The Grief Bible

March 16, 2020 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

You can listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Bear W. Qolezcua
March 15, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Life would be so much easier if it came with a manual that told us all the rules for survival but, of course, nothing so simple exists. Let’s look at lessons gleaned through grief and find the common threads that bind us all together in this very human experience.

Chalice Lighting

We seek our place in the world and the answers to our hearts’ deep questions. As we seek, may our hearts be open to unexpected answers. May the light of our chalice remind us that this is a community of warmth, of wisdom, and welcoming of multiple truths.

Call to Worship

Robert T Weston
from “Seasons of the Soul”

I will lift up my voice and sing;
Whatever may befall me,
I will still follow the light which kindles song.
I will listen to the music
Arising out of grief and joy alike,
I will not deny my voice to the song.
For in the depth of winter, song,
Like a bud peeping through the dry crust of earth,
Brings back memory,
And creates anew the hope and anticipation of spring;
Out of a world that seems barren of hope,
Song decries beauty in the shapes of leafless trees,
Lifts our eyes to distant mountain peaks which,
Even if we see them not,
Remind us that they are there, waiting,
And still calling to us to come up higher.
Out of the destruction of dear hopes,
Out of the agony of heartbreak,
Song rises once more to whisper to us
That even this is but the stage setting for a new beginning,
And that we shall yet take the pieces of our hearts
And put them together in a pattern
Of deeper, truer lights and shades.
I will lift up my voice in song,
For in singing I myself am renewed,
And the darkness of night is touched
By the promise of a new dawn,
For light shall come again.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

Jodi Picoult
from “My Sister’s Keeper”

“There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rulebook that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass – if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it’s okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays.”

Sermon

I’ve brought my fair share of sorrows to this altar and left them here for you all to bear with me. Just like the fire bowl, we bring our worries and fears and pains to the candles, to the meditations, to our prayers in whatever form they manifest so that they are no longer only ours to carry. For that grace, I’m grateful. An old Swedish proverb that is dear to me reads “Sorrow shared is sorrow halved. Joy shared is joy doubled.”

It sometimes really bugs me that there is no handbook when it comes to grieving. However, just because there is no brochure out there with “The Perfect Grief Guide” splashed cheerily across the front leaf doesn’t mean we are bereft of any sort of guidance.

In each one of us there is an intangible well of wisdom that hastens to help us when we need it most. Some pages are scattered with frantic broken thoughts and doodles in the margins that speak of emotional highs and lows… and other pages are neatly set and well thought out, processed and made into a clear message of centered calm. Combined, much of that experience creates what I like to refer to as a “Grief Bible”, a place where we can look to find answers to our questions based off of our own learning.

My grief bible begins with “In grace, in heartache, in joy, in sorrow… I am not alone.”

Grief, of course, is not solely fashioned from the experience of death. Much in our life teaches us lessons of sorrow and those lessons have their own books within our personal bibles. Some of mine would be titled “Boy Troubles”, “What the heck do I want to do with my life?”, and “Student Loan Interest Rates.” That last one… that’s a real tear jerker.

These bibles of our own making are filled with a few short books, with only a passage or two, and others that span hundreds of pages with sayings and life experiences. Some are not yet written and others are in the infancy of them being penned.

Because I know my grief best and what I have carried away from a lot of these experiences, I would like to highlight a few takeaways. Like, Book 19. Kevin. My first love.

This book taught me that the heart never heals completely… not with time, not with distance, not with age or wisdom or any other method or measure. Though the pieces may be swept back into a pile lovingly reshaped into a semblance of its original form, a shattered heart will never be without its cracks. Kevin’s book taught me that no matter how much we think we actually want our heart to heal completely, it won’t and perhaps the most beautiful first lesson comes from that fact.

We want so desperately to not hurt anymore, to not feel that sting. When we lose someone we feel we can’t go on without, and our whole life is in an infinite number of pieces, the worst news we want to hear is that we will never really get over the loss.

There is good news there, though… and that is – we will never really get over the loss.

The reason it is good news, however, is that because you will never really get over the loss you will never really get over their memory. Eventually it might not hurt as bad when you do recall them, that itself is a gift, but the wound will still be there.

My mom told me, in one of her many personal parables, that grieving is like a robin that has broken a wing. There is hope that with time the wing will heal and the robin will fly again but the flight might be less sure than before. It will take to the skies once more but not before going through pain, healing, and growth to be strong enough for the task.

Kevin’s book ends as a lesson on the transience of life and the mortal beauty of death. And yes, as morbid as it makes me sound right now, there is very real beauty in surviving the death of someone you love. It just takes a long time to see it, if you ever do.

27: Trella, my last grandmother. This book taught me that sometimes we must rescue ourselves by whatever means necessary long enough to carry on until we can fall apart safely.

One of my favourite movies of all time, Steel Magnolias, puts Trella’s book into words perfectly… “Laughter through tears is my favourite emotion.”

My grandmother died surrounded by her descendents on a Saturday afternoon. One of her calling cards in life was a fastidiously maintained manicure done in cherry bomb red, almond shaped tips. It was her luxury that she indulged each week, on a Friday, usually with her friend Maxine. After she breathed her last we all kind of panicked and started to fall apart. We still had so much to do that we needed to be a bit more together in our heads, and I tried to find something… ANYTHING… to break me out of that all too real moment and maybe be able to help my family. Then I noticed her manicure and quipped “At least her nails look good.” We all stopped, looked at them and then the chuckling began. We were still crying but that moment of absurdity, the lifelong ritual my grandmother held sacred since coming to Austin in the 60s… it rescued us enough to keep moving forward a bit longer.

Book 31. Mom. This book taught me my most valuable lesson so far. I learned that I am not the person that so many other people told me I was, that I wasn’t just a steady rock and I didn’t have to be. Over the years I learned that I am quite tender, that I genuinely love the emotions in this life, and that the message I was told for all my years before was keeping me back from being able to call on my greatest source of true strength – my community of love and support.

I was the only one of my mom’s children she told about the final cancer diagnosis, Christmas day of 2011. When I asked her why she only told me, she said “Because you’re the strong one.”

I bore that “strong” label with me as if it were all I was. I pushed others away so that they wouldn’t have to bear this thing that I, the rock of strength, told myself I must carry alone. But her death, when it came three years later, proved I was anything but strong… or simply strong. And when I realized that fact, I was unsure as to who then I was. I wanted to hold up the box of puzzle pieces depicting my life and shake them out onto the table for them to fall perfectly in place, making sense of my grief and everything I was feeling and not feeling because I feared I was going to disappear if it went on much longer.

The last few sentences of this book read – you are never ready, even when you are ready. You are never strong enough even when you are strong enough. And you are never too old to feel like a child at the loss of a parent.

After my mom died I returned to seminary almost immediately, mistake number one. Rev. Dr. Blair Monie, one of my professors, sat with me for hours while I fell apart, crying onto the shoulder of his perfectly tailored suits. I’m sure I owed him a ton of dry cleaning money. He was the only Presbyterian minister I loved more than Mr. Rogers and y’all… I LOVE Mr. Rogers. He once told me “you will survive this. No matter what, you have survived and you will continue to survive even this.” Simple words, maybe a bit overused and even pithy but in the moment he said them, just two days after her death, they became bread to me.

In a lot of ways, he became a surrogate father and chaplaincy mentor. Blair was a gift I never had thought I would receive. A year and a half ago I added book 35. Blair Monie.

Adding this particular part of my bible felt like losing a parent all over again. His story in my life ends with the line – “We will say goodbye to our mothers and fathers many times in our lives, but only once can we say goodbye to the many mothers and fathers we have had.”

Grief comes at times we wouldn’t expect. Of course, we often see death attended by grief, that is a part of the human condition, but it so often follows closely on the heels of lost relationships, broken trust, or feeling that there is more to do and we are too small or unempowered to do the tasks needed. Right now, as a nation, many of us are experiencing the grief that stems from trauma and the uncertainty in which we all find ourselves. There is a human made food shortage because of the uncertain nature of our situation and a culture imbued with a strong “what if” mentality.

We keep watching reports of more cases of Covid-19 being confirmed in our communities and we are being told to hold steady and remain calm when our brain is screaming at us to do anything but that.

This viral disease comes with a toll for each one of us. We will all add a book to our grief bibles as we move through the waves of illness as well as the unknown recovery period. Our daily lives have been thrown out of balance and upset greatly. Not only has our comfort been shaken from our grip but also our security.

We see videos and hear stories of people fighting over basic staples of life. Folks hoard more than they will possibly need or use, much of it may be wasted in the end, all in some desperate attempt to reclaim that comfort, security, and feeling of being in control of their lives.

