2020 Youth Service

July 12, 2020 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above. Text of the homilies are not available.

Senior Youth Group
July 12, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We celebrate our graduating seniors as they transition to young adults and welcome our Middle School kids into High School with our annual bridging ceremony. Join our senior youth group as they lead worship and explore the theme of Sanctuary.

Chalice Lighting

Love is the spirit of this church and service is its law. This is our great covenant: to dwell together in peace, to speak the truth in love, and to help one another.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Call to Worship

WHERE WE BELONG, A DUET
Maya Angelou

In every town and village,
In every city square,
In crowded places I searched the faces
Hoping to find Someone to care.

I read mysterious meanings In the distant stars,
Then I went to schoolrooms
And poolrooms
And half-lighted cocktail bars.
Braving dangers, Going with strangers,
I don’t even remember their names.

I was quick and breezy
And always easy
Playing romantic games.
I wined and dined a thousand exotic Joans and Janes
In dusty halls,
at debutante balls,
On lonely country lanes.

I fell in love forever,
Twice every year or so.
I wooed them sweetly,
was theirs completely,
But they always let me go.

Saying bye now, no need to try now,
You don’t have the proper charms.
Too sentimental and much too gentle
I don’t tremble in your arms.

Then you rose into my life
Like a promised sunrise.
Brightening my days with the light in your eyes.
I’ve never been so strong,
Now I’m where I belong.

Bridging Ceremony

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

Bless. Be Blessed

July 5, 2020 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 5, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In this challenging time through which we are living, it is important that we offer ourselves and others many blessings. Let us comfort one another and accept one another’s comforting. We do not have to pretend everything is ok.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame of 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

So what then does it it mean to offer a blessing – to be a blessing? To bless something or someone is to invoke its wholeness. To help remind the person or thing you are blessing of its essence, its sacredness, its beauty. And to help remind ourself too. Blessing doesn not fix anything. It is not a cure. It does not instill health or well being or strength, instead, it reminds that those things are already there within us.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

From MY GRANDFATHER’S BLESSING
Dr Rachael Naomi Remen

A blessing is not something that one person gives another. A blessing is a moment of meeting, a certain kind of relationship where both people involved remember and acknowledge their true nature and worth, and strengthen what is whole in one another.

By making a place for wholeness within our relationships we offer others the opportunity be whole without shame and become a place of refuge from everything in them and around them that is not genuine. We enable people to remember who they are.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Big Gay Sunday

July 1, 2020 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Kye Flannery
June 28, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

A celebration of pride from the perspective of queerness and queer theologies – exploring belonging, solidarity and deep acceptance of our collective history, and the possibilities of our collective power.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame of 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

SCANDALOUS GOD
– Enfleshed LBGTQ Liturgy Group

Divine Presence,
Scandalous One,
Versatile God,
You have been called the worst of names,
tossed aside by the hands of tradition,
met with violence and neglect by stranger and kin alike.
And still, you do not conform to the expectations of power
or polite your way into halls of destruction.
You, the ultimate transgressor of norms
that harm or confine,
bear witness to the glory of Strange.
You, Queer One, reveal the gifts of falling outside the lines.
You, Wild One, break open possibilities –
within us and around us –
whispering in our ear,
“See me. Feel me. Desire me.” You help us come alive again.
Beauty is your passion.
Love is your motivation.
Courage is your center.
May your spirit be awakened in every heart, every church,
every space dull with repressed delight,
That we may choose to live into the riches
of this peculiar life together.
Embrace us, O God,
and lead us in the ways of your love,
so promiscuous,
so deviant,
so free.
Amen.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Beloved Community Moment

Those in privileged identities — take a moment to think of what it is to come to identity slowly as a child and then a teen with the mirrors of your behavior — joining in a game on the playground of “the queer” where the last person holding the ball is tackled and pummeled — what it is to add to this an authority figure in the background who when we really speak from a place of joy, when we let loose, says “don’t be queer” or “you have to wear a dress to church, or you’re grounded” — and add to this the knowledge that your family are just trying to keep you safe, that as a person of color your family needs to protect you and themselves from actual violence —

Today we celebrate our Pride, as a community which seeks always to love better, always discover more about ourselves and our neighbors — in the new testament someone asks Jesus “who is my neighbor” and that is a question I think we are confronting deeply right now as a nation — as in, who do I SEE as my neighbor — and HOW do I see my neighbor — and who is my neighbor — what is it that my neighbor experiences? Who are they, really? And is there actually a “they” at all — today, now, in this historical moment, as always, our Pride is bound up in our yearning, in our pain, in our relationships, our justice commitments, our intersectional identities, our shared humanity — today, — where gender shifts, where identities we are bio families and chosen families, we are LGBTQIA… we are allies, in many stages of growth —

Meditation Reading

ASK MOLLY
Heather Havrilesky

I am an appliance that rattles and spits out sparks and blows every fuse. I used to serve some function but now I prefer not to. Place me on your kitchen counter and watch life become less and less convenient. I will trip you up. I will make you question what you meant by that. You will open a box of cereal and wonder why you do the job you do. You will stand in the middle of the floor and suddenly need to know what happened to that kid on the bus who taught you about Run DMC. You will mourn all the people you could’ve known better, including yourself.

