A Feast of Love

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

https://vimeo.com/508236508

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Bear W. Qolezcua
January 31, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

If you knew that your next meal was your last, what would you choose to eat? Imagine, instead, that we would sit around the long table of humanity and feast on the finest, most filling meal our souls could crave.

 

 

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.

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

Call to Worship

Bron Carlson is the pen name of an American poet and short story writer. This is from a piece titled “I survived you: A letter to my mother.” One with whom we are all familiar.

…My friends have been parents to me, siblings, and even children to me in a way. They have been all the pieces of me that were missing, denied, painful to experience, or hoped for but not yet seen through. We love each other because we recognise that we each need it, there is no ‘deserve’, only an honouring of humanity within each other. We have fulfilled one another’s needs and hopes, we have shown up for each other, journeyed together, been through heartache and grief and joy and love and peace and loss and fear together. There is no need for common blood between us, nor should there be. Blood is not a cement that binds people together. MY family is bound inextricably through the finest threads that, when brought together, make the strongest ties. MY family chose me as much as I chose them and I never had to earn it, fear it, or hide myself from it. They are welcome at my table. Their love fills the scattered dishes and we are all filled by them…


Meditation Reading

We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been – a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.

-Starhawk

Sermon

One of my favourite Christian texts in the Bible is found in the book of 1 Corinthians 13: 1-8 (more or less). So, these verses they say “If I could speak any and every language of humanity and beyond but there is no love within me? Then anything I would say is nothing but noise, noise, noise.” The clanging of cymbals, the bashing of drums is how the Bible explains it.

“I could give away everything I own, sell it, give it to the poor. Give all my food to the hungry, my clothing to the naked. I could give up my very life for someone else. But if I do it with no love, if that place is not found within me. Then it means nothing. Love is patient, Love is kind. It has no jealousy, it is not arrogant. It has no ego and it does not inflate itself.

Love is not shameful. It is not selfish. It is not rude. Love does not demand that it gets its own way. It does not lash out. And it is absolutely not unapproachable.

Love doesn’t celebrate cruelty. It doesn’t celebrate injustice, or pain, or heartache. But only ever rejoices in true equity, in mercy, in goodness, humanity, and truth.

Every mystical gift, every power under the stars within this vast universe, every insight, or fact, or piece of wisdom that has ever been or ever will be will someday end. But love will endure far beyond. Songs will fade, stories will cease, and every good deed ever done will fall.

Even when all I am and all I have ever known is lost to history forever, three things will remain: Faith, Hope, and Love. And the most important, the most powerful, the most enduring, the greatest of these is love.”

A friend of mine put a post out that asked a sillyish quick question, that asked one of those “give me the first word off your head” just to engage the community he had built up there. He asked “if you knew your next meal was your last. What would you eat?”

I was in one of those moods where I chose to sit with the question and really consider it. I chewed on it until it had no flavour left and then I stuck it behind my ear for later. I wanted to think about the impact a last meal could make. 

 I’m pretty sure no one ever meant for those quick little questions to be anything remotely close to philosophical or theological. There I was, waxing toward the poetic and the philosophical and the theological. And I’m sure my friend was just absolutely thrilled to bits.

So, a feast of love. Taking in this never-ending source of power and goodness always leaves me both open to more love and also completely filled by it, so much that my own then pours out from me and into all the ones around me.

I cannot imagine a more generous gift we can give to one another than that.

I wrote about my illness in my early 20s that on good days I enjoyed things like chicken with lemon and garlic, or chili, or brisket, brussels sprouts, pumpkin, asparagus, beans, salads made from celery greens and fresh cucumbers. The food had very little to do with what was nourishing me, what was keeping me full and energetic enough to stick with it. To not just want to give up.

In those times, with my little extended families (and I had several), as I drifted in and out of consciousness or had to excuse myself… after a while everybody just kind of learned to leave me be and then pick up once I was back with them like nothing stopped. It became familiar. They knew what to watch for. To check on me. 

They were patient, they were kind, they were not selfish. They did not want their own way. They were, in my life, the embodiment of love. 

Uncomfortable and fearsome as those parts of my life were. They did teach me something. I don’t care what’s on my plate in the end. I don’t care and yet, I do. I do care.

What is served at the table for my feast of love matters the most of anything I will ever have. So far in this life I have learned to appreciate so much that has crossed my spiritual and physical plate. Things that had always brought comfort or, as I would learn, would bring it. But it was more where it came from and what came alongside it that fed me.

At my last meal, I would make sure I was completely surrounded by the people who have filled my heart so much more than I have ever needed to fill my belly. My feast took a long time in my life to be recognised and to share. And there have been times that I stepped away from the table because I couldn’t handle what was being served. But that meal comes from living a life full to the brim with the sweetest treats anyone could ever taste. The people I gathered to me.

The communities I am a part of.

The family I have created for myself.

They would be my honoured guests and they would be the last thing I would ever need in this lifetime.

Find your feast my Beloved, Beloved Community. Find your feast. If it is here in this community, good. Find it, enjoy it, and share it. If it is in some other group of souls, good. Find it, enjoy it, and share it. Wherever your table is set. Wherever you find yourself seated. Wherever that dinner bell is rung, go. Go to it! Celebrate it as much as you can, with as many people as you can, as fully and richly and deeply as you can. That table is set for YOU and it is yours to take in all that has been poured out there. Fill your cup to the brim. Let it overflow with the goodness, the peace, and the comfort, the contentment, the hope, and the communal sharing of all that is good and all that isn’t as good in this life. Joy and sorrow do exist together. But they are better shared. 

If there comes a time, and I truly hope there is, that you find that your table is so full you cannot contain what is on it… Don’t close anyone out. Don’t build higher walls, build a longer table. More seats, more people, more love. Let it flow. Celebrate your feast of love. Let it be the food that carries you through when you feel so hungry for something more. Let it be what fuels you through this life. 

Bon apétit.



 

 

Most sermons during the past 21 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

In praise of the dark

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 24, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Some people use the metaphor of darkness to mean wrongness or evil, but darkness is as sacred as light. It is in the darkness that roots grow, and it is in a time of uncertainty that people can reflect and transform the way they are going to go forward. As we say goodbye to the darkness of winter, let us pause to appreciate it a bit.

 

 

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

In the dark I rest,
unready for the light which dawns
day after day, eager to be shared.
Black silk, shelter me.
I need
more of the night before I open
eyes and heart
to illumination. I must still
grow in the dark like a root
not ready, not ready at all.

– Denise Levertov

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

Contemplation is essentially a listening in silence, an expectancy. And yet in a certain sense, we must truly begin to hear God when we have ceased to listen. What is the explanation of this paradox? Perhaps only that there is a higher kind of listening, which is not an attentiveness to some special wave length, a receptivity to a certain kind of message, but a general emptiness that waits to realize the fullness of the message of God within its own apparent void.

In other words, the true contemplative is not the one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect or anticipate the word that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence, and when he is “answered,” it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God.

– Thomas Merton

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

 

Most sermons during the past 21 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Spiritual Imagination

by Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 17, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our imagination can lead to both wonderful spiritual paths and can take us down paths that can wound our spirits. On the one hand, our imagination helps us dream of a better life for ourselves and a better, more just world for all. Yet, we can also imagine things that are not true and get drawn into harmful cultural myths. Our imagination can also help sense the sacred all around us in our everyday lives.

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

You can either think that the world is getting better or the future will be much better than it is now or that you can think the world is getting worse. But that continuum isn’t as important to me, actually, as this idea of – Do you think that you have agency in this world that is either getting better or worse. When it come to our futures we have hope, we have fear, but sometimes we forget that we also have influence, and that means we can choose the future we want to work towards. Nothing is written in stone.

– Angela Avantella

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

I’ve decided to exercise my imagination more. I want to build strength and add some muscle to it. But, keep it kind, make it more active and more likely to activate on a moments notice when really needed. So, I’m reading more, emersing myself in stories, myths, poetry, the arts, more often. Rewriting the poems and stories of my childhood sometimes. Permitting my daydreams to take hold, allowing music to enter into my heart and soul, and at times I even dance, poorly, I think, but that’s OK. As I dance my awkward dance I dream not only of a future made better than today, but a present moment suddenlly filled with possibility.

– Chris Jimmerson

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

Most sermons during the past 21 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Wish you were here

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 10, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

How can we be there for each other in this painful time of crisis? How can we linger in our witness of the pain and lack of clarity without trying to fix things for everyone? How can we practice true presence with our country and with one another?

