table tell us a lot more about culture, about assumption, than they do about who a person truly is.

When we are willing to ask or to entertain questions, we’re willing to learn something new. We open the landscape, and say, ‘this space is okay for mistakes.’

One of my favorite Christmas stories is The Littlest Angel. Do you all know this story? A lonely, forlorn small child in the very grown-up world of heaven…shiny, harmonious, sparkling and tasteful — he’s dirty and clumsy — there is a contest to give the best birthday gift to the Christ child. And the most valuable gift is the gift given by this child — a bird’s nest, a dog’s collar, a butterfly, 2 white stones…

When we start to deeply engage with nondualism – not just living in black or white – we also begin to engage with paradox – when 2 white stones and a butterfly are fitting gifts for the King of Kings.

Tao – nondualism – “The Thunder” poem from Nag Hammadi. We are no one in isolation. We only understand in community. And none of us is only one thing.

As a chaplain — having met people at many stages of their lives, and at the time of death — nobody says, “I wish I had been more polite and remembered everyone’s name,” “I wish I’d paid my rent on time,” “I wish I hadn’t offended a friend twenty years ago.” What they regret is what they did with a mistake: “I wish I hadn’t let our relationship go.” “I wish I hadn’t stayed with the wrong partner for so many years.” “I wish I hadn’t let my mother go through a painful time alone.” Because mistakes are our chance to recommit to what we believe is true and important, by doing something hard. Really, we regret not the mistake, but what we did or didn’t do with it.

Actual Regrets I’ve heard: “I wish we’d gotten to start our blueberry farm.” “I wish I could have recorded another album.” “I wish I’d had a chance to fall in love.”

If you listen deeply to these wishes, you start to realize that they’re really wishing for … the chance to make more mistakes.

And at the end of life — Big, audacious mistakes mean you will leave people laughing and in awe of you. (Hopefully nobody loses an earlobe.)

In the midst of any glorious mistake, I think we can feel free to ask ourselves: What am I practicing?

What is it you’re practicing? Right in the thick of your worst mistake, on your mental post-it… what is it you’re practicing?

Gail Sher, author of One Continous Mistake… a Buddhist approach to writing: “If writing is your practice, the only way to fail is not to write.”

That terrible mistake when I was 17 — not getting to see a friend’s family one last time, not finding a way to travel to his funeral, not finding a way at the time to claim my grief and honor his life — At the time, I couldn’t have told you what I was practicing.

Now I know:
I was practicing not seeing money as a barrier to important things —
I was practicing following my heart — really badly, it turns out — but you learn how tolisten better.
I was practicing confronting terrible feelings of guilt and walking myself through them.
And learning the dance I go through when I want to block them out…
I was practicing showing up for grief — learning the beast that grief can create under the surface if you don’t give it air, and let it breathe.

I wish I’d moved heaven and earth to be there to honor his life, and mourn his death.

But I couldn’t, and instead, that led me closer to my vocation. That was when I began to see steps toward where I wanted to be. And now, as a chaplain, I walk with others through their grief process.

Lucky enough this week to be exposed to some lines from Rilke: ” So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp/ it has an inner light, even from a distance- and changes us, even if we do not reach it/into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are…” (Thanks, Ann Edwards!)

Now my job is finding nonjudgmental space for people who fear they haven’t done their best, who have hurt others, who haven’t known what to do.

I believe this is a key commitment we make as universalists — to follow the light, not to leave each other in hell, or even purgatory, when we mistakes. Not using a mistake as an excuse to put a person, or ourselves, out of our heart. We must be kind, because we are each fighting a hard battle.

I’ll close with some words from Leonard Cohen — “Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free –“

BENEDICTION

Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
We have tried in our way to be free

Like a worm on a hook
Like a knight from some old-fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee
If I, if I have been unkind
I hope that you can just let it go by

If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you

Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
We have tried in our way to be free

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Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 18 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Laine Young
September 10, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

We bring water to share from a place that is meaningful to us. Into this ritual we bring our love, hope, and courageous faith, and through it we seek to renew our covenantal commitments with one another. We remind ourselves of the church home we share.

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Call to Worship
by Barbara J Pescan

For the beauty of the earth, this spinning blue green ball, yes! Gaia, mother of everything, we walk gently across your back to come together again in this place to remember how we can live, to remember who we are, to create how we will be. 

Reading

Water Makes Its Mark
By Matt Alspaugh

A glass of tea sweats a circle of droplets on an old table
Drying, they pull dirt and stain from the wood, leaving a ring
Water makes its mark

Deep in the earth, in a cave, a drop falls each minute
Where it lands, a great pillar of white rock has grown up
Water makes its mark

On the surface above, a stream burbles and flows
carving out potholes in the granite of its bed
Water makes its mark

Along a highway cut, a geologist points out the layers of tan slate
each penny-thin sheet,
the memory of a torrential rainstorm eons ago
Water makes its mark

In its network of veins, the blood-
-salty like-the sea water- from-which -we -sprang
flows on in cycles, giving life
Water makes its mark

The dark clouds pass on, yielding no rain
Crops wither, and drought comes
Famine, migration, violence, and death soon follow
Water makes its mark

A space probe turns its camera toward whence it came
Imaging one solitary pixel of light
Its color the pale blue of oceans
Water makes its mark

A solitary tear slides down the cheek
A tear of abiding joy,
a tear of unending grief
We see, and share the depth of feeling at its true core
Water makes its mark

Sermon

When I started thinking about today’s service, I thought, “What better way to start today’s water communion than with a Story For All Ages! I am a religious educator, after all” Once I had this realization I knew the perfect story. I’ve told it here before, although not in a while. It is one of my kiddo’s favorite stories, so it is told more frequently around our house.

