Until Love Wins

by Posted in Guest Speakers, Sermons

Watch the sermon by clicking here.

Rev. Jen Crow Senior Minister
First Universalist Church of Minneapolis
August 1, 2021

Today’s challenging times require a nimble and resilient spirituality. We need a demanding, inspiring faith and a love strong enough that it will not let us go. Join us as we draw the circle wide, gather our strength, and promise to stay in the struggle and joy until love wins.

 

 

This broadcast is the Sunday worship service held during the 2021 General Assembly, hosted by First Universalist Church of Minneapolis, original service date was June 27, 2021.

 

 

Sermon

Rev. Jen Crow:

Welcome everyone to the Sunday morning worship service at the 2021 General Assembly. My name is Jennifer Crow, and I’m one of the ministers at the First Universalist Church of Minneapolis, and we are so glad that you are here with us. If you’re joining us live, on Sunday morning, we hope you’ll use the chat if you’re able, and let us know where you’re coming in from and say hello to each other there. First Universalist Church is a faith community that welcomes, affirms and protects the light in each and every human heart; that listens deeply to where love is calling us next, and with humility, compassion and courage acts for justice in the world. We do all of this as a faith community that is deeply committed to dismantling white supremacy culture, and building the beloved community, a place where all can be free and feel a sense of belonging and wholeness. We welcome you to this place and space. We come to you today from Minneapolis, Minnesota from First Universalist Church from the shores of Bde Maka Ska, and the contemporary and traditional homelands of the Anishinaabe and Dakota peoples, the original stewards of this land. We come to you uplifting the name of these lands and the community members from these Nations who reside alongside us. We come to you from Falcon Heights, from Brooklyn Center, and from George Floyd Square. We acknowledge the trauma that is deeply embedded in the foundation of this country. The genocide, enslavement and ongoing occupation and oppression that has impacted indigenous communities, communities of color, and immigrant and other communities – the culture of colonization and white supremacy that injures us all. We acknowledge the communities of resistance that continue to side with love, teaching us through their persistence, courage, and creativity that another way is possible. Here in this particular place, and in all of the places that you are – we invite you to bring your full self into the present moment.

Breathing in and breathing out – we connect across space and time, we heal ourselves and each other, as we tell the truth in love. Welcome, once again, to the shared experience of hope and healing.

Our Chalice lighting today is led by some of the members of First Universalist Church’s, single parents community. These families have been meeting faithfully together over Zoom throughout the pandemic, offering care and support to each other during these challenging times. Please join us in lighting your own chalice as we light our chalice led by Reverend Sara Smalley and these families.

Please join in the words for the lighting of the chalice: Love is the spirit of this church; and service is its law; this is our great covenant; to dwell together in peace; to seek the truth in love; and to help one another.

Singing: Love, love, love… all we need is love, love, love. (repeats)

Lauren Wyeth:

I’m Lauren Wyeth. And I’m here to tell a story, and in particular I want to talk with the kids, because I’m going to tell you about a time kind of a long time ago – when I learned something really important from my son. My son Ames and I we were hanging out one Sunday afternoon, not really doing that much, and apparently i was i was humming under my breath, I was humming this tune. (humming) Mm hmm. And Ames was about maybe five years old, but somehow he’d never heard this song before so he asked me to sing it to him. And so I did, it’s the one that goes like “On top of spaghetti all covered with cheese. I lost my poor me ball and somebody sneezed.” And Ames listened really closely and then he got really serious, and he demanded, “Sing the rest.” And so I did “It rolled in the garden and under a bush” it goes and then at that point Ames’ lower lip starts sticking out and his forehead starts getting all wrinkled up. And I was surprised I stopped and I said, “You know, what’s up” Are you okay honey” And he goes, “Keep singing.” So I did, but when I sang, “and then my poor meatball was nothing but mush.” Ames just started crying, tears running down his face, and I was shocked to me. I was like “Honey, what’s the matter”” And Ames just said “Sing it again.” And I said, “But isn’t the song what’s making you cry”” And he nodded, and I said, “But I don’t want to make you cry.” And he goes: “Mama, sing.” Now, I really didn’t want to sing something that was clearly breaking his heart. But Ames was 100% clear. So even though it was really hard to do it, I sang the song again and he kept crying. And then he wanted to hear it all the way through again and then again, until finally he was all cried out. And only then, when he was resting his head on my shoulder, and he was patting my arm really exhausted, only then was he ready to talk. I asked him, “What was making you cry” Was was it that they lost their lunch that their lunch rolled away”” And Ames told me. “No,” and I could tell it was really hard for him to say this next part, but he said “It was, it was the poor meatball.

Well, ever since that day, Ames and a lot of other kids too many of them at my church, they’ve been teaching me something really important. They’ve been teaching me that when we feel compassion, when that wells up in us, it’s natural, and it’s good to move in closer, even, even if it hurts. So we can use our hearts and our minds and our bodies to understand what’s happening. And when we grownups, when we try to distract kids from what’s painful or broken, that they notice in the world, we’re not actually helping you, and know it back then. But Ames really needed me to sing so that he could better understand the meatball. Now, sometimes, sometimes we adults might feel unsure about whether you’re ready for certain conversations, because sometimes if really young people ask really hard questions. Like, “Why doesn’t that person have a place to live”” or “Why are the police hurting people instead of protecting them”” Or “What if my pronouns that people are using, don’t fit” What then””. But if you’re asking, you’re ready, you’re ready for the conversation. You want to understand, right” And it’s our job. It’s our job as your grown ups to be ready when you are, and to go there with you. Now, several years after Ames insisted I sing about the meatball, he and his brother discovered this series of books called The Hunger Games. And those books have so many sad parts. In fact, they have some really, really upsetting parts. And some of the grownups that I know told me, they didn’t think my kids should even be allowed to read those books. But I didn’t believe that because of this lesson kids had already taught me. I figured out that I think the Hunger Games, books and movies were really popular for a good reason. And I think it’s because they are about make believe kids. And I make believe world where terrible and dangerous problems are right in front of them. And where many of them make believe, grownups don’t really seem to understand how scary and wrong things have become. And the truth is, there are some big serious problems in the real world. Evil things that happen. And kids are right to look for stories that help them think about why that is, and what we might be able to do about it. Kids have taught me that it’s important to understand the poor meatball gone to mush. It’s not too much. If we do it together. And there’s a magic that happens. There’s a magic that happens when we do it together. There’s a tenderness. There’s a sweetness that happens in our togetherness, there’s freedom, and there’s a healthy kind of power in our togetherness. Thanks for revealing that to me. Imagine the world of love and liberation, we could build with that power together.