 

 

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

We are living in the greatest revolution in history – a huge spontaneous upheaval of the entire human race: not the revolution planned and carried out by any particular party, race, or nation, but a deep elemental boiling over of all the inner contradictions that have ever been in man, a revelation of the chaotic forces inside everybody. This is not something we have chosen, nor is it something we are free to avoid.

This revolution is a profound spiritual crisis of the whole world, manifested largely in desperation, cynicism, violence, conflict, self-contradiction, ambivalence, fear and hope, doubt and belief, creation and destructiveness, progress and regression, obsessive attachments to images, idols, slogans, programs that only dull the general anguish for a moment until it bursts out everywhere in a still more acute and terrifying form. We do not know if we are building a fabulously wonderful world or destroying all that we have ever had, all that we have achieved.

All the inner force of man is boiling and bursting out, the good together with the evil, the good poisoned by evil and fighting it, the evil pretending to be good and revealing itself in the most dreadful crimes, justified and rationalized by the purest and most innocent intentions.

-Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

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

BLESSING IN A TIME OF VIOLENCE
by Jan Richardson

Which is to say
this blessing
is always.

Which is to say
there is no place
this blessing
does not long
to cry out
in lament,
to weep its words
in sorrow,
to scream its lines
in sacred rage.

Which is to say
there is no day
this blessing ceases
to whisper
into the ear
of the dying,
the despairing,
the terrified.

Which is to say
there is no moment
this blessing refuses
to sing itself
into the heart
of the hated
and the hateful,
the victim
and the victimizer,
with every last
ounce of hope
it has.

Which is to say
there is none
that can stop it,
none that can
halt its course,
none that will
still its cadence,
none that will
delay its rising,
none that can keep it
from springing forth
from the mouths of us
who hope,
from the hands of us
who act,
from the hearts of us
who love,

from the feet of us
who will not cease
our stubborn, aching
marching, marching

until this blessing
has spoken its final word,
until this blessing
has breathed
its benediction
in every place,
in every tongue:

Peace.
Peace.
Peace.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

 

Most sermons during the past 21 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

2021 Burning Bowl

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 3, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We are entering a new year and a new decade, many firsts. Bring your resentments, angers, sorrows, and hurts to the burning bowl, bathe them in the fire, and let us all experience the renewal that comes from letting go.

 

 

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

“He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.”
  -William Blake, Eternity

“There ain’t no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.”
  -Kate DiCamillo, Because of Winn-Dixie

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

“Some people believe that holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength, however, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go, and to do it.”
  -Ann Landers

“I finally found the good in goodbye.”
  -Beonce Knowles

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

 

Most sermons during the past 21 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

