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Rev. Michelle LaGrave
December 8, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Rev Michelle offers us survival tips for the spiritual work that we can learn and follow to prepare for the new administration coming in January. She uses the term Zombie Apocalypse as a metaphor because the circumstances we face are so extreme, so out of the ordinary, so out of control, that they seem unreal.

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

Our call to worship this morning is from Kalidasa. Kalidasa was an Indian poet and playwright who lived around the turn of the fifth century and wrote in Sanskrit. His works have been translated into many languages and read the world over and throughout the centuries since his death.

Look to this day,
for it is life,
the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence.
The bliss of growth,
the glory of action,
the splendor of achievement
are but experiences of time.

For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision;
And today well-lived, makes
Yestarday a dream of hapiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope
Look well therefore to this day;
Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

Our reading today is from Lao Tzu. He was an ancient Chinese philosopher who wrote the Tao Te Ching and is considered the founder of Taoism.

If you are depressed, you are living in the past.
If you are anxious, you are living in the future.
If you are at peace, you are living in the present.

Sermon

NOTE: This is an edited ai generated transcript.
Please forgive any omissions or errors.

Let’s begin with some definitions.

ZOMBIE, a person who is deceased, a member of the undead, a person whose body is dead but acts as if it is living, often known to walk with a very slow shuffle, although in more recent stereotypes can move more quickly and in many different ways. Often with a decayed look about their faces.

Definition: APOCALYPSE, In the tradition, this comes from the book of Revelation and is about the end of the world. In more common terminology, apocalypse can refer to any event which is radically changing the world and might feel like the end of the world.

Definition: SURREAL, The feeling that one’s current circumstances are so out of the ordinary that they must be a dream, or one feels like one is in a dream-like state because the current context is so unusual, so different, so extreme, so out of control that it feels like it can’t really quite possibly actually be real.

The date of the zombie apocalypse is January 20th, 2025. Yes, this is a metaphor.

That said there are some survival tips about the spiritual work that is before us that we can learn and follow. I’ve come up with seven. There may be many, many more. And I could go on much longer than a sermon length about all the things we could or maybe should do. But we’ll stick with seven for today.

• NUMBER ONE: FIND A HIDEOUT.
Praying in your closet is actually a long time spiritual practice of our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors on these lands. It was in what is now known as the United States, but at that time was referred to colonial times. Our Pilgrim and Puritan ancestors had a critical spiritual practice of going into a closet, going into a private space to pray and to examine themselves and to look for signs of good works in their lives. So we have a long tradition, a long long tradition of doing this.

Jesus himself in Matthew 6:6 taught his followers to pray in secret and he also went off into the wilderness frequently away even from his own disciples to pray and to commune with his God whom he referred to as his father. In the coming zombie apocalypse, you will need a place of spiritual refuge, free from the distractions of other people. Find it, prepare for it, get it ready now. Start using it now.

• NUMBER TWO: PAY ATTENTION.
There is an old Zen story about a student who said to Master Ichu,

“Please write for me something of great wisdom.” Master Ichu picked up his brush and wrote one word – “Attention”. The student said, “Is that all?” The master wrote, “Attention, attention.” The student became irritable. That doesn’t seem profound or subtle to me. In response, master Ichu wrote simply, “Attention, attention, attention.” In frustration, the student demanded, “What does this word attention mean?” Master Ichu replied, “Attention means attention.”

Pay attention. Pay attention to the beauty that is in this world. Pay attention to your family, pay attention to your community, pay attention to your body, pay attention to yourself.

Pay attention to those who are different from you, to those who have different abilities or disabilities, to those who have different heritages, to those who have different experiences of racism in the world. Pay attention to those who are LGBTQ+. Pay attention to how they are experiencing these current times and learn from people who are different from you. We all have different skills and strengths and challenges. I’m not saying steal from other people or other cultures. I’m saying learn from each other through authentic relationships and having real true deep heartfelt conversations with each other.

Learn about what it means to be a person of color who knows all about resourcing and what resourcing is. Pay attention to people who are black and talk about black joy and how that is possible. Pay attention. Pay spiritual attention. Also pay attention to the news about what is happening, but not all the time.

Take the news in small, but regular doses. Do not be caught sleeping through the apocalypse. It will be too late by the time the zombies come for you. Pay attention. And do not allow yourself to become like a zombie going on autopilot throughout your world and without a care for anyone else.

You may or may not be experiencing the coming months and years in a way that is very different from people who are around you. There are some of us who are needing to consult lawyers at this time and make plans in preparations for how our legal statuses of marriage or citizenry or refugee status may change. So pay attention.

• NUMBER THREE: LIVE IN THE MOMENT.
Living in the moment does help with number two, paying attention.

Lao Tzu said, “Do not live in the past. You will become depressed. Do not live in the future. You will become anxious. Do live in the present and you will find peace.

Be present in the present and you will find peace. You will be able to see that beauty in the natural world. You will be able to see how you and your own body is experiencing what is going on in our world. You will be able to see others who are different from you, who are part of this beloved community and out into the larger worlds and what they are facing. The past cannot be changed. It is in the past. Remaining attached to how we wish the past might have gone is a point of suffering. This is Buddhism now. We’re moving from Taoism to Buddhism all within the same number three. The future cannot be predicted.

Listening to news about what is actually happening is one thing. Listening to hours and hours and hours about what people who are anxious or are trying to sell sensationalist headlines are saying is not helpful, it is anxiety producing, and it may or may not be true. No one can prophesy the future. We will move forward on our best educated guesses by what is happening now.

Focus on what is happening right before you, right now. Act on what is happening in the world right now. It’s not just paying attention and listening and hearing, this is also about acting. We will need everyone to act in different ways. And part of your spiritual work will to be to go deep inside and assess what your level of risk is and will be and what you are willing to put out there. That will be different for each person, and we will need to accept and respect those risk tolerances that are different from our own.

And by the way, we are working with the social justice folks beginning to have some conversations about how to make social justice work more accessible and what people who cannot physically go down to the capital or march in the streets can do instead within their own abilities. It will need all of us.