Since it is Water Communion, today’s story is about a drop of water.

Once upon a time there was a drop of water named Higgins. Higgins was no ordinary drop of water. He was a drop with a dream. Higgins lived in a valley where it had not rained in a very long time, so all the lovely green grass was turning brown, all the beautiful flowers were wilting, and all the trees were starting to droop.

Higgins had a dream that one day the valley would be a beautiful place again. But what could he do? After all, he was only a drop of water.

One day Higgins decided to travel and tell others about his dream. All the other drops listened very politely, but no one believed that his dream would come true. “Higgins,” said one, “get your head out of the clouds. You can’t spend your whole life dreaming.”

Higgins decided that he had to do something to make his dream come true. So he began to think and think and think. One day, as he was walking by a rusty old bucket, he got an idea.

“If enough of us drops of water got together in this bucket,” Higgins thought, If there would be enough water to sprinkle on a few flowers to help them grow and become beautiful again!”

Eagerly, Higgins told everyone his great idea. But everyone thought he was being foolish. “That Higgins is nothing but a dreamer,” they said.

Higgins decided he had to do something to convince the others that he was right. So he said to them, “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting into the bucket! I hope some of you will join me. Then there might be enough water to help at least some flowers grow beautiful again.”

So Higgins ran as hard as he could, hopped way up in the air, and landed with a kerplunk in the bottom of the bucket.

And there he sat … JUST A DROP IN THE BUCKET.

For a long time Higgins was very lonely. It seemed like no one else was going to join him. But after awhile some of the other drops could see that the grass was dying and the flowers were wilting and the trees were drooping. They all agreed that something must be done.

Suddenly, one drop shouted, “I’m going in the bucket with Higgins!” And he leaped through the air and landed- kerplunk -in the bucket.

Then two other drops yelled, “Wait for us!” And they hopped through the air and landed in the bucket. Then ten drops jumped through the air into the bucket. Then thirty. Then fifty! And then hundreds of drops came from all around just to hop in the bucket!

Soon, the bucket was completely full of water. But there were still more drops that wanted to join, so they found another bucket and hopped in. Before long, there were two buckets of water-then three-then four-then ten-and then hundreds-and then thousands of buckets of water!

Along came a powerful breeze that blew over all the buckets, and all the water flowed together to make a mighty stream. Everywhere the water flowed, the grass turned green again and the flowers bloomed and the trees stood tall and straight once more.

All this happened because Higgins had a dream and his dream came true. Because he knew that although he was just a drop in the bucket, enough buckets with the wind behind them, then justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

How many of you have felt like Higgins before? Sometimes it can seem like we are all alone and that our dreams of a just and loving world will never become reality. This has never been more true than in our current political and environmental climate, where we may feel like only a drop in the bucket compared to the many crises affecting our world today.

But then we find a community like First UU Church of Austin that shows us that we are not alone on our journey. Every year as we come back from whatever we have done over the summer we gather in community to remember that together we can do more than we could ever do alone. We celebrate our reunion each year in a ritual we call water communion.

Into this ritual we bring our love, hope, and courageous faith, and through it we seek to renew our covenantal commitments with one another. We remind ourselves of the church home we share, a home that we come back to, a home we welcome all to make their own, a home of love, hope, and faith.

We gather this morning carrying reminders of our summer. The water we share may call to mind light summer showers, thunderstorms, dewy mornings, or misty evenings. Or it may remind us of moments at ocean sides, poolsides, riversides, lakesides, or even our own backyard. Perhaps we found ourselves in the presence of water during a moment of sadness or joy. As we blend our waters together, we reflect upon what we did in these places and moments.

And now, we will begin our Water Communion. Remembering that the sounds of children are part of the silence, please come forward and add the water you have carried with you silently and reverently.

Blending Waters

May our gathering together this morning be a blessing for one and all. May it inspire us to make this coming year a year of hope, love, and courageous faith. And may we walk in the full awareness – as often as possible – of the blessed ties that bind each of us together in community. Amen.

Benediction

It starts with a drop, Then a trickle …
A burble, a rush of water, bubbling toward its destination;
And finally the wide, endless sea.
All rivers run to the sea.
Today you brought water
Poured it into a common bowl.
Though our experiences have differed,
These waters mingle, signifying our common humanity.
Today you came
And shared in this sacred community.
May you depart this sacred space,
Hearts filled with hope for new beginnings;
A fresh start.
Go forth, but return to this community,
Where rivers of tears may be shed l
Where dry souls are watered,
Where your joy bubbles,
Where your life cup overflows,
Where deep in your spirit you have found in this place a home.
All rivers run to the sea.

Blessed be.

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Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 17 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.