A Prophetic Liberal Religion

February 28, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Guest Speakers, Sermons, Video available

Chris Jimmerson

February 26, 2011

Both the Unitarians and the Universalists have a long history of prophetic ministry – speaking truth in the public square and, perhaps more importantly, taking action on social issues. From Michael Servetus espousing an early Unitarianism in the 16th century through the Prophetic Sisterhood of the late 19th and early 20th century, to the Unitarian Universalists (UUs) publishing the Pentagon Papers in the mid-20th century, UUs, though not always unified, have a long tradition of being at the forefront of social change and carrying our values into the world. Will we continue that tradition into the 21st Century and beyond?

How many Unitarian Universalists does it take to change a light bulb?

We’re not sure. The Lighting Technologies Study Team of the Clean Energy Options Working Group of the Green Our World Starting Here and Now Task Force of the Facilities and Grounds Committee hasn’t issued its report and recommendations yet.

You may have heard other variations on this or similar jokes, all on the theme that we UUs can sometimes seem to talk, study, argue, debate, disagree, discuss and “400 plus pages written report” things to death.

It’s not that doing our due diligence, making sure we understand the issues or working through our differing viewpoints isn’t a necessary part of it; it’s just that we (and pretty much all liberal religious groups) have been accused of getting so caught up in our mental gymnastics that we never actually end up doing much about whatever the issues might be. Those 400 plus pages can end up in a file somewhere.

But that’s certainly not always true and it never has been. Even before the merger of the Universalists and the Unitarians, the Us and the Us had often acted as prophetic liberal religions. As our Unitarian Universalist training curricula A People so Bold says it, prophetic religion is “religion that is on the cutting edge, reading the signs of its times, creating a just and loving community in its midst, and advocating passionately for a better world”.

In 16th century Europe, even the very idea of believing in a Unitary God was prophetic and could get you branded a heretic and burned at the stake. And don’t even try for universal salvation! They’d have just added more dry wood to the fire.

In America, early Unitarians and Universalists were among the first to work for improved education, provide charity for the poor, ordain female clergy, call for emancipation and work for women’s suffrage.

Later, after the merger in 1961, this prophetic spirit would continue, with UU participation in environmental issues and in the fight for racial justice, sexuality and gender equality, political and religious freedom.

To be sure, our efforts historically have never been perfect or unified – at no point have either of our Us ever managed to be in complete agreement about anything. However, there is little doubt that overall we have a history of being at the forefront of social issues.

Any yet, as I mentioned earlier, liberal religion can run the risk, sometimes, of intellectualizing more than engaging the core issues. Due at least in part to our roots in the Enlightenment, we tend to focus on the individual as rational and self-determining rather than place our “being” within our connections to others and the web of existence. We see the INDIVIDUAL bigots, the individual abusers, the individual classists and so on, but we don’t as often see the underlying societal structures that perpetuate the oppressive behavior. We focus on the individual victims and not entire cultures, races, classes and other groups that are being systematically subjected to injustice.

For example, let me share some questions I have been asking myself. In the past few years, how often have I given canned goods or the like to the food pantry or the homeless shelter but done little to speak out against the social conditions that force people to live on the streets and go hungry in the first place? I wonder — how many of us recycle, conserve and work to reduce our own environmental impact, yet remain largely silent as our government subsidizes businesses that do far more damage?

How often have we written checks or volunteered for the non-profit clinic, the shelter for battered women, the halfway house for recovering addicts or any other of a number of non-profit groups and then returned to the security of our own homes and lives without having to really consider –what is creating the need for these service agencies to begin with?

Now, I am going to pause for a moment of liberal religious guilt. OK, that’s long enough — because these acts of care and service really are vital and needed and wonderful and necessary and a part of creating the world we seek as UUs. But I believe there is another arena of action required if we hope to really make change. And that’s where living our prophetic religious tradition comes back in.

Will we really be “a people so bold”?

Will we volunteer at the immigrant assistance non-profit AND rally against the economic imperialism that is so often at the root of migration in the first place? Will we join forces with oppressed groups and their organizations to demand and work for change? Will we proclaim our liberal religious principles in the public square? We will do so even if it raises questions about our own middleclass privilege?

The President of our religious movement got himself arrested protesting an unjust immigration law in Arizona. Personally, I say, “more of that!” I believe there has never been a time that so cried out for us to assume the mantle of prophetic religion with renewed vigor and purpose.

Because we are losing our democracy.

Because we are killing our planet.

Before you diagnose me with “hyperbolic propensity syndrome”, allow me just a few minutes to explain why I do not think these are overly dramatic statements. Since the economic crash of 2008, economics professor Edward N. Wolf’s ongoing research revealed that wealth inequality in the United has actually increased even more sharply. The top 1% of wealth owners in the U.S. hold about 40% of all of our wealth; the top quintile hold almost 90%

Other research has found that wealth inequality is highly correlated with power inequality and political corruption. Further, such wealth inequality and corruption form an escalating cycle that threatens the viability of democratic government – wealth inequality begets corruption begets greater inequality begets greater corruption and on and on and on, until only the illusion of democracy remains.

In the U.S., fewer and fewer people own greater and greater percentages of corporate stocks, and corporations are amassing greater and greater power. After the recent Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited spending by corporations and other groups outside the political parties, spending by these groups totaled 135.3 million dollars in the 2010 elections – outside conservative groups spent 119.6 million, while outside liberal groups and unions spent 15.7 million.

Conservative politicians did somewhat better than did liberals, you might recall.

In reaction, democratic groups plan to try to match outside spending by conservatives in 2012. To do so, they too will rely on corporate wealth. By mid-February of this year, the presidential candidates and their Superpacs had already spent in excess of 69.6 million dollars. A recent study found that 30 of our largest companies now spend more on lobbying than they pay in federal taxes.

Wealth inequality begets corruption begets greater inequality. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Listen to what a Republican congressional staffer, who recently retired in disgust after almost 30 years has to say. Republican operative, Mike Lofgren states, quote — “Both parties are rotten – how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money?… Both parties are captives to corporate loot.” End quote.

We are losing our democracy. Democracy is a core element of our religious principles — all that we as UUs value.

More and more, we face an Orwellian political system that promotes and affirms the inherent worth and dignity of the few over the many. We cannot hope for justice, equity and compassion if we allow our democratic process to be subverted in this way. There can be no peace, no liberty, no justice when such vast inequality is allowed to exist and increase.

But this unrestrained economic disparity of power is potentially even more destructive, even more threatening.

In their fascinating and sobering book, Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril, editors Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson bring together essays written by people from throughout the world. With wisdom and expertise that varies from the scientific to the spiritual, they make a compelling case that any sense of ethics requires our immediate action on global climate change. They also paint a terrifying picture regarding the consequences of failing to act, such as:

Already, 40,000 people per week die of hunger-related illness worldwide. As global temperatures continue to rise, this is likely to get worse. 33 million acres of Canadian forest have died because it no longer gets cold enough in winter to kill the beetle that is killing the trees.

High-altitude glaciers that provide much of the drinking water in Asia, Latin America and the American West are disappearing. The U.S. Park Service estimates that by the year 2020, there will no longer be any glaciers in Glacier National Park.

The Great Barrier Reef may well be lifeless within two decades. Fifty percent of the world’s animals are in decline. One quarter of mammals face potential extinction, including elephants, humpback whales, gorillas, tigers and polar bears.

We have effectively ended the Holocene era of our planet, into which human civilization arose and during which countless life forms evolved and flourished. We have replaced it with an era of human-caused extinctions.

There is already no chance that we will leave to future generations, our children and grandchildren, a world as rich with life and possibility as the one we inherited.

We are quickly finding out that our 7th principle, that we affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part, goes much deeper and is much more sacred than we may have known – that our free and responsible search for truth and meaning can only exist within and through that web, not separately — not purely as individuals, but instead in communion with one another and with all that exists on this beautiful blue planet and beyond.

So, what more can we do? How do we sustain ourselves and have hope when the scientific predictions seem so huge, so overwhelming.

We can begin by realizing that the things I’ve mentioned that we are already doing are vital and must continue. The services and social action programs Unitarian Universalists are providing, both here in the U.S. and internationally are needed and wonderful. The actions of our congregations, as well as individual people within those congregations, to do what we can to conserve and protect our ecosystem are admirable. They are making a great difference in our world.

Today though, our world asks even more of us. Embracing again our movement as prophetic religion asks that we go even deeper — that we recognize that the corporatist undermining of western democracies and the escalating destruction of our planet’s sustainability are interrelated – that we name this malfeasance publicly and join with others to fight it. We must reaffirm the wisdom our UU sage, James Luther Adams, taught us about the “power of organization and the organization of power”.

Today, commercial, industrial and agricultural giants are producing more greenhouse emissions than all of the ecological conservation efforts of individual citizens combined can offset.

Today, industries so large that they are beyond our dissent, more powerful than most governments, are making decisions that will have tremendous effects on whether and what life survives on our planet in the future.

To have any meaningful influence will require that we engage with other religious groups and with secular and public policy organizations in ways that may have been uncomfortable to us in recent times. It will require that we engage with our more conservative friends in difficult but imaginative and necessary conversations. It will require that we find ways of harnessing the creativity and power of collective voices, making those voices heard, amplifying their strength.

I believe that we must walk a careful line, upholding the separation of church and state, yet realizing that our religious principles will be lived or not in the political arena.

As Sulak Sivaraska, cofounder of the International Association of Engaged Buddhists writes, “Politics without spirituality or ethics is blind. Spirituality without politics is simply inconsequential.”

Our Unitarian Universalist principles are calling us to the consequential. Our community’s values and mission compel us to act together out of compassion, out of love for one another and that sacred web of existence, with the courage to risk potential failure, despite the loss and the irreparable damage we witness. Climate change provides our greatest test so far of that compassion — of that love. It requires a people so bold.

Against all odds, we must still act. We must act to place love and community above market values and profit. We must proclaim our Unitarian Universalist beliefs beyond our church walls. We must act as if those values and principles — indeed the future of humanity and the beautiful world we inherited — depend upon it.

Because they do.

How many Unitarian Universalists does it take to change the world?

Every single last one of us, along with the many others who might join an invitation to reclaim paradise before it is lost, if only we were to engage with them. If only we were to be so bold.

May we be so. May we be that prophetic religion for our time.

Amen.

Mary, Mary, Quite Revolutionary

January 22, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons, Video available

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Marisol Caballero

January 22, 2012

Marisol Caballero reflects on the symbolism of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a feminine image of the Divine. How may this “goddess”, native to the Americas, speak to us, as Unitarian Universalists, as well as unite diverse populations in compassion, perseverance, and justice?

When I was a very young infant, before I would fully focus on faces or follow sounds much, I am told that I would stare in the direction of a statue that my mother had on her dresser of the Virgin of Guadalupe. No matter where I was in the room, I would try to turn toward that statue. My mom tells me it was the weirdest thing and that visitors to our house would often comment on it, saying that it looked as if I was communicating with her in some way. This may be hyperbole, but it makes for a nice story. And, part of me likes to believe a little that I was born with a special affinity for the Lady, that she drew my eyes to her as she continues to draw my heart, and that a child development specialist can’t easily explain this story away. No, I don’t truly believe that a statue has super powers, nor am I a closet Catholic- in fact I was have been attending UU churches since age two, but there exists a subversive yet compassionate power in the story and symbolism of the Virgin of Guadalupe that transcends religion and that strengthens my faith.

It isn’t often that we hear about traditionally Catholic imagery from our Unitarian Universalist pulpits but as a Chicana from Texas, my cultural connection to her runs deep. Just like each of us, my personal and cultural history influences my worldview and my theology, but I choose to speak from this perspective not because I wish to exoticize my story and my ministry or to become a novelty act. I choose to share such cultural expressions because it is my authentic starting point. One of my professors at seminary, Dr. James Cone, used to remind us in class that, “to do theology, you have to start where you’re at. You must speak from your unique vantage point.”

The image and symbolism of the Virgin of Guadalupe has much to offer UU’s personally, of all backgrounds and genders, as we struggle to equalize the playing fields, seeking justice for the oppressed, and as we strive toward greater compassion in our daily lives, not to mention as we also endeavor to create a more multicultural Unitarian Univeraslism. But, before she can be understood as a universal emblem, the Virgin of Guadalupe must be understood, as her Mexican people know her.

As we learned in the story of her apparition to Juan Diego, the Virgin appeared in solidarity with the marginalized indigenous population. She chose Juan Diego, a poor Aztec, to carry her message. She spoke to him in his language, not the language of the oppressors, from which Christianity had been taught to the Indians. She had brown skin. She wore Aztec astrological imagery on her robe. She was one who they could identify with because she looked like them. She was one of them and still remains so. Most importantly, she does not allow the marginalized to feel inferior. She raises the self-worth of the Mexican people with a mother’s compassion and offers her protection in their struggle.

The Mexican people, and those of Mexican descent, are a mix of various indigenous, Spanish (and other European), and African people. They speak many native languages in addition to Spanish, and many Mexican-Americans (Chicanos) speak no Spanish at all. Before the legendary apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe, most Christian conversions had been made at the end of a Spanish steel sword. Mary had the effect of uniting the old and the new. She was a fusion of the indigenous and of the oppressor, much like the blood running through the veins of those she calls her children. She offered a means by which her people could retain their cultural identity with pride- with respect to the need for self-preservation amidst a violent theocracy.

This Mary continues to be such a means of synthesis for Mexicans and those of Mexican descent today. She unifies us as a cultural icon, no matter our language, religion, dialect or gender. She is our common mother, our loving ancestor. She is called by many names, among them are: Mother of Mexico, Mother of the Americas, (Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe) Our Lady of Guadalupe, and my great-grandmother- the matriarch of our family- called her affectionately, mi morenita (my little dark-skinned lady). She remains a symbol of strength for her marginalized people for after all, even if her story is only a myth, it reminds us that we are worthy of unconditional love.

In our science-minded culture, we say things like “only a myth”, as if myths were powerless things, when we have learned that myths are, in fact, values and ideals in the embryonic stage. Religions and nations alike were built on myths. (Remember George Washington and the cherry tree?) But, the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe is a revolutionary myth in that it offers us a woman (and a woman of color, no less!) as our champion! Maria de Guadalupe offers us all another way to imagine God. She is a feminine alternative.

Many White feminists have historically rejected her image, misunderstanding her due to centuries of misogynistic false interpretations. She has been said to be the reason that so many women dislike themselves, since she has been lifted up as the ideal of womanhood while women are simultaneously told that her perfection is unattainable. She has been accused of keeping women meek and silently obedient, since her eyes are cast downward. She has also been misinterpreted as a proponent of joyfully bearing one’s suffering, regardless of the hardship it may cause us and those we love. Some school districts have even banned her image on t-shirts, claiming ties to gang violence.

Latinas, however, have long known that although for centuries many have tried to pervert the image of Guadalupe in an effort to keep us in a subjugated place, most of us never truly bought it. She is quite the opposite. She is our Rosie the Riveter. Instead of being an ideal of womanhood that is unachievable, we can emulate her willingness to stand up to power and demand that the oppressed be recognized. We view her downcast eyes as a representation of her gentle, loving spirit and she is not silenced easily- she persistently appeared to Juan Diego three times before the Bishop recognized him. She did not accept him backing down and inspired in him the courage to persevere. To Christian Latinas, she is more accessible than a Father God or His divine Son, Jesus.

Dolores Huerta, co-founder with Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers union, heroine of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement, and single mother of eleven, says, “I don’t think I could have survived without her. She is a symbol of faith, hope and leadership. She has been incorporated into everything we do,” she said, “If she’s not there, you notice her absence right away.” Mexicans and Chicanos have carried her image in just about every rally, march, picket, protest, and even battle for centuries. Anywhere there are people of Mexican decent advocating for social justice for their communities, chances are, the Virgin of Guadalupe’s image will be there as well. In fact, I was not at all shocked when, in some of the media coverage of the many nationwide protests of the hateful new Arizona immigration law, marchers have been carrying images and statues of her. No doubt the thought of a compassionate and persevering feminine representation of the divine is bringing strength to those in fear of what this law’s implementation may bring (or, has already brought) to their lives and to their families and communities.

In her essay, “Latinas and Religion: Subordination or State of Grace?”, Laura M. Padilla tells us that,

“The Virgin’s model allows us to discard the notion that we must accept our suffering with dignity, thus freeing us to turn our attention to how to alleviate that suffering, regardless of whether it consists of physical, emotional, economic, or spiritual abuseÉ [she] also turns from a top-down hierarchy where God speaks and we listen, to a model where we mutually communicate with compassionÉ [and] shows Latinas how to incorporate [our spirituality] into our lives in a holistic way that is not based on hierarchy, opposition, intolerance or superiority. Rather, she points us to a framework that incorporates the feminine, not to the exclusion of the masculine, but in balance with it.”