Act on what is happening in the world right now, the one thing you can do, the one thing you can do right now. If you make a list of all of the things that need to be done, you’re likely to become overwhelmed or anxious. Do the one thing right now that you can do. And when you have done that, do the next one thing that you can do. And when you have done that, do the next one thing that you can do. That was number three, live in the moment.

• NUMBER FOUR: PREPARE.
This lesson comes from Rev Michelle in the form of what not to do. The other day I was driving to church in my little hybrid truck, and I got this message warning in bright red flashing up on the screen saying, “You have less than 50 miles until your gas runs out.” At which point I thought, Micah did tell me I really, really need gas. And then about 10 seconds later, another message packed up on my screen saying “Your tires are low on air”, okay, but I got to get to church right now another 10 seconds pass and another bright message pops up on the screen saying “Your window washer fluid needs to be refilled.” This has never happened to me before. Do not be caught without the spiritual versions of fuel, air, and liquid soap. (Laughter)

Actually, there is not one list in terms of getting prepared. Our needs will continually change, and we’ll need to keep adapting and making new skills, learning new skills for new times. But there are some places we can start now. And now is not too soon to start building some skills like in the area of cybersecurity. So get your VPNs in order, lock down your cookies or various trackers, secure your personal info, start using encrypted messaging systems, or communicate in person with any sensitive information. If that sounds like a bunch of gibberish, welcome to the club. I’m learning too.

The ways we communicate, especially in the area of social justice, is going to change Radically, again. I’m sorry, I know we just did this with the pandemic, learning all these new skills with Zoom and live streaming and all sorts of things that we had not done much or at all before. It’s coming again.

Wired had a great recent article about how to protect yourself from governmental cyber surveillance and you should be able to find that online fairly easily if you Google it. See me in person if you would like to set up a way to communicate with me securely. We are going to be using end-to-end double encrypted secure messaging systems and I can let you know how to do that and likely people will learn how to crack that encryption and likely we’ll need to move to another version of encryption and so on.

So number four was prepare in all the ways – still fill your gas tank – still have your Go-bags, but also spiritually prepare.

• NUMBER FIVE: LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR.
We are back to Jesus’ teachings again. Love your neighbor as yourself. There are two parts to this.

• The first is loving your neighbor, being kind to your neighbor, ALL of your neighbors, no matter how they voted.
• And number two is loving yourself.

You cannot love your neighbor very well if you do not love yourself very well and you are trying to follow this edict to love your neighbor as yourself. So love yourself, take care of yourself. take care of your physical self, eat well, get good nutrition, exercise, go to the doctor, and take care of your mental health and your emotional health. Love is a verb. Loving your neighbor, loving yourself are action words.

Remember the story of the good Samaritan and love those with whom you disagree. There was an article recently that has been floating around online, I’m sorry I didn’t go back and try to find it and I don’t remember the author’s name, but it was about building up empathy. He wrote, He studied the brain and he wrote about the upcoming Thanksgiving holidays and how if you were part of a family that was mixed politically and things got a little fraught in the family conversations over the dinner table, to try to redirect the conversation. and to ask grandpa or whoever it is to tell a story about a time they did something good for someone else. Tell a story about how someone has done good for someone else. He said that they have studied this and found out that people aren’t just born with this one level of empathy. Empathy is actually a skill or a muscle or something like that that can be built up over time.

And if you stop, if we stop trying to change people’s minds with rational reasonable arguments and instead focus on encouraging them to build up feelings of empathy and compassion by telling these stories and then more stories and then more stories, we can begin to change the world, to ease the burdens of the world, at least a little bit, by loving each other and supporting each other in building up empathy. That’s number five, love your neighbor.

• NUMBER SIX: MAINTAIN YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR.
This ties in with your mental health, with systems theory, with all those good things. If you notice your sense of humor is decreasing or even disappearing, that is a red flag. That is a warning sign that you might want to seek out some support with your mental health, Some medication some therapy whatever it is that you might need. Pay attention to your sense of humor levels And notice if they’re changing we want them to increase you want to be playful We want to keep our senses of humor up. This will help us get through these coming times. And we can be serious and playful at the same time.

We can be playful about very serious life or death situations. It is a survival tip. These are survival tips. And for some people in the coming months, we are literally talking survival, life or death. And all of you who are not in that situation by keeping up your senses of humor and your sense of playfulness, that will help us all get through.

So, think about your favorite shows or books. NCIS, LA, the character of Heddy who’s like the super-secret super spy who knows everything all the time and no one ever knows how she knows. Think about “Get Smart” or “James Bond” or “Mission Impossible” or “Mrs. Hallafax”, the elderly recruit to the CIA because no one would guess she’s an agent with her white hair. Become your own secret social justice agent and have fun with it. Imagine yourself as a super secret social service, social justice agent. That’s number six, maintaining your sense of humor.

• NUMBER SEVEN: (back to Judaism and Christianity) KEEP THE SABBATH.
Set a regular day or evening or time to put away the news and any form of electronics. Take Take a break, rest, be with the people you love and who love you. Keeping Sabbath is an incredibly powerful spiritual tool of renewal and restoration. It doesn’t have to be on Friday night to Saturday morning. You can choose whatever time worked for you. I do do Friday night. Keep a Sabbath. Rest.

Be with those we love and those who love you. Good luck. Amen. And blessed be.

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Benediction

Your lips and compassion at your fingertips, blessing all others as you yourselvesare now blessed. Amen and blessed be.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 24 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Michelle LaGrave
November 17, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In times like these, what kind of soul work are we called to do? Can we, might we, repair our spirits?

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

LAY IT DOWN
by Joan Javier Duvall

Here, here is where you can lay it down,
lay down all that you have carried,
the weight of the world that has rounded your back,
leaving you aching and exhausted.
Here, here is where healing begins,
where burdens are set down and alongside one another’s,
their magnitude does not seem as great.
Here is where the door is thrown open
and the light can lift away the shadows
and what was hidden can now be seen.
Here, here is where you can rest,
Where nothing is expected,
but that you bring all of who you are
Into the presence of the holy
and of this loving community

Let us worship together

Affirming Our Mission

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

Sermon

NOTE: This is an edited ai generated transcript.
Please forgive any omissions or errors.