Many will experience the grief of feeling responsible to care for their family, however that is defined, and yet helpless to do so in the current situation. Some will experience the grief that comes from the presence of anxiety, being inflated by the media and a seemingly uncaring, inept government, the unknowns and those what ifs will build up further until that is all they can see in their lives. And still, others will, in the end, experience the grief at surviving the death of a loved one.

When humans feel that their sure footing is threatened, they lash out for whatever they can hold onto. Be that money, food, toilet paper, or other humans and now – because of actions and circumstances wildly beyond any of our control – we stand raw to the fear, exposed to the chill of these many forms of loss.

I can’t say to how this book will end, I can’t predict the final line and I dare not speak what is not yet to be into the world. I will, however, say this. In this time it is best to remember our community and keep each other in our minds and hearts. Check in with one another. Help others remain steady as they do the same for you. Draw from our collective grief bibles, if only to be reassured that, as with all things, this is temporary and it too shall pass.

A lesson from my long book of proverbs comes with a warning to remember that in ways, our society often shares the lesson that grief should be peripheral, that it is almost rude to grieve. People ask how you are but some really only want to hear “I’m doing well/alright/ok, thank you” not… I am still shattered, I haven’t showered in four days, I can’t remember if I ate or not, and I can’t find the willpower to pay my electric bill. They want absolution from the responsibility to care for another human being in a moment of pain because, for many, they’ve no idea how to help or what to do.

In conversation, the complications that come from grieving tend to be avoided. People feel embarrassed for you when you talk about your grief; you let them off the hook so that the awkwardness surrounding our fear of this part of life can be moved past. However… Here’s the deal.

Sometimes you must talk about it because talking about it is like opening the pressure valve, letting out all the steam and perhaps being able to take a breath once more.

When I talk about my grief, in times that are very heavy and loud in my head, I feel like I become more visible again. It feels like I am more able to live and move along in my life because I no longer bear it all. Just because I was told I was strong enough to do it on my own doesn’t mean that I have to be. One of the gifts that comes from talking about your grief and what you are grieving is that it can provide profound clarity and remove the gauze that hides things you never thought you knew.

Though it is growing alongside yours, I hope my grief bible is as complete as I can make it right now. This chain of stories and feelings that I have scraped together through my own faulty memory all culminates with this final lesson. – Our grief bibles have nothing to do with our actual grief. Yes, the pain and loss are there in those pages, bound and sealed for our entire lives, but they are not the end result of the book itself. Ed Sheeran sang once that a heart that’s broken is a heart that’s been loved. This grief bible… our gathered mass of stories and memories and hopes and proverbs, it is our testament to the fact that there is, somewhere within us, something more. Not every story of sorrow leads to a positive outcome, some have no greater lesson than survival, but many do come back to being a source of knowledge and guidance for finding that final page to our otherwise heartbreaking book and being able to draw on it when we, once again, need.

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

Lessons in Welcome from Thanksgiving and a Blow to the head

December 1, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Lee Legault, Ministerial Intern
December 1, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We experience the world differently. Those of us journeying life neuro-typically and with ableist privilege too often hold this truth abstractly and at a distance. Let us hold the truth of neuro-physical diversity closely and tenderly to transform worship and build the Beloved Community.

Chalice Lighting

As we await the return of the light, we kindle the flame of Transcendence, the first of the five values of our congregation. We are in awe at each glimpse of the Oneness of everything, the great truth that lives deep within ourselves and reaches to the farthest ends of the Universe.

Call to Worship

by William F. Schulz

This is the mission of our faith:
To teach the fragile art of hospitality;
To revere both the critical mind and the generous heart;
To prove that diversity need not mean divisiveness;
And to witness to all that we must hold the whole world in our hands.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Moment for Beloved Community

This moment comes from American feminist scholar – and white woman – Peggy McIntosh. She wrote an engaging and convicting essay called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” In it she says, “White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.”

In unpacking this invisible knapsack, she lists conditions of daily experience that she once took for granted because of her whiteness. Here are three that stood out for me because I’m raising three, white UU young people:

I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

I can be pretty sure that my children’s teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others’ attitudes toward their race.

She lists 50 items in the knapsack of white privilege. I invite you to explore her full essay on the website www.racialequitytools.org

Meditation Reading

YOUR BODY IS WELCOME HERE
by Rev. Sean Neil-Barron

Your body is welcome here, all of it.
Yes, even that part. And that part. And yes, even that part.
The parts you love, and the parts you don’t.

For in this place we come with all that we are,
All that we have been,
And all that we are going to be.

Our bodies are constantly changing, cells die and cells are reborn
We respond to infections and disease
Sometimes we can divorce them from our bodies,
and other times they become permanently part of us.

Your body and all that is within it,
both wanted and not wanted, has a place here.
Our bodies join in a web of co-creation,
created and creating.

Constantly changing, constantly changing us
Scarred and tattooed, tense and relaxed
Diseased and cured, unfamiliar and intimate
Formed in infinite diversity of creation
Your body is welcome here, all of it.

So take a moment and welcome it
Take a moment to feel in it.
Take a moment, to be in it.

Sermon

My Thanksgivings

When I think back to when I first internalized that people experience the world differently, I would say it was Thanksgivings at my grandparents’ house in Corpus Christi. My grandparents hosted seven or more family members in their small townhouse, so we got cozy, and I always looked forward to spending a couple of nights together.

I usually got to sleep on something other than a bed, and when I was little that felt like an awesome adventure. Would I get one of the couches? Maybe the air mattress?

As I drifted off to sleep, I fondly remember hearing my mom and my aunt whispering urgently to one another. It was always about the same thing: the thermostat.

My granddad kept the thermometer set to 78 at night. He slept in pajamas with long sleeves and long pants; he wore fleecy house slippers. My mom and my aunt were what we called hot-natured and that made them susceptible to “sweltering in the night,” which is why they kept their thermostats at 68 at night in their houses.

At Thanksgiving, my mom and aunt would wait about thirty minutes after my grandparents had gone to bed. Then they would hover about the thermostat debating how low they could turn it without the air conditioning waking my granddad up. My aunt always got up super early in the morning to “put her face on” before anyone saw her naked visage, so she would change it back to 78 before my granddad noticed.

I was pretty much impervious to temperature as a kid. I slept fine no matter where the thermostat ended up, but I could see at Thanksgiving that other people experienced the environment differently than I did ….

Now in addition to a fun story about my family at Thanksgiving, I have just given you some important, unspoken information: I carry able-bodied, neurotypical privilege. Like white privilege, able-bodied privilege is often invisible or unknown to those who have it, because they have the luxury of drifting through life oblivious to their role in an oppressive system. Able-bodied privilege is how I made it through childhood only aware once-a-year at Thanksgiving that people experience their physical environments differently.

Like white privilege perpetuates racism, able-bodied privilege perpetuates ableism. Ableism creates an unwelcoming environment for many, many people.

I was reminded of my able-bodied privilege last month when I got a mild concussion. I was unpacking luggage in a hotel and when I raised up I banged the heck out of my head on the open door of the hotel safe. Today I am back to my own normal, but for about a month, I experienced the world differently. I had trouble focusing, and my memory was unreliable. I fatigued easily and had to pare down my schedule to get enough rest. I got overwhelmed by sensory stimulation. I felt anxious in social situations because I was not sure what would come out of my mouth, or if I would be able to keep up with what was going on around me. These symptoms temporarily changed the way I lived my life and very much changed the way I experienced worship.

Vocabulary

The Accessibility Guidelines for Unitarian Universalist Congregations define a disability as a physical or mental challenge that substantially limits one or more major life activities. There are times when using the word “disability” makes sense, but being a welcoming congregation requires openness to moving beyond binary labels. UU Minister Teresa Soto, who identifies as a disabled person, reminds us that “disability isn’t medical when it comes to being in community. It’s ‘an experience’.”

Two emerging terms reframe the medical model of disability, and cast all of us along a spectrum of physical and mental differences. These two words – neurodiversity and bodily diversity – respect differences in neurological and bodily realities as variations in a shared human experience. Importantly, neurodiversity and bodily diversity are neutral words, that emphasize that we are all in relationship, working it out together. Here’s a sample sentence for neurodiversity: AcknowLedging her son’s attention deficit disorder as neurodiverse means that she understands he approaches time and organization differently than she does – and he is often more creative and innovative than she.

Things not to say

A few more words about diction because words shape and reveal attitudes. Words matter for welcoming.