Welcome this unraveling. The less efficient you become, the better. Break all rote habits and build your life out of satisfying pauses between action. Now eliminate all action. Pull on this strand until the days on your Google calendar skitter across the floor like dominoes. What do your cells crave? Who loves you? When you speak, who feels your words on the soles of their feet, behind their eyes, under their fingernails?

Don’t grieve the ones who can’t see you clearly. Grieve the years you spent refusing to see yourself, or refusing to feel your cells whispering for more. Grieve but don’t say that time was wasted. All mistakes and dead ends led you to this moment.

Now you can finally feel the truth: Mourning is slow but it’s the straightest path forward. The question is “How do I break this appliance permanently? How do I become an inconvenience to myself and others? How do I swear off efficiency forever? How do I keep losing the thread over and over? How do I remain out of the groove, off the map, in the zone, flexible and reflective, shimmering and cool, examining the high stakes of tiny moments, encouraging communion, forgiveness, expansion, invention?

Sermon

Do you remember the toaster? The joke used to be that, if you were gay, and you ‘converted someone’ you got a toaster. Younger people think that started with Ellen coming out on TV in the late 90s — weird to be in my 40s where I can say to someone, “No, sonny, now back before you were born…”

Like so many creative strong persistent countercultural ideas, the toaster was born in response to deep, ugly fear, Anita Bryant mid-70s cultural crusade – “they’re out there and they’re after your children.” So we flipped that script.

Yes, went the campy response, it’s like when you sell Mary Kay! Only instead of a houndstooth tote, top salespeople receive a toaster! That camp saved us, taking the mickey at homophobia, fear, nudging at the idea that capitalism might tie in with attraction —

This is the verb of queer — “to queer” — had been used as a pejorative — making something broken — queering a deal meant making it sour, driving people away — but what it means now is to look at a thing through a queer lens, find the meaning the thing did not know it had, to claim that meaning and find a new connection — a Yes, And — bringing a thing into the circle, adorning it with love and self-acceptance. Like the Fab Five from Queer Eye.

The word “queer.” – Scary. It meant “other,” not one of us. It was a word, weaponized — One of the scariest things we can experience — YOU! Out of the group of mammals you need to survive. These older generations opened up space for us, with their hearts in their throats, bloody with fighting for their lives and their friends — not knowing if it would work, terrified — in contrast, I have usually been able to pass– to read what others are most comfortable with and like to look at — no matter who I was in love with, I could be, in many settings, undercover. It was only when I lived in Boston, where I began to explore my gender expression… What made me feel strong? What made me feel brave? What colors could I fly? …I got to explore they/them pronouns. Genderqueer.

Rather than the 1950s version, I like the 1500s — odd, peculiar, eccentric.

Vonte Abrams: NY
“My queerness encompasses my voice, as a Black, male-assigned, non-binary individual… I embrace “non-binary” because I am naturally androgynous – puberty gave me a physical and emotional blend of masculine and feminine traits. I’ve learned over time that navigating societal rules of binary presentation is always going to be a unique challenge for me. “Queer” helps me face that challenge.”

“Queer” gives courage! And a way of claiming ourselves.

And yet — queering is not an answer that stays for always. It doesn’t give us the final story. It gives us… another part of the story… a richer part of the story…

When we look with queer eyes at religious traditions, we can find the refusal of gender — such as Avalokitesvara buddha, the most compassionate, who is pictured as masculine, feminine, androgynous… might use the pronouns “they”… or delving into Genesis to find the Hebrew pronouns for God and realizing we’ve assumed an awful lot

Rev Irene Monroe:
“The first night of the Stonewall Inn riots played out no differently from previous riots with Black Americans and white policemen. African Americans and Latinos were the largest percentage of the protestors because we heavily frequented the bar. For Black and Latino homeless youth and young adults, who slept in nearby Christopher Park, the Stonewall Inn was their stable domicile. ” The second night is where the broader gay community got involved, white folks, folks with economic privilege, stepped in and went into battle with and for one another —

Queering narrative means we want to know the messy version of the story — our neighbors’ view of the story, and frequently we center our neighbor’s view — after all, only one in one in 7.8 billion stories gets to be about me, and that number is bigger when we count all living things, not just humans. We don’t miss the “We” that is bigger than I — and also “I” is allowed and encouraged to sing —

Queer means looking to the collective, to the many voices, to the fringes, to the tentative, to the unself-conscious, to that which does not know how to market itself and doesn’t care to — What I love about queer theology is that it isn’t about purity, it isn’t about the idea of being washed clean — beauty and the divine is found in the dirt, in the earth, in our body’s functions and our body’s desire — this is not a love that knows all answers, or hides in bluster, but a love which wants to know more — a love which offers, above all, attention.

If you have loved — really — you know love contains pain and grit, dirt — and sometimes lust dominates and that’s also to be trusted in its way, it’s not a binary, is it lust or love? — It’s both, it’s all. But we work to make sure that in our self-expressions we don’t do harm, we see the other as a being, not a thing — We don’t throw out one part of ourselves because it’s basic or primal.

Queer theorist Judy Butler:
“Condemnation becomes the way in which we establish the other as unrecognizable.” Queerness re-acquaints us with that which we had thought to condemn….. intrinsically universalist —

Queering justice work

Prisons — Black and Pink letter-writing organization out of Boston — nobody is made undesirable because they are rule-breakers, because have been beaten down by a flawed system — power is not the designator… queer theology gets that strength and power are not the same.