It has been quite the week and a half, hasn’t it? I feel like I did at the beginning of the pandemic, like what we are facing in the coming months is just too big, too unknown for me to fully comprehend, to fully grasp what is or is not about to happen. And I am left with one gigantic question. How do I lead you, my people, when I don’t know where we’re going.

I am no Moses nor am I Miriam. I’ve received no divine message or instruction for how to proceed and yet I feel like we are about to enter into the wilderness for an unknown amount of time, though hopefully not 40 years. How does one, how do we prepare for such a journey? What do we pack? What do we bring with us? There are so many many questions right now.

How do any of us lead when we don’t know where we’re going? We might have some ideas. I certainly had some ideas at the beginning of the pandemic, many of which never actually happened. And so from that lesson, I need to remember, we don’t really know for sure where we’re going.

And here is the only answer that I can give right now. We prepare. We pack as best as we can and then we proceed mindfully from one moment in time, from one movement to the next, with spirits full to overflowing. When I was in seminary, preparing to finally answer my call to the ministry and at our last weekly chapel service, the professor served the graduating class a communion of milk and honey. I think most of us thought we were about to enter the promised land, the land of milk and honey, our journeys to ministry at that point complete. None of us knew that we would eventually be leading our various faith traditions through a pandemic, nor through times like this.

As it turned out, we were entering, we were actually entering the wilderness, the Promised Land, a murky vision of milk and honey still far off. But before that service, that one filled with milk and honey and promises we were taught an invaluable lesson about ministry.

Now I’m going to share it with you now. Imagine a tea cup. Imagine your body as a tea cup. It can be fine flowers and gilded edges. It can be plain white. It can be sturdy. It can be any manifestation of a teacup you would like. Imagine a teacup with a saucer underneath and a silver spoon in the saucer. The teacup is your body, is your container, and your job is not to just fill it but to fill it to overflowing. And as a minister, as a leader, as a person in these times, what we do is we serve others, we minister to others by using that little silver spoon and serving from our saucer not from our cup from our saucer so our job then becomes to fill our cups our bodies to overflowing continually again and again and again as we continue serving and serving and serving with our spoon as our saucer begins to empty we refill our cup to overflowing to overflowing to overflowing and we serve and we serve and we serve from the saucer. We need to enter these times with spirits filled to overflowing.

We all need this lesson right now. We are all leaders. We all do engage in ministry of one sort or another, and we are all called to build beloved community.

Our theme this month from the Soul Matters program is repair. So this is a big admission for a minister to make, but I’m in need of some soul work right now. How about all of you? So how do we do this? How do we repair our very spirits? How do we fill our cups? How do we prepare for another unknown journey. How do we do these things in these times?

There are more lessons from seminary. Somehow going back to the beginning is filling me with some answers, some sense of potentiality that feels helpful at the moment and during seminary one of the things that we studied was a practice of ritual which Kinsey began to speak to you about a little bit earlier this morning. Practicing ritual, engaging with ritual is an embodied experience. It is a physical experience. It is a participatory experience. It is filled with repetition upon repetition upon repetition. Whether that be words or melodies or actions, we move deeper and deeper and deeper into the sense of things, the meaning of things, the meaning of language, of poetry, of music over and over again. And we pay attention to the sensations in our bodies. We feel the vibrations in our hearts, in our chests. We feel the vibrations of those around us. We feel the vibrations of the music near us.

What we can do as individuals, as families, as a community, one of the things we can do is engage in ritual, to pay attention to those embodied experiences in a way that maybe we’re not always so mindful about and That is what we are and will continue to be doing during this service There is a lot of fear and anxiety out there right now As well as other emotions.

It is in the news. It’s all over social media. It is infecting our families, our communities, ourselves, causing conflict, division, polarization among friends, families, colleagues, congregations. People are revisiting questions they have been revisiting for some years now about how we maintain or build or create or repair relationships with people whose political views might be very different from our own, especially as we are entering in times, which are going to be extremely risky, if not actually life-threatening for many among us.

How do we do that? Yes. By filling our cups to overflowing, yes, from serving, for serving from the saucer, and also by considering generosity as a value. This is one that we newly embraced at our last General Assembly GA that we haven’t spoken about as such very much yet. Generosity of spirit. Generosity of serving from our saucers. Generosity to ourselves of filling our cups to overflowing in the first place so that we even have the ability to serve from our saucers.

In terms of our denomination, our association, the value that was chosen that we went with after many, many hours and years of listening to people was generosity. And there’s a little secret place in my heart The almost wishes, the word that we had gone with instead, was grace. So I’ll say that maybe we can think about generosity in terms of being generous and extending grace. We need to remember that what we are sensing and feeling from the world as a whole right now is not the fault of the person sitting next to me or my husband at home or my mom who’s sitting out in the pews with us right now, they should not be the targets of all those anxious feelings.

We need to really pay attention to our relationships and care for one another and realize that we all might be a little more grouchy than usual and extend grace when mistakes happen. We can be generous with grace.

But to tell you the truth, it’s kind of easy for me to be generous with grace with people that I know, with Micah and with my mom especially. There are some with whom it’s a little more challenging, with people who have very different views from my own, who may not see my life as a queer and disabled person, who is married to a trans person as worthy. So how do we do it in those circumstances?

I recently, at the end of October, went to a virtual ministers network conference. Our featured speaker was a Canadian, Dr Betty Vries. She is an expert in working with people, congregations and other organization who are experiencing conflict and polarization and how to work throught it. One of her favorite techniques is to use a mantra. The one that she favors is:

I am beautiful,
I am worthy,
I am a beloved child of God.

And then she turns that over to the other person. I am, she he they are, They are beautiful, they are worthy, they are a beloved child of God.