A “handicap” is not a description of a person. It is a barrier that society places on a person with a disability. So it would be appropriate to say, “Stairs will be a handicap for John, who uses a wheelchair.” It would not be appropriate to say, “John is handicapped and can’t use the stairs.” It should go without saying, but do not refer to someone BY disability.

Here is a poignant anecdote from Reverend Soto:

“Very often people call me ‘wheelchair.’ You would think: that wouldn’t happen, but it does. The bus driver will say, the wheelchair is getting off here. Well, I’m hoping to go with it. So because people call me a wheelchair sometimes, I prefer to call myself a person with a disability.”

I apologize that these next few words are coming out of my mouth, but I want to be explicit about this from the pulpit. Drop the following descriptors from your vocabulary of neuro and bodily diversity: crippled, crazy, retarded, dumb, shut-in, invalid, sufferer, or victim. Those words do harm: reinforcing stereotypes, creating false narratives, and disseminating disinformation.

Neurodiverse testimonies

Theologically, mindfulness of neuro and bodily diversity is a way to practice our first and seventh principles: the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and the interconnected web of existence of which we are a part. Theologically, welcoming does not mean adapting the existing system for a few; it means the many shake up their attitudes and their way of thinking to make room for every whole person who might be in the room–their needs And their gifts. Theologically, welcoming means relying on our second source: 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. Specifically, we need to listen to those among us — like Reverend Soto — willing to offer the wisdom of their lived experience that we all may grow spiritually.

Another of these prophetic people is Ramon Selove, a Unitarian Universalist from Virginia who teaches biology, identifies as autistic, and trains congregations on best practices for welcoming people with autism. He wrote about neurodiversity in worship in a piece called “Preventable Suffering: A UU With Autism Confronts Coffee Hour.” He says:

Meeting people, touching people, and general noise levels during and after a worship service can be real problems for me and others with autism. During services, just when things have quieted down and we are getting into the rhythm of the service, our minister asks us to stop and greet each other, shake hands, etc. It then takes the congregation a while to calm down again and get back into the service. I personally find that break disruptive. I really wish we wouldn’t do it at all.

It is stressful for me to be in the presence of a large number of people and it is much worse when many conversations are going on at the same time. I sometimes come to church late so that I can avoid all the conversations that occur prior to the service. At the end of the service I usually remain in the seats instead of going to the “social area.” Sometimes people come to talk to me (which I appreciate very much) and sometimes I just sit alone.

Welcoming Practices

First UU of Austin already has in place some of the best practices for a neuro and bodily diverse worship, like our quiet room with a window into the sanctuary, the choice of listening to the service from the fellowship hall, the large-print orders of service, streaming the service on Facebook, and the hearing loop system, among other things.

There is more to do, and that is all right. Let’s ask ourselves as a community of neuro and bodily diverse people: How could we do this better? If we can’t do it today, how can we work towards it and what would it take to do it in the future? We welcome discussion and suggestions. Let us know how to welcome you.

Reverend Helen McFadyen, coordinator of the UU Accessibility and Inclusion ministry, notes that true inclusion and welcome take sustained commitment, and that some of the most important changes are attitudinal.

One step we can all take, beginning today, is to make welcoming a spiritual practice. Some of our middle school youth are learning how to do this as part of their Crossing Paths RE curriculum. I offer you the Eight Practices of Welcoming that they are learning:

Be fully present
Be curious
Be open to being changed
Be comfortable with discomfort
Be an appreciative listener
Be light-hearted
Be gentle
Be yourself

Return to Thanksgiving and link church to sanctuary

At bottom, hospitality and welcome are not about social graces. They are about seeing the divine in every person. They are about Mutual Reverence. We call the room we are all in together right now “The Sanctuary.” “Sanctuary” can mean simply a place that a person can go to avoid harm. But it is more than that. The word “sanctuary” comes from “sanctus,” which is the latin word for “holy.” Let us make this place holy for all who seek it.

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

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

Prophecy, Power, and Potter

July 28, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

Lee Legault
July 28, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Ministerial Intern Lee Legault asks what wisdom can we glean from the Harry Potter books on how to partner with our youth. The Harry Potter myth offers insight into the role of youth in social justice movements. How has Unitarian Universalism supported the unique charisma of our young people?

Chalice Lighting

As we light the chalice may our souls become its hearth. We join our hearts to the one great flame of bright compassion, Beloved community, and fervent justice. May our sparks become a wildfire in the world, lighting the way for all.

Call to Worship

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS
J.K. Rowling

The words of are by Professor Dumbledore who is Hogwarts’ Headmaster in the Harry Potter series. Harry fears that he and Lord Voldemort may be alike in some ways and wonders whether he too may become an evil wizard, Professor Dumbledore tells him:

“It is our choices … that show us what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

Reading

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE
J.K. Rowling

Professor Dumbledore: I say to you all, once again–in the light of Lord Voldemort’s return, we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. Lord Voldemort’s gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust. Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.

It is my belief–and never have I so hoped that I am mistaken–that we are all facing dark and difficult times. Some of you in this Hall have already suffered at the hands of Lord Voldemort. Many of your families have been torn asunder.

A week ago, a student was taken from our midst. Remember [that student]. Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort.

Remember [him].

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

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

Stranger in a strange land

June 24, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Lee Legault
June 23, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Join ministerial intern, Lee Legault, in reflecting on what we gain when we leave the narrow straits of Egypt and lose our ego identities in the wilderness. Psychologist C.G Jung developed a paradigm for psychological growth called individuation and believed it to be humanity’s most important work. From a Jungian perspective, the Exodus account of Moses’ early life becomes a map to freedom through the arduous inner work of individuation.

Call to Worship
Mary Oliver

THE JOURNEY

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and
began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to
do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and
deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life that you could
save.

Reading
Celeste Snowber

Know there is a flow
working within the vessels
of your life and blood

through each spiritual artery and vein
which has a current all to its own

you cannot stop the life stream,
only enhance its surge

listen for the sound
of grace inhabiting
the map of your path

let what is Unseen carry you
in its crest

give into the wave
of the ebb and flow
of your own pulse

who knows where your journey will lead
or what you may discover

you are in a new chapter
of your own autobiography
rewriting your own narrative
every moment you take a breath

Sermon

I’m pretty new to religion. I grew up unchurched and adopted Unitarian Universalism as my family’s faith in 2012. In 2015, I decided to leave the law and become a Unitarian Universalist minister. As a warm-up, I spent a year working half-time as a lawyer and taking one course per semester at the seminary. I studied biblical Hebrew and the book of Exodus, in Hebrew.

I had never owned a Bible before seminary, and I needed something I was more fluent in than Hebrew to help me translate the biblical concepts into something meaningful to me. So in parallel with Exodus, I read up on Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of analytical depth psychology. He helped me see the archetypal elements of my seminary experience: As Moses declared during his psychologically formative years in the Midean wilderness, I have been a stranger in a strange land.

To illustrate, I’ll tell you about my visit to the chapel at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I went there after my first Hebrew class, to catch my breath, calm down, and meditate in their sacred space. It is a breathtaking place. A miniature version of the spired, buttressed cathedrals I associate with old Europe. Nobody else was there, so I could let my mouth hang open a little and turn around and around, soaking it in. Still loaded up from class, I went to put my books down on top of an ornate glass-topped table so I could have a better look at the even more ornate candelabra behind it — only to discover that the glass-topped table was, in fact, an enormous basin of holy water.

Fortunately, I was alone in the chapel, so nobody knew of my baptism by faux pas. Unfortunately, I was also alone with the sudden knowledge that my egocentric identity — “Lee Legault, attorney at law” — got me nowhere in this strange new land where I didn’t know up from down.

But after immersing myself in the Moses myth and Carl Jung, I see that losing my comfortable, safe, egocentric identity in that foreign place was not only embarrassing and wrenching, but also a WONDERFUL psychological development! I had taken a modest step towards psychological freedom, or what Jung calls an individuated life.

Jung by Way of Carrots

Individuation is Jung’s word for the transformation from an unconscious, egocentric person into one whose ego is in dialogue with the Self with a capital S. The Self is the central, creative, organizing source of life energy. Unitarian Universalists might call the Self the Spirit of Life.

I’ll use a carrot as an analogy. You could think of the Self as the vast expanse of soil that undergirds and nourishes the carrot and the leaves above it. The little leaves of the carrot pushing up into the light is the ego. Our ego is our sense of identity — the “I” part of each of us. But prior to individuation, the leaf of ego is unaware of the existence of the soil or the carrot and believes it is growing all alone, without any support.