In queering we care for everyone — solidarity — there is no “them.” There is a spectrum of abilities, of colors, or strengths, of weaknesses, of visions, of desires — and we learn where we are on the spectrum through connection, through meeting — being a mirror and finding a mirror —

“No one ever came to my door in searching – for you, no one, except for you”
– Canadian poet Cabrisa Lubrin

And I think this is even more threatening to the fabric of business-as-usual. And why does it threaten the fabric?… because queerness pushes us to ask…

Queerness! is communicable?? Capitalism, gender is communicable — it takes us up in its arms and we don’t notice the violence in it — as Bear’s song today illustrates — until it is acted out on us and those we love —

A queer lens makes us look twice — embracing that which is surprising, outcast, celebrating — the voices saying “you are all wrong, too loud, your voice is the wrong pitch–you don’t get to play. What are you?”…those voices are still present but we have taken time to appreciate our own mystery, and yours… what can you say against the power of another person’s mystery?

Mystery – God – goddess – divine – spark

We are here, we are queer, you are queered, no longer feared

Pauli Murray

I have been cast aside, but I sparkle in the darkness.
I have been slain but live on in the river of history.
I seek no conquest, no wealth, no power, no revenge:
I seek only discovery
Of the illimitable heights and depths of my own being.
– Cambridge, 1969

With queerness, I think, we moved to a Broken toaster model –

I am an appliance that rattles and spits out sparks and blows every fuse. I used to serve some function but now I prefer not to. Place me on your kitchen counter and watch life become less and less convenient. I will trip you up.

Welcome this unraveling. The less efficient you become, the better. Break all rote habits and build your life out of satisfying pauses between action. Now eliminate all action… Now you can finally feel the truth: Mourning is slow but it’s the straightest path forward. The question is “How do I break this appliance permanently? How do I become an inconvenience to myself and others? How do I swear off efficiency forever? How do I keep losing the thread over and over? How do I remain out of the groove, off the map, in the zone, flexible and reflective, shimmering and cool, examining the high stakes of tiny moments, encouraging communion, forgiveness, expansion, invention?

May it be so, Amen.

Resources

Love is the Spirit of this church:
https://www.uuworld.org/articles/bound-in-covenant

Ask Molly – Heather Havrilesky:
https://askmolly.substack.com/p/loss

Queer theology
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10059955-radical-love

Palimpsest: But this is how history happens, in pastiche — palimpsest — think of an old thick paper used again and again — where our memory fades, and the whispers of what was underneath remain and affect the picture we have now.
https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/palimpsest/

This kind of demonization continues, and people get deported back to places where that thinking is backed by law – do something this Pride month for a person who needs it – Pastor Steven, Ugandan, Angry Tias and Abuelas –
https://www.facebook.com/angrytiasandabuelas/

Vonte and others on what it means to them to be queer: “those who lived through some of the darkest days of legal and societal discrimination are not comfortable using a slur that was sometimes used alongside physical violence.”
https://www.them.us/story/what-does-queer-mean

On how lust and love don’t have to be a binary: Starhawk’s “The Fifth Sacred Thing.” Great book.

Black and Pink
https://www.facebook.com/blackandpinknational/

Pauli Murray:
https://paulimurrayproject.org/pauli-murray/poetry-by-pauli-murray/

“Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold” -history of women loving women in Buffalo, NY

Ellen and the toaster:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTFNK1PQ6jg

Avalokitesvara Buddha
https://bit.ly/3eF2Bux

Gender of God in Genesis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_of_God_in_Judaism

The Kiss-In of 2011
http://themostcake.co.uk/right-on/homophobia-in-the-john-snow-the-kiss-in-self-censorship/

Queer Ecology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_ecology
https://smithsonianapa.org/care/
http://www.jessxsnow.com/ABOUT

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

Living Our Values

June 21, 2020 by tom 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
June 21, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

One of First UU Austin’s stated values is compassion – which we defined as “to treat ourselves and others with love”. What does living out that value look like, especially in these challenging times?

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame of 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

ON THE PATH OF COMPASSION
Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Begin with gratitude
for all you have received,
that you see and that you do not see.
Let your gratitude grow into trust
that you are included in a great wonder;
and entrust yourself to the grace you are given.
Let your trust blossom into compassion
for all those who are also part of this oneness
who have been excluded, used or targeted.
Let your compassion flourish into solidarity,
knowing you are one with those who suffer
and that their wholeness is part of yours.
Let your solidarity bear fruit in justice,
working for freedom and fullness of life for all,
against all evil and oppression.
And when you are most challenged
by the forces of injustice,
most weary and discouraged,
return to gratitude
that you are guided, accompanied,
empowered and saved;
and entrust yourself to the undying love of God.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

GATE A-4
Naomi Shihab Nye

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.”

Well – one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing.

“Help,” said the flight agent. “Talk to her. What is her problem?

We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.

“Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit- se-wee?”

The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day.

I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just later, who is picking you up? Let’s call him.”

We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours. She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies – little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts – from her bag – and was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo-we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend – by now we were holding hands – had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere. And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate – once the crying of confusion stopped – seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

The History of American Policing

June 14, 2020 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above. Text of this sermon is not yet available.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
June 14, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

All eyes are on the brutality of many law enforcement interactions with people of color. How did we get the system of policing that we have today? What are its roots in US history?