And when she’s about to enter a conflictual situation, in particular, she spends some time saying that mantra over and over and over and over and over again, until that space in her heart, in her body begins to shift even a little bit and she encourages she knows that that mantra I am beautiful I am worthy I am a beloved child of God is not going to work for everyone so she encourages people to create their own mantras they can be the Buddhist mantra of loving kindness, or it could be one that you make up yourself that helps you turn your spirit, repair your spirit, so that you can move into a place of greater generosity, into a place where you are able to extend grace.

These mantras, these repetitious mantras are one of the ways that we can fill our tea-cups. The why of filling our tea-cups, the theology of filling our tea-cups is one of generosity, of living out that spiritual value, of generosity of spirit, of generosity of grace in the world, in our communities, in our families, and in our relationships. But first, repair. Repair of ourselves. Repair of our own spirits. Repair is a way to prepare for what is coming in all of its unknowing.

So I’ll leave you with one final reminder that these spiritual practices are PRACTICES. None of us, even the most accomplished of clergy people is expert in them. We repeat them over and over and over again. PRACTICE them.

So I’m going to be vulnerable once again and share another story from seminary. This is a story that I had freely given to one of my best friends from seminary, Craig Nowak, who is also the my matron of honor at my wedding. Because I knew I wasn’t ready to share it with a congregation yet. So he’s been using the story for many years with me as the anonymous person in it. Today you’re gonna get to hear it and know that it’s me.

So when I was in seminary, seminary was hard. Hard in a very different way than things are hard right now. It is a 90 credit graduate degree program that takes at least three or more likely four years, it requires psychological evaluations, clinical experience, field experience, internships, a presentation of a portfolio of competencies, like a hundred or more pages long, you go before a fellowship committee and basically defend your preparation similar to doing a doctoral dissertation, similar to preparing for medical practice. Very different because it’s religious in some ways, but also some strong similarities.

So I was in my second year of seminary, which was in Boston, and I was serving as an interim director of religious education at one of the oldest congregations in the country. There’s a little bit of an argument about that, but we won’t get into that for the moment. Based on whether the congregation was formed in England or after arrival. So if you count England, it’s the oldest congregation in Boston. And I was serving as the Interim Director of Religious Education. Their first paid religious professional. There was a lot of work to be done. And I was also full-time in seminary. And I was also doing my hospital clinical experience in Connecticut. So I was literally traveling every three and a half days from Connecticut to Massachusetts and Massachusetts to Connecticut. I never knew where my shoes were. It was stressful.

And then this day, the Saturday came when we were having a workshop for the religious education folks to work through how they wanted their program to function and whose roles and responsibilities would be whose. And I was supposed to be bringing all the refreshments and the grocery store was crowded and busy and traffic was horrible and I was stressed to the max.

So I decided I needed to engage in one of my favorite spiritual practices of that time period in my life, which was singing meditation, which I did frequently in the car because nobody else could hear me. And I chose many different songs from our hymnals, songs that I had learned as a child. They varied all the time. I did it a lot in those two and a half hour rides from Connecticut to Massachusetts. But this day I decided to sing “Breathe in, Breathe Out.” Not the jaunty upbeat version that Brent has us do, the really slow meditative one and I was singing it and singing it and singing it over and over again it had probably been at least 20 minutes.

I had been singing it and I had started to be feel it settling into my soul into my spirit and all of a sudden this car cut me off and I yelled out a horrible swear And at first my reaction was, “Wow, I was just saying I breathe in peace, I breathe out love, and here I am swearing at this guy.” And then I started laughing hysterically because it was so ridiculous that that’s what I was saying and then that’s what I did in the disconnect. So in the end, so yes, it’s spiritual practice.

That’s where I’m going with this. We have to keep practicing over and over and over again. And yet, even though it didn’t work in the way it was supposed to work, it did work. It lifted my spirits because I thought that it was so funny. So with that note on practice, let us keep on practicing together so that we can keep on keeping on.

Amen and blessed be.

Reading

LECTIO DIVINA
Jamila Batchelder and Molly Housh Gordon

The strength of water takes on many, many forms. Just as each of you has a unique and necessary strength that you bring to our community and to the work of love.

Take a moment now to drop down into the deep wellspring of your own spirit and bathe yourself in the strength that is the groundwater of your person.

Are you a roaring fall wearing rock away with sheer force of will.
Are you a tiny drop of water in a crevice, breaking it open slowly,
steadily?
Are you buoyant like a great salt lake, practiced at holding others aloft?
Are you tenacious, like the mountain stream, finding your way down and around every obstacle you face.
Are you still and calm, like the pond at daybreak, offering radiant peace by your shores?
Are you in touch with hidden depths pulling from a vast well?
Do you soothe like the steam rising from a cup of tea?
Do you dissolve away stubborn muck like water left in a pot to soak.
Do you soften and smooth the edges like a creeping fog?
Do you clear away distraction like a cleansing rain?
Do you roll with the ebb and flow like the ocean waves.

Settle your minds upon the strength, the power that is yours. Draw that strength up and into your heart. Dry up into your soul. As we gather together the many waters of this community. We need each of your power, each of your resilience, each of your love to make us whole.

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Benediction

I know this rose will open,
I know my fear will burn away,
I know my soul will unfurl its wings,
I know this rose will open.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 24 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Michelle LaGrave and Carrie Holley-Hurt
August 4, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Come join us as we kick off LGBTQ Pride Week here in Austin! It takes courage to live authentically. We’ll have queer speakers, awesome music, and a glitter blessing. Come celebrate with us.

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

A PROTEST AND A PARTY
by Hannah Roberts Villnave

People sometimes ask:
Is Pride a protest
Or a party?

And the answer is
Of course
Yes.

And why not?

Why not
Rejoice as we resist
Dance as we demand change
Celebrate as we create community that delights in
All of who we are?

So bring all of that
With you this morning.

Bring your policy demands
Bring your glitter
Bring your supreme court broken heart
Bring your rainbow socks
Bring the emptiness you feel
For our siblings gone too soon.

Bring your Gloria Estefan remix
Bring your tender hope for change
Bring your most garish eyeshadow
Bring your spirit, tattered and battered
By a world that seems insistent on
Choosing fear and hate.

Gather up all these things
And bring them here
To a place where we don’t
Have to shoulder these burdens
Or celebrate these joys
Alone.

Come, let us worship Together.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

JESUS AT THE GAY BAR
By Jay Hulme

He’s here in the midst of it –
right at the centre of the dance floor,
robes hitched up to His knees
to make it easy to spin.

At some point in the evening
a boy will touch the hem of His robe
and beg to be healed, beg to
be anything other than this;
and He will reach His arms out,
sweat-damped, and weary from dance.

He’ll cup the boy’s face in His hand
and say,
my beautiful child
there is nothing in this heart of yours
that ever needs to be healed.

Sermon

NOTE: Carrie Holley-Hurt’s homily is an ai generated transcript.
Please forgive any errors.

Carrie Holley-Hurt

So, fun fact, pride at this church is actually my anniversary. Almost a decade ago I showed up at this church knowing nothing about you people and fell in love hard. So this is very exciting for me that I get to participate in this pride ceremony today. So when Reverend Michelle, who is generous, asked me what I wanted to do, how I wanted to contribute, I said, well, I want to give my testimony.

And I know that might be a little weird, but y’all, I come from a Pentecostal tradition, and so I’m going to give my testimony. And I hope that for those of you who were raised in a fundamentalist or otherwise soul-crushing church, that this does not trigger you. In fact, I hope my testimony is liberating and that it will inspire you to think about your own stories, your own narrative of growth and liberation.

So growing up I was different. I didn’t fit in at all. My body didn’t fit. My style didn’t fit. My mind didn’t fit. And I tried as best I could. I tried to act and look just like everybody else. I tried with clothes and hair, even got an eating disorder. I worked so hard to hide myself and to fit in all the right boxes. And then at some point that all just became too much. It was too hard, too stressful.

And after leaving my religion, I started to allow myself to be more me. And some of that included acting on my queerness. And it was freeing, but only up to a point, because I quickly found out that everyone I loved was not always loving about who I was. And so I stopped the process of coming out and went back into hiding, well, half-hiding because I couldn’t actually hide from myself anymore.

Then many years later, my own kid came out as queer, followed by several of my loved ones who are younger, and I realized that I never wanted them to go into hiding. I knew that they were perfect and wonderful as is. And I did not want the world to suffer because they felt the need to hide. So I came out again. I fully came out to my loved ones and this time I didn’t do it for their acceptance but as a display of my own acceptance and a really beautiful thing started to happen. I began the process of accepting all the parts of who I am, not just the queer part, but the neurodivergent part, the size of my body, my disabilities, in all of the ways that I will never conform to the societal standards of good enough.

I will never fit into those boxes. You see, in embracing myself I stopped embracing the boxes of patriarchy and internalized homophobia. When I decided I was going to fully embrace my queerness and stopped hiding it started to lose control over me. This to me is the beauty of queerness and those who have said yes to their queerness. They say, You, system of suprimacy, you don’t get to have control over me. I’ll not be confined by your boxes, the system that tries to punish me into conforming. You no longer get to call the shots.

So pride then is pointing to the liberation that is found in this act. Liberation on the most personal level. And please know that this message isn’t just for queer people. I love straight people. Some of my best friends are straights. Like my husband, who is a straight cis-man.

No, this message is for all of us because all of us need liberation. All of us feel the weight of the boxes that systems of supremacy try to force on us. The current contrived controversy with the Olympic boxers show us just how demanding and punishing these systems can be on all of us.

We all need the liberation of self. That deep embrace of our own inherent dignity and worthiness. And that comes when we stop conforming and we stop hiding ourselves. We embrace ourselves. And while I know not everyone can do this publicly, because it’s just not safe, I get it. When those of us who can – do. Let us all be those people. Let us continue to do the work of becoming a more radically welcoming church so that we can help others on their journey.

Thank you.

Rev. Michelle LaGrave

This is my story. Or a piece of it, anyway. A portion of the truth … that is me, that is my spouse, that is my family, that is you, that is all of us. Because I can’t really separate out my story from the stories of those I love, those I know, those I don’t know, but with whom I have crossed paths in some way. Our stories are interconnected because we are interconnected on the deepest level. Our stories go out into the world, shape and form each other, and then return to us, re-shaping and reforming ourselves, again and again.

This story is a Love story and I don’t mean a romantic, frilly sort of love, though that is a piece of it at times. I mean the kind of Love story in which people come to love themselves, and each other, in a most agonizingly authentic way and then have the courage to say to the world – “This is who I am!” and “This is who we are!”

The opening setting for this Love story, my Love story, is Andover Newton Theological School, a beautiful campus filled with tall trees and brick buildings, sitting on a hilltop just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, a rather typical New England scene. It began fifteen years ago, and I was deep in the process of ministerial transformation, of becoming a Unitarian Universalist minister. While my own faith tradition had a long history of welcoming, affirming, and marrying people of all sexual orientations, these were new practices, or emerging practices, for many of the faith traditions present at the school and were a frequent topic of theological conversation. As was the question of gender and gender identity. The very first openly transgender people were attending the school, and the very first transgender panel had recently been held. Gay marriage was only a few years old in Massachusetts and less than a year old in nearby Connecticut, where I am from. What I’m trying to say in setting this scene is that everything felt very new and fresh and groundbreaking in the area of GLBT rights. (Yes, it was still GLBT back then.)

And so it was within this cultural context, that I headed to the first day of class, Pastoral Care for GLBT People, with one of my best friends, Craig. We were joking around about something some of our friends had said about sexual attraction and how it works, and we decided to playa game, a bit of an experiment to bring back to the conversation. We would go to class and pick out the person who most immediately, without thinking about it, struck us as attractive and then share about it with each other later. As I scanned the room, I immediately noticed a very butch-presenting person – short, spiky hair, tats on her arms, thick, brown leather bracelet, cool sunglasses hanging around her neck. Oof. I immediately felt the attraction and wanted to get to know her, and so I went and sat kind of nearby. Afterward, I told Craig who I had chosen. It was the first time I ever admitted out loud to another person that I felt attracted to someone who was a woman or was genderqueer. I was in my late thirties.

About two months later, that person had become my girlfriend, my first, and only, girlfriend. Coming out on campus was relatively easy because I lived there, which was kind of like living in a fishbowl. I met up with her after an evening class and while walking around campus she took up my hand and held it. Boom! Done. I was out at seminary. Scary, but overall, not too painful.

What was terrifying was the prospect of coming out to my family and some of my friends. I was afraid of losing, or damaging, relationships with people I loved and cared about. And I did, but not the most important ones. Here’s where social location is important. I was a white, cisgender woman, well into adulthood, super well-educated, living in a liberal area of the country, following a calling to ministry in the most progressive faith tradition available. I had all of the advantages, all of the privileges, except for money, that would bode well for coming out, and still, coming out was terrifying. I risked, and experienced real loss. I lost relationships and I lost jobs. We all do. It takes courage to come out. Coming out is an act of resistance, coming out is an act of defiance, and coming out is an act of pride.

But my story, my Love story, did not end there. There was to be another coming out. Less than a year after meeting each other, my girlfriend came out as transgender. FTM, female to male, as we said back in the day. He had newly come into this identity, partly as a result of some of the work he had done at seminary. My girlfriend was really a transman. Many of you know him, as my spouse Micah. Yes, I married my ex-girlfriend. (That’s my favorite trans joke … Okay, it’s my only trans joke, but I really like it.)

So now we had a second coming out as well as a gender transition before us. These were hard, on both of us, in different ways. While I shared with you the story of my being attracted to a woman, having a first girlfriend, and using she/her pronouns to describe it all, that’s the story from my historical perspective. Now, both Micah and I avoid the use of his deadname and use he/him pronouns to talk about him at any age, long before he came out as trans, long before he came out as a butch lesbian, long before he played softball, long before he joined the Girl Scouts, back to when he was a little kid who played football on the playground with the other little boys, until they told him he couldn’t play anymore because he was a girl.

Returning to our Love story, that summer right after graduation, Micah came out to his family and friends, shared his new name and pronouns, and began gender-affirming care. We joined support groups for trans people and trans partners. We marveled at the way people began to treat us differently when they thought, incorrectly, that what they were seeing was a heterosexual couple. I got through some terrifying moments when I was afraid for his safety. One or the other of us often raged at the mistreatment he received, especially in relationship to his healthcare. And we got through it all, we still get through it all, with both Love and courage. By the next February, Micah had legally changed both his name and gender marker, and knowing we were to get married later that summer, also took on my last name and became Micah Shiloh LaGrave.

Our wedding was beautiful. We were married on the beach in Connecticut. I wore cargo shorts and a tiara. People who were walking along the beach joined in the circle of family and friends surrounding us for the ceremony, strangers welcomed in to the trans/partner wedding.

But before that, we worried that our wedding wouldn’t happen at all, or would only happen with great difficulty, at least legally. Because first we had to get a wedding license and even though Micah had all his gender marker papers in place, and even though gay marriage was legal in Connecticut, it wasn’t almost everywhere else. It was an exciting, but also fraught time. We worried the whole way down to get the license, and while standing in line, and while being helped. And we thought we were right to be worried, because as soon we handed over our papers it became clear there was a problem. The clerk took them in back and there was a lot of whispering and consulting going on before she came back and finally said, IIUmm, you both have the same last name? Are you related?/I We laughed with relief. They didn’t care that we were queer, they were concerned we might be committing incest! It never occurred to us it might be an issue that Micah had already taken my last name a few months back.

All of this is to say, that while there are moments of humor and misunderstanding, and lots of love along the way, coming out is long, hard, tough work. Coming out is never finally and fully over. It must be done again and again. And so it is, that we have Pride every year. We support those who are newly coming out and those who have been coming out for a long, long time. And we remember, that Pride began as a riot, led by trans women of color, as an act of resistance, and defiance, and of agonizing joy to throw off the cloak of oppression and finally act free by simply being ourselves – out loud, in public, and on the streets.

Pride says, still says – you cannot, will not hold me down. You policymakers, you legislators, you enforcers, you false prophets, you conservative religious fundamentalists, you oppressors, you the system, you cannot hold us down. We will persevere and we will survive as we have always done – whether we are lesbian, gay, asexual, bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, intersexual, transgender, non-binary, nonconforming, polyamorous, or plain old queer, we will persevere, we will survive! We are courageous! We are proud! And we will celebrate!

May it always be so, Amen, and Blessed Be.

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Benediction

As we go forth, we offer you this final blessing.

May you receive and reflect love, everywhere you go, and know-in your deepest heart and in every day – you matter and you belong.

May you hold on to hope and your inner sparkle even when discouragement and despair beckon.

May the beauty that is you shine out, bright as the stars from which we came and to which we will return.

Together may we make this a place of welcome and healing, of connection and plurality.

Together may we practice compassion and courage, seeing and celebrating and supporting each other.

Together may we be the sparkling force of love that our world needs.

Blessed by this community and by the divine, go forth and celebrate with pride!

Amen and Blessed Be

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 24 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

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Rev. Michelle LaGrave
May 12, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Did you know that God had a “wife”? Her name was Asherah and stories of this old Hebrew Goddess remain in the Bibles of today. On this Mother’s Day, let us reclaim the story of the Queen of Heaven.

Chalice Lighting

Blessed is the dark, in which our dreams stir and are revealed.
Blessed is the dark of earth, where seeds come to life.
Blessed are the depths of the ocean where no light shimmers:
the womb of all earthly life.
Blessed is the light into which we awake,
the light that sparkles on the waters: that calls the tree forth from the seed, and calls the shadow forth from the tree.
Blessed are we as we move through darkness and through light.

Call to Worship

THERE IS ROOM FOR YOU HERE
Mary Edes

If God is your strength and companion
and prayer the means of centering your thoughts,
There is room for you here.
If the teachings of the Buddha give you clarity and calm in the midst of human striving,
There is room for you here
If Gaia’s seasonal rhythms lead you best through the myriad steps of Life’s great dance.
There is room for you here.
If the still mysterious capacity and power of the Mind, stirs your imagination and quickens your pulse,
There is room for you here.
Rest now, beside that spring, wherever it is for you
And let your attention go to the small places inside or out in the great wide world –
places or people in need of healing or for which your heart is filled with thanksgiving,
And in that spirit, let us be silent together for a time.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

REMEMBER
(excerpt) by Joy Harjo

Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.

Centering

by the Rev. Victoria Safford

What if there were a universe, a cosmos, which began in shining blackness, out of nothing, out of fire, out of a single, silent breath, and into it came billions and billions of stars, stars beyond imagining, and near one of them a world, a blue-green world so beautiful that learned clergymen could not even speak about it cogently, and brilliant scientists, with their physics, their mathematics, their empirical, impressionistic musing, in trying to describe it, would begin to sound like poets?

What if there were a universe in which a world was born out of a smallish star, and into that world (at some point) flew red-winged blackbirds, and into it swam sperm whales, and into it bloomed crocuses, and into it blew wind to lift the tiniest hairs on naked arms in spring, and into it at some point grew onions, out of soil, and in went Mt. Everest and also the coyote we’ve spotted in the woods about a mile from here, just after sunrise on these mornings when the moon is full? (The very scent of him makes his brother, our dog, insane with fear and joy and ancient inbred memory.) Into that world came animals and elements and plants, and imagination, the mind and the mind’s eye. If such a universe existed and you noticed it, what would you do? What song would come out of your mouth, what prayer, what praises, what sacred offering, what whirling dance, what religion and what reverential gesture would you make to greet that world, every single day that you were in it?

We begin our candlelighting time with a communal ritual, honoring our most ancient of human ancestors and milestones …

• Ardi 4.4 mya – Ardipithecus Ramidus (most complete early hominid skeleton, about 110 pounds, 3’11”, likely bipedal on ground, quadrupedal in trees, diet of fruit and nuts)
• Lucy 3.2 million years ago – Australopithecus Afarensis
• Over 2 million years ago – genus Homo emerges, the earliest hominins, use of stone tools begins (homo habilis)
• Control of fire by humans, 1.5 million years ago (homo erectus)
• Earliest evidence of homo sapiens outside of Africa, 210,000 years ago (Greece)
• Mitochondrial Eve, 150,000 years ago
• Earliest evidence for agriculture, now at 23,000 years ago (Sea of Galilee); certainly by 12,000 years ago
• Biblical Eve: mythic story of leaving the Garden of Eden (out of Africa); transition to agriculture; transition to hidden menses and monogamy
• Miriam 1200ish years ago
• Our individual mothers: I am Michelle, the daughter of Nancy, who is the daughter of Eleanor, who is the daughter of Henrietta, who is the daughter of Eleanor, who is the daughter of Martha and I light this candle for all the mothers of my line.

I now invite you to light candles honoring your own lines of descent, or whatever it is you need to honor during this time.

 

Sermon

Once, early on a drizzly Saturday morning, I went to see the Dali Llama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. As I sat in this gigantic outdoor football stadium, he said: Think about this:

Everyone of us here, some ten thousand of us, has a mother. And he paused for a moment, allowing that knowledge to sink into our very beings. A hush fell over the stadium, so that in the silence, I could almost hear the thoughts of others, and I certainly felt the sense of amazement, as we took in this knowledge – that we are all connected to each other in such a fundamental way. It’s such a simple fact, isn’t it? We were all, each and everyone of us, born of a woman. And, I’d guess, it’s a fact most of us take for granted.

It wasn’t always so; this taking for granted of new life. Disconnection from our bodies and disconnection from nature is a rather modern phenomenon. Today, in this country, most of us were born in a hospital- in a sterile environment; with quick and easy access to life-saving drugs, equipment, and procedures; with quick and easy access to the miracle of medical technology.

For the millennia before the advent of modern medicine, we were born, that is our human ancestors were born – in the grasses of the savannah, within the confines of caves, under the protection of thatched roofs. Our survival, and the survival of our mothers, was always in question. For our survival, we relied on the wisdom of the women who had gone before, on the oral traditions that had been passed down from generation to generation, on the medicinal value of plants and herbs growing nearby. And – we relied on the Goddess.

We relied on the Goddess. Throughout ancient times and ancient cultures, it was the Goddess who was revered. Archaeological evidence from Palestine of the 13th and 14th centuries BCE in the form of clay figurines, with their emphasis on the elements of human fertility and survival, tells us that our earliest religious impulse, as humans, was to worship the Goddess. This makes sense to me – for as people we were intimately tied to the cycles and rhythms of nature, of the earth. We knew life and death, we knew the seasons of the year, we knew seedtime and harvest – in a way most of us, today, cannot and do not know. And we, that is our human ancestors, made the connection between human sexuality and reproduction and the implantation of seeds in Mother Earth, for our very survival depended on both.

Today, we celebrate Mother’s Day. Mothers all over the country will be blessed with brunch, courted with cards, favored with flowers, and showered with small gifts of time and treasure. Joy and good humor abound, such as was sent in this email chain, when 2nd graders were asked questions about the relationships between mothers and God. Here is a sampling of just a few of them: Why did God make mothers? She’s the only one who knows where the scotch tape is. How did God make mothers? Magic plus superpowers plus a lot of stirring. And finally, what ingredients are mothers made of? Clouds and angel hair and everything nice in the world and one dab of mean.

Of course, Mother’s Day is not only joy, good humor, and celebration. On this day, children mourn the deaths of their mothers, mothers mourn the deaths of their children, and some children grieve the loss of the mothers they wish they had had or never knew.

When the Dali Llama spoke to that stadium full of people, reminding us of our common origin from our mothers, I do not know if he was aware of the approaching Mother’s Day holiday here in the United States or not. He taught of the importance of a mother’s touch, of a nurturing touch, in the first few months of human life; of its essential function in brain development. And he spoke of his own mother, telling stories from his childhood. He told us that his mother was a person of great kindness and compassion and he spoke of being spoiled by her. During the earliest time of his life, in the first two years, his mother carried him about on her shoulders just about everywhere she went. He said that when he wanted her to go this way, he tugged on this ear, and she went this way. And he said when he wanted her to go that way, he tugged on that ear, and she went that way. But sometimes, sometimes … she wouldn’t do as he wished, and he tugged on both of her ears like this.

Yes, this story is both funny and cute, and for that reason alone, it is one of my favorites. Without fail, I smile each time I remember him telling this story. To me, though, the wonder of this teaching is its humility; and the brilliance of this teaching is its universality. For all are not mothers, and many shall never be; but we are all children of mothers, we all were born of a woman, all- even Jesus, even Muhammed, even Buddha, even the Dali Llama. For this teaching gets at the heart of life, the cycles of life and death, or as the Dali Llama would say, birth and rebirth; for this is the universal connection of all human life.

Earlier, I spoke of the importance of the Goddess in early human religion; yet, our culture has developed in such a way that it is a male God who is most commonly worshiped. How did that happen? Where did the Goddess go? Did she simply disappear with the advent of monotheism? Almost, almost, but not quite … as we shall see, Biblical scholars and archaeologists have been busy rediscovering and reclaiming the Goddess of Ancient Israel.

In one of the most intriguing stories of the Hebrew Bible, God, who is very upset with the people of Israel, speaks to Jeremiah and says to him:

“As for you, do not pray for this people, do not raise a cry or prayer on their behalf, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger.” (Jeremiah 7: 16-18)

Later in the story, after the first Temple had been destroyed and many of the Israelites were exiled to Babylonia; Jeremiah then speaks to a crowd of refugees who had fled Jerusalem, explaining that they cannot escape the wrath of God by fleeing to Egypt.

“Then all the men who were aware that their wives had been making offerings to other gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, all the people who lived in Pathros in the land of Egypt, answered Jeremiah: ‘As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we are not going to listen to you. Instead, we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out libations to her, just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. We used to have plenty of food, and prospered and saw no misfortune. But from the time we stopped making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her, we have lacked everything and have perished by the sword and by famine.’ And the women said, ‘Indeed we will go on making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her; do you think that we made cakes for her, marked with her image, and poured out libations to her without our husbands’ being involved?'” (Jeremiah 44: 15-19)

There are many, many interpretations of these passages of Jeremiah. Some say that the Queen of Heaven was Ishtar or Astarte, a foreign goddess; others say she was Asherah. Some say that she was the consort of the LORD of Israel; others say that she simply represented the feminine side of God. I believe the strongest evidence supports the idea that the Queen of Heaven was Asherah, the wife of the old Hebrew God EI, whose worship flourished throughout Biblical times. William Dever, a professor of archaeology, believes that the writers of the Hebrew Bible in their monotheistic interpretation were actually battling a widespread and well-entrenched folk religion; a religion practiced not just by the women, but by the men as well; a religion which revered and worshiped the Queen of Heaven in all of her local manifestations; a religion which worshiped a Hebrew goddess, yes, a Hebrew goddess, through and through.

Eventually, as we all know, monotheism and a patriarchal God did win the battle for the religion of the people, or at least most people. Worship of the Goddess continued, albeit underground and in secret, and survived through millennia of persecution; finally re-emerging in the light of day, or perhaps, by the light of the moon, in the form of pagan and wiccan traditions practiced today by UUs and many others, the world over. Other vestiges remain as well. The goddess has survived in mystical Judaism as the Shekinah, the feminine aspect of God who dwells in this world; and the Goddess has survived in all of Judaism as the Sabbath bride. In Christianity, the Goddess has survived in the form of Mary, as the human mother of a divine God; a story long familiar to many pagan traditions.

Over the course of time, as human societies grew increasingly complex and more and more patriarchal; women lost much of their stories, much of their power, much of their access to the divine. Women lost their roles as prophets and priests. Women lost their Goddess.

As Unitarians and Universalists, we have our proud stories of reclaiming the place of women in ministry. Universalists lay claim to what was perhaps the first modern ordination of a woman to ministry; most likely, the Rev. Olympia Brown in the year 1863. Unitarians took their turn, a few years later, with the ordination of the Rev. Celia Burleigh.

Lest we be too proud of ourselves, it is also important to remember that the history of women in Unitarianism and Universalism was also sometimes problematic. Our triumphs were often more the exception than the rule. Despite our early ordination of women, many congregations rarely or never called a female minister. It wasn’t until 2017 that we elected a woman to the presidency of the Unitarian Universalist Association for the first time.

As we journey forward in our quest to regain the divine feminine, I am reminded of some old ideas about the unity of God. In Platonic, Hellenistic thought, society was organized in a hierarchy of those thought to be farthest away from God and those thought to be closest to and most like God (or the gods). Not surprisingly, slave women were on the bottom of the hierarchy. On the next rung up – slave men; on the next – free women; and on the next – free men. At the very top of the hierarchy, those thought to be most like God, were androgynous or gender-less people.

A similar line of thought continued in the writings of early Gnostic Christians found at Nag Hammadi. They believed that the end times would manifest as a return to the beginning times – to the time before humans were divided into male and female; when humans were simply one; one gender.

This yearning for unity, for the Goddess and the God, is reflected in these words by a UU minister, the Rev. Shirley Ann Ranck. She writes this as if from the perspective of Gomar, a devotee of Asherah, who is speaking to her husband Hosea, a prophet of YHWH, the LORD of Israel:

“Are our Gods so different? Must it be one or the other? Can we not dwell together in harmony? Is Asherah so different from the Gods of your ancestors, Hosea? … Were they so different? Elshaddai and Asherah? The Divinity of the Mountains and the God of the Air and Rain … Forgive me as I forgive you. Even as our Gods, the great YHWH and the great Asherah forgive us. May they live side by side. Although I know in my heart that may never be, I still pray for it …. And some day your world-transcending God will be reconciled with my world-renewing God, peace shall reign, and we shall be together again in the land.”

And so our search for Asherah continues. May we reclaim the Goddess while retaining the God. Amen and Blessed Be.

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Benediction

Our circle is open but unbroken,
May the Goddess and the God go with you,
and all the protection they provide.
All are one.
Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again.
Amen and Blessed Be.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 24 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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