In the story, she chose to appear before a man, Juan Diego, demonstrating that although she is “divinely” feminine, she exists for men, as well. Men can also both be mothered by and guided by her, while also learning to emulate her maternal attributes of tender nurturance yet strong advocacy for one’s family. For Guadalupe, this family does not begin and end with bloodlines. Our family is made of up humanity, itself, for we are interconnected. The marginalized and the oppressor are both of her concern, as she reaches for the heart of the wealthy Bishop through the experience of the impoverished Juan Diego. Men may follow the example of her symbolism not only as the sons, husbands, fathers, and brothers of woman, but also as members of the human family who recognize that ignoring the suffering of others prohibits the privileged from realizing their full humanity.

In this way, the Virgin of Guadalupe has relevance and meaning not only for all genders, but I would argue, all people. In the way that the image and symbolism of the Virgin of Guadalupe transcends religion, language, gender, and national borders, she also transcends race. Just as she unites the diverse people of Mexican descent in a common cultural identity, so may she unite the world to a common cause of justice, of working to end all forms of oppression. Although she will always be the treasured product of the Mexican people, the strength of her symbolism has the potential to reach anyone looking for a loving yet righteously angry, gentle yet fierce, and patient yet persistent ally in the struggle.

As UU’s, so often we begin our prayers to “God of many names”. In the Virgin of Guadalupe, we recognize that one name for God is “Mother”. The feminine divine does exist in many traditions: Hindus have Kali, Lakshmi and others, Buddhists have Tara and Kwan Yin, and pagans may call her Gaea or Great Mother, to name just a few. The Virgin of Guadalupe is the manifestation of the feminine divine for this continent. She is our native goddess, Mother of the Americas, and offers the world her love, encouragement, and protection both to those who view her as a powerful symbol as well as to those who view her as a supernatural being with intercessory abilities.

Next time you see a candle, a keychain, a mural, or anything else that her ever-so-pervasive image adorns, see her for who she is to her people and who she can be for all- a powerful symbol of compassion, fortitude, and justice. Not a cultural cliche or tacky kitsch, but a reminder that we shall overcome, that Si Se Puede (Yes, it can be done), for she is Mary, Mary, Quite Revolutionary!

Installation Service

January 16, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Peter Morales

President of the Unitarian Universalist Association

January 15, 2012

Audio of this service does not include the music and some of the readings due to technical constraints. An unabridged video of the complete service can be purchased from our bookstore.

Podcasts of sermons are also available for free on iTunes.

Call to Celebration:

Rev. Bret Lortie, Minister, First UU Church of San Antonio

Chalice Lighting:

Reading:

Exerpt from The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Read by Rev. Kathleen Ellis, Co-Minister, Live Oak UU Church

O! You bad little thing! — said the woman, teasing her baby granddaughter. “Is Buddha teaching you to laugh for no reason?” As the baby continued to gurgle, the woman felt a deep wish stirring in hear heart. “Even if I could live forever,” she said to the baby, “I still don’t know which way I would teach you. I was once so free and innocent. I too laughed for no reason. But later I threw away my foolish innocence to protect myself. And then I taught my daughter, your mother, to shed her innocence so she would not be hurt as well. Little one, was this kind of thinking wrong?… ” The baby laughed, listening to her grandmother’s laments.

“O! O! you say you are laughing because you have already lived forever, over and over again? You say you are the Queen Mother of the Western Skies. now come back to give me the answer Good, good. I am listening . . . Thank you, little Queen. And you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.”

Welcome:

Susan Thomson, President-Elect First UU Church of Austin

Greetings from the Austin Community:

State Representative Donna Howard

Reading:

Excerpt from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Read by Rev. Eliza Galaher, Wildflower UU Church

When the doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw “the tree with the lights in it.” It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The lights of the fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had my whole life been a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.

Greetings from the Southwest UU Conference

Jennifer Nichols, District Director for Lifespan Faith Development

Charge to the Congregation

Andrea Lerner, DE Metro NY District

Reading:

Credo by Judith Roche

Read by Sharon Moore and Michael Kersey,

Co-Chairs of the Ministerial Search Committee

I believe in the cave paintings at Lascaux,

the beauty of the clavicle,

the journey of the salmon,

her leap up any barrier,

the scent of home waters

she finds through celestial navigation.

I believe in all the gods –

I just don’t like some of them.

I believe the war is always against the imagination,

is recurring, repetitive, and relentless.

I believe in fairies, elves, angels and bodisatvas,

Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

I have seen and heard ghosts.

I believe that Raven invented the Earth

And so did Coyote. In archeology

lie the clues. The threshold is numinous

and the way in is the way out.

I believe in the alphabets – all of them –

and the stories seeping from their letters.

I believe in dance as prayer, that the heart

beat invented rhythm and chant -.

or is it the other way around –

I believe in the wisdom of the body.

I believe that art saves lives

and love makes it worth living them.

And that could be the other way around, too.

Offering for the Unitarian Universalist Association

Laurel Amabile

Sermon:

Peter Morales, President, Unitarian Universalist Association

Act of Installation:

Susan Thomson, President-Elect

Charge to the Minister

Kiya Heartwood

Reading:

Fearing Paris by Marsha Truman Cooper

Read by Rev. Daniel O’Connell, Minister, First UU Church of Houston

Suppose that what you fear

could be trapped

and held in Paris.

Then you would have

the courage to go

everywhere in the world.

All the directions of the compass

open to you,

except the degrees east or west

of true north

that lead to Paris.

Still, you wouldn’t dare

put your toes

smack dab on the city limit line.

You’re not really willing

to stand on a mountainside,

miles away,

and watch the Paris lights

come up at night.

Just to be on the safe side

you decide to stay completely

out of France.

But then the danger

seems too close

even to those boundaries,

and you feel

the timid part of you

covering the whole globe again.

You need the kind of friend

who learns your secret and says,

“See Paris First.”

Reading:

We have not come to take prisoners by Hafiz

Read by Brian Ferguson, Minister, San Marcos UU Fellowship

We have not come here to take prisoners,

But to surrender ever more deeply

To freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world

To hold ourselves hostage from love.

Run my dear,

From anything

That may not strengthen

Your precious budding wings.

Run like hell my dear,

From anyone likely

To put a sharp knife

Into the sacred, tender vision

Of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend

Those aspects of obedience

That stand outside of our house

And shout to our reason

“O please, O please,

Come out and play.”

For we have not come here to take prisoners

Or to confine our wondrous spirits,

But to experience ever and ever more deeply

Our divine courage, freedom and

Light!

Benediction:

The Fountain by Denise Levertov

Read by Rev. Meg Barnhouse

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water

to solace the dryness at our hearts.

I have seen

the fountain springing out of the rock wall

and you drinking there. And I too

before your eyes

found footholds and climbed

to drink the cool water.

The woman of that place, shading her eyes,

frowned as she watched – but not because

she grudged the water,

only because she was waiting

to see we drank our fill and were

refreshed.

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.

That fountain is there among its scalloped

green and gray stones,

it is still there and always there

with its quiet song and strange power

to spring in us,

up and out through the rock.

A simple running stitch

November 28, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Nell Newton, Sermons, Video available

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Nell Newton

November 27, 2011

It’s the simplest stitch of all. Tie a knot in one end of the thread, and slip the other end through the eye of a needle. Hold the fabric taut between your fingers, and pierce the fabric – not your fingers! – with the needle. Draw the thread up and through, and then, catch the fabric up on the tip of the needle, one, two, three, four times, and pull the thread through. Smooth it all out and there is your clear running stitch. It is the Paleolithic stitch that first pulled together two pieces of hide, two pieces of matted wool, two pieces of handspun cotton, or two pieces of the lightest woven silk to make something useful. Ecclesiates tells us there is a time to rend, and a time to sew. This is a time to at least consider sewing.

A few years back I offered to teach a group of Camp Fire kids how to sew some simple garments. Most of the parents agreed to help their kids, but one girl’s mom wasn’t able to help. No problem. Eleven-year-old Mary was well behaved and smart enough that I knew she would be fine just following along with me. I told her to show up with a couple of yards of fabric and we’d go from there. When they came to my house, instead of just dropping Mary off, the mom hung around to talk. I was polite, but turned my attention to the matter of fabric, choosing a pattern, etc. The fabric they brought was a sensible, solid blue. It was the blue of those coverall jumpsuits my great uncles used to wear when they worked on engines. And, given the navy pants and plain white blouse Mary was wearing, I guessed that vanity was discouraged in their home. But that blue fabric was just too ugly to mess with. Instead, I told Mary to dig through my stash of fabrics – that’s what it’s called – a “stash”. She found a nice piece of calico with a light blue background, sprigged with tiny white flowers. It would be perfect for her skirt.

Meanwhile, her mother was explaining why she would not be able to help us. You see, she explained, her mother had never taught her to sew, never wanted her to sew because her mother wanted her to be an engineer, or a scientist. She didn’t want her to be limited to girl’s work, or be tied down by domestic drudgery. I listened politely while quietly showing Mary how to find the fabric’s grain so the garment would hang right, and how to lay and pin the delicate tissue paper pattern correctly. I listened to the mom tell me that it was her mother’s insistence that she never learn to cook or sew because she presumed that she would be earning so much money that someone else would always be doing that work for her. So that is why she never learned to sew and why she got a professional degree… Finally, I’d had enough. I turned to Mary who was carefully pinning and cutting out the pieces, and said “If you think about it, sewing is really a type of construction based upon engineering. And it’s a bit tricky because you are working with a flexible material with the goal of covering a moving body. It takes a fair amount of math and planning, and you have to understand the properties of the material and how bodies move if you want to have something worth wearing. Badly sewn clothes are really quite uncomfortable.” Eventually the mom ran out of excuses and left us in peace.

Mary learned how to make a loose running stitch and pull the thread to gather up the fabric, how to fit differently sized pieces together, how to create a waistband tunnel to run elastic through, and how to hem the bottom evenly. Within a couple of hours she had finished a lovely three-tier skirt. She knew every thing about that garment. There was no mystery to it because she had sewn it herself. And, when she finally slipped it on to her delicate waist, she looked down at her work and did what any young girl would do – she twirled around to see the skirt flare out and swing around. It was a magical moment. Even if she never sews another thing in her entire life, she understands the basics and when she looks at the inside, the underside, the lining, or the back – she will see how something was put together.

I want you to do something here – just a moment. I want you to look at the inside of your sleeve, or the hem of your shirt or pants. Look at the threads holding that fabric in place. You will probably see an even line of stitching. Maybe there is a complex web of threads to bind the fabric and keep it from fraying. Maybe the thread is a contrasting color, or maybe it matches the fabric so well that you can barely see it on the right side of the garment.

Someone’s hands did that work. Every thing we are wearing was sewn by another human being. Every pillow case, sleeping bag, backpack, and tent was sewn by someone. Every sofa cushion, slip cover, and seat belt was guided through a sewing machine by a skilled worker. The suits the astronauts wore were assembled by expert seamstresses who had never sewn such a thing before, but they put their minds and machines to work, and sewed suits to protect fragile human bodies from the cold of space.

Even in this era of astonishing technology, there is still no machine where you stuff a bale of cotton in one end and remove a pair of pants from the other. We are still doing pretty much what our ancestors did – cutting a flat cloth into pieces, and sewing the pieces together to cover our shivering naked selves.

Maybe your mother sewed clothes for you when you were younger? If you came in with a tear on your sleeve or a rip in your britches, did your mom work some kind of mundane miracle of mending? Along with my 10″ chef’s knife and my pen, my sewing basket is one of my most powerful weapons against chaos. Like many women, I sewed clothes for my children when they were young simply because they were so beautiful and store bought clothes were so unimaginative. My kids got to pick out the fabrics so that instead of the same old football, soccer ball, baseball, or truck, my son’s pants had penguins and frogs and feathers and fish! Unless you look closely, you might not see the places where I’ve patched and repaired the rips and three-cornered tears where one of us snagged on a fence, or caught on a nail.

A woman I spoke with explained that when she is sewing a quilt it might mean assembling 35 blocks of pieced fabrics. She cuts, and stitches, and presses the same thing 35 times. It becomes a meditative time and as her hands work, her mind travels out into its quiet fascinating places. If it will be a gift, she might be thinking of the people who will receive the quilt. It’s impossible to put a prayer into every stitch, but she takes care to choose fabrics that will bring a smile to the person who snuggles under that quilt at night.

A man who quilts simply says “it’s my safe place”. His quilts are dazzlingly intricate – each one is made up of thousands of small pieces of bright cloth. He listens to audio books while he works and has listened to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and other great writers whose books we all mean to get around to reading, if only we had the time. And while he listens, his hands cut, and piece, and pin and sew artwork of kaleidoscopic brilliance. This world would be a calmer place if all of us had such safe places for our creativity.

Choosing fabric takes practice and it requires a sort of Buddhist lack of attachment off-set by a hoarder’s mania. Choosing a color is only part of it. You also have to feel fabric to determine the quality, the drape, any stretch or texture to it. When we are searching for fabric, we move through the store shopping with our hands — touching, rubbing, tugging, and even just waving it to watch how it moves. It’s getting harder to find high quality fabrics so there is a certain amount of scowling when I shop. And the goddess will just laugh at you if you think that you simply MUST have a certain fabric because you will not find it. Or you will find the Perfect Fabric but not the Perfect Pattern. Or vice versa. We learn to buy up the fabric when we find it and then wait for the pattern to show up. Or vice versa. This is how fabric stashes grow rather large.

I was lucky to learn to sew from my mom – who taught me the 4-H correct way – and from my stepmother who taught me all the ways to adapt a pattern, be creative, and have fun. My mother’s fabulous dresses sewn from Indonesian batiks fit her beautifully because she sized them to her petite frame. My stepmother opened up her own business doing everything from simple alternations up to designing and sewing gorgeous wedding dresses. Both of them drew upon deep patience to teach me. And, while I don’t have the time to sew as much as I’d like, when I spread out the fabric and pick up my shears, I have them both, and all of my grandmothers, along with me for every stitch.

Another woman I know was like many of us – forced to learn sewing in school. Girls learned sewing, boys learned woodshop. You know — the natural order of things… But she resisted sewing and hated it for the sexist holdover it was! She made her damn skirt moaning and groaning the whole time and was done with it. But then… as an adult, one day she picked up a book on quilting and was stunned – it was the most beautiful thing she had seen. The book pulled her in and in time she taught herself everything about quilting from the ground up – how to use a sewing machine – how to BUY a sewing machine. She found delight in all the odd doo-dads that someone, some where (probably a woman, probably in a snit) had invented to solve a specific sewing problem. Did you know, there really is such a thing as a bodkin? It’s very useful when you’re turning something skinny inside out. A fat safety pin works well too. As my friend learned to make quilts, she developed a respect for the ingenuity and engineering that paved the way for her. She loves choosing the colors, and that moment when she drops in a little piece of lavender or orange and the whole thing turns spectacular. And, when she sews a quilt – she is verrry selective of who receives them. Each one is more than a blanket, it is a gift of her precious time.

Sewing these days is anachronistic. It takes patience to learn how to sew and practice to learn to sew well enough to make something you’d want to wear out in public. Why bother? Someone else can do it better, cheaper, faster. And they are probably happy to have the work. I mean, it’s not like we really have slavery any more. Those people are skilled laborers who get paid. Right? Well… I don’t want to depress you with details, but if you pay $5 for a tee shirt, you can be pretty sure that the person who sewed it did not even make fifty cents for their work. And even if you pay $50 for a shirt, you still can’t be sure that the person in Vietnam, or the North Marianas, or Nicaragua was paid a fair wage. If you are vigilant, you can research your clothing choices, but there’s not a lot of “fair trade” garments on the market right now. Unless you sew your own. When I wear something I’ve sewn, I know the only person who was unfairly compensated or exploited was ME!

So what else can you do? How can you stand in opposition to a global economy that treats workers and their products as disposable commodities? It’s unrealistic for all of us to learn to sew clothing. But here’s a suggestion – treat every piece of clothing you own as if it were hand made especially for you. It might not have been hand-stitched, but hands guided the fabric through the cutting, stitching, and pressing. When you put on your shirt, consider the hands that carefully spaced the buttons and made sure they were secure. Think of the hands that folded it and wrapped it up for you. Wear it well. If the button falls off, catch it quick and sew it back on. And, when it is worn beyond repair, snip off the buttons – they might come in handy some day — and use the fabric as a rag to wipe your windows clean. Do you have a garment you love but that doesn’t fit quite right? Take it to a local seamstress for alterations or repairs so that it fits you – as you are right now, not when you’ve lost or gained or have an interview. And, when you pay that person and you’ll keep a few dollars in our local economy.

And, here’s my last recommendation: If someone gives you something they sewed, please don’t say “Oh! It’s so pretty. I’ll save it for sometime special” and then never use it. That would be missing the point. Put it on! Spread it out! Let the baby spit up on it! Hang it up where you will grab for it when you are in a rush. Wrap yourself up in it! And then twirl around slowly and see if the love swirls about you.

Growing Out – Maturing as an Expanding Embrace

October 23, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Mark Skrabacz, Sermons

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Rev. Mark Skrabacz

October 23, 2011

Widening our circle of compassion, opening our hearts, embracing life, living large…these are expressions of growing out, the theme of today’s examination of maturing. Most often, I think of it as unconditional love or attentive presence. This involves learning to acknowledge, allow, open to and inquire into the experience that each of us has of what is, without trying to have some other experience than the one we are in. This can be difficult.

Interestingly, there’s little in our Western experiences of community, religion, spirituality and psychology that helps us develop the capacity for unconditional presence. Most of what we learn in school, church and society sends us an opposite message — setting boundaries, isolating, developing caution and fear. These examples result in the tendency to turn away from aspects of our lives that are painful, unpleasant or threatening. They teach us that we must be strong — and that strength is about having power over. Yet from the East there’s a different lesson. The Tao Teh Ching reveals that genuine power is gentle and kind.

Chapter 8 begins: “The highest good is like water. Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive. It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.”

Chapter 13 concludes with this couplet: “Surrender yourself humbly; then you can be trusted to care for all things. Love the world as your own self; then you can truly care for all things.”

In Chapter 22 it says: “Yield and overcome.” And from Chapter 43: “The softest thing in the universe overcomes the hardest thing in the universe.”

Obviously, there is truth in both the teachings of West and East…and the both-and is a preferable balance to the either-or. Yet growing out, as the quality of maturing that we are exploring today asks the question: how can we expand our embrace into a quality of presence, awareness and equanimity that is able to respond with openness to unpleasantries, wherever and whenever they show up, most often in our relationships with family, friends, neighbors and our world?

Consider the idea of healing. We all have our scars. I have scars from various injuries, some more serious than others. They don’t go away no matter how much lotion, or massage or therapy I undertake. I have to learn to live with them. Part of this process is my recognition of how how I was affected. I’ve had to develop a different relationship to my wounds and because of them. Every time I see them and feel them, I recognize what they mean to me. My life has a different shape because of my scars. Healing does not mean the absence of suffering. It means learning from its presence. Recall the final words of the poem (The Cure by Anonymous) read by Eric (Stimmel, Lay Leader) before our time of contemplation.

And life is as natural as a leaf.

That’s what we’re looking for:

not the end of a thing but the shape of it.

Wisdom is seeing the shape of your life

without getting over a single

instant of it.

Have you heard of the practice of Tonglen? It’s described in some of Pema Chodren’s work. Do you know her? She’s a westerner who received training as a teacher of the Kagyu Tibetan Buddhist lineage of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the wild Tibetan master, author of Cutting through Spiritual Materialism and other powerful books, and who taught in Boulder, Colorado in the ’70s. He founded the Shambhala Training and the Naropa Institute. Chodron has written numerous books, including Getting Unstuck and When Things Fall Apart.

Tonglen is an integrative meditation consisting of a breathing practice with thoughts, visualizations and especially feelings. In Tonglen one vizualizes a real condition for which great compassion is needed, like domestic abuse, and inhales the feelings of pain, violence and anger. You breathe in and actually take on this issue physically, mentally, emotionally and consciously. One literally feels into the condition, making it as imaginatively real as possible. Then with the out-breath, one exhales compassion into the situation. This means one must access genuine compassion in the midst of distress, a beneficial exercise in itself. Tonglen is a practice of a Bodhisattva (translated as “awakened being”), a compassionate one, who willingly takes on and transmutes the energy of violence, hate, abuse, war, terrorism, overpopulation, genocide, environmental degradation and other forms of dis-ease. Tonglen is a very personal practice that can result in very transpersonal changes.

Pema Chodron writes: “If your everyday practice is open to all your emotions, to all the people you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that — then that will take you as far as you can go. And then you’ll understand all the teachings that anyone as ever taught.”

Can you imagine being that open and willing with your embrace?

Maturity begins when we can understand the basic distresses and blocks that are at the root of our immaturity, personally and collectively. I often speak from the pulpit about that which I find to be true and basic. Perhaps a most basic truth has to do with acceptance. No matter where you are or what the circumstances, come to terms and become friendly with yourself and with the present moment. Because if you do not accept the present moment, you’re not friendly with life because life is only now. Some call it “the eternal now.” If you’re not friendly with life, life cannot support you.

The nature of our basic distress as human beings is that we continually judge, reject and turn away from areas of our lives that cause us discomfort, pain or anxiety. We think that if we can just get rid of these areas then we’ll suffer less, we’ll finally be comfortable. What happens however, is that in getting rid of our problems, we simply trade these concerns for a new set of concerns that keep us just as distressed as before, lending truth to the aphorism that what you resist persists. Changing circumstances isn’t the answer. Changing ourselves is.

We are all involved somehow in an inner struggle. It’s the human condition and no one gets a free pass. This inner struggle keeps us inwardly divided. This in antithetical to our nature as individuals; individual means undivided. We are constantly cutting ourselves off from the totality of who we are.

Of this totality, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote (in his essay The Oversoul):

“Within us is the soul of the whole,

The wise silence,

The universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related;

The eternal One…

When it breaks through our intellect, it is genius;

When it breathes through our will, it is virtue;

When it flows through our affections, it is love.”

This is a picture of our true nature. This is our goal. What we mostly experience is an emotional programming that contracts our bodies and minds, shuts us down, like a safety valve, keeping us from flowing when we perceive danger or threat. This is our way of survival, of protecting ourselves. Yet in cutting off our anger, our need for love, our openness, our sexuality, we form negative judgments against these parts of ourselves and of others. Hence we become disabled and disabling of others.

For example, say we didn’t get the love we needed as a child. One typical response is to contract our feelings when this need for love arises. We learned it is simply too painful to feel the rejection or unfulfilment. Hence we develop an emotional pattern or program, such that even as adults, when we continue to feel a need for love, we shut down our awareness of it. We become unable to function in areas of our life that evoke feelings we’ve never been able to tolerate. We contract and close off. This may be at the root of not asking for help and our incessant drive to do it my way. This is 180 degrees from opening our embrace as Einstein suggests (in a Letter of 1950, as quoted in The New York Times 29 March 1972 and The New York Post 28 November 1972 and read by our Lay Leader today as our Call to Worship –

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”) or of the poetic description of Emerson of the soul of the whole.

This programming creates a false self, a personal self-image and identity based on distress. With such a pattern we are faced with the challenge of having to continually display this identity and prop it up like the mask that it is. We fuel it with stories about our reality, our parents, former or current spouses or friends. Stories like: men are emotionally unavailable, women are crazy, certain people can’t be trusted, etc. This petty and divisive false self system can lock us into a distortion of life and drain our energy that instead could be feeding our true nature, that of our larger self — the soul of the whole.

Hence, the call to maturing is a call to recognize this burdensome facade and to become a real explorer of the vast embrace of the Universe.

In order to grow out, to expand our embrace, to welcome what is we must expose our wounds which lie at the root of our disconnection from our larger being. We must engage our suffering directly. Of course, it’s hard to let ourselves feel our pain. We’ve spent our lives masking it, denying it, avoiding it. Our society, education and experiences reinforce the delusion of separateness. As in 12 step recovery work, the first thing we must do is acknowledge our distress, our human condition. That’s one of the reasons we meet here. An important component of our gathering is to connect with ourself and each other in honesty and humility.

There are many ways to observe life. There’s the view that we do make mistakes. We have failed to do as we would. We act and feel imperfectly. There’s also the view that there are no real mistakes, that all things work together to make life what it is.

Nisargadatta Maharaj says: “Nobody ever fails in Yoga. It is all a matter of the rate of progress. It is slow in the beginning and rapid in the end. When one is fully matured, realization is explosive. It takes place spontaneously, or at the slightest hint. The quick is not better than the slow. Slow ripening and rapid flowering alternate. Both are natural and right.”

Whatever our view, let’s get straight with ourselves and each other. We also need each other. We need to receive love — to give love.

And so I encourage us to develop an antidote to the emotional programming of our false self system, and that is in developing unconditional presence and a wider embrace. It starts within each of us. We must connect with that which shuts us down and accept what is. We must exercise our innate awareness to recognize (re-cognize) our dilemma.

I’m no expert in human behavior. Truth is, no one is. That’s because our true nature is unbounded and open-ended. We have yet to experience who we really are, who we fully are. As Unitarian Universalists we are committed by covenant to an exploration of our true and unlimited potential as human beings. We want to see evolution continue and to cooperate with it in every way possible.

I can say with confidence that if we wish to mature, we must learn to bring awareness to our false selves, to bring it out in the open, so that we can stop investing so much energy in propping it up. We must devote more and more of our energy and attention to the fact of our true nature. Our true nature may be seldom seen, but does not have to live for us as merely the poetic and visionary potential of an Einstein or Emerson. We are the people we’ve been waiting for!

Fact is, like the air that surrounds us and often goes unnoticed as a source of the life force in our breathing, unconditional presence is also already always here. It lies within, beneath the layers created by our busy and judgmental minds. Unconditional love and presence is accessible to everyone and is, in fact, our most intimate reality.

Whenever we open into our larger self and our unconditional presence, our conditioned self or our emotional programming tries to run away or else, says, “I know that,” and puts the experience in a familiar box. Fact is, our false selves can’t fix ourselves and neither can anyone else. Our natural opening, maturing and expansive embrace will only come when we can see and feel our truth. And truth shows up against the background of our sustained awareness of our facades, programming and dis-ease.

Sorry, no quick fix. However, like I’m find of saying, “You have to do your work, and you can’t do it alone.” We are a community in covenant to work out our lives together. As our awareness of unconscious patterns of our false selves starts to be seen, it becomes conscious. This awakens our desire and will to a new life. This new life is the life that is our real and present experience, that accepts our life as it is. It takes awareness.

This description may not fit the picture that our mind wants, just as those we are related to don’t always measure up. Folks, the world is in a mess and if you are paying attention, if you live from awareness, you’ll risk heart break. Yet our broken, open and fragile nature is the one that can open wide its arms in expansive embrace. We need to become vulnerable in order to be mature. “The softest thing in the universe overcomes the hardest thing in the universe.” Paradoxically we need to be vulnerable to be solid.

Understanding our false nature and the possibilities of our true nature is a start. It’s the beginning of self-awareness and self-acceptance. It provides compassion for ourselves and for others whom we may begin to understand are afflicted with the same human condition. We need to heal our separation from ourselves and those we meet everyday. We need to heal our separation from the life we know as our daily reality. This is true for us and for our whole world.

Let us join together in opening our arms in a wide embrace. Here’s a vision: imagine opening to all and fully accepting your present reality. Imagine transforming your identity into its full and unique part of the interdependent web of all existence. Imagine living so large that even the specter of death would appear as a friendly and fearless embrace of the Universe, which is not other than you. Our greatest difficulties provide us with our greatest opportunities.

Flying fish make me smile

September 25, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Barbara Gay Stoddard

Interim Director of LifeSpan Religious Education

September 25, 2011

Show Up, Choose Your Attitude, Make Someone’s Day and Play are the four principles of living from the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market. I’ll consider how these principles have informed my life and keep me smiling.

Barbara Stoddard has been a professional religious educator for 15 years. She has served as the interim religious educator beginning in 2003 for UU churches in New Jersey, Virginia, Massachusetts, Maryland, Seattle and Houston. In addition to her work as an interim she helped design and teach the training for Interim Religious Educators. She is so very happy to be with First UU for the next two years.

“Flying Fish Make me Smile”

Or living by the Principles of the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market… “Show Up, Choose Your Attitude, Make Someone’s Day and Play”

Barbara Stoddard September 25, 2011 First Unitarian Universalist Church Austin

Years ago, I met a woman in my UU church in Manchester, NH named Charlene. She was a motivational speaker and great advocate for positive thinking. Charlene was beautiful, intelligent always had perfect hair and a wonderful smile, 3 gorgeous children and a very handsome husband. I wanted to be Charlene, but I could never quite embrace all that positive attitude stuff. After all, I was still in my 20s, full of angst, a divorced single mother, whose ex had deserted my daughter his child- never to contact her again until she was 15 years old.

Year’s later, Charlene shared with me that her life was not as perfect as it appeared. There were many heartbreaks and illness and money issues they had suffered through. But, they survived by loving each other and helping others and sharing positive energy to all those around them. She gave me a gift by telling me that it was my own sense of joy and wonder and love about life and people that helped make me a survivor and also helped those around me feel better.

Charlene was showing up, choosing her attitude, making someone’s day, and playing long before it was a part of the success story of the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market. And I bet, if I were to call her today, she’d tell me she had incorporated the philosophy in her own speeches.

Music has always very important to me. Perhaps one could say it’s been the core of my existence. I was a child of the 60s so of course there were the Beatles, but mostly I adored my folk singers like Judy Collins and Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. I was going to be all of them when I grew up.

Music was always there for me in times of silliness, joy, hope, tragedy, sorrows, elation, passion, pain and the mundane. Music provided my first connection to UUism – when I was 18 years old attending Columbia College, a Methodist woman’s college, in Columbia, SC – I became part of a folk singing group called the Ladybugs. My beloved Ladybugs and I were asked to sing at a service at the Columbia UU Fellowship. They met at that time in a big green house, a small group of children went to one part of house for classes after a story while the adults listened to a speaker and then discussed the topic. I remember we sang “where have all the flowers gone” and other anti-war songs. It was the first time as a singer I got the chance to speak my values through music. I was exhilarated and wanted more of this UU thing.

A few years later, my now ex-husband and I were living in Manchester, NH – We were- house parents for 3 adults with cognitive disabilities and a year old baby in tow. We went to the Episcopal church in town. That morning the priest spoke about loving each other. Reaching out to strangers, etc. etc. etc. But when we walked out of church, he rebuffed this strange little family of mine in a way that devastated me. Wasn’t the church a place we could bring our joys and pains and be hugged and loved. Later as we mulled over our experience – I asked (being very new to New England) Do you suppose there are any UUs around here? Well – hallelujah there were. We next attended the Manchester UU church, walked in the door. Our minister, Elium Gault – greeted us with the biggest smile and heartiest handshake I’ve ever known. We were home.

The church continued from that first day forward to nurture us and care for us. They were my daughter Dayna’s and my extended family for over 20 years. They saw me with a guitar in hand and asked me to be a youth advisor, and sing at services. Over the years the church held fundraisers to purchase 2 different guitars for me. They held Dayna and me even closer as we went through divorce, poverty, and perils of life. They nurtured me by helping me discover that I had gifts beyond my knowing. I really discovered my singing voice, I found out I loved working with children. I further developed the comedienne that I can sometimes be, the organizer, the advocate, the storyteller, and on and on. They hired me to be their DRE for a couple of years. They got me to go to RE Week at Star Island (a UU conference center – off the coast of NH) for the fist time in 1985 – this has since and forever will be my “spirit’s home.” Any of you that have attended a UU summer experience know from whence I speak. These are life changing moments. The love is intensely felt.

I was always singing, performing and playing the guitar during the years I raised my child. My daughter would never really sing with me -I didn’t discover until she was older – how intense her own need and love of music had and continues to be. I didn’t even think she knew or cared for anything I sang – until I discovered that she was the one gen Xers that knew all the folk songs and even mimicked me doing some of my silliest ditties.

I’ve discovered for both of us that music actually gave us a voice in our worlds, but it also comforts us in great times of need. It has not been easy for either one of us. We’ve each made some really bad decisions and have had quite messy lapses in wisdom. But we have also found great love and hope that always surrounds us. We are both survivors of varying degrees of pain but through it all we pull out our songs and we remember the strength within that gives us the freedom to continually soar and soar again. Music has helped us choose better attitudes, make someone’s day and certainly helped us play.

But there have been times when the music has actually died for me in my life. Times when it gave no joy, no comfort, no solace, no laughter, no hope. I hid from music as it might open my heart. In my life, when music wouldn’t help I’d find solace in the next place which for me was food.

I’ve been overweight most of my life. There have been varying degrees of the weight I carried. I’ve even seen old pictures of myself that I didn’t recognize, I was so thin. But no matter the weight, I performed in front of people, usually confident at work, playing with my child, falling in love, volunteering for the women’s crisis service, and teaching in RE classes and so much more.

As I grew older, despite my weight I developed self confidence, sense of purpose, recognition of gifts I had, understanding of the world around me, and the impact I had on people in my life. I actually started liking myself and I understood that what was in my heart was so much more important than how good I looked. But I think I forgot that being healthy was actually more important than how I looked as well.

After my daughter was grown and left home, I decided to go to college again, this time to get certified to teach K-8th grade. I went home to live with my mother in Ft. Inn, SC. I went to Clemson and joined the Greenville UU Fellowship. And yes, that is when I first heard about our own Meg Barnhouse. I was home in a way even though as a child my family never lived in one place more than 5 years – it was home because mom was there. It was a good thing. We both got to know each other as the incredible women we are.

My first teaching job was one that I should never have been placed in. I was the wrong person for the children I taught. I was teaching at an alternative school for Jr. high students that were placed there as the last resort. A myriad of emotional and behavioral and criminal issues and hard family lives. I looked like the lady that only had experience popping bon bons all day and how the hell did I know what they were going through. I wasn’t good at the job. I was an out an out failure. I came home every night in deep despair, frightened and worried. I ate and ate. My blood pressure sky rocketed and I was on the verge of a heart attack. My doctor advised that I quit. I quit. I had failed. And it was then that I went into a new self imposed depression that included no music, no joy, no hope, I went into a cocoon of safety and never wanted to come out again, I felt as though the music in me had literally died.

But after my failure, I needed to find a way to fly again. I returned to a part of the country that for some reason feeds my soul. I returned to New England this time settling in on the coast of New Hampshire = right on Rte.1A, where I could look out at the ocean when I woke in the morning and also see my beloved Star Island every day. I needed to be back where my spirit would find a new path a new journey a new source of freedom, of joy, where my music might live again.

I think I returned to New England, because it was that part of the world that had really given me my UU community. I knew people all over the area, they knew me. They knew the gifts I had, they knew and understood my idiosyncrasies, they understood that I had flaws but they loved me and embraced me because they knew and believed I had great potential to continue to find my soaring ways again.

Yes, I survived my teaching disasters and with the help of love from a lot of friends I found grace. I’ve been in and out of cocoons (so to speak) so many times but each time I emerge from that cocoon stronger than ever.

Now, over the last 10 years, I’ve many wonderful successes both personally and professionally, but at the same time I subconsciously sunk into a new low and began an assault on my body that eventually got to a point that I could no longer deal with. No matter what I’d do, couldn’t lose weight. I was broken, I felt miserable – I tried hypnosis, nutrisystem, weight watchers, Jenny Craig, etc. etc. etc. I started losing my personality. Oh I’d manage to bring myself forward as best I could when at work and around children. But it was a struggle. I looked horrible, I couldn’t breathe correctly which affected my singing. I gave in to it all. I got canes to help me move around – I wont’ even bother to list all the medical issues due to being so heavy.

I felt so physically burdened, that I found no joy in my life and work and no energy for play. Being so very overweight – saps all the energy from you even the energy to love yourself and others around you. I was giving up. I wasn’t showing up for me. One week on a diet I’d say – well I’ve done that – lets move on. I felt I was a failure at life a failure at love a failure at, joy and I was no good for anyone.

When I arrive at Emerson UU in Houston, in 2009 I was at my heaviest, 280 lbs. I eventually had 4 doctors caring for me and all my health issues. They all said the same thing – lose weight. My hematologist lovingly said, your primary doctor and I were talking about you – have you ever considered Gastric bypass. I said yes but I was afraid. He directed me to the clinic where I finally had the surgery last November.

To say that I’ve changed is an understatement. I’ve lost over 110 lbs so far and still need to lose more to reach my goal. But, I’ve thrown out the cane, I climb the stairs, I walk, I exercise, I eat properly, I breath, I breath, I’m singing again. I’ve found joy and I’ve chosen positive attitude (most of the time), and the days that I make someone else smile are my happiest days.

In the book Switch, How to change things when change is hard. by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. They write: “The conventional wisdom in psychology, is that the brain has two independent systems at work at all times. First, there’s what we called the emotional side. It’s the part of you that is instinctive, that feels pain and pleasure. Second, there’s the rational side, also known as the reflective or conscious system. It’s the part of you that deliberates and analyzes and looks into the future.”

The authors’ feel the “tension between the two brain systems is captured best by an analogy used by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his book The Happiness Hypothesis. Haidt says that our emotional side is an Elephant and our rational side is its Rider. Perched atop the Elephant, the Rider holds the reins and seems to be the leader. but the Rider’s control is precarious because the Rider is so small relative to the Elephant. Anytime the six-ton Elephant and the Rider disagree about which direction to go, the Rider is going to lose. He’s completely overmatched.” They continue to state that “most of us are all too familiar with situations in which our Elephant overpowers our Rider. You’ve experienced this if you’ve ever slept in, overeaten, dialed up your ex at midnight, procrastinated, tried to quit smoking and failed, skipped the gym, gotten angry and said something you regretted, abandoned your Spanish or piano lessons, refused to speak up in a meeting because you were scared, and so on. “

They explain that “the weakness of the Elephant, our emotional and instinctive side, is clear: It’s lazy and skittish, often looking for the quick payoff (ice cream cone) over the long-term payoff (being thin). When change efforts fail, it’s usually the Elephants fault, since the kinds of change we want typically involve short-term sacrifices for long-term payoffs. Changes often fail because the Rider simply can’t keep the Elephant on the road long enough to reach the destination.”

“The Elephant’s hunger for instant gratification is the opposite of the Rider’s strength, which is the ability to think long-term, to plan, to think beyond the moment (all those things that your pet can’t do.)”

“But the Elephant also has enormous strengths and that the Rider has crippling weaknesses. The Elephant isn’t always the bad guy. Emotion is the Elephant’s turf – love and compassion and sympathy and loyalty.. That fierce instinct you have to protect your kids against harm – that’s the Elephant. That spine-stiffening you feel when you need to stand up for yourself – that’s the Elephant.”

“And even more important if you’re contemplating a change, the Elephant is the one who get s things done. To make progress toward a goal, whether it’s noble or crass, requires the energy and drive of the Elephant And this strength is the mirror image of the Rider’s great weakness: spinning his wheels. The Rider tends to over analyze and over think these things.”

As the authors point out, “if you want to change things, you’ve got to appeal to both. The Rider provides the planning and direction, and the Elephant provides the energy.. So if you reach the Riders of your team but not the Elephants, team members will have understanding without motivation. If you reach their Elephants but not their Riders, they’ll have passion without direction. In both cases, the flaws can be paralyzing. A reluctant Elephant and a wheel -spinning Rider can both ensure that nothing changes. But when Elephants and Riders move together, change can come easily.”

I think perhaps this is why I’ve found a love for the interim work that I do. I get to use both my rider and elephant while helping beloved communities such as First UU Austin find the balance. I feel a wee bit more competent and confident in my own ability to do this with each new interim and I learn more about how churches function and how I function as a leader. It’s a fantastic, exhilarating place to be. But…..

In my personal life – forget it. Elephant 90% of the time. Fortunately, in mine and for most of us I suspect, the elephant does get tired and wants a little help. That’s the time when perhaps, we stop and say I need to listen to the rational side of me I need to rest and analyze why I do what I do, or where I’m going, or what I want. , I’m too tired to feel the passion for the things I love. I need to stop. That’s why I was able to make the decision that I couldn’t lose weight by my own will. I needed outside forces to help me find success and to re-learn what it is and who it is that exists in this body.

As I’ve begun this personal/physical transformation, I know that I have more weight to lose, that I still and always need to exercise and eat healthy and care for myself in ways that I let fall by the wayside in the past. I’ve had to rediscover all the things I love and love to do and that I love people. I love people. I was getting to a point where I couldn’t bear to be with people because I couldn’t bear to be with myself. Ah, the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would do unto yourself.” I wasn’t being very nice to me – how could I find the energy to be nice to others. When I’m in right relationship with myself, (in the words of Iris Dement) I can give joy to my mother, and I can make my lover smile., and I can give comfort to my friends when they’re hurting and I can make it feel better for a while.

Does this mean all my trials are over. Of course, not – I still have many worries and people to take care of and love and aches and pains and bad hair days ahead. But now, the excitement that wells up inside me – the joy that I am feeling right now about attending the connections fair later, and the excitement of moving into my new apartment on Oct. 13 is delightful. The happiness of seeing my 91 year old mother twice this summer and the fun I had literally running around with my 2 grandsons is indescribable. Oh I’m still mostly that Elephant – but my Rider is firmly attached and helping me push on the walls of my cocoons and guiding me as I fly through this wonderful thing called life.

While I have many friends that are not UU, I am so blessed to have found so many loving UU communities that over and over again, hold me, call me to look beyond myself, but also call on me to love myself , communities that support and restore my soul. That love is miraculous.

So I say to you, Remember the Pike Place Fishmongers and start throwing fish around. Show Up, Choose your attitude, Make Someone’s Day, and Play. Fly with the freedom to explore, fly with the freedom to fill your soul with all that you are, fly with the joy of giving and receiving, fly with the wonder of discovering who you are and the gifts you have – each day is a blessing when the spirit of beloved community is there to embrace you. And when you need to rest, or seek comfort or find peace of mind, know that we are with you in those moments as well as the moments of joy and play. We are here for you always. Blessed Be.

Henry David Thoreau and the Simple Life

August 16, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Luther Elmore, Sermons

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Luther Elmore

August 14, 2011

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen. Audio is also available for free download at iTunes. Keyword: austin uu

Henry David Thoreau is generally recognized as one of us, a UU. He most famously lived for two years at Walden Pond and wrote of his life and observances while there. His quest at Walden and at other times in his life reflect a search for meaning and simplicity that we can apply to our lives today.

Sometimes you just need a good exorcism

August 16, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Marisol Caballero

August 7, 2011

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen. Audio of this sermon is also available for free download on iTunes. Keyword: austin uu

Ministerial Candidate, Marisol Caballero, is a life-long UU and Native Texan. She recently returned to Texas after spending the past 2 years in California, doing one year of hospital chaplaincy at USCF Medical Center in San Francisco, and one year as a Ministerial Intern at Neighborhood and Throop UU Churches of Pasadena. In 2010, Mari, as many call her, was honored to “fly solo” as Neighborhood UU Church’s Summer Minister. Mari earned her B.A. from St. Edward’s University in 2003 and her Masters of Divinity (M.Div.) from Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 2007. She now lives in Cedar Park with her long-term partner, Chanel, and their cat, Peppercorn Cottonpaws, and works as substitute teacher in the Austin school district and as a chaplain at St. David’s Hospital. She was a member of this congregation for a time during college.

Worship Service: “Sometimes You Just Need a Good Exorcism,”

Marisol Caballero, UU Ministerial Candidate

During my time as a hospital chaplain in San Francisco, I encountered rituals that were quite different from my own spiritual practices. In what ways can such rituals inform our own theologies and what lessons do they hold for Unitarian Universalists about compassion and renewal?

So let it be written

July 31, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Eric Hepburn, Guest Speakers

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Eric Hepburn

July 31, 2011

Prayer

Somewhere out there

On a dusty shelf

Or a spinning disk

On parchment aged

Or in pixels bright

There are words waiting for you

These words were written for you

And when you find them

They will touch your heart

And change your life.

Somewhere in there

Between the synapses

Of your frontal lobe

Or floating around

In the recesses of you consciousness

Are words destined for another

Words that will touch their heart

And change their life

It is your duty to record them

So that they may be found.

Somewhere out there

Is a better world

waiting to be described

We spend our days and our nights

Imagining this world

When we are wise,

We record these imaginings

For each other

To bring this dream one step

Closer to reality.

When we are unwise,

We think that

all of these imaginings

are just stories.

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Sermon: “So let it be written…”

“So let it be written, so let it be done.”

I have to start this morning with an amusing admission, I chose the title of today’s sermon off the cuff after being approached by Vicki and Dwayne who hoped that I would tie the sermon into the end of our Hogwarts Summer Camp and our Bookspring summer social action project.

I thought it was from the bible. I thought it was from Moses or one of the other Old Testament prophets… But, as I was doing research for the sermon I found out that the quote was actually from Cecil B. DeMille’s epic film The Ten Commandments. Furthermore, it was not one of God’s noble representatives, but the Pharaoh who utters this famous line. Here is the quote in context:

The Egyptian Master Builder Baka asks Pharaoh, “Will you lose a throne because Moses builds a city?” Pharaoh Rameses answers, “The city that he builds shall bear my name, the woman that he loves shall bear my child. So let it be written, so let it be done.”

Well, you can thank Vicki and Dwayne for saving you from the torturous sermon on self-righteousness that I was planning. And you can thank me for drawing the title of a sermon on the sacredness of all texts from a movie line that exemplifies the petty vengefulness of tyrants.

Being unfortunately trained in the contemporary American academic tradition, my first thought when I decided to write a sermon about the sacredness of all texts was to be critical of its weakest point, which, to my mind is more or less, the Harlequin Romance Novel. Can I make the case that even the schmaltz-iest novel is a sacred text? Now I want to clarify that I don’t believe that the success or failure of the proposition that all texts are sacred rests on whether or not I prove the holiness of the romance novel. However, I would like to challenge you to think about whatever genre or type of writing that you find most banal and least likely to be sacred. Must not the author of this dubious work, by necessity, confront the human condition? Does not this topic, this domain of inquiry speak to some pertinent aspect of our shared reality and thus derive its readership? What else is there? We are all at different points in our journey, and so it ought not be too surprising that we find a wide variety of different material insightful in different ways and at different times in our lives.

I think that the more important differentiation, in terms of sacredness, or to echo our prayer closing from Jack Harris-Bonham, holiness, is not what we read but how we read it. It is not which book we select, but why. It is not the level of enlightenment or spiritual power of the author, but how well the book resonates with our own spiritual journey that matters. Ultimately, the sacredness of any particular text to us is about whether or not, and to what extent, we allow the text to change us…

From this perspective, we can come to recognize the transformative potential of essentially all human writings. To be sure, some texts will have objectively greater transformative breadth and depth, but this describes a continuum of sacredness, not an either-or proposition. For the sexually repressed, salvation might just come in the form of a Harlequin.

In the spirit of this revelation, I would like to share with you some of the writings that have changed me.

I want to frame these writings using Ursula Le Guin’s introduction to her novel The Left Hand of Darkness. I started reading science fiction and fantasy when I was twelve, but it wasn’t until I read this introduction in my thirties that I understood why it had always had such a hold on me.

“Science fiction is often described, and even defined, as extrapolative… This book is not extrapolative. If you like you can read it, and a lot of other science fiction, as a thought-experiment. Let’s say (says Mary Shelley) that a young doctor creates a human being in his laboratory; let’s say (says Philip K. Dick) that the Allies lost the second world war; let’s say this or that is such and so, and see what happens… In a story so conceived, the moral complexity proper to the modern novel need not be sacrificed, nor is there a built-in dead end; thought and intuition can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the experiment, which may be very large indeed.”

I remember concretely the moment when I first read this paragraph. I was lying in bed reading, excited to start a new book by an author I was just discovering. I remember feeling a bit breathless, I remember laying the book down on my stomach. I remember closing my eyes and flashing through twenty years of my favorite books. I remember realizing that my favorites were the ones where this counterfactual universe, this imagined world, produced in me a type or degree of moral complexity, sometimes even moral clarity, beyond what I had ever experienced in reading traditional literary fiction.

For example, in his series that begins with Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card takes on the themes of xenophobia and just war theory in a fictional war with aliens. Ultimately, the reader finds a way to identify with and find compassion for the aliens, while becoming self-critical of the might-makes-right and win-at-all-costs mentality of humanity. I can think of no finer gift for a loved one preparing to enlist in the military than a box-set of Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. Not that these books would dissuade their service, Card’s work is steeped in the value of civil service and self-sacrifice. What these books would do is encourage them to struggle with questions that are particularly relevant to anyone preparing him or herself to enter a profession with regular access to weapons of mass destruction.

To continue from Le Guin;

“The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrodinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future – indeed Schrodinger’s most famous thought-experiment goes to show that the “future,” on the quantum level, cannot be predicted – but to describe reality, the present world… Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.”

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings famously describes the struggle between those who wish to live in harmony with nature and those who seek to control it. Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials describes the struggle between free inquiry and powerfully institutionalized dogma. While Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land describes the perverse oddity of culture, any culture, when viewed critically by an outsider.

(Quoting again from Le Guin)

“Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying. …Certainly. Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing this pack of lies, the say, There! That’s the Truth!

…In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane – bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren’t there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

What has struck me about some of my favorite works of alternative histories and futures, many by Kim Stanley Robinson, such as his Mars and California trilogies and his compelling The Years of Rice and Salt, is that these thoughtfully constructed alternative worlds have often felt far more sane than the world we live in. Not a Pollyanna-ish sanity that denies our darker angels, but a cooler-heads-have-prevailed sanity where our social energy is focused on living good lives together and not at each other’s expense.

Returning to Le Guin’s words:

“…I do not say that artists cannot be seers, inspired: that the awen cannot come upon them. Who would be an artist if they did not believe that that happens? if they did not know it happens, because they have felt the god within them use their tongue, their hands? Maybe only once, once in their lives. But once is enough.

I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.

The only truth I can understand or express is, logically defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor.

In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we’re done with it, we may find – if it’s a good novel – that we’re a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little… But it’s very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.

The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

Words can thus be used paradoxically because they have, along with a semiotic usage, a symbolic or metaphoric usage…”

Ah, paradox; such fodder for reflection; such a treasure trove of possibility for the mystically inclined. My first serious introduction to the power of paradox probably came through the robot novels of Isaac Asimov, most famously I Robot. In these books Asimov deconstructs the power of both logic and rules by forcing his sentient robotic protagonists through sequence after sequence of moral crisis brought on by situational conflicts with and between the immutable laws of robotics. Asimov deals similarly with the paradoxes of time and prediction in his famous foundation series. If I can claim today to have the insight that logic, in and of itself, is inadequate to solve the problems of humanity or to answer our biggest questions, the seed of that insight was planted by Asimov in my thirteen year old brain many years ago.

And now, Ursula Le Guin’s finale,

“All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is a metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life – science, …and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.

A metaphor for what?

If I could have said it non-metaphorically, I would not have written all these words, this novel; and Genly Ai would never have sat down at my desk and used up my ink and typewriter ribbon in informing me, and you, rather solemnly, that the truth is a matter of the imagination.”

That is how the six page introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness ends. I have tried to pull out the most succulent language and ideas from those six pages… my wife insisted that reading all six pages aloud to you was a bad idea, one that would end in, at best, a half-glazed congregation. After reflecting, I couldn’t disagree. When I read this introduction the first time, which was followed immediately by rereading it a second time, and then a third time, I put the book on my nightstand, turned out the light, and spent the next few hours in quiet contemplation until sleep finally overtook me. On subsequent nights, I went on to finish the book, diving deeply into the world of Gethen, where the native intelligent species is much like mankind, except for its being without gender. I’m not exactly sure what a planet full of androgynous hermaphrodites is a metaphor for, but I can tell you that it is a great book. I can tell you that it challenges you to think, and to feel, beyond gender to what lies at the heart of our shared humanity.

I have stood in this pulpit many times. I have shared with this community my reflections on growing up as an evangelical Christian, I have laid out for you my obsession with barefoot running, I have pondered with you the concepts of karma and natural law, and I have read to you the words of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and Tenzin Gyatso the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, and Mohandas K. Gandhi, these ones who seem to me the prophets of our modern age. But what I have not told you, not until today, is where my faith comes from. I have not told you… why. Why I stand up here, why I care so much about trying. I have not told you WHY I believe.

My faith comes from science fiction. I do not have to guess whether or not we can imagine a better world. I do not suffer from doubt on this count. We can, and we have, and we do… We actually know EXACTLY what kind of world we want, and we need, and we deserve. I see this knowledge reflected back to me from every single person I meet… in their desire for justice, for compassion, for community, for truth and for beauty, for goodness and for peace. But nowhere do I see these desires mirrored more faithfully and more clearly, than in the thousands of worlds and cultures and peoples that we, ourselves, have projected out there, onto the great metaphorical unknowns of space and time.

And so, we have already let it be written…

What remains, is to let it be done.

Love and Fear

July 24, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Gary Bennett, Guest Speakers

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Gary Bennett

July 24, 2011

I was originally thinking of some sort of cosmic smack-down between love and fear. In one corner, we have Machiavelli, Hobbes and a few others who thought fear essential to running a society. But the Beatles assured us that all we need is love, and they are not alone; how many pop songs, religious homilies and greeting cards say the same? Simple enough. But not really. I’m into love, but I’m also full of fears, from nuclear war to phone calls at 2 am to walking in tall Texas grass in summer, even botching a sermon. At best, I try to keep the fears to things I can do something about, or at least reasonable. I can’t help worrying about government default, but can pass on worrying about whether Casey Anthony’s verdict was an outrage.

Fear is pervasive among all living beings and keeps us alive, the great-granddaddy of all emotions. Once there was no freedom in the universe but quantum uncertainty; but as organic molecules proliferated, those that best avoided danger were likeliest to replicate. And that’s still what it’s all about for one-celled creatures. But life over time became more complex. Colonies of single-celled creatures; then multi-celled. Symbiosis. Sexual reproduction and protecting mom and the kids. All kinds of social species. Ecosystems, up to and perhaps including the Earth itself. Something has been driving this ever greater complexity; call it the ancestor of love. Love is what seeks to find completeness outside, a possible definition of agape . Romantic love probably fits in there somewhere, but that involves jealousy, which brings us back to fear. From amoeba on up the chain of life, somewhere you get to the emotions of love and fear as we know them, rather than just tropisms or instincts.

Human nature was primarily shaped in the hundreds of millennia of hunter/gatherer tribal life. Fears were directed outward, particularly in the earliest days, toward predators, natural disasters and starvation; I doubt much time was spent determining alpha males. The chief survival asset these tribes had was their internal unity, their willingness to work together for the common good; and because survival is what natural selection is about, traits that made us better tribespeople flourished. We developed language for conversation, stories and ritual, and to simplify teaching the next generation; we learned to flirt, and to make art and music together. We even developed a taste for questions which, surprisingly, only tribal lore could answer. Love was the principal tribal glue, but fear was also used to build unity: we were frightened of being ignored, censured, barred from mating or worst of all, exiled. A funny thing happened because we were so successful as tribes: external threats shrank in importance, and with it our sense of “tiger reality,” the urgent need to acknowledge the existence of that tiger within striking distance, diminished; it was far more important for our minds to focus on the group’s shared version of reality. If you are impressed by the Social Darwinist view of pre-social man struggling for survival against other humans, think about this: there would be a strong survival advantage for those who saw the world most clearly; but instead we are far better at rationalizing than reasoning, because our status within the group has been more important than out thinking others.

Very late in our existence came farming and herding, and the ability to hoard wealth came with it. Nomadic desert tribes in the Middle East were patriarchal; some men ended up owning large flocks, many wives, children and slaves and of course enough hired goons to keep it all. Then came cities, and mind-boggling extremes of wealth; states with priest-kings or god-kings and despotic rule followed. For a while there were other, more balanced societies around too, but the fear-based states came to dominate in all the world’s major civilizations.

Not unopposed. The prophets of Israel from the 7th century BC on denounced inequality and injustice. “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion,” said Amos; and “Hear this, you who trample the needy and bring ruin to the poor of the land.” Christianity began as a religion with a radical emphasis on love, as even a casual reading of the Gospels reveals. St. Paul’s letters to young churches focus on trying to bring back to earth starry-eyed hippies waiting for Jesus’ return; but he could get in the spirit from time to time: “Now abide these three things, faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.” St. Augustine was even more succinct: “Love God and do whatever you want.”

But the rebellions in the end failed. Within a few centuries after Jesus, Catholicism was about rigid obedience to the Church; punishment was persecution in this life and eternal torture in the next. Later the Reformation Protestants threw out much, including the authority of the Pope and some beliefs about the sacraments; but kept fear, in the idea of heresy, in demanding obedience to authority and even more anxiety about Hell. Those few who did go further, such as the Quakers – or several centuries the Universalists – were persecuted by every other religious group.

So what’s with Machiavelli? He’s talking government, not religion, and any government as last resort uses force on individuals. But there are repressive regimes and free ones, and legitimate or not. The Prince is written for the ruler who comes to power illegitimately; that ruler, if he relies primarily on charisma and popularity, will be in trouble when these fade. Better to rely on terror from the beginning, given the changing tides of public approval. You might be able to relax the reins a bit later; at least that’s what they tell beginning classroom teachers.

Though he wrote the best primer ever for dictators, Machiavelli’s true loyalty was to democracy; after all, he was a high ranking diplomat for the Republic of Florence before dictator Lorenzo di Medici came along. His masterwork was Discourses on the Histories of Livy, looking for historical patterns to help preserve republics. One lesson was that republics should rely on citizen armies; hiring mercenaries always backfires. How much was I influenced by Machiavelli? A few years later I must have been one of the few people in the United States of my age, gender and draft status who consistently opposed ending the draft. Forty years after Nixon ended it I believe more strongly than ever that is dangerous and possibly fatal for our middle class to be so detached from America’s wars and government policy. “A republic,” said Benjamin Franklin, “if you can preserve it.”

European settlers brought their fears to America with them, and added a few new ones. Forget the myths: with few exceptions, the colonists were interested in religious freedom only for themselves. Most of them came to get rich quick and go home, or to stay one step ahead of the law. The natives very quickly became enemies, as Europeans kept encroaching on their lands. Plentiful land and scarce labor led them to human slavery, and the more slaves they brought in, the greater the fear. And the march west led also to dangerous encounters with the French and Spanish Empires. Texas was the center of a maelstrom of all fears, as colonists dealt with the Mexican Army, their imported slaves and the Comanches; and in their folly, Texans took on the United States a generation later. They were tough enough to win most of these struggles; I can’t imagine America as a continental power otherwise, for what that is worth. But in winning, the core fear-based personality and culture predominated then, and by cultural inertia, it continues today.

Elsewhere in America and Europe changes were happening. In the 1600s New Englanders bred a patriarchal, tyrannical, even theocratic culture second to none. Massachusetts Puritans persecuted differences ruthlessly, driving out dissenters to create many nearby colonies; they tortured and lynched supposed witches as late as 1690 and manned stomach-turning slave ships even into the 19th century. Their clashes with the natives led to one of the worst of all such conflicts, King Philip’s War, in the 1670s. But life gradually got a bit softer after that, less dangerous and with fewer non-tribesmen to fear, and so the rough edges began to smooth over. The Middle Colonies also began to diverge from the slave revolt-fearing Lower South. Enlightenment ideas began to drift in from Europe, and without class extremes or a powerful church, took root faster than in Europe itself. The Revolutionary generation created the Declaration of Independence, followed by 200 years or so of trying to live up to it. These changes have shifted the over-all American culture more to the love end of the love/fear axis.

Transmitting the cultural values of love and fear is partly a matter of upbringing, and partly a matter of what the external world hands you. One psychologist breaks parenting styles into four types. Two of the four are the permissive and the non-involved; though quite different, each merits near-universal disapproval in the larger culture, because they tend to produce unpleasant children and dysfunctional adults. The other two, which have huge bases of approval, are the authoritarian and the authoritative.

The first and probably commonest of these, the authoritarian, emphasizes obedience without understanding, otherwise known as “because I said so.” Authoritarians believe routine harsh physical punishment is the only way to beat good behavior and good manners into kids; they will look at you blankly if you try to distinguish between discipline and whippings. Children come to take pride in the punishment they have endured; as adults, they believe it is responsible for their own highly-developed character, so as good parents they must repeat the pattern. Papa, as the strongman in the house, is naturally the unquestioned head of household, and the obvious source of punishment. Morality becomes confused with power, and their cultural heroes tend to be physically powerful, arrogant and underhanded, from John Wayne or Sylvester Stallone action movies to wars waged by the United States against weaker nations. The Founding Fathers’ documents, in particular the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they believe to be perfect and infallible in the same way they believe the Bible is; and they are equally unlikely to read any of them. God is the ultimate strongman Papa, and His infinite power must be shown by rewarding those who obey him and exacting infinite punishment on His enemies, the sinners. The only escape from Hell is obeying the Church’s teachings without question, from the particular 16 out-of-context Bible verses that make up its theology or, all too often, whom to vote for in the coming elections. Authoritarian adults tend to be hard-working and successful. But they are subject to an inordinate number of fears, which can be exploited by those who know which buttons to push. They have exaggerated fears of the likelihood of being crime victims, of foreign attack or of having their children seduced away from them by enemies within.

Authoritative parenting emphasizes democratic virtues. Unlike permissives, parents set limits on behavior and expect obedience. But within the limits of a child’s understanding, reasons are given; as the child matures, she or he is allowed more say in family matters generally and in personal behavior especially. Discipline is enforced, but with as little harsh physical punishment as possible. Because the rules make sense and the child is listened to, the world comes to be seen as fair and moderately benevolent. Culture heroes are judged as much by their sense of fair play as for their power and skill. My cousins, for example, adored the bullying John Wayne and imitated his strut; I preferred a straight shooter like Roy Rogers, who never cheated, bullied or did more harm than necessary for self-defense.

From this kind of childhood a self-confident adult can develop, capable of being economically successful, but also able to look past self-interest. These adults can certainly be frightened, for fear is intrinsic to life; but endless fear-mongering by politicians and media tends to become less and less effective. They are also more persuadable through fairness and compassion; when Martin Luther King’s marchers did not trade violence for violence, this made a much greater impact on this group than on authoritarians. When I was growing up in the 1950s and Ô60s, these were not liberal or conservative but the commonly accepted values of good citizenship.

I like to think that Unitarian Universalism can be a good home for those for whom love and compassion, not fear and unquestioning obedience, represent ultimate values. But we are not alone in holding these values; given our size, that’s a good thing. Other religious faiths, both Christian and non-Christian, also espouse them. According to a recent Pew Foundation study, most Christians in this country, even among Evangelicals and conservative Catholics, have moved away from the traditional beliefs about salvation and Hell; in overwhelming numbers they either do not believe in Hell at all, or believe that it will be reserved only for the truly wicked. Universalism, far from having withered away, has in some ways permeated Christianity. In a country where the media have been pouring fear into people’s living rooms incessantly in recent decades and where preachers and politicians successfully run political campaigns on fear alone, that is very good news.

So here we are. We need fear; we cannot survive without fear. But fear is not easily governed by reason. If the crowd around seems to be calling me to fear, I might find it stirring without ever passing through the rational critic in my head. Fear begets fear, and none are more compelling than those ingrained in us as children. All of these characteristics have been ruthlessly exploited since the beginning of civilization for the benefit of power and wealth; they have also been spontaneously generated by news events and even by the stress of living with those we consider as being “not from our tribe.”

And we have another need as well, love. It was an integral part of what made us human in the first place, even if limited to our own tribe; so we need it to remain human in the face of fear. We also need it to align ourselves with a cosmic principle that has moved to ever greater levels of complexity, cooperation and integration for billions of years, perhaps not so much shaped by a pre-existing God as shaping toward becoming God. And we need it right now most urgently for the survival of the human race, with its ever bloodier wars fought with ever more terrible weapons. Let W.H. Auden have the last word: “We must love one another or die.”

Are First UU's Inside Traders?

July 24, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Michael LeBurkien

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Michael LeBurkien

July 17, 2011

Good Morning Beloved Community. MEOW!! You are FAT CATS. We are a very wealthy, self satisfied, insider trading, tax cheating FAT CAT congregation. We are the spiritually richest congregation in the USA.

We are gorged with honest religion, true and relevant religion…..but you refuse to Evangelize, to share the Good News with others. You are guilty of Spiritual Insider Trading in a most precious life sustaining and enhancing commodity; authentic religious stocks and bonds and spiritual gold. You are inside traders, taking advantage of non public information, keeping it non public…..keeping UU’ism and FUUCA a secret as if this knowledge were your birthright. This is religiously illegal and a violation of our mission statement. This illegal activity raises the cost of purchasing honest religion, an essential commodity for all. It decreases the spread of spirituality over the entire planet earth. Our attitude is I’ll scratch your back and you scratch mine. You give religious tips to insider members, but not the general public. We are self satisfied in our little hidden cul de sac at the end of poorly traveled No Outlet Rd. This is fraudulent and violates the duty of full disclosure. We all may end up in prison. We may be in spiritual prison and on the way to spiritual Hell this very moment.

Speaking of prison listen to the story of Coval Russell from the New York Times. The Butte Co jail cell where Coval spent his last happy days is no bigger than a wheel-chair-size stall at Austin International Airport and dominated by a toilet. He called this place where few would want to spend a single night his home. He spent 14 months there for wounding his landlord with a knife. He became a beloved counselor. He was given dibs on TV program selection. Pops was first in the food line and had a reserved place in Monopoly Game Marathons. He never had visitors, but he did not need any. Here among the transient population of men awaiting trial or sentencing, he had found community. His body was found Wednesday in the Feather River, where he had fallen from a bridge just a hop from the Motel 6 where he was staying since his release. No one doubted what had happened. Russell had petitioned the court to keep him in jail indefinitely and became depressed when the judge granted him probation. He said he would kill himself if he was sent “back out there” with no friends and family. He took a taxi to Table Mountain Ridge….said on a railroad track for 1/2 hour and then disappeared. He was unaware that a UU church in Butte would have taken him into their homeless aid program because it was not advertised to the general public or the Butte Co. prisoners aid programs.

We delude ourselves when we say that UU’ism is just about lofty principals. People seek us out because they simply want a place where they belong. Our world marginalizes, discounts and ignores many folks who are just looking for a place to live a life of spiritual integrity. Lofty principals yes, but it is also a one at a time religion. We all have our secret struggles. We all need community to give us strength to cope with our secret struggles. That is why we need to evangelize to inform the general public that we are here for them.

Evangelism is in our genes, our history. In 1834, George Rogers, a renowned, Universalist circuit rider rode one horseback out West, then Pennsylvania, to preach in Pottsville, Bethlehem, & Womelsdorf speaking English to a German Congregation. Local clergy opposed him with violence. Rocks were thrown, windows broken. He told religious persecutors….”You have mistaken your man. I am not to be stopped, I will preach the universal love of God at the martyr’s stake” Hundreds came to hear him. Think of that next time you complain about a 20 minute drive to church. The evangelistic style spread the good news of Universaism and its heartfelt saving message and make us visible. It emphasized personal evangelism, leading to change is heart and behavior throughout the horseback circuits.

Can we talk? UU’ism is not for everyone. If you plan to attend Gov. Perry’s Houston’s Reliant Stadium religious rally wherein fundamentalist preachers will talk about the Sex Goddess seducing the Emperor thus causing social demise, this is not the church for you. If you think Oprah is an unknowing well meaning handmaiden of the anti-Christ, this is not the church for you, if you think children of immigrants who are born here are raised as terrorist time bombs and should be sent back to countries of their parents origin, this is not the church for you. If you think Mr. Michelle Bachman’s clinic is right in promoting reparative prayers to change gays to straight people and takes government money for that purpose, then this is not the church for you.

On the other hand, on the other hand…. If you think you are responsible for your own mind, body, and spirit, If you know that you don’t know every answer to every question, if you’re not afraid of humanists, who aren’t afraid of pagans, who aren’t afraid of theists, who aren’t afraid of atheists, who aren’t afraid of Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Christians, or Buddhists, if you’re fairly sure that tattoos and body piercing do not signal the end of Western civilization, if you are tired of the phrases acceptable losses & collateral damage, if you’re ashamed of the amount of press coverage given to the debate about the place of God in the Pledge of Allegiance in a country where 1/6 of the children go to bed hungry and health care is considered non-essential, if you’re tired of union rights denied to social workers and teachers who work 2 jobs to make ends meet then this is your church, your community, your spiritual home. This church is good news for you.

In this country we number only 1/4 of a million. Our population was greater 2 decades ago. But in the recent census 600,000 listed themselves as Unitarian Universalists. We are out there, but unevangelized. Fundamentalists have said UU’s believe in nothing and everything. No requirements no beliefs no faith. They don’t know us because we inside trade our beliefs, we inside trade our thoughts on revelation, repentance, resurrection, salvation and the Messianic Age. We are shy about evangelizing and offering our Amazing Grace to spiritual prisoners. We practice illlegal and criminal religion if we don’t communicate our access to spiritual wealth to a religiously impoverished world.

Hey People, we are a vibrant faith of believers. We believe in the motive force of love, We believe in the necessity of the democratic process, We believe in the importance of a religious community, we believe in the freedom of religious expression, We believe in the appreciation of religious ideas, but not religious myths, We believe in the authority of reason and conscience, we believe in the never ending search for Truth and spiritual honesty,We believe in the unity of experience, and all life, We believe in the worth and dignity of each human being, We believe in ethical application of religion with the goal of social justice, We believe in the Amazing Inner Grace that finds completion in community involvement.

When I tell young people students at UT about our beliefs they tell me they did not know a religion like ours existed. Where is your church? What time are services?

Let me end with my own personal story. About 2 years ago I initiated proceedings to end my marriage of 4 decades. Many years were happy and fullfilling . But it became intolerable. I was ashamed and afraid. I masochistically blamed myself for the events leading to divorce. I was afraid of being cut off from my grown children and beautiful grandchildren. I feared being branded a loser not meeting social expectations of not having a spouse, a girlfriend, a partner, a significant other, or even a roommate. I had allowed myself to be cut off from old friends and had been denied the opportunities to make new friends. Like Coval Russell being let out of the Butte Co. jail, I had no community. I contemplated the ending of my life.

But I was drawn to the FUUCA. Embryonic friendships became solid. The ties to community strengthened. I stopped being afraid. I felt strong and worthwhile, I gained spiritual strength and self esteem. I learned to love myself and accept love from other UU’s. I learned from this community and the gym locker room that friendship love and church family love was just as valid as romantic love and having a spouse, girlfriend, significant other or roommate was no guarantee of erotic love anyhow. I gathered my forces and crossed the the stormy Channel to find the safe haven of personal happiness and community service I never looked back. I now have matured, and grown emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. I am light years ahead. I have taken university level courses in family systems, leadership development and non violent communication here. We believe in continuing education here. I don’t even recognize who I was 2 weeks ago, let alone 2 years ago. This church saved my life and it can save yours.

In the Torah it says, “If I am not for myself who will be? If I am for myself alone, what am I?” Let’s get out of our inside trader comfort zone people.” There are millions out there in the general public who like me, like you, need to find a spiritually integrity who need to connected to all creation. What are you, if you are for yourselves alone?

The Virtues of Leadership

July 11, 2011 by tom Posted in Guest Speakers, Mark Skrabacz

Rev. Mark Skrabacz

July 10, 2011

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

I wonder what you think good leadership is? What is your experience of leaders and as leaders?

A few months ago 10 of our Congregation’s leaders gathered to share a Leadership Training. This was a round table discussion during which we explored readings and topics to enhance our understanding of leadership, specifically for our church. As UU communities we are committed to democracy, which means that “we the people” are the principals of our church. Our Boards are our elected voluntary representatives and as such serve as leaders for a time. We members are also in a way only temporary, too. Nevertheless, members present and future will endure as the responsible authors and leaders of our churches.

Right here, right now, I invite you speak out single words or phrases in answer to these questions: Firstly, what are some of the qualities you most admire in good leadership? Secondly, what are those qualities you most fear or dislike?

Changes are happening around our planet. The whole world is changing, and what can we learn from this? We learn that good leadership is absolutely necessary to navigate through times of change. Changes are happening in our church community as we grow with the steady addition of new members, new interests, new concerns, talents and energies. We are expanding our embrace and becoming more broadly linked to the world. We are blessed to be growing in increments, so that we can integrate new energies with the old. For we have something special here that called us and will call others. We all have to take responsibility for our church community. Today’s message will address this in part.

Nowadays there are countless new examples of how leaders mobilize others to get extraordinary things done in just about every area of organized activity. Leadership knows no bounds and can be found in every racial, religious, ethnic and cultural circumstance. Yet the traits of leadership follow remarkably similar patterns as mentioned in our brief Q&A today. Let’s examine some common virtues of leaders that will hopefully steer us toward further achievements in our church community.

In olden times, society and churches accorded great authority to clergy. The priests were the authors of their church’s destinies and the center of church communities. That was my experience growing up. It led me to pursue leadership training in a Roman Catholic seminary in the navel-gazing 70s. This was a time when many priests were looking at their lives and the dwindling prospects of their dreams being actualized in a church that seemed bent on preserving the past, and an extremely patronizing and authoritarian one at that. They started leaving in droves. In the midst of my own aspirations, I began to witness the loss of the best and the retention of the “yes men”. The inner authority that clergy demonstrated began to falter as many persons who possessed the personal traits of honesty, transparency and trustability left the clergy.

The great opportunity of the demise of authoritarian leadership lies in developing a new capacity for leadership. A title and authority can be given but it’s behavior that wins respect. The first virtue of leadership is that leaders must model the way. People respect and follow first the person, then the plan…bringing to mind the cardinal principle of parenting: kids don’t go where you point; they go where you go.

Leading means you have to be a good example and walk your talk. Exemplary leadership attracts commitment and achieves high standards, because it models the behavior expected of others. One of the guiding principles of modeling is that it clarifies your values. Your values are at the core of leadership. You have to open up your mind and heart to let people really know what you think and believe. Yet it’s not just the leader’s values that are important, because leaders aren’t just representing themselves. They speak on behalf of the larger organization.

20 members of our church met last December to launch our Long Range Planning process with an appreciative inquiry facilitated by Eric Hepburn. He helped us ask questions and tell stories in order to think and listen for our own core values that we personally find in our lives and that are shared in our church. We came up with three: communication, interconnectedness and acceptance. Leaders must forge agreement around the common values and ideals of the group being led.

A friend of mine works as a leadership consultant and he tells of his initial meeting of with a company president The CEO briefly outlined their history, mission, current goals, personnel problems and the situation he wanted help with. My friend listened and then asked the president what he valued more than anything else. The president asked for clarification. My friend asked him again to declare the single thing that motivated his life. He got up and closed the door and asked if that meant for work or life in general. My friend said there was no difference; that there was only life.

He finally answered, I guess that would be love. The consultant asked how many were on his executive team and he said 8 and that most of them had been with him for 5 years. The consultant remarked that probably all of them knew that love was is most cherished value. He answered probably not. 6? No. 3? No. My friend said: “How many of these people with whom you’ve worked closely for 10 hours a day, 5 days a week for 5 years, would know that love is your most important value?” He answered, “Probably none.”

Makes you wonder if that leader was lying to himself about his personal values. How do your leader’s modeling of their personal values impact their ability to represent your congregation’s values?

A second virtue is that leaders must also inspire a shared vision. You all — this church — has done a lot of work on this these past few years with your core values and development of vision and mission. The idea here is that when we get as excited about our future as we do about our present, we will allow that vision to pull us forward into it. Our vision is the force that directs our future. Leaders gaze across the horizon of time and imagine the exciting and ennobling opportunities that are in store for their organization. Leaders have a desire to make things happen that no one else has ever done. Do you have any interest in your future as a church community? Do you have any images to share of how we might be making a difference? Then you are a visionary leader and I hope you will step up and act, so that we all can support these ideas.

A note of caution: Be careful about surrendering your own authority and initiative to a charismatic leader. Remember we are about creating a future that is bigger than any leader.

This is what the world wants and the basis of today’s revolutions–the chance for the people to author their own lives and destiny. Facilitating this is the work of leadership. How well is your church doing in raising up leadership? George Bancroft, a notable early 19th century historian wrote: “The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force; in other words, the measure of the progress of civilization is the progress of the people.” Sounds like our recently-departed contemporary historian Howard Zinn.

That brings us to the third virtue of leadership the ability to challenge the process. Whatever the challenge: growth, change, mission, expansion, innovation, all cases involve a change from the status quo. This is challenging for us to hear. Yet the fact is not one leader who has ever achieved something of great importance did it by keeping things the same. All leaders challenge the process.

Leaders venture out. They invite others into challenging conversations. They are pioneers searching for opportunities to make things better, to integrate the best of the past with the burgeoning future. They listen within and without in order to check the timing, take risks and create the atmosphere for experimentation, the implementation of new ideas and the willingness to innovate. Risk and change are scary. Not everyone is comfortable with uncertainty. Yet small steps and small wins build confidence so that bigger challenges can be met. My view is that this happens best when it happens in increments. We must feel safe first, then we can begin to take the risks necessary to lead by challenging the process.

There’s a difference between managing and leading. Managers use their authority by making decisions, decisions that get things done; leaders exceed this kind of authority by causing others to ponder troubling questions; questions like how can we be more relevant or more transparent or inclusive or more compassionate? Managers calm people by resolving ambiguity; leaders often frustrate people by refusing to decide quickly what can only be solved slowly and digested by a greater number than one or a few. You see, the most important challenges are too big for individual decision-makers to address alone. That’s where leaders come in to bring the whole group’s gifts to bear. Anyone, from any seat in here, can lead.

Which situations call for management and which for leadership? One factor is the nature of the challenge to be faced. For example, if the central air malfunctions, it must be repaired. Our congregation has authorized our Building and Grounds Committee to pick a contractor and spend money pronto. On the other hand, hypothetically a once-successful program that no longer attracts participation may need a cross-section of good heads to take whatever time they need to cook up a fresh vision of this activity.

Leadership is not a personal trait, but the ability to take action: like getting a whole group of us to address our most important challenges. Leadership is measured not by whether leaders get their way, but by how well the resources of the congregation come to bear on crucial questions.

That’s a picture of the next virtue of good leadership: Leaders enable others to act. They build trust and foster collaboration. The single test most used to detect whether or not someone is on the road to becoming a leader is the use of the word “we.” They use it nearly 3X more than the word “I.” Leaders make it possible for others to do good work. They empower others. They delegate. Like the reading for the Tao Te Ching, they give the work back to the people.

Finally leaders encourage the heart with genuine acts of caring that uplift the spirit and draw people forward. Personal thank you notes, phone calls, visits to the home, then following up with an email. These are old-fashioned but timeless signs of encouragement. Recognizing contributions and celebrating shared values and victories are also helpful, as are empathy and sympathy when things are tough.

Before closing I’ll paraphrase Gordon McKeeman, former President of our UU Starr King School of Ministry and a parish minister of 22 years in Akron, Ohio.

There are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people. Beckoning them forth is the task of leadership. As leaders we have the responsibility to lead our institution – in our case our church – in becoming a source of power of making a difference. We are called to do this in the midst of a group of people overwhelmingly devoted to individualism, and who are consequently suspicious of institutions.

Each individual is a locus of power, actual and potential. A purpose of having any institution is to link the separate powers of individuals into one larger, more committed, more powerful community. … The maturing self struggles to embrace more and more … to grow toward a larger self that is always learning to love one more person, forgiving one more person, understanding that his or her well-being is inextricably bound to that of others. … It then realizes that the glorification of the small, narrow I is the source of what we call evil.

The errand on which we are bent is this: the realization of exalted human possibilities through self-growth from narcissism to encompassing wholeness. Let’s become “we” speaking people.

Fortunately, anyone can lead. While it is far from the ideal solution, when official leaders fail, then leadership can still emerge from the periphery: from ad hoc planning teams, from voices crying in the wilderness, even from the mouths of babes. Maybe you feel like a voice in the wilderness or even a baby to your community. This message is to encourage you to consider serving in leadership on a working committee. Your Board would be interested in hearing from you about your concerns and interests regarding your church and if you are interested in serving on a committee. You know, serving this congregation on its board or a committee, your board and committees, is a very good learning opportunity.

After hearing this, I leave you with these questions about your own beloved Church’s leadership: Considering the virtues of leadership we have just explored, what do you feel you are doing well and where could you use some improvement?

With acknowledgment to the authors of Leadership Challenge: Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner for material reiterated in this sermon.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of What?

July 3, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Brian Ferguson, Guest Speakers

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Brian Ferguson

July 3, 2011

Reading

Excerpt from A Treatise on Atonement by the 19th Century Universalist leader Hosea Ballou.

“Man’s major goal, in all he does, is happiness; and were it not for that, he never could have any other particular goal. What would induce men to form societies; to be at the expense of supporting government; to acquire knowledge; to learn the sciences, or till the earth, if they believed they could be as happy without as with?

The fact is, man would not be the thing that he now is, as there would not be any stimulus to action; Men are never without this grand goal, so they are never without their wants, which render such a goal desirable. But their minor goals vary, and their passions differ. Then, says the objector, there is no such thing as disinterested benevolence.

The objector will say, to admit that our happiness is the grand goal of all we do destroys the purity of religion, and reduces the whole to nothing but selfishness.

To which, I reply a man acting for his own happiness, if he seek it in the heavenly system of universal benevolence, knowing that his own happiness is connected with the happiness of his fellow-men, which induces him to do justly and to deal mercifully with all men, he is not more selfish than he ought to be. But a man acting for his own happiness, if he seek it in the narrow circle of partiality and covetousness, his selfishness is irreligious and wicked.”

Sermon

I find it interesting that on this July 4th Independence Weekend that you invited a worship leader who is British. I am reminded of the Romans, who would parade their captured enemies through the street then have the defeated leaders give speeches praising the Great Roman Empire. I wondered if this is why you invited me back? Those of you who remember my eventful Internship here two years ago probably realize that is not what I will be doing. What I do want to do is congratulate this religious community for the hard work you have done over the last two years and your selection of a fabulous Minister in the Rev. Meg Barnhouse. Congratulations, I am sure you must be very happy.

Now happiness is something I want to explore today. Happiness is a strange idea when you think about it. It is one of the most common wishes we make for others. This weekend we will be wishing each other a Happy 4th July, even to British people. Last Fall I even saw a sign saying Happy Veterans Day. I was taken aback and a little unsettled by this, Happy Veterans Day. Veterans Day has always been a day I recognized as a solemn day of remembrance for those who lost their lives in wars. Wishing someone a Happy Veterans Day seems to have missed the point of the day. Not everything in life is happy – in fact even our wishing of each other happiness on holidays implies that most of the time we are not happy.

Now being from Britain, happiness is not something that comes easily to me. I grew up Presbyterian which with its emphasis on human depravity seems much more grounded in reality than any foolish optimism about happiness. Human history seems to have plenty of examples where humanity has taken the low road in the treatment of each other. Reviewing human history with its seeming constant violence and injustice usually stirs in me emotions of sadness or anger and often both. History or our current news rarely stirs emotions of happiness in me.

Now perhaps I’m overly negative about this but to show that I’m not alone in this view, there was a proposal by a British psychologist to have happiness classified as a psychiatric disorder. I originally thought this was a joke from a satirical newspaper like the Onion but it was in the Journal of Medical Ethics1 which is not usually a barrel of laughs. Here is what the abstract to the proposal says:

“It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains — that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant.” So there you have it to be happy is abnormal – at least in Britain. We British can be a miserable bunch. Perhaps that is why the American colonies wanted their independence from Britain -they wanted to be happy or at least the opportunity to pursue happiness. At the very founding of the United States in the Declaration of Independence there is talk about happiness. One of the most famous sentences from the Declaration says “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This is considered a powerful statement of individual human rights and has been called one of the best-known sentences in the English language.2 As a powerful statement of human rights it is great shame that it talked about all men rather than all people being created equal. If it had said all people then women might not have had to wait another 140 years for the vote. Alas like the reading from Hosea Ballou earlier, it’s sexist language was a product of its time.

Thomas Jefferson was the main author of the declaration and acknowledged that most of the ideas in it were not original. Scholars recognize multiple influences on the document. One of the major influences was somewhat ironically the British political philosopher, John Locke, who was one of the most influential thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries. He wrote extensively about the just use of power by governments and about 100 years before the Declaration of Independence he said people had the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of property.” Lock believed that property rights were fundamental to human rights both of which should be protected by the government. It is interesting that Jefferson changed this aspect of Locke’s work to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The pursuit of property seems much more in line with our lives in the consumer culture of the U.S. today.

The modern American and British views of individual property rights are by no means a Universal view. Many of the indigenous Native American groups to New England struggled to understand the early American colonists’ ideas of ownership of land. A common view among the Native American groups was “The land does not belong to us, we belong to the land.” This in many ways is a radical interpretation of our 7th Unitarian Universalist principle of the respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are part. Many Native American saw humans as part of the environment, part of something larger than themselves, with no sense of ownership by them. That is a radically different world view and makes a clash of cultures inevitable as soon as the early colonists started claiming ownership of land. What did the Native Americans make of the first “No Trespassing” signs?

Many indigenous groups throughout the world struggle with the dominant western ideas of individual property rights. Even, in my home country of Scotland, the native non-English language Gaelic, did not have a word for individual ownership, it only had language for community ownership by family or clan. The language had no way of saying that I own this, a person could only talk about how we own this. This is a remarkably different approach to living than we have in most of our modern society. Yet think about how we talk about ownership within this religious community.

In our religious tradition ownership and responsibility does not lie with some centralized power or with the minister, blame may lie with the minister but not ownership and responsibility. The ownership and responsibility lies with the members of this religious community, with each of us. We talk about our church, our religious education program, our members, our minister, the land that we own, and in the modern world we live – our webpage and our facebook page. As individuals of this religious community we own none of it but together with each other we own all of it.

The idea of individual property rights is so fundamental to how British and American societies operate that we forget it is a choice we make as a society. I find it interesting that the individual pursuit of property was down-played by Jefferson in the declaration of independence and replaced with the pursuit of happiness. There are many benefits to individual ownership since as individuals we often take better care of what we own individually rather than what we own in common with others. The desire for ownership, be it a house, car, or other item, can be the primary motivator for many of our actions.

Now the exact relation of ownership to happiness is a complex one. The material wealth of most Americans has increased enormously since the 1950’s but the surveys of happiness suggest most Americans are slightly less happy than the 1950’s. The pursuit of property may be a major motivator of our actions but does not seem to make us happier. This makes sense to me since pursuing property to a certain level of comfort such as having a safe place to live and ample food to eat will reduce our fear and insecurity therefore increase our happiness. Beyond these basic comforts the continual pursuit of property and goods which is encouraged by our economic system I believe can result in more dissatisfaction. As our expectations are continually raised then the likelihood of happiness or even just contentment can diminish. Perhaps Jefferson was on to something when he replaced the Pursuit of Property with the Pursuit of Happiness.

Some historians believed that Jefferson de-emphasized protection of property by the government to allow taxation but most historians believed that Jefferson wanted a more virtuous ideal to go along with life and liberty. Happiness was a very important concept in the 18th century since many liberal philosophers like Jefferson and Locke were justifying the curbing of the powers by Kings and Tyrants – often the same thing. The justification defined the role of government to serve the people by seeking the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.3 Judging by this standard it would seem that our present government in America is failing badly since no-one seems happy with it.

At the time of the writing of the Declaration of Independence Happiness was considered the supreme determiner of a person’s actions. This idea was mentioned in the earlier reading by Hosea Ballou, considered the father of the Universalist side our tradition. He stated: “Man’s major goal, in all he does, is happiness; and were it not for that, he never could have any other particular goal.”4 Hosea Ballou was writing just 30 years after the Declaration of Independence and still reflects that period’s belief in the pursuit of happiness as the major motivation of a person’s actions. The Declaration has a strong religious context emphasizing rights endowed by one’s Creator meaning God. Ballou likewise believed we had a God-given right to be happy and we were created to be fulfilled and happy. Jefferson from a political point of view stated the pursuit of happiness is a right and Ballou from our own Universalist religious tradition stated that happiness is our main stimulus to noble action. It seems like happiness is a very important idea but is the pursuit of happiness an appropriate religious goal?

In the earlier reading Ballou warned that acting only for our own individual happiness is irreligious and wicked5. The focus on one’s own individual happiness can easily slip into narcissism and selfishness. Ballou believed true happiness would come when we acted justly on the behalf of others and dealt mercifully with them – a universal system of benevolence. Over the last 200 years we have increasingly become a more individualistic culture and many in our society do not think in terms of the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

As well as the overemphasis on individual happiness, the idea of happiness as a goal to be pursued seems problematic to me since it implies we can reach some stable state of happiness. I don’t think life is like that. Given the constant change in our world and the finite nature of human life then any expectation of a lasting state of happiness seems doomed to disappointment. Our lives are filled with challenges such as illness, loss of loved ones, disappointments in relationships, financial uncertainty, and injustice in its many forms. Now being happy through all the struggles of life may not be a psychiatric disorder as was claimed earlier but may not be a meaningful response to life’s challenges. Having expectations of lasting happiness can lead to a sense of disappointment and despair. I heard it said that expectations are just premeditated resentments therefore I treat life with high hopes and low expectations. So what are my expectations and hopes about happiness?

I think we have brief moments of happiness rather than lasting periods of happiness. These moments often come when reflecting on our past, often our immediate past. These reflections can be on some great time of connection with family or friends, or a great event we worked hard on that felt successful, or time we took for ourselves to reflect on our growth as people through skills acquired or changes of behavior. Happiness for me has a reflective quality where some past event gives us satisfaction and I think that happiness is more often the consequence of what we do not the motivation for what we do. Take some of the life’s struggles I just mentioned – with illness I seek care, for loss of loved ones I seek comfort, for disappointments with relationships I seek understanding, for financial struggles I seek support, and for injustice I seek to work for justice.

Mainly what I seek with life’s struggle is the compassion and understanding of others to help me cope. This is where I think religious communities can play an important role in our lives. Many people seek religious community to help them cope with life’s sorrows and celebrate life’s joys. The congregation I serve in San Marcos has a shared joys and concerns portion of our weekly worship service which is a ritualized form of that. But the sharing of joys and concerns amongst us does not just happen in worship, it happens in the fellowship hour after service, and through the friendships we have with fellow congregants. This is a vital part of the fabric of a healthy religious community.

Through this sharing and reflection on the struggles and joys of life we create the meaning in our lives. This sharing and reflection in community can allow us to feel cared for, comforted, supported, and understood which, in time, may leads us to moments of happiness as we reflect on how we are valued by other people. And the sharing of joys is important because if we can learn to truly find joy in another person’s joy then this can help increase the moments of happiness in our own lives.

In closing, I think Jefferson did get it right in pursuing happiness rather than property as one of our rights but happiness is not a goal to be achieved but moments of satisfaction to be savored in our lives. Aristotle said “happiness is the only thing that humans desire for its own sake, unlike riches, honor, health or friendship, which are sought not for their own sake but cause people to be happier.” I would add that people may desire happiness but life will place obstacles in the way of our happiness. How we choose between riches, honor, health, and friendship will determine the depth and frequency of those moments of our happiness. We do well to choose wisely.

Ballou, Hosea. A Treatise on Atonement Edited and introduced by Ernest Cassara (Boston, MA: Skinner House Books, 1986) p.33-34

i Bentall, Richard P. Journal of Medical Ethics Volume 18, Issue 2 (BMJ Group, 1992) p.94-98

ii Lucas, Stephen E. Justifying America: The Declaration of Independence as a Rhetorical Document in American Rhetoric: Context and Criticism Thomas W Benson ed. (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press,1989) p.85

iii Willis, Gary. Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence ( New York, NY: Doubleday, 1978) p.259

iv Ballou, Hosea. A Treatise on Atonement Edited and introduced by Ernest Cassara (Boston, MA: Skinner House Books, 1986) p.33-34v Ballou, Hosea. A Treatise on Atonement Edited and introduced by Ernest Cassara (Boston, MA: Skinner House Books, 1986) p.33-34

The importance of ritual

June 26, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers

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Stephanie Canada Gill

Sandra Ries

June 26, 2011

Stephanie Canada Gill

It’s always fun; when preparing a sermon, to look up the dictionary definition for your topic. So I went to www.dictionary.com; which gives me some choices from a variety of dictionaries, and the one which I found the most amusing, was this one from “The World English Dictionary”:

Ritual – (noun)

1. the prescribed or established form of a religious or other ceremony

2. stereotyped activity or behavior

3. [psychological] any repetitive behavior, such as hand-washing, performed by a person with a compulsive personality disorder

With that in mind, I am happy to be here with you this morning, so that we can enjoy our compulsive, repetitive behavior together.

It’s worth noting that some in this church don’t necessarily qualify what we do here together each Sunday as ritualistic or ceremonial. Yet each aspect of our worship service has a meaning, a context, and a reason why it is performed in the way that it is, and the manner and order in which we perform it are vitally important to us.

If you doubt that; I urge you to have a chat with any of the “old timers” here such as myself about our discussions; as a congregation, about any changes in our worship services. For those of you who have been here a while, please take a moment and cast your memories back to the time we added “Joys and Concerns” to the service… and when we removed it later. Or our discussions about how, when, and in what manner we would be including our children within the worship services.

Yes, I don’t believe that “Vitally Important” is too strong a phrase.

Ritual can be seen in terms of a structure, a template. There is something repetitive in the nature of ritual, but it is the way we each conceptualize ritual that is important. So let me share an experience I had about that, many years ago.

I had a period of time during my teens where I was still attending church, but no longer felt a deep connection to the faith of my childhood. And during that time, I had an experience worth sharing.

It happened on one of those many, nameless mornings, just as my mind was waking up in response to the communion plate being passed around. Ah, the sharpness of unsweetened grape juice, and its contrast to the tasteless little wafer squares. For me, it meant that the service was nearly over and my freedom was within sight.

But then I noticed something; one of my fellow congregants, who was sitting in the pew in front of me. I saw her face light up as she put the wafer in her mouth. I was captivated. I watched carefully, and I then I turned to look at others across the aisle, and in the pews behind me. It happened again and again, there, and then there! Somehow in that sad little square; people were tasting something I didn’t, and whatever it was, it was not something inherent in the wafer itself. It had touched their hearts.

I remember sitting back in the pew; almost light-headed, and thinking about what I had just seen. And then I realized that it wasn’t that the rituals of that church were meaningless, it was that they had become meaningless to me.

They felt something, something very profound.

It may seem obvious to you all now; but I tell you it shook me, and it made my heart clench. I was excluded from what I had witnessed, and I came to realize later that it was because they were experiencing the spiritual expression of their god, a god with whom I no longer felt contact.

Although it came to me much later, that day was the start of a personal quest. I began a search for rituals which did have meaning for me. I did not find meaningful expressions of ritual again until I came to THIS church. And it was here that I began to open up to Paganism. Until that time, I did not know that creating our own rituals was an option until I came to this church.

What was I missing? Well, let’s start by considering this concept:

Ritual is a way to make non-observable reality manifest.

I’ll say that again, a little slower:

Ritual is a way…to make non-observable reality…manifest.

Ritual touches something in our core, something significant and deep in us which has existed at least as far back as the painted caves, and likely before that. It touches our emotions, but it also appeals to our minds. Ritual speaks to the part of us which is so often beyond words.

In fact, we are going to perform something ritualistic together today after this sermon. Words give a clearness of direction; it is a way of expressly stating our sacred intent, if you will. But the non-verbal part is key. The non-verbal portions of ritual give us the opportunity to digest the words, and allow them to touch us on an emotional level. So here is an opportunity to transmute words into emotions. Later in the service, we are going to smudge this sanctuary.

So let’s look at smudging. This is a sacred act, which revolves around some similar concepts world-wide. It’s an ancient rite, we really have no idea how far it goes back in any of the cultures which use it.

Smudging has an element of purification, and of defining sacred space via scent. The two are intertwined, because in essence it sweeps away whatever is mundane, in order to make room for the sacred. Distracting thoughts, impurities from outside the circle of the holy space – smudging pushes those things out in order to create a void which the sacred can fill. It recognizes that in order for something new to be born, something old must give way. The smoke fills the room, and then fades. Now a new space is created.

Within that context; smudging has a symbolic connection to planting, to rededicating, to preparing the way for something new to begin. The way is made clear. What will we plant once the weeds have been plowed under? What are the furrows waiting for? These are decisions which are planted in our hearts, and later will bloom into words and actions

I believe we are accustomed to thinking of sacred space as someplace where the sacred somehow simply happens. But; in fact, the sacred consists of what we bring to the space, what we do while we are there, and how we take it and apply to our lives both within the ritual context and beyond. A ritual can be seen as a temporary construct, but in truth no ritual is successful if it does not in some way impact our lives on an ongoing basis.

The ancients understood this. They understood the core aspect of ritual construction – intention. Ritual takes the reality we envision; but cannot yet see except with the eyes of our heart, and ignites the process through which it will become our reality in time yet to come. So it’s important to know what our intentions are.

Ritual is a way to connect our emotions with our thoughts. This happens; in the case of smudging, through our sense of smell. The only way we have to begin the process of connecting with the unseen; or inexpressible, is by using one (or more) of our five senses.

The sense of smell is tied to memory. Scientific research has shown this. As such, it has the ability to create a strong memory, to create a path way in our brains; if you will, so that the repeated use of a given smell, over and over in a particular context will naturally take us more and more quickly in our minds back to that context. And that context was designed intentionally and so is supported by that smell. As such, it is absolutely ideal for religious ritual.

Nor is the sense of smell the only sense ritual can use to great effect. Our sense of hearing can be used both actively and passively. Passively, we had have music sung to us or played for us by a variety of amazingly talented people over the course of time. It lifts our spirits, it opens our hearts.

I sometimes refer to ritual as storytelling, as it is within ritual that we tell the story of who we are. Like a story, our ritual has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In our worship services, we begin the process of creating sacred space by the introductory music, which alerts us that we are entering the place where we create the sacred together. This space is infused with sacred sounds, unlike our day to day lives.

Just as a storyteller might set the stage by saying, “Once upon a time…”; our opening music says that we are stepping into a place where our ordinary reality takes a backseat to a magical sort of reality, where we are both the best of who we can be and; at the same time, the seekers who hope to learn more about the connections we long to feel, the connections to each other, and to the sacred within each of ourselves, In the most effective rituals, we meld heart and mind together to guide us on the next step of our journey.

We feel connected to the sacred, when we listen.

Our intention can be touched actively when we sing together. The hymns we sing together are an expression of our roots as a Christian denomination, in many ways. Singing is universal, but hymns are associated with Christianity. We join in aural communion via the sense of sound, when we stand together and sing a hymn from our hymnal. We’ve worked very hard to be more egalitarian, non-sexist, and so on with our hymnal, but that in no way changes these facts. Singing is a way to affirm our unity over our differences.

And our emotions are connected to our senses. We feel bonded as we sing. That bonding is intentional and deliberate.

Ask a Buddhist sometime about the importance of “breath”. He or she will tell you that the Universe was created via “the breath”. A Buddhist would say “Breath is the beginning of all things, and the crux of awakening”. Turn that over in your mind after the sermon. Oh, and breathe deeply when you do.

Now, I did mention that ritual context was designed and supported by our senses to bring our sacred intentions manifest. So what is our sacred intent? Our church mission statement reflects it as does our invocation of the chalice and the flame. This is not a church of sinners trembling before an angry god, this is a church of seekers!

This is our sanctuary, we designed and paid for it together, we collectively decided (or at least delegated) the decision of who will stand where I am standing each Sunday. Standing before a podium emphasizes something different about me and my purpose here than how I would be seen sitting at the edge of a circle. We have had active and; let’s say brisk and intense discussions about any ongoing changes about our rituals which take place here. Our emotions are very much involved, whether we like to admit to them or not.

It feels a little odd to say that Unitarian Universalists are emotional about ritual, doesn’t it?

But there’s no question that we are. And that is because ritual is the key to our intentions; as a congregation, and as a faith. There may words involved in the UU approach to ritual, actually with UU’s there are always words involved. Lots and lots of words. Let us never forget however that a vital part of our lives is happening between the words.

This weekly Worship service IS our ritual. We may draw from Christian traditions, we may draw from other faith traditions; for example today we will be drawing from traditions which use smudging darn near globally across the face of this planet. We have a multitude of influences throughout our hymnal, and I could go on and on, picking apart our ritual; piece by piece to show you the where and why each aspect of our “Order of Service” is done how it is done, why it is done, and the reason in this order, but I would prefer to get you started wondering; as I did so many years ago. Does it have meaning for you?

What about the smudging? I urge you to “push your envelope” a little and stay here for it, unless your allergies prevent it. Does it feel too “out there” for you? Or is there something some how satisfying about sitting through a brief few minutes in within our ritual which are strange, yet comforting in their own way. And in either case, why do you feel what you feel? What is your heart saying to you about this experience?

Let me return to the concept that smudging clears the way. Now we have a new minister coming. But have we thought about what we are willing to give up, in order to make space for what we hope to put in the place of what went before? What are the comfortable old ways we have done things in this church, which need to be set aside for the new? What are the outdated visions of how we see this congregation, which now need to be plowed into the furrows, so that they can fertilize and support new growth? I encourage you to consider those questions in depth over the coming weeks.

Change is uncomfortable. But change is the only truth which is inevitable in life. Resisting change is difficult, but embracing change will transform you.

Here is our opportunity to transform ourselves.

Ritual is a way to make non-observable reality manifest. Who we hope to become in our spiritual journey can’t be seen. The emotions which are summoned up in ritual, their power, our connections with the divine are invisible which which are summoned forth in ritual are not tangible. But these are the seeds of something which can compel us to express then beyond the confines of ritual. They grow day by day and if we nurture them, they bloom in the actions we take in the world to express ourselves as the best of who we can they be, and take those first steps in the process of making our world the best it can be. They change us, and they change our world, casting their seeds in turn to everyone who is touched by what we do. They become manifest.

Feel the new wind which is blowing through this congregation. Be ready to plant the seeds of your choice within your heart. Embrace the wind, and be transformed!

Sandra Ries

To continue the theme of change and transformation, I share with you some words from Unitarian and from Universalist leaders from our history.

For an expression of our hope, we look to Clara Barton:

“I have an almost complete disregard of precedent, and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I go for anything new that might improve the past.”

For an expression of our determination in days to come, we look to Henry David Thoreau:

“All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight-to-the-finish spirit is the one characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers.”

For inspiration, we look to Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

Responsive Reading

The Spirit of those leaders who have walked this path before us, calls to us

We recognize their work, and its legacy.

They have joined people together in common purpose

Or have written in solitude and contemplation.

They have labored to bring justice and compassion to the world

And we are their heirs.

Each of us is human, each of us has stumbled and fallen

And yet we have risen, and we are gathered today.

With hope in our hearts, with joy in our vision

I seek to be nourished, I seek to nourish others.

Ready for new beginnings

I wish to be transformed, I wish to transform others.

Ready to help create a better world

I want to do justice, I want to join with others to do justice.

And so we set out on this journey together,

to participate in building a community of souls,

bringing our diverse perspectives together

To manifest the light within us, and around us

In this congregation, and in our lives

So May It Be!

As Stephanie said during the sermon, in a ritual, intent is important. In the group ritual we are about to perform, our shared intent makes it even more powerful. As Stephanie performs the smudging, I invite you to envision what “sacred space” means to you as an individual as well as to our congregation as a whole. And I invite you to reaffirm our sanctuary as a sacred space.

Endings and Beginnings

June 20, 2011 by tom Posted in Audio available, Ed Brock, Guest Speakers

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Nell Newton

Chris Jimmerson

Eric Hepburn

Brendan Sterne

Susan Thomson

Rev. Ed Brock

June 19, 2011

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Tribute to Ed Brock

Nell Newton

As Mick and Keith have already told us, “You can’t always get what you want, but you’ll get what you need.”

That is exactly what we got when we called Ed Brock and asked if he would consider serving as our interim minister for this past year. We didn’t know this at the time, but let me back up.

The process by which churches obtain interim ministers is much more streamlined than the search for settled ministers. While a settled search takes nine people about 18 months, an interim search can be done by five people in three months with the UUA serving as matchmaker.

Last spring we were wrapping up a successful and soothing year of interim ministry with Rev. Janet Newman. We knew we still had some work to do before we’d be ready to call a settled minister, and we’d heard stories about other interim ministers who specialize in shaking up the status quo. These are the SWAT ministers who come in swinging their brooms, with a critical eye for bad habits, and who cut no slack for sentimental tradition if it stands in the way of progress. Perhaps that’s what we should look for – a no-nonsense interim who would make us stand up straight, straighten our tie, and do things their way. It would be good for us. We knew we had some bad habits, and we were ready to be humbled, if necessary.

As the president of the congregation, I was kept apprised of the progress and would be the one to make any formal offers. The search team was sent four names of possible interims – and two had the reputation of being stem-to-stern change up specialists. Oooh! Perfect!

But nothing went as planned. For assorted reasons, none of those four names answered when we called to inquire. Oh dear. Perhaps we weren’t challenging enough for them? Or worse — maybe we were we too far gone…

I called the office at the UUA and tried not to let them hear the rising worry in my voice. Uh… could we maybe, uh… well, you see… we need more names… Of course, we’ll send more names. Not to worry, this happens all the time. Trust the process. You’ll get the right minister.

Four more names arrived, and immediately the search team pushed one name ahead of the others: Rev. Ed Brock. A minister trained in family systems theory – Oh! We’ve heard about family systems theory! And he’s a trained counselor – Oh! We could use some counseling! I was a little nervous when we called him. Would you? Could you? Consider us? Yes? Wonderful. Thank you. Yes! Yes! Yes!

When Ed first arrived, he didn’t kick in the doors, he didn’t tell us we were doing things all wrong, and he was nice. He was the kind of guy who would pull you over to the side and quietly tell you if you had spinach stuck in your front teeth. And during his first visit with the board, he gave us the nicest gift. He told us that during this year, we would be busy at work searching for our next settled minister, but that one thing we should always remember is that we already have our settled ministry in the form of our lay leadership and our community. We are the enduring ministry of this church.

Oh, my heart just melted then and there! Instead of telling us we were a lost cause, he had held up a mirror and showed us how strong, and lively, and beautiful we are.

Instead of marching ahead, he walked alongside us during a year of heavy work. He pointed out dusty places, and held a flashlight steady as we went into some dark spaces. He kept us company and encouraged us to keep going as we cleaned the windows, overhauled the by-laws, and learned to trust ourselves to do good work.

Ed’s ministry showed us that, No, you don’t always get what you think you want, but if you do the work, trust the process, and say “yes, yes, yes!” you’ll get what you need.

Chris Jimmerson

In the past year, I have had the opportunity to work with Rev. Brock, Ed, in a variety of ways and on a nearly weekly basis. After spending all of this time with him, I can tell you one thing for certain – The Reverend Edward L. Brock is …not normative.

And that’s a good thing! When it comes to large systems, oftentimes, normative is great because what has become normal practice is the result of much experience, experimentation and research to determine what works best.

In an interim minister though, normative could mean average, when what we are hoping for is excellence. Excellence is what we got in Ed Brock!

So, let me count the ways that Ed has been “not normative”.

1. Despite his self-effacing and modest disposition, Ed has dared to tell us how his experience and training might inform the opportunities and challenges we have encountered – to help up us begin to implement the covenant, governance and mission groundwork we had laid in our first year of interim ministry – even when it meant challenging prior ways of doing things and ingrained ways of thinking.

And all without disagreement or controversy!

2. He has sent us some of the wisest and most detailed email messages I have ever seen. Many of them sounded just like one of his sermons; some of them were shorter.

3. His sermons have contained a terrific mix of humor, inspiration and topical wisdom that we needed to hear. Some of them were even better than his email messages.

4. Ed gave some great stewardship speeches that helped increase pledges at a time when the church really needed it. As they said in the small Texas town where I grew up, “he can talk a dog off a piece of meat.”

5. Ed did all of this while mentoring not one but two new Unitarian Universalist ministerial aspirants. I’m so grateful for the advice and opportunities he has given me, not to mention for all of the various recommendation forms and paperwork he has had to complete for me as I applied to seminary, scholarship funds, the Unitarian Universalist Association, etc. In fact, it got to be so much extra work for Ed at one point that I took to taking previous forms he had filled out, reformatting them to fit wherever I was applying this time and giving them to Ed to sign if he was OK with what I had done.

Oh, that reminds me – (to Ed) Ed could you … (back to congregation) excuse me … (take to Ed) Ed, could you just sign and date this here. Oh, and on the second page also.

(Back to congregation) Sorry.

Suddenly I’m realizing, I can’t possibly cover all of the extraordinary gifts Ed has brought to us in the last year, so let me just close by saying this: If helping a congregation to call an exceptional settled minister by guiding us through the work necessary to chart a future filled with magnificent promise with that new settled minister is what we hope is “normative” for a second year interim ministry in UU churches, then Ed has set the new gold standard with us.

Thank you Ed, for a wonderful year.

Brenden Sterne

Our new congregational President Chris Jimmerson asked me to say a few words about this past year and the work that the church has accomplished with the help of Ed Brock. I am tempted to say a few nice things about Ed, but afraid that all the nice things that can be said about Ed have already been said, by Ed.

In all seriousness…

Early on during my first year on the Board of Trustees, a dozen or so of us sat around the tables on a hot Saturday morning in one of the classrooms, and Nell Newton, our president at the time, asked us to check-in by taking turns sharing with the group, what is was that we were giving up to be at church that Saturday

I thought it was a great idea to recognize what we sacrificing that day to do the work of governance. And that it would help us get to know each other better. There were a variety of answers. If I remember correctly I felt most keenly that I was missing time with my family – my daughter’s soccer game that morning, and maybe swimming in the afternoon.

Whenever anyone in our community, devotes some of the their time, talents or treasure in serving the mission of our church, they are giving up something too. Just to be here this morning, each of you has given up something. Maybe it’s time you could spend on your house. Or time reading. Or maybe it’s just sleep. As the parent of toddler I know how precious, precious sleep is. So we’re all giving up a little something to be here.

Ed was joking around these past two weeks as he asked us if we members of the congregation wouldn’t mind recording a brief message of support, that he could bring back with him and share with his family.

And if you reflect on that request for a moment – the human side of Ed comes out. On father’s day I think it’s particularly appropriate that we recognize that behind the professional role of Minister that Ed lives so well, there is also the role of husband and father. As many of you know Ed has a wife and children 7 and 9, in Washington state, that he has been apart from this year.

And that’s why he asked us record those videos. Because as he wants his wife and children to know why is doing what he does, and that what he is doing is important.

This shows that Ed has had to make some big sacrifices to be here with us. And what it also shows is how much faith he must have in our religion, and this church, leaving his family for a big part of this year.

Now I can’t speak for the good Reverend Ed, but I’ve come to know him a little bit, and I think that I understand why he is doing what he does. Just like most volunteers at our church – he does it for the money.

You can’t do Interim Ministry without a deep belief that what we do here at church is important. I can’t recall where I first heard the words, but they’ve stuck with me, and that is: ‘We have a life-saving message’.

Let that one sink in here for a second. ‘We have a life-saving message’. The ‘we’ in that sentence can mean Unitarian Universalism. And it can mean the First UU Church of Austin. Whatever works for you.

I know Ed really believes that we have a life-saving message, and that we can make a real difference in our community and the world.

I want to thank Ed for all his wonderful contributions to our church this year. And I want to thank the congregation for all your hard work and trust that you have placed in the board.

When I’m at church I’m always delighted to see that there is a community of people who are willing to make sacrifices – small and large – towards a higher purpose. I hope that you are, and continue to be nourished, and that you find your life being transformed, as I find mine.

I look forward to my final year on the board as your board secretary. And I’m excited about the arrival of our new Minister Meg Barnhouse.

Susan Thomson

I have been reflecting a lot lately on the state of our church 2 years ago and now. I was not excited about the prospect of an interim minister, even though I had been in congregations, including this church, with interim ministers of whom I was very fond. And perhaps that was why I was not looking forward to more as I had quickly bonded with these interim ministers only to have them move on from my congregation in a short time. So I was eager to just get on with it and hurriedly organize a search for our next settled minister. And if I had been the Grand Poobah, or the Decider, to quote a former President from Texas, that is exactly what we would have done.

I came to believe, though, in the wisdom of not only having one interim minister for one year but a second interim for the following year. Our church has been so blessed by both our interim ministers, Janet Newman and Ed Brock, who each brought different gifts at just the right time for us.

I have been struck in looking back on the past two year about how much our church has grown by doing things the right way. To have a deliberate transition from one settled minister to the next, with time for re-examination about who we are as a congregation, resulting in a beautiful new mission, values and ends-that was the right way to do things. For time to identify what needed to change to make us a better, healthier congregation as we prepare for our next settled minister-that was the right way to do things.

Joe Sullivan, a consultant with Unity Consulting, observed at our board retreat last weekend that we not only commissioned the Bridge Builders report from Peter Steinke, contrary apparently to many churches, we actually read it and actually implemented the actions called for in the report. So we have done many things the right way these past 2 years.

But what I would like to speak to today is not only the part that Rev. Brock has played in helping us do things the right way, but the courage he has demonstrated in pointing us toward the right thing to do. And there is a difference. Doing the right thing is much riskier. It involves poking more sacred cows. It is often more challenging to determine the right thing to do than to look through a rulebook or a policy manual for answers on the right way to do things. It takes more courage.

Ed has worked tirelessly to help us determine the right thing to do. He has done so with our mission, our values and our ends as his compass. And as we wish Ed Godspeed with grateful hearts for his time with us and prepare to welcome Meg, we know that we now have the foundation upon which we as a congregation can work tirelessly to do the right thing at First UU, to allow our mission and our values and our ends to guide us to become the thriving congregation we want to become.