2021 Sermon Index

by Posted in Indexes

View Post

2021 Sermons

Sermon Topic
Author
Date
 Opening to Joy  Rev Chris Jimmerson
12-26-21
 2021 Christmas Eve Service  Rev Meg Barnhouse
12-24-21
 2021 Christmas Pageant  Rev Meg Barnhouse
12-19-21
 The Perils of Perfectionism  Rev Meg Barnhouse
12-12-21
 Dealing with difficult people (and trying  not to be one)  Rev Meg Barnhouse
12-05-21
 Right Concentration  Rev Meg Barnhouse
11-28-21
 Holding History  Rev Chris Jimmerson
11-21-21
 Using Our Voices  Rev Meg Barnhouse
11-14-21
 Be Present in your Life  Rev Meg Barnhouse
11-07-21
 All Souls and All Saints  Rev Meg Barnhouse
10-31-21
 The Healing Power of Truth  Rev Meg Barnhouse
10-24-21
 Cultivating Relationship  Rev Chris Jimmerson
10-17-21
 Great Big Celebration Sunday  Rev Meg Barnhouse
10-10-21
 The Third Principle  Rev Meg Barnhouse
10-03-21
 So Much Wasted Effort  Rev Meg Barnhouse
09-26-21
 Resilience  Rev Meg Barnhouse & Rev Chris Jimmerson
09-19-21
 Down to the River to Pray  Rev Meg Barnhouse
09-12-21
 Right Livelihood  Rev Meg Barnhouse
09-05-21
 The Inherent Worth and Dignity of every Person  Rev Meg Barnhouse
08-29-21
 Possibilities Ever Emergent  Rev Chris Jimmerson
08-22-21
 One coming out story  Rev Meg Barnhouse
08-15-21
 Nature v Nurture Youth Service  First UU Youth Group
08-08-21
 Until Love Wins  Rev Jen Crow, UUA General Assembly
08-01-21
 When Trust is Hard  Sage Hirschfeld & Bear Qolezcua
07-25-21
 Sacred Vulnerability  Rev Chris Jimmerson
07-18-21
 Collective Liberation Rebroadcast  Rev Chris Jimmerson
07-11-21
 We’re Still Here; Our Journey Continues  Rev Chris Jimmerson
07-04-21
 In the stream of your life  Rev Meg Barnhouse
06-27-21
 Play – Fun – Humor – Love  Rev Chris Jimmerson
06-20-21
 What did you just say?  Rev Meg Barnhouse
06-13-21
 Just a Reminder  Rev Meg Barnhouse
06-06-21
 Flower Communion 2021  Rev Meg Barnhouse
05-30-21
 Why should I believe that?  Rev Meg Barnhouse
05-23-21
 The Power of Storytelling  Rev Chris Jimmerson
05-16-21
 Abandon Hope and Fear  Rev Meg Barnhouse
05-09-21
 Waiting to Exhale  Rev Bill Sinkford
05-02-21
 Blues Theology (Revisited)  Rev Meg Barnhouse
04-25-21
 Pathways ever unfolding  Rev Chris Jimmerson
04-18-21
 History – It’s complicated  Rev Meg Barnhouse
04-11-21
 When Harold Hatcher gave up, He grew  Rev Meg Barnhouse
04-04-21
 Side With Love  UUA
03-28-21
 Commitment Creates Connection  Rev Chris Jimmerson
03-21-21
 Third Lap in a Four Lap Race  Rev Meg Barnhouse
03-14-21
 The Power of Our Words  Rev Meg Barnhouse
03-07-21
 Need a Little Mercy Now  Rev Meg Barnhouse
02-28-21
 Muppet Theology Reboadcast  Rev Chris Jimmerson
02-21-21
 To Corinth with Love  Rev Meg Barnhouse
02-14-21
 Blessing the Animals 2021  Rev Meg Barnhouse
02-07-21
 A Feast of Love  Bear Qolezcua
01-31-21
 In praise of the dark  Rev Meg Barnhouse
01-24-21
 Spiritual Imagination  Rev Chris Jimmerson
01-17-21
 Wish you were here  Rev Meg Barnhouse
01-10-21
 2021 Burning Bowl  Rev Meg Barnhouse
01-03-21

 

Sermon Archives Index

Sermon Indexes
by Year
Principal Speaker
 2020 Sermon Index Meg Barnhouse, Chris Jimmerson
 2019 Sermon Index Meg Barnhouse, Chris Jimmerson, Lee Legault
 2018 Sermon Index Meg Barnhouse, Chris Jimmerson
 2017 Sermon Index Meg Barnhouse, Chris Jimmerson, Susan Yarbrough
 2016 Sermon Index Meg Barnhouse, Chris Jimmerson, Marisol Caballero
 2015 Sermon Index Meg Barnhouse, Marisol Caballero
 2014 Sermon Index Meg Barnhouse, Marisol Caballero
 2013 Sermon Index Meg Barnhouse, Marisol Caballero
 2012 Sermon Index Meg Barnhouse, Marisol Caballero
 2011 Sermon Index Meg Barnhouse, Ed Brock
 2010 Sermon Index Janet Newman, Ed Brock,
 2009 Sermon Index Janet Newman
 2008 Sermon Index Davidson Loehr, Aaron White, Brian Ferguson
 2007 Sermon Index Davidson Loehr, Jack Harris Bonham
 2006 Sermon Index Davidson Loehr, Jack Harris Bonham
 2005 Sermon Index Davidson Loehr, Jack Harris Bonham
 2004 Sermon Index Davidson Loehr, Victoria Shepherd Rao
 The Jesus Seminar Davidson Loehr
 2003 Sermon Index Davidson Loehr, Hannah Wells
 2002 Sermon Index Davidson Loehr, Cathy Herrington
 2001 Sermon Index Davidson Loehr
 2000 Sermon Index Davidson Loehr

Guidance

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 27, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

How can we use guidance methods such as I Ching, Runes, Dream Interpretation, Tarot and others in order to answer our questions and to seek a path through our lives?

 

 

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 we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

Springtime blooms the starry tree
Bearing fruit the mariners see.
High by night and low by dawn
The silver apple guides us home.

– F.T. McKinstry

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

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

 

Most sermons during the past 20 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

2020 Christmas Pageant

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 20, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We raise our voices in story and song to greet Christmas with our annual Christmas Pageant.

 

 

Chalice Lighting

In this season of anticipation we raise our voices in story and song to greet Christmas. May the lessons of compassion, trust and generosity alight within us and lead us into the new day, renewed.

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

IN THIS NIGHT
Dorothee Solle

In this night the stars left their habitual places
And kindled wildfire tidings that spread faster than sound.
In this night the shepherds left their posts
To shout the new slogans into each other’s clogged ears.
In this night the foxes left their warm burrows
And the lion spoke with deliberation
“This is the end revolution.”
In this night roses fooled the earth
And began to bloom in the snow.

Unison Reading

For so the children come
And so they have been coming.
Always in the same way they come
born of the seed of man and woman.

Each night a child is born is a holy night.
Fathers and mothers-
sitting beside their children’s cribs
feel glory in the sight of a new life beginning.

Each night a child is born is a holy night:
A time for singing,
A time for wondering,
A time for worshipping,

– Sophia Lyons Fahs

 

 

Most sermons during the past 20 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

A Moving Stillness

by Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
December 13, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Sometimes stillness is not so much a lack of motion but rather a moment to find our center so that we can discern where to move next.

 

 

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 we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

Today I’m flying low and I’m not saying a word. I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I’m taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I’m traveling a terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.

– Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings

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

KEEPING QUIET
by Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth
let’s not speak in any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

 

Most sermons during the past 20 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

What’s so Funny ’bout Peace, Love, and Understanding

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 6, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The election is over and our president elect is calling for unity. How do we do that on a family scale? On a community scale? How do you build relationships with people who you see more clearly now? How do you rebuild relationships with people for whom you may have lost some respect? Can you just move forward without addressing the harm that has been done?

 

 

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 we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MISTER ROGERS
Fred Rogers

It is very dramatic when two people come together to work something out. It is easy to take a gun and annihilate your opposition but what is realy exciting to me is to see people with differing views come together and finally respect each other.

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

STAGES OF CULTURAL COMPETENCE

1. Cultural Destructiveness
2. Cultural Incapacity
3. Cultural Blindness
4. Cultural Pre-Competence
5. Basic Cultural Competence
6. Advanced Cultural Competence

Meditation Reading

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

-Ralph Waldo Emmerson

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

 

Most sermons during the past 20 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Poetry as Meditation

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 29, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Join Rev. Meg as she explores the idea of meditation through poetry. We will explore lines, writers, and work together to better understand how to find our center through the art of words.

 

 

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

WILD GEESE
Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

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

Medition

CAN YOU DO CONSTRUCTION IN THE RAIN?
by Sage Hirschfeld

Can you do construction in the rain?

Will screws sewn into softened wood hold up,
when earth turns to dry?
When pliable hardens,
and stakes take shapes in unexpected ways.

Will you become brittle when we leave this place?

How does a name forged in open-hearted uncertainty sound
In the light of day
At the grocery store
In your mothers voice.

How will it temper in the open air
When everyone,
and no one at all,
Is listening.

Will it crack?
Or kindle

When moments wedge decades into fractured foundations
Steel whines under weight unexpected
Wind whipped stained glass windows,
turned windchimes

Will you become brittle when we leave this place?
Or simply changed.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

 

Most sermons during the past 20 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Healing does not equal Cure

by Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
November 22, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Often, we can have a tendency to equate healing with being cured – like when we take a prescribed regimen of a medication and then get better. For trauma and other emotional wounds though, healing is more of an ongoing process, sometimes lifelong, whether individually or socially. We will explore embodied ways of approaching such healing.

 

 

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 we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

PARTNERS IN CARE: MEDICINE AND MINISTRY TOGETHER
Fred Reklau

Cure may occur without healing and healing may occur without cure. Cure alters what is. Healing offers what might be. Cure is an act. Healing is a process. Cure seeks to change reality. Healing embraces reality. Cure takes charge. Healing takes time. Cure avoids grief. Healing assumes grief. Cure speaks. Healing listens.

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

INSTRUCTIONS IN JOY
Rev. Nancy Schafer

“MENDING”

How shall we mend you, sweet Soul?
What shall we use, and how is it
in the first place you’ve come to be torn?
Come sit. Come tell me.
We will find a way to mend you.

I would offer you so much, sweet Soul:
this banana, sliced in rounds of palest
yellow atop hot cereal, or these raisins
scattered through it, if you’d rather.
Would offer cellos in the background singing
melodies Vivaldi heard and wrote
for us to keep. Would hold out to you
everything colored blue or lavender
or light green. All of this I would offer you,
sweet Soul. All of it, or any piece of it,
might mend you.

I would offer you, sweet Soul,
this chair by the window, this sunlight
on the floor and the cat asleep in it.
I would offer you my silence, my presence,
all this love I have,
and my sorrow you’ve become torn.

How shall we mend you, sweet Soul?
With these, I think, gently
we can begin: we will mend you with a rocking
chair, some raisins,
a cat, a field of lavender beginning
now to bloom. We will mend you with songs
remembered entirely the first time
ever they are heard.

We will mend you with pieces of your own
sweet self, sweet Soul – with what you’ve taught
from the very beginning.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

 

Most sermons during the past 20 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Falling in Love with What is

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 15, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Both Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie, two wisdom teachers of the current age, say that we need to see reality clearly and be present with it in the moment.
“We suffer when our thoughts argue with reality,” Byron Katie writes.
Can this view be compatible with longing for a better world?

 

 

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 we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

May all beings be well and enjoy the root of happiness free from suffering and the root of suffering. May they not be separated from the joy beyond sorrow. May they dwell in spacious equanimity free from craving, fear, and ignorance.

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

The central task of the religious community is to unveil the bonds that bind each to all. There is a connectedness, a relationship discovered amid the particulars of our own lives and the lives of others. Once felt, it inspires us to act for justice. It is the church that assures us that we are not struggling for justice on our own, but as members of a larger community. The religious community is essential, for alone our vision is too narrow to see all that must be seen, and our strength too limited to do all that must be done. Together, our vision widens and our strength is renewed.

– Mark Morrison Reed

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

 

Most sermons during the past 20 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

Science, Imagination, and Magic

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 8, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

A lot of us have experiences with things that are mysterious to us. Can they all be explained by science? Maybe not yet. Do we sometimes behave as if we believe in things which, in our head, we don’t really believe in?

 

 

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

– Arthur C. Clarke

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

The different religions confused me. Which was the right one? I tried to figure it out but had no success. It worried me. The different Gods – Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, Mohammedan – seemed very particular in the way in which they expected me to keep on good terms with them. I couldn’t please one without offending the others. One kind soul solved my problem by taking me on my first trip to the planetarium. I contemplated the insignificant flyspeck called Earth, the millions of suns and solar systems, and concluded that whoever was in charge of all this would not throw a fit if I ate ham, or meat on Friday, or did not fast in the daytime during Ramadan. I felt much better after this and was, for a while, keenly interested in astronomy.

– Richard Erdos

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

 

Most sermons during the past 20 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

All Souls

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 1, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Honoring the Ancestors. Who are our ancestors? How do we honor them? How might we think of ourselves as ancestors?

 

 

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

GRATITUDE TO MY ANCESTORS

With honor and respect, these eyes see for you
all manner of life you could not have imagined.
My lips move with the rhythm of your words
flowing through me,
my tongue caressing each morsel of wisdom
I am graced to pass on.
Your DNA rides my veins
and with every breath I take,
your cautious steps from the past
toward a fuller life become
bold moves I make toward my destiny.
Together, we wrap arms
around a new generation,
here to become who they were born to be,
to cast their magic as we once did
and bless each day for their ability to do so.
For you, dear ancestors, we live this day.

– Marta I. Valenti
A Long Time Blooming

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

The dead are never gone:
they are in the shadows.
The dead are not in earth:
they’re in the rustling tree,
the groaning wood,
water that runs,
water that sleeps,
they’re in the hut, in the crowd,
the dead are not dead.

The dead are never gone,
they’re in the breast of a woman,
they’re in the crying child,
in the flaming firebrand.
The dead are not in earth:
they’re in the dying fire,
the weeping grasses,
whimpering rocks,
they’re in the forest, they’re in the house,
the dead are not dead.

– Birago Diop

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

 

 

Most sermons during the past 20 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS