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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
November 21, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
On both an individual level and as communities and societies, the ways in which we tell or fail to tell our histories define who we become.
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
The prophetic tasks of the church are to tell the truth in a society that lives in illusion, to grieve loss in a society that practices denial, and to express hope in a society that lives in despair.
-Walter Brueggemann
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Learn more about Beloved Community at this link. – The King Center
Meditation Reading
REMEMBER
Joy Harjo
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
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.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.
Sermon
I am from grassy, open fields, from Frito’s corn chips and banana seat bicycles.
I am from the the little house with asphalt siding and a yard full of mud mounds the crawfish built.
I am from the pecan trees at my grandparents house. The generosity of those trees overwhelmed us year after year.
I’m from holiday tag football games and warm hugs.
I am from from Robert Leo and Hatti Ann.
I’m from laughter and playfulness, from going camping in the East Texas piney woods.
I’m from you are loved, and boys don’t cry, and don’t sweat the small stuff.
I’m from traveling the country and the world.
I’m from Groves, Texas and Boykin Springs State Park and the best cornbread dressing ever made.
I’m from the man who could never stand still and jingled his keys to everyone else’s great distraction.
I’m from my that man’s, my grandfather’s pocket knife. His dominos sets and my grandparents’ Maple living room furniture – all of these treasures have his initials or name engraved or written on them along with what was my grandparents’ address and phone number – all of these treasures now reside in my home office here in Austin, as well as in the depths of my heart and soul.
In our small group ministries and other programs this month, we have been exploring the spiritual topic of holding history.
What I shared with you about myself and my history just now is one of the spiritual exercises some of us have done this month to remember and reclaim at least a part of our histories.
You can do the exercise yourself by doing an internet search for “I am from poem template”, which will bring up a number of template variations.
Or, I am also happy to send you the version I used if you would like.
I think that holding our histories, revisiting them from time to time, is vital for us as individuals, as well as communities and societies.
Getting our histories right, embracing all of it – the mundane, the joyful, the painful – that for which we are proud and that which we might wish we had done differently – those histories tell us who we have become.
And trying to hold our histories accurately can help tell us who we would like to be becoming.
The Akan (Ahkahn) peoples in Ghana have a word, Sankofa, symbolized by a bird with its head turned around to take an egg from its back.
The Sankofa heron illustrates a proverb that loosely translated means, “It is not taboo to go back and fetch what you have forgotten.”
The thing is, so often we get our histories wrong, sometimes because we were taught false things about ourselves and our world.
We can end up forgetting our truest selves.
So, from time to time, it can be vital for us to reexamine the histories we have been telling ourselves.
Here are just a couple of examples from my own life.
I was told by the little church we went to when I was growing up, as well as by others in my life, that I was sinful because I had same sex attractions.
That was not true, but it got implanted as part of the history I told myself for many years, even if unconsciously.
I had to go back and fetch the truth, remember my own inherent worth, unlearn that false history in order to be able to live and love fully.
Another false bit of history that I was told while growing up was that I could accomplish anything I put mind to.
Now, ignoring for a moment how the fact that I was gay kept me from accomplishing some of what I put mind to at times in my life because of the discrimination I encountered from others, this also was simply not true in general for my or anyone else’s history anyway.
I did well in school and made good grades, and had the privilege of being white and male.
I have since learned though of another aspect of my history I did not realize at the time – that we were at best lower income, working class when I was a teenager.
Because of that, opportunities opened up for some of my school mates from wealthier families that were not made available to me, such as invitations to attend more prestigious higher institutions of learning.
Besides, none of us are great at every single thing, and accepting that this is OK is a part of reclaiming our true history.
Research has found that we often show ourselves far less compassion than we do other people when we tell ourselves the narrative of our own histories. This harshness on ourselves can lead to anxiety, depression and other forms of distress.
So, it can help to turn our narrative toward when we have succeeded or been kind to others.
It can help to offer ourselves the same forgiveness we often give to others when we ourselves fail or just find we are not so great at something.
Author Madeline Johnson writes about reframing how we view our histories. She gives the example that her parents would never accept her earning anything but an A+ in school.
As a result, she would beat herself up anytime she remembered making even just an A in her educational history.
As she has grown older though, she has reframed that narrative to realize she loves learning for the learning itself, not for some grade she may or may not have made. Her new frame is as a lifelong learner.
Personally, I seem to be incapable of creating drawn or painted art, even if it only involves depicting a simple stick figure, but that’s OK, because, hey, I at one time directed some absolutely fabulous stage productions, so that can be my artistic history!
That, along with the truism that ministry is an art, not a science.
It can help to also let go of our regrets from our past. We can learn from them, but we can’t change them.
We can have nostalgia for our past that can inform our present, but we can’t change our mistakes.
As British author Aubrey Degraaf wrote, “Don’t cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.”
Finally, I want to close out talking about our histories as individuals by touching on how psychologist Ronald Alexander says we may be able to use mindfulness meditation to deal with some of our more upsetting memories.
He says to get into a comfortable position and for a few minutes simply concentrate on your breath flowing in and out.
After a few minutes, bring the upsetting memory to mind. Let yourself feel the original feeling for a bit.
Then, imagine yourself being drawn upward and backward by an invisible source that deposits you in a balcony seat from which you gaze down at the drama before you.
Be aware that you’re writing the script of this play, and begin to rewrite it. Imagine there are people around you expressing support, smiling, encouraging you.
As you continue your breathing, rewrite the scene to unfold in a way that alleviates your discomfort and makes you feel reassured of being loved and accepted.
I’ll admit to being skeptical at first, and I am not sure this type of technique would be advisable with more severe negative memories such as trauma.
However, Dr. Alexander’s and others research has shown that for less severe upsetting memories, these types of mindfulness techniques can reduce their negative power and help us dwell on them less when thinking of our past.
Now, I’d like to turn to how we tell (or importantly do not tell) our true history as a society can become harmful to everyone in that society – as collective liberation theology would say, “even the more privileged”.
Let me begin by illustrating an example of the opposite:
While Germany is certainly still not completely free from racism and antisemitism, the country has managed to stay informed of its history of Nazism and the Holocaust.
All of its arts, including television and film, routinely refer to and acknowledge Nazi history as the evil it was.
The country pauses to perform “public rites of repentance” around events such as the liberation of Auschwitz.
There are also famous “stumbling stones”-small brass plaques placed throughout the cities to denote where Jews and other Nazi victims last lived.
Now, what if we in the U.S. did this?
What if we more often told the unvarnished history of our treatment of women, for example?
What if our histories included more women and people of color?
What if we more often the told the truth about how the Texas Rangers lynched and murdered thousands of Latinos?
What if we told the stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer folks.
We who are white, gay, cis gender males might start by recognizing that it was an African American, self-described drag queen who started the Stonewall uprising, which catalyzed a movement for LGBTQ rights.
Yesterday was the annual Trans day of Remembrance. It is a beginning on truth telling, but far, far too few people are even willing to listen.
Too many do not want the real histories to be told.
And while the U.S. does also have positive narratives to be told, there is too much history we refuse to completely acknowledge.
We don’t tell the true story of genocides committed by the U.S. against native Americans and others.
We don’t tell the true story of slavery, or the land that was never given to former slaves as had been promised.
We don’t talk enough about Jim Crow, or lynchings or African Americans who fought for our country and then were denied the benefits of the G.I. bill afterward, red-lining in real estate or modern day voter suppression, and on and on and on it goes. <>
Instead, we tell myths.
Myths like enslaved people never rebelled because they were quote “comfortable in their roles”.
That’s a lie. They did rebel. I’m fact, the legal concept of whiteness and race in the U.S. came from wealthy plantation and business owners’ desire to prevent indentured whites and African American slaves from joining together in rebellion, as they had done.
We tell myths like the civil rights era ended systemic racism or that there is no slavery still happening today.
In fact, several million imprisoned people, mostly African Americans and other folks of color, are forced to provide their labor for the profit of others and for little to no pay.
Sadly, recent research has begun to find that the traumas all of these folks I’ve mentioned experience can be passed down genetically across multiple generations, as well as through cultural practices developed to help protect themselves and their loved ones.
The harm just gets further extended to more and more people.
What if like Germany, we began to tell these histories honestly – if we engaged in public rites of repentance.
What if like Germany’s stumbling stones, imagine if we placed markers on all that was built by enslaved African Americans?
What if more of us visited the national trail of tears and learned more deeply about the devastations that were inflicted upon tens of thousands of Native Americans as they were forcefully displaced from their homelands?
What if we placed brass plagues at all of the places where far too many of our trans siblings’ lives were taken from them?
If we were to tell these histories truthfully, holding them up against the values we claim as a country, might we begin to enact policies that dismantle oppressive systems and change peoples lives for the better?
Might we begin to see how these histories and systems have been and continue to be harmful, even to those of us who also enjoy some form of privilege because of them.
And yet, one recent poll found that 43% of conservatives do not want public schools to teach about the history of racism in the U.S.
Now, that’s not Critical Race Theory that was recently used for political gain in the Virginia election and that our senior minister Meg pointed out a few weeks ago is not even being taught in public schools.
No, these folks do not want the history of racism mentioned at all in our schools.
Such truth telling would threaten systems of oppression and supremacy.
So my beloveds, we must be the voices that call for our true histories to be taught and discussed.
We must proclaim that telling our histories is part of how we heal.
Our histories are a large part of how we construct ourselves and understand ourselves both as individuals and as societies.
We might say then that distorted histories distort our very souls.
So, we best get about bringing the truths of our history to light, then.
Our collective soul has some mending to be done.
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