Now, when I called Moses a myth, I meant no disrespect. In Jungian terms, myths are sacred stories. Irrespective of their external, historic truth, myths ring true on the inside. Myths are maps, and they contain keys: symbolic elements — called archetypes — that weave their teachings into the fabric of our souls, consciously and unconsciously. Let me tell you part of the Moses Myth from a Jungian perspective, focusing on the archetype of the wilderness journey.

Mitzrayim

Moses is born in Egypt to Hebrew parents at a time when the Pharaoh fears the ballooning Hebrew population. The Pharoah has ordered all Hebrew male babies be killed at birth. To save her son, Moses’s mother weaves a basket out of reeds, and sets him afloat on the Nile River. The Pharaoh’s daughter finds him, adopts him, and raises him as an Egyptian prince.

Moses, as we all do, spends roughly the first third of his life in Egypt developing his ego (his little green leaves). The Exodus text on Moses’s early life is spare, but we imagine he led a life of power, privilege, and safety there in the palace. He has an inkling of his Hebrew roots, but he is living life as Egyptian royalty.

The Hebrew word for Egypt is “mitzrayim” and aptly, it translates to narrow, constricted place. Right now, Moses’s sense of the world and his ego-bound, psychological state is narrow and constricted, but safe and protected.

Driven by some internal sense of restlessness, young man Moses (with his spring green ego) leaves the palace and ventures out to the Hebrew labor camp. He sees an Egyptian soldier beating a Hebrew. Moses becomes enraged, beats the Egyptian soldier to death, and hides the body.

For Jungians, this is a perfect example of the psychological stage of ego inflation, where the ego (the leaf) starts to get impressed with its own power and engages in some rash act that defies societal conventions.

The next day, Moses is inexplicably drawn back to the Hebrew labor camp. He sees two Hebrews fighting. His ego puffs up again, and he says, “Stop! Why are you fighting? You are brothers in oppression.”

One of the Hebrews stops fighting just long enough to put Moses in his place, saying “Who made you ruler over us? Do you mean to kill us too, like you did that Egyptian soldier?” This is the beginning of Moses’s ego demotion and identity crisis. Right now, he is not ready to lead anyone anywhere.

Sure enough, Pharaoh finds out about Moses’s killing the Egyptian soldier and orders his execution. Moses flees the narrow straights of Egypt, heading into the wilderness.

Midbar

A wilderness journey in a myth is an archetype for the psychological stage of alienation. Alienation is a painful, dark time when all that the ego thought it was, thought it had, and thought it knew is abruptly taken or discovered to be woefully insufficient. A seminary friend described alienation pretty well by saying, “Moses had to get the Moses out of Moses.”

In the wilderness, Moses comes across the semi-nomadic Midianites. Midianites don’t build pyramids or live in palaces; they herd sheep in the middle of nowhere. Moses spends years in Midean. He marries, has kids, herds sheep, and grows up.

Burning Bush

Painful as it is, alienation is probably the single biggest opportunity for psychological growth in a lifetime. Once the over-inflated ego (the leaf) is all battered to bits, it has a shot at realizing it is rooted in something bigger and deeper: the soil of the Self.

Archetypally, this reunion usually occurs in the wilderness.

One day while Moses is out shepherding in the wilderness, he sees a bush burning but not consumed by the fire, and he hears an awesome voice calling his name. Tn a less developed psyche that had not gone through the pain of alienation, the inner monologue might have gone something like this: “I’ve come to a fork in the path. On my left, there is a weird burning bush and a scary, disembodied voice. On the right is a well travelled sheep trail with regular shrubbery. Which way should I go? Moses forks left, toward the burning bush, and that has made all the difference.

Moses is eighty when he has that reunion with the Self at the burning bush. Individuation is not for the young pups.

Moses goes back to Egypt and has a talk with the Pharaoh about some plagues, but we’ll save that part of the myth for another day.

For today, our focus is on the fact that Moses has grown psychologically since the last time he was in Egypt. This time, he is able to lead the Hebrews, and he does: out of the narrow straights of Egypt.

As I understand it, this part of the Moses myth shows that — though it is not a fast, easy, or painless process–bending to the inner work of individuation is a path to psychological growth and freedom.

Three Tools

Here are three tools you might try out on your own inner searches for truth and meaning.

Read myths for yourself and read them regularly.
I believe a myth must be reinterpreted in order to maintain its vitality and living connection with the world. A myth, after all, describes the relationship between humanity and the Spirit of Life, and I believe that relationship is not static. It is dynamic, direct, and evolving.

While myths abound in the world’s holy books, they are almost certainly also in the books that are holy to you. For me, these would include the Wrinkle in Time, Harry Potter, and the Alchemist. Know the myths that are sacred to you, and reread them periodically so their archetypes can do their conscious and unconscious work on your psyche.
Practice listening for the still. small voice.
Follow it in minor matters (like Moses did when he broke the norm and ventured out of the palace to the Hebrew labor camp). But don’t be surprised if there are times in your symbolic wilderness journeys when that inner voice is not so small, and is more like a burning bush. You are less likely to turn away from the burning bush if you have practiced listening to the still, small voice.
Mythologize your own life.
Dwell in your internal rather than external progress and see the myth patterns at play.

Notice when your ego has gotten inflated and you are too locked down in your safe, leaf life. Notice when you are in the wilderness and honor that for what it is.

In Jung’s autobiography, he exclusively discusses his inner life. Not the world wars. Not the famous people he knew. Just his internal shifts. His wilderness journeys. His burning bush experiences. That’s where the real action is.

Conclusion

You don’t have to live a myth on the scale of Moses. What I love most about the Jungian paradigm is that everyone’s inner journey matters. And not just to you. Your advances — however modest — on your inner work benefit humanity because we all contribute to and draw from the soil of the Self.

I’ll leave you with a story I’ve liked all my life, and like even more now that I’m familiar with individuation. A man came upon a construction site where three people were working. He asked the first, “What are you doing?” and the person without glancing up, replied: “I am laying bricks.” He asked the second, “What are you doing?” and the man rested on his knees and replied: “I am building a wall.” As he approached the third, he heard her humming a tune as she worked, and asked, “What are you doing?” The woman stood, looked up at the sky, and smiled, “I am building a great cathedral!”

From a Jungian perspective, every life is building the great cathedral of the Self.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Homecoming and Dedication

June 7, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above. Text of this sermon is not available.

Mr. Barb Greve
June 2, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Mr. Barb Greve will be joining us and speaking to the community. Barb is co-moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association, serving alongside Elandria Williams. He was appointed by the Board of Trustees on August 1, 2017, to serve in the bylaw-defined role of moderator. At the same time, the board named Williams co-moderator and stipulated that he and Williams would serve together and share responsibilities as co-moderators.

A Master-level credentialed religious educator, Barb has served for the past twenty years as an intentional interim director of lifespan religious education, a professional youth advisor, and a member of the UUA staff. He received his Master of Divinity from Starr King School for the Ministry in 2007 and served as the chair of the school’ s Board of Trustees. He is one of the cofounders of TRUUsT (Transgender Religious Unitarian Universalists Together) and a tri-founder of the Guild of Interim Religious Educators. Raised in the First Parish in Framingham, Massachusetts, where he maintains his membership, Greve loves committee and board meetings, believing that doing the ” business” of our faith is important.

Greve is a transgender guy, grateful for the life-saving loving acceptance that our faith has provided throughout his life.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Youth Service: Reflection

April 29, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Senior Youth Group
April 28, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our Senior High Youth Group lead the service and invite the congregation on a journey in self-reflection, how we’ve grown, and who we’ve become over our lives.

Call to Worship

ELEVEN
by Sandra Cisneros

What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are-underneath the year that makes you eleven.

Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is. You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you . And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is.

Reading

REACHING NONETHELESS
by Sage Hirschfeld

If I could take every word I’ve ever written and ask them what this is all about
I think it might sound something like all the pots and pans in my kitchen falling out from every
overstuffed cabinet and onto the tile floor in a single moment
It would sound like every great and terrible symphony warm up
Like cacophony of chaos already insued
A ruckus of all things sacred in their hardness
Colliding
Greeting each other
Shaking hands with shock waves strong enough to rip through plaster and wood and flesh and
bone
To stir something somewhere you never knew was sleeping till you felt it wake up
To punctuate a period with an exclamation point and then another period.
But that’s not where it would end
It would sound like a collective exhale of everything daring to move
It would sound like doors creaking open throughout the house
Like footsteps down narrow hallways drawing near
Like my father’s voice calling in every shade of compassion
It would sound like hands outstretched in beaconing beyond intrinsic
Beyond first thoughts or old habits or logiced ways
Simply reaching out without truly knowing what for
But reaching nonetheless

Meditation

REFLECTION
by Shel Silverstein

Each time I see the Upside-Down Man
Standing in the water,
I look at him and start to laugh,
Although I shouldn’t oughtter.
For maybe in another world
Another time
Another town,
Maybe HE is right side up
And I am upside down.

Homilies

by Shanti Cornell, Julia Heilrayne, Rae Milstead, Abby Poirier

JULIA HEILRAYNE

Children’s hospitals aren’t like normal hospitals. They are places where we care for our youngest and our most vulnerable. They are places where the juxtaposition of emotions felt covers a spectrum larger than I ever thought possible. In children’s hospitals, the grief that is felt is felt so deeply, so loudly, so intensely, that sometimes it is easy to forget that the joy there is felt just as deeply, just as loudly, just as intensely. Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, the place where I spent a month of the last school year, is no different. From the bubbly decorations to the fish in the MRI machines and the graffiti style cartoon characters that bounce across every wall, it is in essence what a children’s hospital should be: a place to heal, to mourn, to celebrate, and to reflect.

From the branch of the hospital I spent the most time in, you can see the parking garage. This particular parking garage is adorned with an art installation, consisting of colored sheets of glass protruding from the side of the building, casting colorful shadows on the outside wall. In just the right room, standing on just the right section of blue carpeted floor, you can see yourself, reflected in those sheets of colorful glass. Sometimes you are blue, or red, or purple, or green. Sometimes you are clearly defined, so much so that you can see the expression on your face, and other times you melt into the colors, reflections of trees and noises cars coming and going. The first time I saw those glass sheets, the girl reflected back to me was anxiously fiddling with her fingers. There were dark circles under her eyes, and although her hair was pulled back into what might have once been a ponytail, it had since morphed into a clumped tangled mat on the side of her head. The girl was sitting in a wheelchair. As I watched the girl in the glass that first day, she watched me back. Together, we hoped, and we prayed, in our weird atheist UU way, that the doctors here would tell us they could make the pain go away. I left the hospital that day with good news- I was an excellent candidate for the treatment they provided.

Months passed before I was able to travel back to Children’s, and when I did, the girl in the glass was waiting for me, but she had changed. Physical therapists forced the girl to stand, they bent her legs in weird angles and took a million different measurements. The dark circles under the girl’s eyes had grown, and the tears that streamed down her face as the doctors worked on her felt warm and uncomfortable on my cheek. I turned away from the girl in the glass, and she turned away from me.

It was days later, when I let myself glance out the window back towards the parking garage, and the reflection glanced back at me. This time, the girl’s ponytail still looked like a ponytail, and although the dark circles still remained under her eyes, the tears had stopped falling. She looked stronger, better. She looked less like a patient in a children’s hospital and more like the girl I once knew myself to be. I smiled a small smile, and she smiled back, the same small, timid smile.

I continued to watch the girl in the glass grow stronger, watch her legs hold her straighter, watch her arms leave the wheels of the chair far behind. I watched as she became more sure of herself on the treadmill, more able to do the things that most 17 year old girls were doing every day- like walking. The dark circles under her eyes grew lighter, and the smile on her face grew bigger, and slowly, slowly, after days of watching her, I started to recognize myself.

While my friends stressed over studying for finals back in Austin, I learned methods to control the pain that had been plaguing me for years, and the girl reflected back to me in every color of the rainbow did the same. I walked, then ran, then ran a mile. And the entire time, I watched the reflection of myself in the glass. On the hard days, I would check in with me in the glass, and assure her it was going to be ok. On the goo days, I would celebrate with the girl in the glass, and we would carry that success onto the next day. Those seemingly meaningless colorful glass panes gave me a way to watch myself change, in the best possible of way. As silly as it may sound to someone who didn’t spend 8 hours a day learning to walk, run, use their hands, and think again in those rooms, I am grateful to that glass.

I have been home for exactly 4 months and 3 weeks. It has been a glorious 145 days, and as I prepare mentally to go back in June for my 6 month follow up, I can’t help but wonder what the girl who will be reflected back at me into the hospital will look like this time, because the thing that the girl in the glass taught me above all else is that be it staring at yourself in the mirror and having a good chat with yourself, laying in bed with your eyes closed and mediating, or watching yourself go from a self declared “wheelchair sick kid” to the functioning human you want to be in reflections provided by your favorite children’s hospital, to reflect on your progress, change, and accomplishments in life, no matter where you are, is how you keep making that progress, and get where you want to go in life. Or as John Dewey so eloquently put it “we do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.”

RAE MILSTEAD

There’s this story in the bible where Jesus goes into the garden of Gethsemane and he kneels down and gives this very agonizing and very human prayer which is “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. And being in agony he was praying very fervently; and his sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.” This is a time you see Jesus letting himself be doubtful and in pain and quite frankly, afraid of his future. He ultimately decides that God’s will is stronger than his and that he had to lay that burden down as to accept his crucification. You see this same theory in so many faiths where you can’t really change some of the hardest things in life you have to go through and that you cannot will it away. It’s just going to happen and the inevitability of it is probably the most daunting thing.

I believe that every person has to go through those really hard, humanizing moments which I call “brick-wall” moments – because they’re moments in life that absolutely shatter you and force you to grow into a person that you can live with for the rest of your life.

My junior year of High School, my brother committed suicide and not even a year later, my father passed away after a long history of alcohol-abuse and drug addiction. I was 18 and I was fatherless and I had lost someone to suicide. I was just an 18-year-old girl. The days after I lost my brother, I kept to a corner of my room, refusing to eat food or water and I just stared into nothingness- I was shocked as to what kind of world I was now living in. The weeks following, it felt like I was outside of myself, just watching this girl slowly walk through life with this frazzled look. I was devastated and lost. My identity was ripped away from me and I was placed into a completely different universe. What I thought I knew seemed to dissipate and slip through the synapses in my brain. I felt like everyone around me was moving so much quicker and it was impossible for me to reach out and grab onto anything. I was just flying backwards.

I grew up In the church and I saw the bible and Jesus as a collection of lessons on what to do when no one else could give you any advice because the challenge you were given was not something any human could change-like death. I often wondered if Jesus ever stopped to look at himself in a mirror and ask himself first off, How many braids could he make out of his beard? and secondly, what on earth was he thinking?

But he asks himself this and he asks God this in the Garden of Gethsemane. He asks God, why it has to be him? why does he have to bear this pain when he’s done everything he was supposed to? What can He do to get out of this fate? And God gives him the strength and understanding that it was going to be okay. These are the same questions that were asked when I was looking in the mirror at this tear stricken grieving girl who just didn’t know what to do anymore to escape this loss. Why did it have to be me? Why am I the one who has to keep living through this? How do I do this?

For the past month and a half, I have been learning about lent and the core values of the lessons learned throughout this 40 day period. I’ve learned that lent is this time where you take the not so great aspects of your faith and lift it up into the light for you to reflect on it and help strengthen your faith and in the catholic faith, get closer to god. The UU church has a topic for each day to reflect on and share a photo of- things like struggle, vulnerability, courage, dreams, and recovery are amongst these topics. Things that aren’t always pretty or what you would put front and center of your identity but are still definitely there. I’ve found that a lot of people, no matter what your path of spirituality is, find themselves tearing themselves apart which is the exact opposite of what Grace is. I hear my friends in my youth group here that our lives are precious human lives and in my catholic youth group that god will always love me and that no matter where I go in my life, I will always be a beloved daughter of the king most high, yet the hardest part of accepting Grace is giving myself that. How many of us have just mindlessly scroll through facebook or instagram and comparing ourselves to someone else? Or after spending hours watching other people live their lives, felt like a wasted attempt of success? How many of us get a grade back on a test or feedback from a boss or a comment from a loved one and just make that one thing your entire identity and thought process for the next 48 or something hours? It’s self reflection but it’s also painful self-infliction.

I think that’s the greatest human flaw. I watch so many amazing people work so incredibly hard and then tear themselves down. But as I started to read more stories in the bible and read more about all the strongest empowering role models rising up in the social justice world I’ve discovered that no one in the bible made it in the bible by just having an easy life. The strongest people I know have been through some really incredible losses and experiences to get where they are. Jesus knelt onto the ground and SWEAT BLOOD begging to give up what he felt was a burden but was actually the thing that made him so incredibly strong. So yes, I may have no idea who I am or where I am going right now in this world, I do know that me, along with everyone else in this room and outside this room is destined for greatness. We go through things to build character and what you’ve gone through does not define who you are but how you choose to get off the floor of the corner of your room and keep going does. Greatness is defined by the ability to persevere through adversity. And perseverance isn’t always a beautiful A on a calculus test two weeks after your father died. It’s giving yourself the grace to take a day to just cry it all out, even if it’s a full on ugly cry. Questions like “why did I have to be the one chosen to go through these things?” is part of self reflection and building a stronger sense of perseverance through this internalized adversity. You’re doing great and just keep trying to grow from the things that were given to you and wrap each other with this unstoppable love through grace and growth. Perseverance is giving yourself the grace to love yourself and your precious human life, no matter how destroyed life looks.