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame of 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

It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, “Wait on time.”

– Martin Luther King Jr.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE
– Steven Pinker

People become wedded to their beliefs, because the validity of those beliefs reflects on their competence, commends them as authorities, and rationalizes their mandate to lead. Challenge a person’s beliefs, and you challenge his dignity, standing, and power. And when those beliefs are based on nothing but faith, they are chronically fragile. No one gets upset about the beliefs that rocks fall down as opposed to up, because all sane people can see it with their own eyes. Not so for the belief that babies are born with original sin or that God exists in three persons or that Ali was the second-most divinely inspired man after Muhammed. When people organize their lives around these beliefs, and then learn of other people who seem to be doing just fine without them – or worse, who credibly rebut then – they are in danger of looking like fools. Since one cannot defend a belief based on faith by persuading skeptics it is true, the faithful are apt to react to unbelief with rage, and may try to eliminate that affront to everything that makes their lives meaningful.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Useful Ignorance and Beginner’s Mind

June 7, 2020 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above. Text of this sermon is not yet available.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
June 7, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In Zen Buddhism, it is called beginner’s mind. Thoreau called it useful ignorance. When we choose to approach scary things with curiosity instead of defensiveness, suddenly our mind and body are open to adventure and transformation.

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice so that its flame may signify the spiritual strands of light that bind our hearts and souls with one another. Even while we must be physically apart, we bask in its warmth together.

Call to Worship

“The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day. Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding, and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length. It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.”

– Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

There was a Japanese Zen master named Nan-in who lived during the Meiji era (1868-1912). During his days as a teacher, he was visited by a university professor curious about Zen. Being polite, Nan-in served the professor a cup of tea.

As he poured, the professor’s cup became full, but Nan-in kept on pouring. As the professor watched the cup overflow, he could no longer contain himself and said, “It is overfull. No more will go in!” Nan-in turned to the professor and said, “Like the cup, you are too full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Flower Communion

May 31, 2020 by tom 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
May 31, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

It is once again time for one of our most beloved traditions. In a more usual year we would gather and bring a flower from somewhere along our path to share and take one from the altar. Bring a reminder of new life and the movement of the seasons and sharing it with the others gathered is a beautiful way to enjoy the bounty and goodness of our green earth. This year, due to sheltering and striving for safety within our lives, we are doing it differently. We need your help to make it happen!

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice so that its flame may signify the spiritual strands of light that bind our hearts and souls with one another. Even while we must be physically apart, we bask in its warmth together.

Call to Worship

SEEDS
by Rev. Meg Barnhouse

Who are my children?
One is a baker in Cairo with flour on her cheek.
One is a banker in Oslo with dreams of playing in a tuba band.

One child lives in the mountains of Peru and loves to watch the Oscars.
I have a son who is a monk in Katmandu
and has a bird he has taught to whistle.
And a starving daughter in Kenshasa who dreams of running in the Olympics.

One of our cousins is a pine tree on the side of a mountain in Japan.
And one is a catfish drowsing in the Mississippi mud.
One is a bear in North Carolina.
And one is a butterfly in Finland.

A woman held an apple seed In her hand,
and held it to the sun.
It’s easy to count the number of seeds in an apple, She said.
But tell me, how many apples are in this seed?
How many apples are in the seed?
How many generations are in this child?

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

THESE ROSES
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower, there is no more; in the leafless root, there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. There is no time to it. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

Sermon

Today is a sad day, a strange day. An angry, sorrowing, overwhelmed, furious day. So many people around the world are dead from this virus. We who have the privilege of having houses and who can work from home slowly notice that social distancing is a privilege. Many people live in households where there are so many people, many of whom are going out into the pandemic to work, coming home, trying to be careful. We who have had the privilege of solid medical care our whole lives notice that those who couldn’t afford medical maintenance of their health are more fragile. The poor are dying at a greater rate than other people. The urban poor are more likely to be black and brown, and the rural poor are all colors, but still dying because of lack of masks, working essential jobs, being on the reservation where grifters are given the job of procuring medical supplies for their Nation.

And now everyone can watch white supremacy culture in action as Amy Cooper calls the police on Christian Cooper because he dared to ask her to leash her dog. In our culture, white people, any white bodies, are allowed to enforce rules on black bodies. Black bodies shock white bodies when they enforce rules like “your dog is supposed to be on a leash.” The white bodies can then sic the police on the black bodies, knowing full well that the police may respond with violence toward that black man because our whole culture has taught us to see black men as threatening. The Washington Post used the phrase “white-caller crime.”

The same day the police killed George Floyd, a black man handcuffed, on the ground, already subdued, begging for his life, bystanders begging for his life. They murdered him callously, in full view, in the day time, radicalized and empowered by an administration openly encouraging racism. The people have had enough. We are responding with rage. Sometimes you have to break things and set them on fire to be heard by the heavy-footed, the comfortable powerful.

It is in this tumultuous yet somehow hopeful time that we come to our flower communion. Hopeful because all of us are feeling together, all of us are grieving, in a rage, disgusted, fed up. The status quo cannot continue.

Flowers have always played a part in how humans express grief. We lay wreaths on the sidewalk where something awful happened. We bring flowers to the cemetery. We toss necklaces of flowers onto the water.

The Unitarian Flower Ceremony was created by a Unitarian minister named Norbert Capek.

Norbert Capek developed this flower celebration for his congregation in 1923. He had been a Baptist minister in Newark NJ, but grew too liberal for the Baptists. He and his wife joined a Unitarian congregation in Orange County, NJ, and then decided in 1921 to take Unitarianism back to Czechoslovakia. They founded the Unitarian church in Prague, and by 1930 were recognized by the Czech government. The Nazis were certain which flowers were of value and which should be erased. They wanted to erase the Jews, the disabled, LGBTQ people, and Travelers, sometimes called Roma, derogatively called gypsies.

When the Nazis took control of Prague in 1940, they found Dr. Capek’s gospel of the inherent worth and beauty of every human person to be – as Nazi court records show — “…too dangerous to the Reich [for him] to be allowed to live.” Dr. Capek was sent to Dachau, where he was killed the next year during a Nazi “medical experiment.” This gentle man suffered a cruel death, but his message of human hope and decency lives on through his Flower Communion, which is widely celebrated today. It is a noble and meaning-filled ritual we are about to recreate. We join in affirming that any culture that declares some of value and some humans expendable is evil, and must be opposed. Our silence is such easy violence. We who identify as white will continue to find our voices and speak. The message of the flower ceremony is still disruptive.

Now we consecrate the flowers with Dr Capek’s prayer

Infinite Spirit of Life, we ask thy blessing on these, thy messengers of fellowship and love. May they remind us, amid diversities of knowledge and of gifts, to be one in desire and affection, and devotion to thy holy will. May they also remind us of the value of comradeship, of doing and sharing alike. May we cherish friendship as one of thy most precious gifts. May we not let awareness of another’s talents discourage us, or sully our relationship, but may we realize that, whatever we can do, great or small, the efforts of all of us are needed to do thy work in this world.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Navigating the Thresholds

May 24, 2020 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
May 24, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

It seems like we cross into new territory all of the time these days. As we cope with a pandemic, we are in the midst of crossing a threshold, but we cannot yet see what the other side of that threshold may be like. Still, there may be opportunity in the uncertainty. We may have the agency to influence the other side of the threshold.

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice so that its flame may signify the spiritual strands of light that bind our hearts and souls with one another. Even while we must be physically apart, we bask in its warmth together.

Call to Worship

A PLACE WE ARE CREATING
-John Schaar

The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created–created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

BLESSING WHEN THE WORLD IS ENDING
-Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

Look, the world
is always ending
somewhere.

Somewhere
the sun has come
crashing down.

Somewhere
it has gone
completely dark.

Somewhere
it has ended
with the gun,
the knife,
the fist.

Somewhere
it has ended
with the slammed door,
the shattered hope.

Somewhere
it has ended
with the utter quiet
that follows the news
from the phone,
the television,
the hospital room.

Somewhere
it has ended
with a tenderness
that will break
your heart.

But, listen,
this blessing means
to be anything
but morose.
It has not come
to cause despair.

It is simply here
because there is nothing
a blessing
is better suited for
than an ending,
nothing that cries out more
for a blessing
than when a world
is falling apart.

This blessing
will not fix you,
will not mend you,
will not give you
false comfort;
it will not talk to you
about one door opening
when another one closes.

It will simply
sit itself beside you
among the shards
and gently turn your face
toward the direction
from which the light
will come,
gathering itself
about you
as the world begins
again.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Living with Trauma Brain

May 17, 2020 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
May 17, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The human brain has its ways to react to trauma, either one big one or an ongoing series of daily dramas. It makes us react differently, and understanding trauma might help us understand ourselves and one another a bit better.

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice so that its flame may signify the spiritual strands of light that bind our hearts and souls with one another. Even while we must be physically apart, we bask in its warmth together.

Call to Worship

WE GATHER IN REVERENCE
Sophia Lyon Fahs

We gather in reverence before the wonder of life-
The wonder of this moment
The wonder of being together, so close yet so apart-
Each hidden in our own secret chamber,
Each listening, each trying to speak-
Yet none fully understanding, none fully understood.
We gather in reverence before all intangible things-
That eyes see not, nor ears can detect-
That hands can never touch
that space cannot hold,
and time cannot measure.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

Rev. Fred Rogers

Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionalble can be more manageable. When we talk about our feelings they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know we are not alone.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

All will be well – Really?

May 10, 2020 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above. Text of this sermon is not yet available.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
May 10, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

All Will Be Well This song is my “hit single” in the Unitarian Universalist world. I feel like it came through me, and that it changes its meaning somewhat in my life as I get more experience. From the letters people write me about it, I see that it has a life of its own, and shift its meanings for each person who listens.

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice so that its flame may signify the spiritual strands of light that bind our hearts and souls with one another. Even while we must be physically apart, we bask in its warmth together.

Call to Worship

REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE
Julian of Norwich

God is everything that is good. All life’s Pleasures and comforts are sacremental. They are God’s hands touching us.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

THE NEXT RIGHT THING
Kristen Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez

I’ve seen dark before, but not like this
This is cold, this is empty, this is numb
The life I knew is over; the lights are out
Hello darkness: I’m ready to succumb

I follow you around (I always have)
But you’ve gone to a place I cannot find
This grief has a gravity, it pulls me down
But a tiny voice whispers in my mind

You are lost, hope is gone
But you must go on
And do the next right thing

Can there be a day beyond this night
I don’t know anymore what is true
I can’t find my direction; I’m all alone
The only star that guided me was you

How to rise from the floor
When it’s not you I’m rising for
Just do the next right thing
Take a step, step again It is all that I can to do

The next right thing
I won’t look too far ahead
It’s too much for me to take
But break it down to this next breath, this next step
This next choice is one that I can make

So I’ll walk through this night
Stumbling blindly toward the light
And do the next right thing
And with the dawn what comes then?
When it’s clear that everything will never be the same again
Then I’ll make the choice to hear that voice
And do the next right thing

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Punk Theology

May 3, 2020 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
May 5,2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Join Rev. Meg as she talks about how the rise of Punk gave outlets for marginalized voices and new ways to cry out against opression.

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice so that its flame may signify the spiritual strands of light that bind our hearts and souls with one another. Even while we must be physically apart, we bask in its warmth together.

Call to Worship

A WALK
– Rainer Maria Rilke
My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far beyond the road I have begun,
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has an inner light, even from a distance-
and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER
– Patti Smith
I was dreaming in my dreaming
God knows a purer view
As I lay down to my sleeping
I commit my dream to you
People have the power
The power to dream, to rule
To wrestle the world from fools
It’s decreed: the people rule
It’s decreed: the people rule
Listen. I believe everything we dream
Can come to pass through our union
We can turn the world around
We can turn the earth’s revolution
We have the power
People have the power

Sermon

A punk attitude can be described non verbally with a hand gesture. You know the one I’m talking about. So that we can all survive this with our dignity intact, I’m going to use this alternative from my childhood in Philadelphia. ( hand gesture.)

England in the 70’s. Margaret Thatcher was the Iron Lady, closing down the coal mines, the economy was bad, so many working people were on the dole. The kings of the music scene were Led Zeppelin. Overblown, guitar solos turned up to 11, satin pants and flowing curls, references to English folklore and the bustle in your hedgerow. I love Led Zeppelin, but the next generation needed music that could express their lives.

You have kids who had no hope of work. They had plenty to say, anger at the establishment, little chance of having the money for musical training, the long slog of unpaid effort it takes to get a record contract, no money for satin pants. All of this is tremendously oversimplified – I’m just giving you an impression of what happened. “(Hand gesture) them!” We are going to express ourselves. Being authentic is the main thing, show our rage. Look cool. Make it clear that you are as far from satin pants as a person can get. Here, take some safety pins and stick them through your clothes. Clothes made all out of safety pins? Go for it. Stick some through your ear? Cool. Life is pain. We can take it. If you can shout, you can sing. Who needs long croony stairway to heaven songs? Make them short. Scream what you feel. Shout what you see about the world the way it is. Give it a hard edged melody and sing it in a hard voice. Can’t play an instrument? Here. This is a chord. Here are two more. Now, go write a song because all you need are these three chords. Loud. Fast. Aggressive. They think we’re angry, but loud and fast can be ecstatic too, and sexy too.

So many bands were trying to be Led Zeppelin without their genius. Pale imitations, then imitations of the imitations.

Let me read you something from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Divinity School Address: Imitation cannot go above its model. The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man’s. When you do things that are from your soul, that are natural to you, they have a charm. If you are imitating others, you doom yourself to hopeless mediocrity.

The Punk movement was a do-it-yourself movement. You can learn without being taken under the wing of a great teacher. You can figure it out for yourself. Are you an outcast from the mainstream? Be out cast, then, and enjoy the freedom of saying (hand gesture) you! I didn’t want to be like you anyway.

In the US, the punks did not have the economic despair of the UK punks, but they had seen Watergate, their older brothers had gone to Vietnam, they didn’t trust the government. AIDS was beginning to kill gay men, and the government was humming with its fingers in its ears for years before doing anything. The black kids, gay kids, kids with gender questions could be punks and find a common ground. (hand gesture) you, we didn’t want to be accepted by your pale imitative group anyway. We’re going to make our own.

The punk bands came out of the garage bands who make their own music in the garage, not in a fancy studio, in a simple but energetic style, valuing expression over polish or skill.

We’ll make our own recordings, we’ll just sell them to our friends. We don’t need big money, big studios, big distribution. Developing technology helped the bands make their own tapes, then CDs, starting in the early 80’s. Then came the internet, and now you can share music, publish music, put up your art, write poems and have people read them, watch people doing recording and learn by watching, write graphic novels. On the internet you can learn almost anything. They say girls don’t play guitar? Girls don’t scream? Show them how girls rock, show them Black punks, show them drag queen bouncers, show them modified bodies. Don’t like the way it is? Change it. You can make your own world.

Overlapping here with punk, carrying on the punk ethos, are the geeks and nerds, who, if they feel rejected by the culture’s beauty standards, if they feel repulsed by the culture’s values, they are making their own worlds with science fiction and Anime. Science fiction is not new, but geeks and nerds dressing up and acting out different worlds is fairly common in these past few decades. You can make a medieval life, somewhat tweaked to reflect a modern sensibility, you can make a star trek life or a manga life, you can dress as superheroes, a movie character, or a character from a video game. That’s called Cosplay. You don’t fit well in this world? Make your own. Become a member of the Gender Bent Justice League, with Superma’m and Batma’am, and scantily clad Wonder Man and Power Guy. You want a world where females get to be heroes and still be clothed? Make your own. And by the way, if they say things have to be either female or male? (hand gesture) to that.

What about our theology is punk? We have a class called “Build Your Own Theology.” Emerson said (and I quote) “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” He said “Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”

There are great philosophers, then many pale imitations. There are great beatniks, then the pale imitations, great hippies, then many pale imitations, great punks, then many imitations. Do what is you. Be an authentic voice. Tell the truth as you see it. Make your own. Don’t let the fire on the altar burn out. The remedy for it is “first, soul,” Waldo says. “and second, soul, and evermore, soul.”

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Prayer when no one is listening

April 26, 2020 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above. Text of this sermon is not yet available.

Bear W. Qolezcua
April 26, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The best laid plans… Growing up a sceptic, I questioned the faith I was told to have and why I would ever want to be a part of it. Join our R.E. Chaplain, Bear W. Qolezcua, as he speaks about atheism and the power of prayer. Where does it have a place and how can we use it when we don’t believe anyone or anything is listening?

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice so that its flame may signify the spiritual strands of light that bind our hearts and souls with one another. Even while we must be physically apart, we bask in its warmth together.

Call to Worship

Impassioned Clay
– Ralph N. Helverson

Deep in ourselves resides the religious impulse. Out of the passions of our clay it rises. We have religion when we stop deluding ourselves that we are self-sufficient, self-sustaining, or self-derived.

We have religion when we hold some hope beyond the present, some self respect beyond our failures. We have religion when our hearts are capable of leaping up at beauty, when our nerves are edged by some dream in the heart.

We have religion when we have an abiding gratitude for all that we have received. We have religion when we look upon people with all their failings and still find in them good; when we look beyond people to the grandeur in nature and to the purpose in our own heart. We have religion when we have done all that we can, and then in confidence entrust ourselves to the life that is larger than ourselves.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

The Book of the Good
by A C Grayling
Chapter 8, Verses 1-12

Shall we ask, by what commandments should we live?

Or might we better ask, each of ourselves:

What kind of person should I be?

The first question assumes there is one right answer.

The second assumes that there are many right answers.

If we ask how to answer the second question, we are answered in yet other questions:

What should you do when you see another suffering, or in need, afraid, or hungry?

What causes are worthy, what world do you dream of where your child plays safely in the street?

There are many such questions, some already their own answer, some unanswerable.

But when all the answers to all the questions are summed together, no one hears less than this:

Love well, seek the good in all things, harm no others, think for yourself, take responsibility, respect nature, do your upmost, be informed, be kind, be courageous:
At least sincerely try.

Add to these ten injunctions, this:
O friends, let us always be true to ourselves and do the best in things, so that we can always be true to one another.

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

Liberation Through Letting Go

April 19, 2020 by tom 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
April 19, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Sometimes when we hold on too tightly to expectations of ourselves and others, it can lead to added suffering. In these difficult times, what are some of the things for which it might be liberating to let go or at least hold less fixedly?

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice so that its flame may signify the spiritual strands of light that bind our hearts and souls with one another. Even while we must be physically apart, we bask in its warmth together.

Call to Worship

EARTH TEACH ME STILLNESS
From War Cry on a Prayer Feather
by Nancy Wood

Earth teach me stillness
As the grasses are stilled with light.
Earth teach me suffering
As old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility
As blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring
As the mother who secures her young.
Earth teach me courage
As the tree which stands all alone.
Earth teach me limitation
As the ant who crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom
As the eagle who soars in the sky.
Earth teach me resignation
As the leaves which die in the fall.
Earth teach me regeneration
As the seed which rises in spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself
As melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness
As dry fields weep with rain.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

PERHAPS IT WOULD EVENTUALLY ERODE, BUT…
by Rosemary Wahtole Trommer

That rock that we
have been pushing up
the hill-that one

that keeps rolling back down
and we keep pushing
back up-what if

we stopped? We are not
Sisyphus. This rock
is not a punishment.

It’s something we’ve chosen
to push. Who knows why.
I look at all the names

we once carved into
its sedimentary sides.
How important

I thought they were,
those names. How
I’ve clung to labels,

who’s right, who’s wrong,
how I’ve cared about
who’s pushed harder

and who’s been slack.
Now all I want
is to let the rock

roll back to where it belongs,
which is wherever it lands,
and you and I could,

imagine!, walk unencumbered,
all the way to the top and
walk and walk and never stop

except to discover what
our hands might do
if for once they were

receiving.

Sermon

This month, our spiritual theme at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin is liberation.

I think many of us never imagined what a different perspective on that term, liberation, we might come to hold during this time of hunkering down and social distancing.

I don’t know about you all, but I am looking forward to the time when we will be liberated from having to practice this sheltering in place – social distancing!

This morning I’d like to talk about some of the ways we might avoid entrapping ourselves with unrealistic expectations during this strange and challenging time through which we’re living. What are some of the things which we might need to let go in order to liberate ourselves from self-imposed anxiety and judgement during this period, when we all have plenty enough stress in our world already?

For me, one of the big ones is letting go of expecting myself to handle moving through a pandemic in perfect fashion.

None of us can do that. None of us has ever had to handle this before. And, in fact, because we are under stress – trauma, all of us are likely a little ADHD about now.

We’re likely to make mistakes we would not normally make. We’re likely to be more forgetful than usual. We’re likely to have less stamina than we ordinarily do.

Last week, I had to don my face mask and protective gloves and head into a Randall’s grocery store, because none of the groceries in our area had any delivery or curbside pick up time slots available. I got my groceries, and a very nice woman bagged them and put them into my cart for me.

I got home, only to discover that several of my items were missing.

“That woman didn’t give me all of my groceries”, I thought to myself.

So off I went, back to Randall’s to march in and demand my missing groceries.

Luckily, I parked right by where I had left my cart, and there, in the bottom basket of the cart was the other bag of groceries right where I had left it when I loaded everything else into the car.

This week, I was back in Randall’s again, for the same reason – no curbside or delivery available.

A woman checking out in front of me, from 6 feet away, was placing her items in a bag with her right hand. The checkout clerk completed the transaction and told her the amount owed.

In a sudden panic, the woman exclaimed, “Oh my God, where’s my wallet?”

Then she turned and saw that she was holding her wallet in her left hand.

She looked at me with embarrassment. I smiled and said, “don’t worry, we have all been doing that sort of thing all of the time. We both laughed together, and it was a blessed relief.

When we are under stress, we are all more likely to make these sorts of absent-minded mistakes. Let’s forgive ourselves and be especially careful when driving – people are accidentally running red lights and stop signs and changing lanes without even looking.

Here is another thing to let go. If any of you are like me and have always strived to be an “A” student, we may need to let go of that for a while too. If we make it though this as a “C” student, we’ll be fine!

I know I’ve sent email messages to the wrong person and texts that were so full of typos they made no sense at all!

To our folks who are trying to work from home, while parenting and providing home schooling, I especially want to say you are doing it well enough. You have been given a nearly impossible challenge.

You get an “A” plus just for the Herculean effort.

Another thing I have been learning to let go is having to be strong all the time – keep that stiff upper lip, as I was taught most of my life in my white, Euro-scandinavian family.

We have to feel the grief, the fear, the anger the stir-craziness. We have to feel all of it in order to move through it.

That doesn’t mean we have to stay there forever, just that we can’t try to stuff it all down and numb it.

We’re all also having to let go of our ideas of separateness. We will only make it through this together, and we can be in it together even while we are physically apart.

And we’re all also having to let go of what was our daily routine. That may be an opportunity for longer-term change. I am trying to start the day with a nice walk instead of immediately looking at the news. Another thing I have had to let go is feeling like I should be doing more I’m trying to be careful with that word “should”. It can lead me into all manner of troubles.

So, those are some of the big ones for me. I invite you to consider what what it might help you to let go, or at least hold a little less tightly.

One final big one for me is learning to live with not being able to have physical contact with other people.

I love preaching and leading worship, but I have discovered during this time, that one of the things I have loved most about my ministry with this church, were the Sundays when Meg, our senior minister, was preaching, and I would be what I’ve called “the floor minister”.

You know how restaurants and retail stores have had a general manger, that would be Meg, and then a floor manager who would move about checking in with people?

That’s kind of what I got to do as a minister on those Sundays – and will get to do again someday.

Move about the church and listen to folks, ask how you’re doing, try to help with any issues you might be having.

I miss being able to shake hands, or hug, or put a hand on a shoulder.

But I am learning that love can radiate through a computer screen or a phone call or even an email or text message. Love can travel from six feet apart.

So, even though right now I am doing it through a computer video camera, I am sending you much love.

Even though I am recording this a few days before you will see it on Sunday, the love will still be there.

And I’ll be there too, chatting with you in the comments.

Because the one thing we can’t let go is love.

Not even a virus can quarantine love.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

A Trip to the Underworld

April 14, 2020 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 12, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Rev. Meg tells one of the oldest human religious stories, a story from almost 4000 years ago, a story about resurrection often called Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld. We are descending these days, deeper and deeper, and we do not know what the world will look like when we come back out again.

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice so that its flame may signify the spiritual strands of light that bind our hearts and souls with one another. Even while we must be physically apart, we bask in its warmth together.

Call to Worship

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

– e e cummings

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

If you live in the dark a long time and the sun comes out, you do not cross into it whistling. There’s an initial uprush of relief at first, then-for me, anyway- a profound dislocation. My old assumptions about how the world works are buried, yet my new ones aren’t yet operational.There’s been a death of sorts, but without a few days in hell, no resurrection is possible.

– Mary Karr from Lit

Music

SILENCE MY SOUL

Silence my soul, these trees are prayers.
I asked the tree, “Tell me about God”;
then it blossomed.

– Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Losing My Religion

April 5, 2020 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above. Text of this sermon is not available.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 5, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Losing my religion. Rev. Meg looks back at her days in seminary.

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice so that its flame may signify the spiritual strands of light that bind our hearts and souls with one another. Even while we must be physically apart, we bask in its warmth together.

Call to Worship

Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.

-Gandhi

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will come out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping, we are becoming.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS