Joseph Priestley was a scientist, philosopher, educator, and Unitarian minister. His positions forced him to flee his homeland for America. We will look at his life and contributions to our Unitarian history.
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The Youth of First UU Austin
Audrey Lewis, Max Wethington
May 19, 2013
The Sr. High Youth Group holds its annual youth service and holds a bridging ceremony. Bridging is a rite of passage celebrating the movement of our high school seniors into adulthood.
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We are living in an extraordinary time and many of us will see significant social progress within our own lifetime… struggles for justice have not been easily won. Join us as we look back in order to move forward.
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Evangelical minister Rob Bell, in his book, “Love Wins,” articulates the concept of God’s unconditional love, and he has been widely condemned for it by the evangelical community. Join us as we explore Universalism’s history and delve into why this idea still causes such an uproar.
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Welcome to First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin. Whether this is your first time or you’ve been coming all your life, we welcome you.
My name is Andrew Young. I have been a member of this church for five and a half years and for two and a half of those years I have been the Youth Programming Coordinator, which means that I am in charge of our middle school and high school youth programs. Although I am still in this role, I am entering into a new role as well. This Sunday marks the end of my first semester at Starr King School for the Ministry where I am pursuing a Master of Divinity degree in preparation for ordination as Unitarian Universalist minister.
Today’s service is a part of my final project for a class aptly named “History of UU Religious Practices” in which we’ve studied how our liturgy has evolved since the Puritans arrived in North America. The word liturgy refers to the rituals of the church, especially the structure and format of the Sunday service since that is the primary ritual of our church. As such, this service diverges somewhat from our normal Sunday service in both format and content and I apologize in advance for any confusion this might cause.
The elements of today’s service and the selection of its hymns are rooted in our Unitarian and Universalist traditions. The hymns are from a hymnal published in 1955 that was used by both the Unitarians and the Universalists before the two denominations merged. Our responsive reading is taken from a Unitarian hymnal published in 1907.
It is sometimes said that the work of religion is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Today’s service is sure to do both. We will deal with topics that may be uncomfortable for some of you due to your past experiences, and my intent is not to make light of or invalidate your feelings on these topics. We each bring our own experiences to the conversation and all I ask is that you keep an open mind and reflect on how each element of the service today affects you. Pay special attention to the words and phrases which trigger strong emotions for you, either positive or negative.
Now, as we begin our sacred time together, please join me in reading the words for lighting our chalice which are printed in your order of service.
Love is the doctrine of this church,
The quest of truth is its sacrament,
And service is its prayer
To dwell together in peace,
To seek knowledge in freedom,
To serve human need,
To the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine —
Thus do we covenant with each other and with God.
Invocation / Prayer
Please join me in an attitude of prayer.
La Eternulo estas mia paŝtisto; mi mankon ne havos.
Sur verdaj herbejoj Li ripozigas min, Apud trankvilaj akvoj Li kondukas min.
Li kvietigas mian animon; Li kondukas min laŭ vojo de la vero, pro Sia nomo.
Eĉ kiam mi iros tra valo de densa mallumo, Mi ne timos malbonon, ĉar Vi estas kun mi; Via bastono kaj apogiĝilo trankviligos min.
Vi kovras por mi tablon antaŭ miaj malamikoj; Vi ŝmiris per oleo mian kapon, mia pokalo estas plenigita.
Nur bono kaj favoro sekvos min en la daŭro de mia tuta vivo; Kaj mi restos en la domo de la Eternulo eterne.
Language is powerful. And yet, language is arbitrary. The words we use have no inherent meaning, only the meaning that we give to them. And yet, the words we use are still powerful because of that meaning. Dr. Zamenhof knew this well. In the 1880s he invented a language now called Esperanto, which you have just heard a sample of. Dr. Zamenhof grew up in a community that spoke four different languages, each with its own cultural heritage, and he saw how the differences in language created walls between members of the community. This was why he invented a language that didn’t belong to any single country or culture. He hoped that this language, with its lack of cultural and linguistic baggage, could help bring people together by lifting up their commonalities and rejoicing in their differences.
How does language affect the way you see the world? This is what I would like you to meditate on for the next few minutes whether you sit quietly or come to the window to light a candle. Take a moment to reflect on how you react differently to the Esperanto verse and its English equivalent.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Amen
Sermon
Like many members of our faith, I am a relatively recent convert to Unitarian Universalism. I was raised in a non-religious home, the son of freethinking parents who were the product of the cultural revolution of the 1960s. As a child I attended Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Mormon, Pagan, and Jewish services with friends and extended family, but I was always only an observer and never a believer because I couldn’t subscribe to the central ideas of these groups. I didn’t believe in magic or in a God that would condemn so many of my friends to eternal damnation despite how much good they did in the world. After high school I discovered Buddhism and I embraced its teachings because they didn’t require me to believe in a deity or in superstition. By the time I found the UU church I considered myself a staunch atheist and skeptic. When I say that I was an atheist, I mean literally an a-theist, that is one who does not believe in God. This is subtly but importantly different from one who believes there is not a God. I had no proof one way or the other, and I knew for sure that I didn’t believe in the God of the Christian fundamentalists.
When I began attending here I didn’t realize was how much negative baggage I had attached over the years to many of the words associated with the church. Words like God, divinity, ministry, faith, spirituality, salvation, and grace made me bristle, and in the UU church I found a place where I could be in ethical and moral community with others without the need to use such terms. I remember that soon after joining the church a friend of mine was explaining his Pagan religious beliefs to me. He told me that he used to be an atheist, but he had realized that there was more to life than that. He felt that there was something that connected all of us together, and he had found an expression of this belief in Paganism. I remember that at the time I thought his beliefs were silly and superstitious and I was glad that I had found a church that was more enlightened. His use of divine language, such as god, goddess, and even ritual, had built up a wall between us. If you asked me then if I believed in God, my immediate answer without hesitation would have been “no”. Not only that, I thought that discussing the idea of a god or goddess was silly superstition. What I didn’t know was that my own journey of faith was only just beginning and I was yet to learn the underlying theology and history of Unitarian Universalism.
You see, Unitarian Universalism is a faith with deep theological roots. We can trace our direct lineage to the colonial era when English dissenters journeyed to America in search of religious freedom. The church of England considered them heretics because they believed in ideas such as universal salvation – the belief that all people will be saved – and unitarianism – the idea that Jesus was not God, only a man. And even though the dissenters were a product of the enlightenment, the ideas they supported were much older, almost as old as the Christian church itself. For the majority of our history the members of our denomination have considered themselves Christians and have been at home with the language of divinity. However, for the last hundred years our vocabulary has shifted to the language of philosophy and morality. This shift began, to some degree, in the early 19th century with the transcendentalists and their focus on the inherent goodness of both people and nature. It continued in the late 19th century with the translation of the great religious texts of the world into English. But it didn’t really pick up speed until the late 1940s with the introduction of the Unitarian fellowship movement.
At the time the American Unitarian Association was trying to find ways to increase growth. They found that there were some people who were interested in Unitarianism who weren’t comfortable in a traditional church, so they began to sponsor Unitarian fellowships as alternatives to churches. Fellowships could be started with as few as 10 members and without any ordained clergy. They could also meet in people’s homes or in rented space. To increase the likelihood of their success, the American Unitarian Association targeted largely white communities which also had universities in them. Add to this the popularity of humanism among this particular demographic sparked in part by the release of the Humanist Manifesto in the 1930s and the result was a boom in small groups which were lay led, often highly educated, and largely humanist in nature. Hymnals written at the time began to include readings and hymns which lacked the traditional language of divinity. Over time these fellowships became larger and either merged with existing churches or became churches themselves. This led to a large increase in humanism in the Unitarian church as a whole as well as a steady decline in the use of religious language. So complete was the removal of religious language from the denomination that our statement of principles and purposes, often pointed to when someone asks what we believe in as Unitarian Universalists, contains no divine language at all, except for the word “covenant”.
This is why, when I joined the church, I felt so at home, so comfortable with the language used here. However, things changed as I began to apply what I was learning in church to the rest of my life. As I attempted to truly live my UU principles each day I noticed two interesting side effects. The first one was that I was less and less defensive when other people used divine language in my presence. My understanding of words such as “God”, “ministry”, and “faith” began to change and take on new meanings, thanks in part to a large number of younger UUs who were adopting this language as their own. I came to think of God as the best hopes and dreams in all of us and when others would speak about God, I realized they were speaking about the same basic ideas. This led directly to the second side effect: Other people began to comment on what a good Christian I was. The first time this happened it took me completely by surprise. For a split second I was insulted, but very quickly I recognized the comment for what it was: not a slur, but a compliment on how I lived my life. I came to realize that there was an entire group of Christians, really the silent majority, who cared more about doing good in the world and following the teachings of Jesus than about commandments, sin, and hell. I also realized that many devoutly religious people were speaking of God not as a literal man in the sky – like the one on the order of service today – but as a metaphor for that something greater that connects us all. My ability to tolerate the use of God language had changed my entire outlook not only on Christianity, but also on religion as a whole. The walls which I had built up began to be broken down.
What I came to realize is that I had been doing the same thing that the religious fundamentalists had been doing. I had been taking words such as “God” and “faith” and putting them into little boxes of meaning instead of letting their meanings expand to meet me where I was in my personal journey. I thought that “God” had to mean a physical being, and that “prayer” meant talking directly to that physical being. I thought that “faith” meant blind trust of what you’ve been taught and that “salvation” meant that you would go to heaven after you die. I’m sure that if I asked a group of UUs about these words, many of them would have similar reactions. Many of us have attached the baggage of our previous religious experiences to these words. We hear the word “sin” and we think of angry signs at a protest. We hear the word “ministry” and we think of groups giving bibles to villagers in other countries. But to many these words mean much more.
As a religious educator and a parent I have seen another side of this issue as well. Many UUs want to spare our children from the negative effects that words such as “sin” had on us when we were their age. We want to shield our children from closed minded zealots who spew hate and intolerance in the name of religion. But in doing so, we often rob our children of the power that comes from having a language to describe that which is so difficult to describe in our lives. If we taught our children that “God” refers to the great mystery of life or if we taught them that “grace” refers to those gifts that we receive simply by being alive, then they would be equipped with those words when events in their lives moved them to use language which embodied the awe and wonder of life more directly than our everyday speech does. Instead we have given that power to the fundamentalists by making sure that their definitions of these words are the only ones that our children will ever learn.
I’m not trying to influence you one way or the other about your personal belief in God. Instead, my goal is to make you think about why the word itself is so problematic for Unitarian Universalists. I think that one of the reasons is that many times when we are asked “Do you believe in God?” we are expected to give a yes-or-no answer to a very complicated question. I think another reason is that many of the popular concepts of God are so simplistic and confined that we resist forcing the indescribable spiritual intuitions of our minds and hearts into such a simple and narrow description. The real question is not “what do you believe?” but “In what do you have faith?” When all seems lost and darkness is everywhere, to what do you pray for salvation from the darkness? If you put your hopes out to the universe, then perhaps the universe is God. If you rely on the inherent goodness of all people, then perhaps that is God.
I knew that my understanding of God, and especially of the word God, had changed significantly when I was asked by a high school youth if I believed in God and I was able to honestly answer “yes”. Although I don’t believe in a personal God whom I am able to interact with, I do believe in a wonderfully complex universe and in the spark of the divine in every living thing. To me, this is God. My belief in God hasn’t really changed since I became a UU, but my participation in this church has helped me define it as something more than “I don’t believe in the God they believe in.” I still consider myself a rational skeptic who doesn’t believe in superstition, but what has changed is my relationship with the word God. Instead of shrinking away from it I embrace it as my own. And I am beginning to see the fruits of my labor.
This year my 9 year old daughter began attending Redeemer Lutheran School, a local private school that is a part of Redeemer Lutheran Church. When we first started looking at private schools for my daughter I was concerned because many of them are very conservative. We chose Redeemer because of its rigorous academic program, but it came with some possible drawbacks. Two of these are the weekly chapels and bible verse memorizations, but the more serious one is that the church which runs the school is a member of the Missouri Synod. For those of you who have never heard of them, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is the fundamentalist branch of Lutheranism in the US. It is balanced out by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Whereas the ELCA ordains gay clergy, the Missouri Synod doesn’t even ordain women. They hold to the fundamentalist stance of strict biblical inerrancy. I’m sure you can imagine why this concerned me.
When we interviewed the principal we were assured that they taught evolution and that they were tolerant of other faiths at the school. The principal told us that a Muslim girl had even been student body president a few years ago. When we spoke to my daughter’s teacher he told us that they had an atheist student the year before and enjoyed having conversations with him about religion, so we signed my daughter up and hoped for the best. All of my fears were swept away on the very first day of school. The kids all put together bags with objects in them which represented who they were. The idea was for the kids to try and guess which bag belonged to which child based solely on the things in the bag. Among the things my daughter placed in her bag was a chalice. When they made posters that told other students about their interests and hobbies, my daughter wrote “I’m a Unitarian Universalist” as the very first thing on the poster.
So far our experiences have been very positive. Even though I’ve attended every chapel service to make sure I can explain to my daughter any theological bits that I disagree with, so far I haven’t needed to. She is so completely grounded in her faith and so at home with words like God and prayer and salvation that she has instead often come to me to tell me how she disagreed with the sermon topic before I even had a chance to bring it up on my own. We often discuss how we as Unitarian Universalists can apply the teachings of Jesus to our daily lives while maintaining our own beliefs about God and the spark of the divine within all people. She even asked her prayer leader at school to pray for me when I was traveling on a business trip, not because she believes in a personal God who answers our prayers, but because she wanted to express her desire that I come home safely.
So what is the point of all of this? My sermon is titled “Is There a Place for God in Unitarian Universalism?” I believe that the answer to this question is yes, there is a place for God. There is at least a place for the word “God” regardless of what your personal beliefs are regarding the existence or non-existence of one or more particular deities. We need to bring the religious language of our predecessors back into our daily experiences and embrace that language. It isn’t the words themselves that we have a problem with, it is the meaning that others have assigned to them. If we take back these words we will regain a descriptive vocabulary which we desperately need in these trying times. My challenge to you today is to reevaluate your relationship with the language of divinity. I realize that many of you have been hurt by religious zealots using these words to spew hate, but I ask that you try your best to embrace these words and to make them meaningful in your daily lives. Doing so will rob those same zealots of the power that these words have given them.
Benediction
I will leave you today with a quote from the book, Fluent in Faith: A Unitarian Universalist Embrace of Religious Language.
“God is the voice or impulse calling us toward goodness, beauty, creativity, love, justice, growth. God is a mysterious impulse available to us, a too-often unheeded voice within me and you and all of life. This god calls and invites, prompts and lures, but it is up to us whether to respond. We are a part of an interconnected web of life in which each affects all. There is a sacred spark, a spiritual energy and power, in each of us. It matters what we do with our lives. The great, ultimately unnameable mystery of life is a call to goodness and love. As we choose love, decide for love, stand on the side of love, we are part of the growing god in the universe.”
I implore you to find ways to embrace religious language in your daily lives and to teach your families and others about your faith by using the language of divinity. Words only have meaning because we give them meaning. If we don’t give these words a deeper and broader meaning, if we aren’t comfortable using them to describe our faith, then they will always be used to rail against us and the walls between us and those of other faiths will continue to stand.
Go now in peace until we meet again. Amen.
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Kermit T. Frog’s famous ballad, “The Rainbow Connection,” has had a profound impact on my life, my theology, and my call to ministry. As I age, I have begun to recognize that Jim Henson’s words and characters have helped form so many of us in similar ways. This sermon will celebrate the wisdom of this unexpectedly prophetic man, who together with his puppets, continues to help change the world more than 20 years after his death.
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Albert Einstein was one of the great thinkers of the 20th century and knew a lot but said “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Our Unitarian Universalist religious tradition places great emphasis on the use of reason to interpret our experience to derive meaning in life. But the solutions to some of the most difficult intractable problems in our lives seem to lie beyond our experience and reason. This worship service will explore what possibilities could be open to us if we make imagination a bigger part of our religious life.
Rev. Brian Ferguson is currently serving in his third year as the Consulting Minister to the San Marcos Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Prior to serving at San Marcos, Brian completed a year of chaplaincy training at Seton Family of Hospitals in Austin, specializing in the areas of Intensive Care, Trauma, and Mental Health. He was honored to serve as the ministerial intern here, at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin, in 2008 and also the Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church in Cedar Park. Brian earned a Masters of Divinity degree from Starr King School for the Ministry, the Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley, California. His ministry is driven by the desire to explore and improve the human condition in an interdisciplinary and holistic way.
He is a native of Scotland but has lived in California since 1986 prior to moving to Austin in August, 2008. In his previous life, before attending seminary, he earned an applied physics degree from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, and worked for 24 years as an electronic design engineer and project manager. Brian is joined on life’s journey by his partner and our office manager, Natalie Freeburg, and nine year old daughter, Isla Ferguson.
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The Day of the Dead (El Dia de los Muertos) is a Mexican holiday that celebrates the lives and personalities of our loved ones who have died. In this inter-generational worship service we celebrate and remember loved ones (pets included) who have died. A congregational ofrenda (altar) honors their memory. We briefly share the name of the deceased and our relationship to them. We bring items to place on our ofrenda, such as a favorite food, drink, photograph or another item that represents who they were and what they loved in life.
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We pride ourselves in being open and affirming toward all, yet it seems many people still do not know of our existence. Why are UUs so shy about talking about where we attend church? This sermon challenges us to be more willing to share our faith.
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There has been much dialogue within our congregations and within our movement about working to become a more welcoming and a more multicultural/multiethnic faith. This is both exciting and challenging work that grows the humanity of all those who venture to undertake it with an open mind and in humility. What will this work require of those of us who are already here, in order to better welcome those who we’d like to join us? What will we gain and what must we sacrifice? What does it truly mean to be an ally to those who live as members of less dominant groups?
Sermon:
Good morning. I cannot express how thrilling it is to be in this pulpit! Each time I stand here, I remember standing here and delivering my first sermon as a twenty-year-old member of this congregation. It was part of a lay-led gay pride service that focused on the coming out process as a means of celebrating one’s authentic self. I remember using the then-recently released film, Pleasantville, as my text, of sorts, and compared shamefully hiding away parts of ourselves that we should be proud of to living in a black-and-white world, rather than in Technicolor. Through this experience, and with the encouragement of this congregation, I was able to listen to that still, small voice within me and uncover my call to ministry.
I first heard that whisper many months before, when I attended my first service here. One of the two Interim Co-Ministers, the late Rev. Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley, was leading service that day. Having grown up in conservative northern West Texas, I had never before laid eyes on a woman minister, let alone a woman of color minister! In fact, my little fellowship was too small to even have a minister, so I had no idea that Unitarian Universalists ordained anyone, and before me stood a role model whose existence was proof that I could bring my whole self into service of this faith that I love in a way I had never before imagined.
As I got to know Marjorie better over the years and she took me under her wing, she told stories of her difficult journey as a UU minister of color. She experienced sexism and racism within our ranks, most often in the form of the less tangible microagressions, than the easy-to-recognize acts of bigotry that make levelheaded, compassionate people recoil.
Microagressions are small acts that are done, often without thought or malicious intent, which serve to remind others that they exist outside of what is considered normal or acceptable. We have all born witness to various microagressions and, most likely, have uttered them ourselves without realizing it. A boy is told, “Stop being such a girl!” A woman, “Wow, who knew you could fix a flat tire!” A plus sized woman, “You know, you have a very pretty face.” A lesbian couple, “So, I guess she’s more of the man, right? And you’re the woman?” Or, “that’s funny, I couldn’t tell you were Chinese on the phone!” Or, “It’s so rude when you say things in Spanish with others when you’re hanging out with me.”
We would be hard-pressed to find a soul in this room that hasn’t had such an experience that made them feel diminished in some way, which made them feel as if they did not matter. When someone fails to see us as an individual person of worth, it has the effect of isolating everyone involved from recognizing our inherent connectedness. Just as we all can recall feeling diminished, we all have experienced pain. We all yearn to feel loved. We’ve known the joy of friendship and the agony of loss. We’ve all had hard days that we cannot wait to close the door on with a good night’s sleep. We all have known what it feels like to laugh so hard or to worry so much about someone that it hurts.
And yet, we have all been enculturated since birth to fear and judge those who are different from ourselves. I become so frustrated when I hear otherwise progressive folks lifting up the word “tolerance.” In my youth, I was so proud to be a member of the UU Fellowship of Odessa, TX, as its sign read “Freedom, Reason, and Tolerance.” But, as I grew into adulthood, & I began to notice more & more that the majority of Unitarian Universalists don’t look like me, tolerance sounded less and less appealing. Those who are tolerated do not fully have a place. Sure, blatant name-calling and the like are frowned upon with tolerance, but does that mean that tongues are being bitten? Maybe, maybe not. One who is tolerated is never certain.
As the “good liberals” who we are, we would like to think that we have moved beyond tolerance to acceptance. But have we, truly? It may be safe to say that many if not most or all of us would like to have greater diversity in our UU congregations. Most congregations, this one not withstanding, have a smattering of ethnic, gender, ability, and sexual diversity, but by and large, ours is still a predominantly a White, heterosexual, upper middle class, highly educated denomination. If we are accepting, why is this the case? Why are we not more diverse?
Acceptance is a tough place to come to. It requires intention and deep soul work to become a reality. We do not simply become accepting because we wish ourselves to be or because we believe ourselves to be. Because we are all taught racism, to varying degrees, (either by our families of origin and/or by our society that values as the norm European influence and culture and Whiteness as the standard of beauty and intelligence) as well as all of the other “isms” (sexism, heterosexism, ableism, ageism, classism, etc.) it takes deliberate time and energy to unlearn all that we have been taught, much of which has been buried deep in our wiring, where we keep the less cute parts of ourselves. We don’t usually expose these parts to the light of day for fear of judgment by ourselves & by others. Without taking the risk and doing this work in faithful community, of engaging in a remedial education of love, an increase of diversity will be a faade and we will be engaging in tokenism. We may gain the appearance of an accepting denomination but we will, in essence, be merely tolerant of difference.
Robert W. Karnan, UU minister to a church in Portmouth, New Hampshire that was able to grow in diversity through multiculturalism, writes similarly about the experience, “Inclusive Congregational membership means intentionally opening the doors and pews with a genuine welcome to all who come in goodwill. It means a natural concomitant fear among the existing members about the many unknown people who begin to sit next to and join them in worship with those who have been there a long time. We found that this is the frontier for confrontation with racism, class phobia, ageism, genderism, homophobia, and all other prejudices that we hold mostly privately just under the surface of our daily lives…”
How will we go about achieving an authentic celebration of difference? The answer must begin by stating that diversity, in and of itself, cannot be the ultimate goal absent from working toward ending oppression and becoming allies to one another. We have a spiritual imperative to end racism and other forms of oppression, to become allies to the marginalized. Doing this work helps us to grow more fully into our humanity. It recognizes the worth and dignity of every person and embraces our interconnectedness. Anti-racism and anti-oppression work, in general, requires us to look directly at ourselves and at others and do away with rhetoric which values “colorblindness” and ignoring difference. Joo Young Choi, a lifelong UU and friend I met through DRUUMM, a UU people of color organization, once addressed a 2005 UU youth conference with the following,
“Friend, if you wish to love me, do not be blind to my color, my sexuality, my abilities, my class. If you wish to love me, do not be blind to systemic oppression, and do not be blind to the oppression that has affected me. My color is beautiful.”
I have certainly experienced my share of racism in my life, not to mention my experiences of sexism, homophobia, and whatever the “ism” is called by which people from elsewhere negatively judge Texans. Within UU congregations, I often hear comments such as, “you don’t look like a Unitarian! You look like you’d be a Roman Catholic.” Or, “Wow! That was powerful! Do you write your sermons yourself?!” Or, “So, what part of Mexico were you born in?” (To that one I answer, “Texas- the northern part of Mexico.”) I’ve been mistaken for the Latina childcare worker after preaching and while standing in my robe! The list can go onÉ But, in doing this work, I have found that my stories are not unique. We have all been damaged by the continued existence of oppression. Our humanity has been tried and lessened. Our work begins by undoing these lessons and learning to become an ally, to be a community of allies to the historically marginalized, among us and outside of these walls.
There are many ways to begin this crucial work of becoming an ally. By increasing our awareness of culture and difference, we become more mindful- more mindful of our “attitudes, values, and assumptions.” We must examine our cultural “norms” and begin to become curious about how they came to be. I have a funny story about this from seminary: we were placing our snacks out before a Student Senate meeting when my friend, Dominique, a black woman, and I began teasing two of our white friends, Margaret and Jessica, about their dish. They had brought hummus and baby carrots. We pointed out the fact that at every meeting there was always sure to be a white girl who brought baby carrots and hummus. After the four of us had a good laugh, Margaret and Jessica gained an awareness of the reality and existence of white dominant culture and planned a seminary chapel service that explored whiteness further, calling it the “White Girls’ Chapel Service”. What began as a joke between friends, ended up bringing some healing and opening the eyes of all who attended the worship service.
So, to achieve the goal of diversity begins in anti-racism/anti-oppression but it must end in working toward multiculturalism, for diversity on its own is not sustainable without multiculturalism and multiculturalism cannot be built without the foundation of anti-oppression. The journey toward becoming truly welcoming to all, of becoming allies, is tough work, but it’s soul-feeding work. These subjects are easier not to talk about. This is work that requires courage to move beyond denial, guilt, shame, and apathy.
But, I wonder, what will our congregations look like when we arrive? How will we measure our success? Is there truly a destination, or should we view the journey as an ongoing process, forever growing our humanity? Rev. Paul Rasor says, “Liberals want to create a strong and inclusive community, but we often want to do it without giving up anything, without letting down the barriers we erect around ourselves in the name of individual autonomy.” Change can be a scary thing. But, if our church culture changes to more fully embrace multiculturalism, we need not change our core values, which is what makes us Unitarian Universalists. We won’t throw out all of the great old hymns or traditions, we will simply add to our repertoire. True multiculturalism does not recognize one culture as normative over any other, be it heterosexual culture, English-speaking, two-parent households, white, upper middle-class, gender normative, or able-bodied cultures, but it does embrace each as a rich and valuable member of the human family.
What do we have to gain? Karnan admits that, “An inclusive opening brings discomfort. The discomfort exists for those who are already members and it exists for the newcomer, tooÉ[but] the journey has meant that we speak more honestly & listen more carefully. It has meant the growth of the heart and the spirit of love to encompass more than the congregation has previously been willing to see & know. It has meant becoming a close friend to someone who ten years ago might have been avoided because of their identity or looks or presumed status. We have begun to remake our world, beginning with ourselves, and the transformation has been as liberating as it has been demanding.”
I look forward to engaging in this transformative, community building, justice ensuring; this holy work with this congregation this fall. We will laugh, cry, discover, and grow in spirit together as we strive to become better allies. May it be so.
Podcasts of sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
Sometimes we make things that are really not all that valuable more important than they really are. Paradoxically, sometimes we miss that the seemingly smallest of gestures can make all the difference. After spending this summer serving as chaplain at the largest level one trauma hospital in our area, these are among the many lessons I learned – sometimes the hard way, and sometimes through the humor and amazing resilience of others.
CALL TO WORSHIP
Come into the circle of caring,
Come into the community of gentleness, of justice and love. Come, and you shall be refreshed.
Let the healing power of this people penetrate you,
Let loving kindness and joy pass through you,
Let hope infuse you,
And peace be the law of your heart.
In this human circle,
Caring is a calling.
All of us are called.
So come into the circle of caring.
PRAYER
by Dr. Davidson Loehr
We pray to the angels of our better nature and the still small voice that can speak to us when we feel safe enough to listen.
Help us to love people and causes outside of ourselves, that we may be enlarged to include them.
Help us remember that we are never as alone or as powerless as we think. Help us remember that we can, if we will, invest ourselves in relationships, institutions and causes that transcend and expand us.
Help us guard our hearts against those relationships and activities that diminish us and weaken our life force.
And help us give our hearts to those relationships that might, with our help, expand our souls and our worlds.
We know that every day both life and death are set before us. Let us have the faith and courage to choose those involvements that can lead us toward life, toward life more abundant.
And help us find the will to serve those life-giving involvements with our heart, our mind and our spirit.
We ask that we may see more clearly in these matters, and that we have the will to hold to those relationships that demand, and cherish, the very best in us. Just that, just those.
Amen.
SERMON
Chris Jimmerson
“The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.”
That’s a quote from the Swiss Psychologist and Psychiatrist, Carl Jung. Many of the world’s wisdom traditions express similar ideas. The bible speaks of the simple treasures of the heart far exceeding in value those of the material world. Islam embraces modesty and talks of the meaning in doing for others. Many of the Eastern traditions emphasize compassion and the letting go of unnecessary attachments.
Anyway, I’ve always really liked that quote, and I had thought I understood it.
I found out this summer that I didn’t.
Not really. Not the way we understand things down deep in the gut; down in the cellular level; in the soul.
I spent this summer doing a unit of professional education for ministry students on pastoral care. I was assigned to a group of six other seminary students, 3 Episcopalians, a Presbyterian, a Catholic and a Muslim. Sounds like a setup for one of those jokes, doesn’t it? “Three Episcopalians, a Presbyterian, a Catholic, a Muslim and Unitarian Universalist are in a bar…”
Of course, since we were all ministry students that never happened. Much. OK, some of us, sometimes.
Anyway, we spent the summer learning together while serving as chaplains at local hospitals. I was assigned to Brackenridge Hospital, where I worked on a floor that provided care for people struggling with a number of illnesses. We were also required to take turns serving as the on call chaplain overnight, covering four local hospitals.
During on call shifts, our home base would be the little Chaplain’s sleep room down in the basement of Brackenridge Hospital. Some of my fellow students decided that the sleep room was haunted. Being a good, rationality-based, Unitarian Universalist, I secretly dismissed the notion, and did my best to ignore the inexplicable sounds that often startled me awake at 3 in the morning, uneasy and shivering in the little sleep room at the bottom of the hospital.
The day before my first on call shift, I was too slow to react while driving, and I a hit another car from behind. No one was hurt, but my car was damaged pretty badly and not driveable. We managed to pull the cars off the road into a parking lot and called for a police officer and a tow truck.
I was frettin’ – frettin’ about my car; frettin’ about how I was going to arrange for having something to drive for my upcoming on call shift; frettin’ about how much all of this was going to cost me!
But as we stood waiting together, the young guy who’s car I had hit asked me what I did for a living, and so I told him about being a seminarian. He said, “Oh, wow. Can I talk to you about something?”
And so that’s how it happened that I ended up in a parking lot off North Lamar Boulevard, standing around in 103 degree heat, leaning against my wrecked car, providing pastoral care for the guy who’s car I had just crunched.
I suppose it was the least I could do.
The funny thing was, after listening to him for that time, my wrecked car seemed the least of things to worry about.
By the way, though I have tried to keep the essence of the stories I am telling you today intact, I am changing enough details to protect the privacy and identity of those involved.
The next morning, I arrived at the hospital in my freshly acquired rental car at 8 am. My pager went off immediately, calling me to the emergency room. When I got there, a woman was lying on a stretcher, holding the body of her 21-year old daughter. The daughter had just died from injuries she sustained during a car wreck in which the mother had been driving. The mother’s sorrow filled the air and for a while it was all there was left to breathe.
Over the next five hours with her and the other family members, there were no words that would console the inconsolable. The only thing anyone could do was just to stay with them in their grief.
And yet, somehow, families hold each other; and tell their stories; and hold tightly to the love that exists between those who survived; and begin the process of honoring the memories of those who have been lost; and somehow they pick themselves up and leave the hospital and find a way to go on with their lives. Their stories continue, including those of the ones that were lost. It is a testament to courage and resilience of the human spirit that defies even the tragic – that overcomes even great loss.
Later that day, I went down to the sleep room, and I called my partner, Wayne, and I said, “I need you to stay on the phone with me while I cry.” He did. I love him so much.
You see, that little chaplain’s sleep room in the basement of the hospital is haunted. It is haunted with memories so strong, losses so profound, yet courage, love and the will to live on so boundless, that they awaken you at three in the morning and demand to be heard.
But, you know, somehow, so often, we miss the things that really matter. Instead, we make “the greatest of things” out of the stuff that is not really important at all.
In fact, some of the things to which we assign such meaning are actually almost comical if you really think about them. For example, here are just a few things we make way more important than they really are – that when you really think about how much meaning they truly have, are the least of things:
Most church budget battles;
Anything having to do with “reality” television;
What the neighbors think of our car, house, clothing, etc.
U.T football. (Don’t throw things at me. I enjoy it too.)
Most of the material things in our lives.
Don’t get me wrong; I know we love our iPads and Priuses. I do too, and to a certain extent enjoying them is great. But we also have to remember what truly brings us comfort and joy and meaning and beauty.
And that’s where a paradox about the least of things comes in. There are things that can seem so small and so unimportant, yet they can be so meaningful, so powerful, so life-giving – a kind word, a loving gesture, the friend who shows up to visit us just when we need them, prayer.
I know. I know. As UU’s, we often shy away from prayer, and yet, as a chaplain, I was often called upon to pray with people and to do so in religious language that you might never hear in a Unitarian Universalist church.
And I saw prayer calm the disturbed, bring peace and hope to families experiencing great loss and release the tears that allowed people to finally express their grief so that they could begin to reclaim hope.
Here is one example. Late one evening, I was called to the room of a woman who was too distraught to sleep. She had just made it through a protracted legal battle to regain custody of her children from an abusive husband, only to be diagnosed with leukemia.
We talked for a while, and she shared both tears and laughter. Finally, she asked if I would pray for her. I asked her what she would like me to pray for. She answered for God to be with her children.
And so, we prayed the prayer she needed, together.
At the end of the prayer, she squeezed my hand and said, “I think I can go to sleep now.” Later, she said that it was the first time she had slept through the night in months. Later, she looked at me one day and said, “You know, I’m starting to be able to laugh and tell jokes with my kids again.”
It might seem counterintuitive, but that’s another of those seemingly little things that can be so meaningful — humor. So often, humor can bring light into the darkest of situations; bring humanity to people who had been feeling as if they had become their disease.
During the summer, I got to know an older gentleman who was in for surgery to remove a non-malignant mass attached to his brain. We had talked several times before his surgery. He had expressed his fears about it and talked with me about some decisions he had made in his life that he regretted.
The afternoon after his surgery, I saw him walking around in the hallway with the help of a physical therapist. He smiled, pointed at the stitches on his head and said, “Hey look chaplain, they say I can go home tomorrow — the new brain fits just fine.”
Before I even thought about it, I laughed and said, “Well, I hope it works better than the last one did.” Luckily for me, we had formed a relationship that already included humor, so he returned the laugh!
There are so many of those little things that can matter so much, but what it seems to always come down to is loving presence. It always comes back to relationship – to love for one another and the sacred and fragile web of existence of which we are part.
One Sunday, I brought a young woman back to the Intensive Care Unit to see her younger brother. He had just died as the result of an accident at his summer. She had fought with him before he left for work that morning and needed to say her goodbyes and seek forgiveness before the rest of the family would get there. As we stood by his bed and she spoke the words she needed to say to him, she suddenly turned and placed her head on my shoulder, cupped a hand over each of my shoulders and collapsed her entire weight onto me. I hadn’t expected this, and it was as if her body had suddenly become a stone weight and her overwhelming grief was pouring into me though the tears she was shedding on my shoulder.
In that moment, I thought I would collapse too. That I didn’t have the strength, and that we were both going to fall down in great puddles of sorrow on the cold tile floor of that room in the ICU.
But we didn’t. Somehow, the experience was as if something was holding me up, so I could keep holding her up. Rebecca Ann Parker, one of our UU theologians, calls this an “upholding and sheltering presence” that is “alive and afoot in the universe”. Others might simply call this God. Still others might say that it’s some sort of a bio-psychological reserve built deeply into our DNA that helps us help others survive so that our species can go on.
I’m happy just to dwell in the wonder and awe and mystery. I am just grateful for it.
I think that it has everything to do with love.
That young woman was eventually able to go on, not because of anything I or anyone else did, but because there was love in that room that Sunday — love that transcends everything else; love that upholds us; love that we carry with us always and that is simply present. It is there, and we can find it in the least of gestures, the fewest of words, the silences we share when there is nothing to be said, and yet we stay connected with each other nonetheless. Simple, loving presence can be the least of things and yet the most meaningful of things.
It is where we find purpose — a comforting hand on the shoulder, a kind word, a meal for an ailing neighbor, just remembering to say “I love you” before leaving the house in the morning; these are where we ultimately find meaning. These are the things worth more in life.
For all I know, that loving presence with each other and within all of life and creation is the place where, in the end, we find beauty and truth and joy. For all I know, it is where God lives.
Amen.
OFFERING
We all have so many needs-
A thousand prayers-a thousand needs–
That really need only one answer:
Let the world not be indifferent.
And may we live and be with
each other in the way that
shows this truth whatever the day brings:
That neither are we indifferent to each other.
BENEDICTION
As we go forth today, I wish you love.
And even more so, I wish you the courage to love and to love deeply.
Let us live it in the smallest and the greatest of ways. Let us always be asking ourselves, “what would it look like if we were to truly live love?”
All blessings upon you and yours.
Go in peace and love.
Amen
Podcasts of sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
We have a lovely mission for our church and it is the result of a tremendous amount of work! Now that we’ve had it on our walls for a couple of years, let’s take a deeper look at what these words say about who we are and what we believe.
“We gather in community to nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice.” The mission of First UU Church of Austin, TX
Such fine words! When our leadership set out to create this mission two years ago we listened to the whole congregation. We gathered hundreds of ideas and thousands of words that people gave as their dreams for the work of our church. And then we sifted, sorted, and winnowed out the most salient ones and worked them into our mission. They are a powerful vision of what we believe, and who we hope to become. And, if we look carefully they reveal some important ideas that we might not otherwise articulate.
And articulating is the whole point of a mission. Here’s a little bit of the back-story. A few years back it was determined that no one was clear about the mission of our church – the reason we all keep showing up here. And, without a shared mission some folks were unclear of what was helpful and was distracting us from our larger purpose.
Larger purpose – a reason bigger than, but inclusive of, each one of us.
Yes, there was a wonderful mission statement that had been drafted almost a decade earlier, but after the initial work it was lovingly placed in a secure location and never looked at again. That is how mission statements don’t work. Some wondered if we could just take the old one and dust it off, but wiser folks explained that it’s not like sourdough and it’s better to start from scratch each time. So, that is how we wound up conducting a series of workshops and exercises that resulted in page after page of beautiful words to work with.
Then one fine spring day the church board, our interim minister, and a wonderful consultant all holed up in a room with these pages and began the process of finding out what was important. What were we doing that was bigger than, but inclusive of, each one of us? We looked at examples from other churches. Some were really, really detailed, but we decided to keep ours short enough to fit into one sentence. Something you could carry around easily. There were many, many drafts, but it wasn’t a sausage-making process of argument and compromise. It was something far sweeter and exciting. And, once these words coalesced we collectively stopped and I think a few of us gasped. I know I got tears in my eyes because when I saw them all together, I saw us, this congregation. It was cool.
These words are powerful. And this time we were not going to let them out of our sight! We made sure that they would be in common usage, and someone saw fit to put them up on the walls. Now, let’s see what they say.
First off — we are agreeing to be in community. Even if we believe that each person is tasked with creating a personal theology we are still coming together in community. In Community is where the richness our many voices form a chorus of experience. In Community is how a potluck feeds a multitude. In Community, we can hold one another in times of joy and sorrow and hold one another accountable to our highest aspirations. There are some things that you just can’t do by yourself, no matter how beautiful your theology. Despite assorted statistics that suggest church membership is a quaint old habit on the decline in the US, we are bucking the trend and coming together as a church community!
Now, let me jump ahead and look at the middle part. We have charged ourselves with the work of “transforming lives”. This indicates that we feel that change is possible within a human life. We are not predestined, fixed, beyond help, or already perfect. Lives can be transformed. Maybe even our lives. Granted, we didn’t specify if we will transform lives for the better or worse! But I suspect that we aim to improve.
This speaks of an optimism that presumes progress is possible and that things can get better with intentional work. And we are indicating that this is work that WE will do — instead of waiting for a force outside us or above us to sprinkle transformation powder down upon us. And notice that we’re not doing this work in the aim of redemption or connecting ourselves to something from which we were disconnected by sin or failure or simply birth.
However, note that we stop with just the lives — we are not offering to help with any afterlife activity one might engage in. This is straight up, classically optimistic Humanism with no need for anything supernatural. We have the power and, some would say, the duty to transform lives
Now, let me go back to where we announce that we intend to nourish souls. Two words. Big Ideas. We are being bold here in stating that there are such things as souls and they require nourishment — AND that we will attempt to provide this nourishment! Now, let’s skirt around a few fiddly details about souls and any afterlife (again, we’ll stick to this life) — and acknowledge that if we use the word “soul” it is setting us apart from strict Humanists, who would place the use of reason and development of the human personality above all else. We are saying that we will feed something more than just our minds. And we believe that our community can be a source for this nourishment. It won’t just fall out of the sky upon a deserving few. From what I’ve seen around here, nourishing souls seems to be an active process using poetry, music, and ritual to feed and comfort in times of celebration and crisis.
Nourishing souls! This kind of talk can still get you tossed out of plenty of UU pulpits! In making this statement, we place ourselves among the contemporary UU’s who are reclaiming spiritual language and creating a place for such discussions in our church. We are still a little new at this and I suspect that we don’t have a good working definition of “soul” that everyone agrees on. But the fact that we are ready to use this word and do this work is a big step into a broader theology. Really. It’s big. Y’all are brave and bold.
We will “Do Justice”. This is biblical talk here! Straight from Micah 6:8. But I suspect we were just channeling that unconsciously —
He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?.”
Yeah… we’re probably not ready to go that far… And, yet, there is electricity in these words! “Do Justice!” They indicate that we are aware of injustice, and intend to do something about it. We won’t wait for an afterlife for fairness to be meted out, or wait for Karma to tidy up this mess. Instead, we will strive to discern just from unjust — it’s not always as easy as it sounds — and then attempt to be part of the weight that bends the arc of time towards justice.
Nourish souls, transform lives, do justice. Great words. There were some good words that wound up on the cutting room floor — sacred, beauty, love, nature. They were sprinkled in among all the words we received from folks, but they didn’t show up with the frequency of the others.
Here’s a word that didn’t make it up there: TRUTH. I think it did show up a couple of times – generally in the familiar phrase “free and responsible search for truth and meaning” that is one of our UU principles. But for the most part “truth” did not feature heavily. Why is that? I don’t know for sure, but I have my personal favorite theory. It goes like this – and, I’m sorry, but I have to bring up Postmodernism to get there – but here goes.
I suspect that many of us have let go of the notion that there is such a thing as a pure, unchanging, universal Truth. Even the idea that one-plus-one-equals-two really only works if you are measuring discrete objects. You already know that one drop of water plus another drop of water makes one fatter drop of water! So, I suspect that we are no longer in pursuit of a solid, lovely, singular and fixed, capital “T”, Truth.
But, we’re also probably not falling into the nihilism or relativism that is the dark side of Post-modern thought. That would be the idea that since there is no single Truth, that there is no truth at all. That doesn’t feel quite right either. Instead, I suspect that we are wandering into the Alter-modernist (oh yeah… I’m in grad school) the Alter-modernist understanding of Truth as a multi-faceted, shimmering thing that can only be appreciated from many angles and through many voices. And this gets us back to why we are gathering in community!
And there were some words that never showed up in the first place because they simply are not part of our collective theologies. Those were words like suffering, mercy, repentance, or judgment. We don’t find redemption in suffering or feel the need to repent in order to live our lives fully.
Oh, and there was one other word that made a couple of appearances, but not enough to register. It’s BODY. We didn’t think to include our bodies up there. That’s probably okay for now. I suspect they are implied. But I can’t be sure… Just in case, I’m bringing mine along…
The Magic of I Am (you fill in the blank). Inspired by the Harry Potter book series, this sermon delves into the pensieve of words we use to describe ourselves.
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Bringing Justice Home from General Assembly. FUUCA members Gillian Redfearn, Mike LeBurkien, Judy Sadegh, Carolyn Gremminger & Peggy Morton share their General Assembly experiences and human interest stories from immigrants, undocumented workers, undocumented children, and UUs around the nation who are working for Social Justice.
Gillian Redfearn
I don’t want to assume that you all know what General Assembly is and so I won’t. General Assembly, also known as GA, is the Unitarian Universalists’ annual meeting. It is attended by thousands of UUs and is held in cities all across the United States. This year’s GA held in Phoenix, a decision which had been made some years ago, left many of us wondering how could we possibly go to Phoenix in light of its anti-immigrant laws, best known as the Arizona Senate Bill 1070, put into place in 2010. BUT IN TRUTH, HOW COULD WE NOT GO TO ARIZONA?! It was our opportunity to live our UU faith, live our UU principles, make a difference and most importantly, understand what doing justice really means. This GA, in fact, quickly became identified as the Justice Assembly. It was an opportunity to learn from, partner with and support the many groups and individuals whose daily work, seven days a week, is for the greater good of all people.
There are so many organizations hard at work in Arizona and some of those organizations include the ACLU, ALEC, Grassroots Leadership, National Day Laborers Union, Amnesty International, Puente Arizona, American Progress, and No Mas Muertes.
In coordination with these many groups and during GA, the UUs decided to hold vigil at the local Phoenix prison and it was this vigil that most made me want to attend this year’s GA. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the Phoenix prison, but it is rather infamous and is best known as America’s toughest jail or Sherriff’s Appaio’s tent jails, where 1,000 plus undocumented people are being held for no REAL crime. This place resembles a concentration camp, even Sherriff Appaio describes it as such. There is no a/c in a place where temperatures can be as high as 118 degrees, meals are only served twice a day, and medical attention is often denied. The tent jails were established in 1993 when Sherriff Appaio decided to use tents acquired at a surplus sale after the Gulf War, rather than add on to the existing building, seemingly a cheap solution. Since then approximately 138,000 people have passed through these tents and approximately 150 people have died there.
Every night in Phoenix at the prison, a small group of people hold a vigil for those held in those tents, probably in many cases, their own family and friends. On the evening of Saturday night, June 23rd, we were able to add to their support in a BIG way. Approximately 2,000 of us, many of us wearing our “Standing on the Side of Love” t-shirts, boarded school buses and were driven to the prison to stand with these people. For the “regulars” at the prison, it must have been quite a sight to see as bus after bus arrived and dropped off 100s of people, then leaving again only to return with even more people.
For two hours, we stood together, peacefully, singing songs and chanting words of support that we hoped and believed could be heard by those locked up inside. The experience of standing with so many people who share your core beliefs is a rare one and it touched me greatly, but what I most remember about the vigil is the gratitude of the “regulars.” As we reloaded onto the buses, they thanked us at large and in many cases, thanked us individually. One woman, in particular, and I made eye contact and I noted that there were tears running down her face as she said, “Gracias. Thank you.” I was so sad in that moment, but I have to believe that our presence brought a renewed energy and hope, but at the very least, that they, the inmates, the families, the Phoenix Latino community, know that they have support outside their own communities and that we, who do not suffer the same injustices, are aware of theirs. I hope and pray that we can live up to the call to “do justice. “
Judy Sadegh
I am Judy Sadegh and I have attended GA several times in the past, but this Justice GA was a very special experience for me.
Describing GA is almost as challenging as trying to decide one’s schedule from all the programs offered from 7am to 11pm during the four and a half days of the conference. It is really unique for each individual as I think you will hear today. If you would like to get a better picture of the entire experience, you can see and hear many of the sessions on the UUA website.
Daily worship services were inspiring and the music was wonderful. There were a lot of new songs introduced, but it is also amazing how great our familiar hymns sound with 3000+ UUs singing together.
Every day we heard stories from members of the partner organizations in Phoenix about the hardships people suffer there. We heard of children afraid parents would not be able to pick them up from school, of parents afraid to go out or send their children to school after hearing about issues going on in the community.
One family’s story especially affected me. Maria’s mother came to the US with her young son before Maria was born. Last year the mother was stopped because of a burned out taillight, detained and deported as a result. Maria remained in Arizona with an aunt and finished high school. She spoke to us of her sadness that her mother could not attend her graduation. Maria is very close to her brother and his family, but she fears that he will be deported, as well. Maria’s sister-in-law spoke while holding her young toddler of the fear that her husband would be deported. He had an opportunity to go back to Mexico to try to get a Visa. However, he was told that it might take a year before he got an answer and there was no guarantee that he would be able to return. He decided to stay in Phoenix so that he could participate in his daughter’s early years. Although the stated policies of ICE and the administration focus on deporting criminals and dangerous individuals, the reality is that families are being torn apart and individuals who have lived peacefully in our communities for many years are being swept up and sent back to countries where they are no longer familiar.
In my recent reading I came across a quote from Max Frisch, a Swiss playwright which struck a note with me. In 1965 when guest worker programs were starting in Europe, he wrote, “We called for workers, and there came human beings.” May we never lose sight of the fact that we are all human beings, documented or undocumented.
Carolyn Gremminger – Exposing For Profit Incarceration
One of the talks that hit close to home was on For Profit Incarceration and Detention Centers.
I am reminded by our Principle that all people have inherent worth and dignity, not just some, not just the documented..
The talk focused on Corporations that profit from the detention of undocumented people. They treat this population as profitable new market. The Industry lobbies for and drafts harsh anti-immigration legislation. The owners profit from the suffering of others. They exploit inmate labor by contracting with outside corporations, paying the inmates roughly 40 cents an hour.
In my mind, this is exploitation. I hope it is in your mind, too. I learned that the facilities are often sub par for both the incarcerated and the staff, while the owners profit enormously. Security is lax and there is very limited governmental oversite of their operations.
Corporations should not be allowed to profit from the incarceration of Human Beings.
What can we do?
Visit the website: Grassrootsleadership.org. Attend Teach in at First UU on Saturday, August 4, at 6pm.
Contribute to organizations working to stop incarceration and detention for profit.
Get educated.
Join other faith based organizations in the opposition.
Make Family members and friends aware of this issue
Talk with elected officials.
Strive for a more accountable and humane Criminal Justice System.
Peggy Morton
Hello, I’m Peggy Morton and I’m you’re new Social Action Chair, and I bet you can guess why I was attracted to attending my first GA, it’s Justice Theme.
Now, I’d like for you to imaging these snippets of stories you’ve just heard, multiply that times 25 and that’s how my head was spinning the the third night when we heard Keynote speaker Maria Hinojosa, who you may know from her NPR Radio program Latino USA.
After having been an undocumented student and worker, she eventually became an American citizen and one day when she was talking about illegals, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Ellie Wiesel said “Don’t say that.” and asked “Why do you call them illegals?”
When we get a speeding ticket, you don’t hear anyone call us illegal drivers. Lou Dobbs first call them illegals like the Nazis had called Jews illegals. I left GA with the new language of calling them undocumented workers, undocumented students or undocumented children.
Another lesson I learned at GA was that I had to travel to Arizona to connect with fellow Austin UUs, not only from our church but also our other Austin UU churches Live Oak in Cedar Park & Wildflower in South Austin.
We returned and joined forces to work with Austin immigrant rights and labor worker rights groups to protest in front of Sheriff Greg Hamilton’s office July11 because he gives Immigration Customs Enforcement officers 24-7 access to our Travis County jails, which is why we have one of the highest deportation rates of non-criminal undocumented workers in our nation.
At the rally, we heard a local undocumented female student tell about being picked up for J-walking and held at Travis County taxpayer expense in jail for 4 days. Yes, for a misdemeanor J-walking offense she served time. She’s not being deported, she’s a law abiding student.
I appreciate all of you here today listening to our stories because just hearing what’s happening in our own city can be heart-wrenching and for many of you that in it’s self is major, but for those of you wondering what you can do, I hope you’ll join me as our Social Action committee adds immigrant rights to our mission to do Justice.
Next weekend we will host 30 members of the National Day Labor Organizing Network, who are traveling across the country to tell their stories. They’re traveling on the UndocuBus and they say “No papers, no fear” to put a spotlight on the dehumanization that’s taking place in our country. They will roll out sleeping bags in Howson Hall Friday night through Monday morning and you’re welcome to sign up to help us feed and host them.
We also want to invite you to join us and our guests as we head over to Sheriff Hamilton’s office again next Friday at noon to stand behind our Standing on the Side of Love banner and work to convince the sheriff that he doesn’t have to keep giving ICE 24-7 access to our jails. We want to build trust between our law enforcement officers and our community.
On Saturday, I hope you’ll attend the TeachIn that Carolyn told you about and then next Sunday before the Worship service, please come to a casual meet and greet breakfast in Howson Hall eat tacos and visit with our guests personally to get to know them as fellow humans.
We will also have future opportunities to learn what we can do to stop the dehumanization because we must return to civility as we recognize the worth and dignity of all people.
After the service today, our group will line up as usual outside the sanctuary, except for me because I’ll head to the Social Action table in the gallery to visit with you, give you flyers about our planned activities and tell about how you can help us host the UndocuBus travelers.
If you want to join our grassroots effort, please visit with me at our Social Action table to see how you can join the good fight with the Power of Love.
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker’s lecture “Standing on Holy Ground” can be found on our iTunes podcast. Podcasts of sermons are also available for free on iTunes. Click here.