Text of Shanti Cornell and Abby Poirier’s homilies are not yet available but you can click the play button to listen.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

The Holiness of Hands

January 21, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

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.

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.

PODCASTS

Truth Telling

August 12, 2018 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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.

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.

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

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.

Making Our Alphabet Soup

August 5, 2018 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
Guest Speakers: Michael Thurman, Becca Brennan-Luna, and Tomas Medina
August 5, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

With the LGBTQ Pride Festival and Parade coming soon, members of our “Alphabet Soup” group will share their stories of finding a spiritual home at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin.

Call to Worship

We Answer the Call of Love
Responsive Reading By Julia Corbett-Hemeyer

In the face of hate,
We answer the call of love.
In the face of exclusion,
We answer the call of inclusion.
In the face of homophobia,
We answer the call of LGBTQ rights.
In the face of racism,
We answer of justice for all races.
In the face of xenophobia,
We answer the call of pluralism.
In the face of misogyny,
We answer the call of women’s rights.
In the face of demagoguery,
We answer the call of reason.
In the face of religious intolerance,
We answer the call of diversity.
In the face of narrow nationalism,
We answer the call of global community.
In the face of bigotry,
We answer the call of open-mindedness.
In the face of despair,
We answer the call of hope.

As Unitarian Universalists, we answer the call of love —
now more than ever.

Reading

Let Us Make this Earth a Heaven
By Tess Baumberger

Let us make this earth a heaven, right here, right now.
Who knows what existences death will bring?
Let us create a heaven here on earth
where love and truth and justice reign.

Let us welcome all at our Pearly Gates, our Freedom Table,
amid singing and great rejoicing,
black, white, yellow, red, and all our lovely colors,
straight, gay, transgendered, bisexual, and all the ways
of loving each other’s bodies.
Blind, deaf, mute, healthy, sick, variously-abled,
Young, old, fat, thin, gentle, cranky, joyous, sorrowing.

Let no one feel excluded, let no one feel alone.
May the rich let loose their wealth to rain upon the poor.
May the poor share their riches with those too used to money.
May we come to venerate the Earth, our mother,
and tend her with wisdom and compassion.
May we make our earth an Eden, a paradise.
May no one wish to leave her.

May hate and warfare cease to clash in causes
too old and tired to name; religion, nationalism,
the false false god of gold, deep-rooted ethnic hatreds.
May these all disperse and wane, may we see each others’ true selves.
May we all dwell together in peace and joy and understanding.
Let us make a heaven here on earth, before it is too late.
Let us make this earth a heaven, for each others’ sake.

Homilies

Michael Thurman

How I found this church. It was the 90s, Every week there was another funeral another friend diagnosed with AIDS. My LGBTQ family were being villafied around the globe. we were feeling scared, guilty and helpless. We were living in full crisis mode. Feeling alone and shunned by family, friends and the whole community at times.

We leaned on each other and time was spent on vigils, helping our dying friends as much as we could. Cooking for them, some of us opened our homes so during the day no one had to be left alone, while their partners worked. Our social lives had changed from bars and dinner parties to hospital visits, Benefits and collecting donations. We got the notice for a 24 hour benefit called The mostly music marathon. It was being held in a church?

Now I was raised in a Southern Baptist Church. (Its where I learned the word HYPOCRISY) I grew up hearing the hate spewed out in my church against homosexuality. I was lucky though, coming out was no problem for me. I came out after high school graduation in 1979 and my mother always had my back. She would get upset while we were out together and ask “Why do you have to let everyone know your gay?” Because they need to know gay people exist! My mom and step dad even left the family church after a sermon (as they described) as a ignorant unkind attack on their son.

So the day of the mostly music marathon I got prepared, picked out my clothes made sure my belt matched my shoes and then started to prepare for entering a church again.

Practiced my smile and nod I would muster up when I heard “Love the sinner Hate the sin” “accept Jesus Christ as your savior and denounce your homosexuality before you die and you might make it to heaven” and hoped I did not get whiplash when smacked upside my head with the bible. My montra was brain first mouth second.

We pulled up in front of the church, walked to the front double doors and the first thing we see is a sign that stated “This church has a open door policy and accepts all that step through its doors” WOW! That still makes my hair stand up on end (and with all this hair that is saying something) As we walked in we were welcomed by several church members and smiled at, a little small talk, no entrapment so far! Then we hit the sanctuary and found a place to set. As I sat there a kind of peace fell over me. Here in this church there was every kind of person, all colors, ages, sexuality and families with children, not afraid to be around us gays. During intermission in the fellowship hall got to meet and talk to members of the church, gay and straight all welcoming and thanking us for being there. Heard of the gay mens group that met once a month. Even heard a rumor the new pastor was going to be a gay man.

The next sunday got up and went to our first Unitarian service. After a few more services my partner and I became members. Worked on committees gathered things for the annual fundraiser auctions. Being gay here was just a normal thing. I had found my place of peace. Now as all things do, things change, a breakup, a move out of town, several health challenges and church fell to the side. Then on my birthday a couple of years ago a small gift from a fellow Unitarian. My First Unitarian Universilist name tag. I found my place of peace again back in this church!

It was a little confusing that first Sunday back, All those Rainbow stickers on a lot of name tags had me confused. I thought “this church has become overrun with the gays” Then realizing allies wore them too, my heart felt so supported. Thanks allies for all the love and support. You are definitly part of my peace here. THANK YOU.

Becca Brennan-Luna

Hi, my name is Becca Brennan-Luna. I have been a member of First UU since last September, so almost a year. My wife Amy and I have been married for over two years and together for over 6 years. We had a few setbacks, and some discrimination at first, but we just recently found out that we have become licensed foster parents!

I was raised Mexi-Catholic in El Paso, TX. My family went to church every Sunday. We celebrated Christmas and Easter and gave up something for the 40 days of Lent. We were REALLY super Catholic! It was a big part of my life for a long time. I was baptized, had my First Holy Communion, and my Confirmation in the Catholic Church. I grew up believing that if we prayed and sacrificed and confessed our sins, that we would go to Heaven. I believed that God created us in His image and that He loves us, but that He would punish us if we sinned.

I’m sure we all have an idea about what the Catholic Church thinks about homosexuality, right? Well, Pope Francis is a good guy, but it was different when I was growing up. I heard a lot of anti-gay sentiment and hate and judgement based on fear. Despite this I did believe that God would be there for us when we needed Him. I still believe that, and I still pray. Okay, maybe my image of God is different now. He is a She, for one.

My family was very close and very loving. But we definitely had a certain way of doing things, and a way things were supposed to be. Homosexuality is not something my family talked about all that much. My mom had one gay friend who lived in California and a distant gay cousin who lived in Mexico. We saw the friend sometimes, and my family was pleasant with him, but there was always an air of mystery about the men and their “lifestyle.” It certainly wasn’t something that would be acceptable for me in my family’s eyes.

I guess growing up I had crushes on boys. Yes, I swooned after the New Kids on the Block. But maybe that’s because that’s what all the other girls did. Maybe that’s just what I was “supposed” to do I honestly didn’t know crushing on girls was an option. I remember feeling very ashamed and confused for a long time.

I attended an all-girls private Catholic high school, with nuns and everything! If the mean girls didn’t like you, they would spread a rumor that you were a (whisper) leeeesbian! Oh, the horror if that rumor got spread around about you! Everyone would avoid you like the plauge and make ugly faces at you for being SUCH an abomination. Needless to say, finally coming to terms with my sexual orientation was a lengthy and difficult process. College was great for me because I moved away from home, met like-minded people, and felt accepted for who I was. I understood who Becca really was for the first time . So, I shared a bit of my coming-out story and we’re supposed to be talking about our experience at First Unitarian Universalist. I’ll get to that.

Even though I felt a little betrayed by the Catholic Church, I still continued to go for a while. I longed for that spiritual connection with a community. I loved the music, the singing, the prayers and “Peace be With You.” At first it was kind of ok to be there. Even though I personally was never turned away, it got harder to ignore the fact that I was not welcome.

I heard about First Unitarian Universalist from a few different people, so my wife and I decided to try it out. I LOVED it! People were so welcoming! It seemed like everyone was friendly with one another. The music was so lively and uplifting. I love hearing Reverend Chris and Reverend Meg’s messages acceptance, inclusion and love. I enjoyed the services very much.

What means so much to me was that I ALWAYS feel like I belong here. I joined the People of Color group, Alphabet Soup, and I got involved with Service Saturdays, Sack-Lunch making and Religious Education. Im just so thrilled to be a part of such a wonderful community. I have everything I used to love about my old church, minus all the judgement. I feel like I am welcome and accepted. I feel like I am home.

Tomas Medina

When I was growing up, my father used to tell me, “Gay people should be lined up and shot.” When I was growing up, the worst thing you could be called in school was faggot. In junior high and high school, I was called faggot, a lot. In fact, I had such a miserable time in high school, that I skipped my senior year altogether, opting to test out and start college at age 17.

The church I was brought up in was also not a place of refuge for me. I was taught that I should love the homosexual sinner, but that a homosexual act was a mortal sin, which not only prevented me from taking communion but would also condemn me to hell, if I was unlucky enough to die before having the chance to confess my sin.

As you might imagine, as a young man wondering about my own sexual orientation, I never felt particularly safe at home, or at school or at church. When I came out at 17 to my parents, I was seriously worried that they would react negatively and throw me out. They didn’t throw me out, but they did send me to a psychologist whose advice to me was to not look at the men on my college campus who were wearing shorts. Fortunately, at my college, I was part of support group for LGBTQIA students, and I quickly decided that I didn’t need to see a psychologist to help me get over my gay feelings. What I decided instead was that it was my parents who needed help to get over their homophobia.

Coming out to my parents was not the only time I felt like coming out might be risky. As a gay man, deciding whether to come out is something that I have to weigh on an almost daily basis. With every new situation and every new person that I encounter, I do a quick calculus as to whether it is safe for me to be explicit about being gay. And I don’t think I’m being paranoid about this calculus. Even in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, a very gay neighborhood, I’ve recently been called faggot by men who I not only had no romantic interest in but was downright frightened of. And I remember that when I was being interviewed for a job by a judge in a NYC court, he asked me how I could live in downtown NY where there were so many homosexuals and wasn’t I afraid that I’d get AIDS. There are only two places, where I don’t feel the need to do the mental calculus as to whether to come out. One is when I’m somewhere that is predominantly gay and caters to the gay community, like a gay club, gym, or beach. The other exception is here at First UU Austin. I think it’s remarkable that there is a community that is majority non LGBTQIA where I don’t have to wonder what the consequence will be if explicitly acknowledge my gay identity.

Here at First UU being lesbian gay bisexual transgendered, intersexual, questioning, asexual or straight is not something that is used to define us. But, at the same time, our struggles with the world outside of this First UU community are acknowledged, and our triumphs are celebrated.

Being part of a community that is majority non LGBTQIA , in which I feel both safe and acknowledged, has had transformative benefits for me. For one thing, it has allowed me to find a spiritual home. I couldn’t explore my spirituality anywhere where being gay somehow made me lesser than anyone else.

Something else I appreciate about First UU is that it supports our Alphabet Soup group. A group exclusively for those who identify as part of both the LGBTQIA and UU community. It’s a wonderful treat to be able to meet with other First UU’s who share similar experiences and to be able to relate to each other without the need to explain ourselves. And, not all members of the LGBTQIA community at large are interested in exploring spirituality, so it’s great t be able to form relationships with other member of this community who share similar spiritual yearnings.

I also love that at First UU I have formed relationships and friendships with many people outside of the LGBTQIA community. Being supported and loved by so many people in this congregation, has given me the confidence to be more myself in the outside world. As I find myself taking leadership positions in the church, I also find myself less willing to keep my opinions and beliefs to myself in my relationships outside of the church, whether I’m with family, friends, or at work.

Perhaps the most transformative aspect of being part of the First UU community is the optimism it has given me. I am confident that if we can build a loving and supportive community in here, it can happen in the outside world too. Being part of this community has given me more confidence to take the risk when I do the calculus as to whether to come out, yet again. And I know that every time I and others in the LGBTQIA community comes out, yet again, the world takes a small step towards becoming the world we know it can be.

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

Everyday Ministry and Finding Your Signature Move

July 1, 2018 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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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.

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.

Youth Service: Exploring Dreams

May 21, 2018 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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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.

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

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.

Bringing Imperfect Gifts

May 6, 2018 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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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.

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.'”

Sermon

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

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

Transformation through Service

October 8, 2017 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse & Leadership Team
October 8, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

How will you use your gifts? What if we were able to use our gifts to their full potential, and purposefully encourage others around us to do the same?

Call to Worship
Mother Teresa

Love cannot remain by itself – it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action and that action is service. Whatever form we are, able or disabled, rich or poor, it is not how much we do, but how much love we put into the doing; a lifelong sharing of love with others.

Reading
How Will You Use Your Gifts?
by Don Southworth

One of the first things I saw on my first day of seminary at Starr King School for the Ministry in August 1996 was the official school T-shirt. On the front of the shirt was a beautiful drawing of a sand dollar. I discovered the importance and meaning of the sand dollar later that morning during our opening worship service. Rebecca Parker, the president of Starr King, spoke poetically and movingly about the sand dollar’s history at the school and its symbolism for our time there. For decades incoming students have been given a sand dollar as a welcome gift in a ritual to honor the gifts we brought to the school and to represent the grace and mystery of our vocations to ministry. We were each invited to choose a sand dollar to take with us on our journeys.

With tears in my eyes, I prayerfully selected the sand dollar that I knew would be the perfect companion on my road to ministry. When I returned to my seat, and as I lovingly fondled it, my precious sand dollar shattered into several pieces and soon was nothing but sand dollar dust. I realized that this probably wasn’t a good omen for my future, so I snuck back to the basket to take another. Certain that nobody saw me, I slunk back to my seat and gently placed the new sand dollar in my pocket. Fifteen minutes later, when I went to touch my sacred sand dollar, I discovered it too was in pieces. Convinced that the Gods were telling me something about my choice to pursue the ministry, I quietly dumped my sand dollar dust into the garbage and wondered if seminary was the right place for me.

Fortunately, the T-shirt on the wall had writing on the back as well. It said: “How will you use your gifts?” Since sand dollars did not seem to be my thing, I hoped I could do a better job with that question. On that day, that question became one of the guiding lights of my life and ministry. How will you use your gifts? I have been blessed to be surrounded by faculty, friends, family, colleagues, and congregations committed to living that question with me. It is a question with the power to transform the world.

How will you use your gifts? Imagine what would happen if everyone of us committed to fully living out the answer to that question and helping others to do the same. Imagine if every person in the world overcame their doubts, fears, and oppressions and shared all their gifts.

We have the power to change and heal the world when we use our gifts to bless the world. And what better place to practice than in our religious communities, where we are encouraged to bring our unique talents, skills, passions, and dreams, and share them as widely as we can – even on those days when we feel as imperfect as a broken sand dollar.

You and I are miracles, my friends. We are packages of gifts that have never been seen before in the history of the world and will never be seen again. Our potential, our greatness, lie in how well we open our packages, our lives, and share them with other people. To paraphrase the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

Everybody can be great. Because everybody can share their gifts with the world. You don’t need a master of divinity degree to share your gifts. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to share your gifts with the world. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. (And maybe a pocket full of sand dollar dust!)

Sermon

Meg Barnhouse

(Sung)
Let the life if lead speak for me
Let the life if lead speak for me
When I’m lying in my grave
and there’s nothing left to say
Let the life if lead speak for me

Our Worship this morning is about Transforming Lives. Two members of this congregation will speak about their own lives, which have been transformed through service within this congregation.

One of my favorite theologians is the Baptist minister Howard Thurman. He said

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Most of the church members you see participating in worship this morning are members of the First UU “Transformation Through Service” team. They are here to invite you into transformation. If you care to participate, they have interviewers who sit with you for about an hour to ask you questions about you. This morning you are invited to think about a word or two that describes a gift you bring to this community. You might be a good teacher, a listener, a builder, an idea person, a detail person, or all of the above. This program is an invitation to transformation through service, so no one is asking you to sign your gift words. They will be collected at the end of the sermon time and some of them will be read aloud so we can be encouraged by the many gifts among us.

Tomas Medina

If I had my way, we’d change the order of our mission statement. I’d swap “do justice” and “transform lives” so that our mission statement read, “We gather in community to nourish our souls, do justice and transform lives:” In my experience, that I’m about to share with you, it is in doing justice that lives are transformed.

When I first walked through the doors of First UU, three and a half years, ago. I came for the worship service, to nourish my soul.

And my soul was nourished. It felt really good to be surrounded by people who believed in the same things I did, our 7 principles, and who drew on our 7 sources to inform their spiritual journey.

When I took the path to membership class here, I was told that there was a need for ushers and that being an usher was a good way to start becoming part of the community.

So my very first act of service here was to usher. And I did it for selfish reasons, to become part of the community. And it worked.. One Sunday, while I was ushering, Rev Mari walked up to me and asked me if I was going to come to the newly formed Alphabet Soup group, for people who identify as belonging to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning community. I joined.

Another Sunday Rev Mari asked me if I was going to be part of the Adult religious education group, that was going through the new Welcoming Curriculum to help ensure that we continue to be welcoming to the LGBTQ community. I joined.

Another Sunday, Rev Mari asked me if I was going to be part of the newly formed People of Color group. I joined.

As an aside, if I just read the announcements in our order of service, Rev Mari woldn’t have had to take the extra step of telling me about all these opportunities. But I grew up Catholic and at the end of mass, the priests always read the announcements. I kind of figured if there was something I should know it’d be announced from the pulpit. That is not the case here.

Eventually, people other than Rev Mari starting asking me to do things. I became the facilitator of the Alphabet Soup Grop, I served on the intern committee for our most recent ministerial intern, Susan Yarborough. And, I’m a steward for this year’s pledge drive.

But it was my encounter with Peggy Morton, that really transformed my life, she told me about an opportunity to visit immigrant women being held in detention , at Hutto, about 45 minutes from here.

I am a child of immigrants and very much appreciate the opportunities this country has given to my family and me. For the longest time, I’ve wanted to give something back And, I’ve been very bothered by the fact that many immigrants to this country don’t receive the welcome that my parents were given when they immigrated in the 1950’s.

I began to visit women at Hutto once or twice a month All I did was converse with them, about simple things like their families back home or in the States. And, about incredible things such as their harrowing trips from their home countries to the states and the reasons why they came, which was often out of fear for their lives after seeing family members killed by gangs.

Talking with these women was humbiling. I very much admired their courage and resilience. It also made me appreciate how easy my life is because of the fact that I was born in the US, through no effort on my part.

All of the activities I’ve mentioned have been transformative for me. Before moving to Austin, I lived in NYC for 25 years. When I lived there I was a very appreciative consumer. I took advantage of much of what the city offers: theater, restaurants, night life, etc. My time at First UU has made me much more into a creator. I feel like I make experiences now as much as I consume them.

I’ve saved the most important transformative experience, I’ve had for last. This June, inspired by my time at General Assembly, our annual gathering of UUs, I took my first pro bono immigration case as an attorney. I represented a lesbian woman from Guatemala who had fled with her girlfriend because of threats made on their lives. When the women crossed the border into the US, they were caught by ICE and put into detention, aka jail, at Hutto. The girlfriend voluntarily deported herself back to Guatemal unawae of her rights to seek asylum. My client, on the other hand, did file for asylum. Though American Gateways, a not for profit organization that provides legal help to immigrants, I represented this women in immigration court. I’m happy to say that on August 23, the immigration judge handed down her decision and granted my client asylum. My client is now out of detention, living and working in Austin, without fear of being deported.

This was the single most transformative event of my life. Last year in a class I’m taking here at First UU, we were asked the question as to what is the thing in your life that you feel driven to do, that you just can’t not do. I answered that I’ve struggled with this my whole life. I felt like I should have a calling but never had one. I can now say, I have one. Using my legal education to help new immigrants to this county, is now something that I cannot not do.

Currently, I’m helping with our guest in Sanctuary, Alerio’s legal case. And it feels great to be able to provide the service that I feel called to, in the same place that I call my spiritual home. I feel whole, in a way that I’ve never felt before.

My point in telling you all this is to encourage you to move beyond just attending worship and start providing a service that you feel at least a teensy bit of a calling to. Or, if you already giving service, first of all, thank you. And secondly, if you fee so called take a leap and try something you have never done before. I acknowledge that we’re all busy and it totally normal to resist giving up more of your time. Believe me, I’ve often had that feeling myself. But, I promise you that in providing service to others your life will be transformed, in ways big and small. And just as important as the transformation, your soul and the souls of those your serve, will be nourished.

Carolyn Gremminger

So, how is serving others transformational?

My path of service at First UU has transformed my relationship with our community: from being a consumer to being a co creator. My energy has been heightened. I now purposefully try to see how I can use my gifts to become an innovator in service here and how I can connect with others to enhance our church community, and its efforts to better serve Austin and our world.

As writer Thomas Moore has said, “this process is not so much something we do, as it is something done to us”

Of course, it is important that I am clear on my motivation and attitude.

I try to enter with an open heart and mind and create a loving, accepting place for others. This effort sometimes open up new avenues inside of me.

If I draw from my Source, my Ground of Being, this enables me to have more hope and energy

“We all have a unique gift of service to contribute, and with time and persistence, it becomes apparent, by finding that “sacred service” the work that helps others and nourishes ourselves, we find how to “begin with ourselves, but not end with ourselves”- Roger Walsh

I have found that service can be transformational, when done mindfully and intentionally. There is a joyful path of service, a conscious spiritual path.

Not out of a sense of obligation, or for the ego or personal gain, not attached to outcomes.

A specific commitment to care for a need in our circles of concern.

I would like to share an example of how I was a beneficiary of someone else’s apparent path of service. I was going through a biopsy procedure, a few years ago and I was very afraid.

I did not take anyone with me to the appointment at the Hospital.

A volunteer approached me in the waiting room, and asked if she could accompany me. I agreed.

The reason it was scheduled at the hospital was due to the fact that the area to be biopsied was close to my rib cage. I decided to be a brave solder, as usual, and did not accept my doctor’s offer of a local anesthetic.

The volunteer stayed right by my side. As the procedure went on, I came to understand my doctor’s offer. The pain was intense and I was obviously distressed. The volunteer held my hand as the doctor administered the anesthetic. Tears were rolling down my face…. I grasped my helpers hand and looked up at her through my tears and said “thank you” and I will never forget her response…”there is no where else I would rather be.

This happened years ago, and I have never forgotten it. I don’t know the lady’s name, and I would guess she is a cancer survivor. I have always hoped that her act of service helped her in some way. She surely helped me that day, and I was a total stranger.

It can be an inspirational path, in service of creation, done in gratitude and can result in a more joyful experience of life.

You might find that the people you are attempting to serve can help you, teach you things.

I can honestly tell you that I have been personally transformed by my path of service here at First UU.

When I first entered these doors 15 years ago, I felt pretty lost and isolated. I now have support on my spiritual journey in community. I feel at home here.

Being a lay leader has introducing me to people and ideas that have changed my life at a profound level. I see myself in a different way today, more confident and loved. My mind and heart have been opened to a whole new realm of possibilities and hope. I now know that I am a valued member here whose talents and presence are needed. It has truly been a life changing experience.

In our community, our tribe, in the crucible for the creative, to quote Meg’s recent sermon. I experience so much fun and meaning and I have made some really dear friends through service on the Board of Trustees, cochairing the Public Affairs forum and helping out with the theater group and gallery openings.

Together we have accomplished great things…I can’t wait til the next service opportunity!!!! J

First UU is a safe place to practice new skills.

You can risk failure and be ok. Grow from the risk, in a non shaming environment. You can take a leap of faith here!

We are all in need of caring and care at certain points in our lives.

One could ask the question, who is really being served?

My reality is that I receive so much more than I give.

There are so many ways to get involved in service work here both large and small, short and long term projects and efforts.

So, if you are interested, how can you find your calling, your “Path of Service”

You could ask yourself:

What makes me come alive? What causes am I passionate about? What energizes you? What is needed?

Be open to the gifts that service can give you. The Process open up new possibilities, talents, feelings, sensitivities, a new and profound sense of belonging. It can unearth a new identity.

What we do in this life matters, for ourselves, our loved ones, and the community at large…. We can help to build a “heaven on earth”.

So, what do you say friends, let’s all work together, to continue to build Beloved Community .

Thanks!

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.

Water Ceremony

September 10, 2017 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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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.

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.

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

From Eve to Us

August 13, 2017 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons, Video available

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Erin Walter
August 13, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Sexism and misogyny go way back, and challenging those oppressions can be a source of personal and spiritual growth. Why are UUs called to address sexism in ourselves, our churches, and our wider world? What simple or creative ways can people of all genders rise against misogyny in our daily lives? This sermon won the UU Women’s “Justice for Women and Girls” 2017 sermon award.

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.