Yahanna Mackbee:

Hi, my name is Yahanna Mackbee. I’m a member at First Universalist Church and I also serve on the Board of Trustees. Today I’m going to be reciting a poem by Reverend Teresa Ines Soto.

It’s called everything is still on fire. Everything is still on fire. Despite your best efforts. In addition to living, it is clear that fire or not, you must level up in what it means to thrive. Right now that means wrestling with the truth in the fact that everything is not your fault. I am sorry that everything is still on fire. Once hate catches the winds of “Not my problem” blow in blaze, it is hard to stop. But hard is not impossible. Not yet, is different than never. You, in community, have an answer. You have a response to systems of power and control and to the cost of suffering.

You and your community, together, are the answer. You are not only a people of flame, but also a people of cold, clear truth. You know both where you fall short and where you flourish, and where you still reach. Everything is still on fire, but all is not lost. You remain more nimble than steadfast. More unshakable than swayed by the latest rage. You are here to put out the ravenous flames and heal the world. Enough is enough. Everything is still on fire.

Rev. Karen Hutt:

In 1967, Douglas Turner Ward wrote a play called the Day of Absence. The play starts off with a town in absolute panic. Something was terribly wrong. Half the people had disappear. In fact, all of the black people in the town had disappeared. A scene from the play: Jimmy they gone. Henry, not a one of them in the street. Not a one of our homes. Not one singing. Not one walking down the street. The last living one of them nowhere to be found. What are we going to do Mayor” Keep everybody together. Keep your head on your shoulders. They can’t be far, probably just hiding somewhere. Jackson, Jackson. Yes, sir Mayor. Immediately mobilize our Citizens Emergency Distress Committee. Order a fleet of sound trucks to patrol the streets in the nigra alleys. They can’t remain hidden for too long. Tell everybody just to calm down. Everything’s gonna be under control. Then have another squadron patrol some more alleys and find out if they’re hiding somewhere we can’t find them. Ordering them out, one by one. Wherever they are by God we will find them if we have to dig them up from the ground ourselves. We got to find them negros. Now the play is performed in white face with black actors. And it goes on to depict the chaos that occurs in this small town without black people. But where did they all go” Why did they all leave” Will they ever come back” What prompted them to leave in the first place” In many ways, the disappearance of Black people from this town, this empowers white supremacy. Without black bodies, white supremacy, becomes non functional and inert. Without blackness whiteness is dangerously feeble, feckless and frightened by its own shadow. Since it is historically irrational, and nearly impossible for blackness to enter into any kind of fruitful relationship with the concept of whiteness, black liberatory responsibility and rationality is the only path forward. One form of this rational black resistance that has proven highly effective throughout the Black Diaspora is that of fugitivity. The philosopher and the discourse of Professor Fred Moten defines black fugitivity as a “disavowal of and disengagement from state-governed prospects that attempt to adjudicate normative constructions of difference through liberal tropes of freedom and democratic belonging. Black fugitivity it is a desire for and a spirit of escaping and transgressing the proper and proposed.” Friends, fugitivity means always running away from the ontologically embodied challenge for African Americans to leave that random social notion of slaveness. Because of this inheritance that we have incurred, it is deep within my Black DNA to escape.

Years ago, I was on a tour of a plantation with a Native American friend of mine. And while the tour guide was giving some very vague descriptions describing the antics of this plantation, I decided that I was going to make history come alive with my friend, and we started to play a game with the tour guide and the other tourist of running away of hiding around every corner, telling them “shhh we try to escape master.” We attempted to do this throughout the tour. And while our reenactment caused great consternation for our guide and the other tourists, it was the only response we could have had, freeing ourselves from the proper and propose government sanction limitations placed on us by this historic plantation. The demarcation of blackness necessitates our fugitivity. In the play blackness disappeared from that town. They left because of the gratuitous acts of harm inflicted upon them. They left because they had plans to build communities, like the Blue Maroon community and the Blue Mountains in Jamaica. They left because they had ideas to produce an economy like the fabulously wealthy, Black Wall Street of Tulsa. They left because they had dreams for their children in the swamp schools on stilts off the eastern shores of the Carolinas. They had visualizations of independence, of self reliance and of joyous segregation. I came to Unitarian Universalism with a free thinking, unapologetically human centered belief that that was unshackled by any kind of proper and propose notion of religiosity, superstition and trickery. Black Fugitivity is supported by our first principle, because fugitivity supports the act of self directed inherent worth and dignity. Not the worth and dignity ascribed by others who simply want to see my black body next to them in a pew to smile at me on Sunday. NO, a worth and dignity that is ascribed by us for us, because we want to love ourselves, and we want love to win first, not a love of self that has a bargaining chip, or some kind of negotiables. But a love of self that is firm, rooted, solid, unwavering and fierce. The worth and dignity of blackness must imagine eradicating the after life of slavery, which like all after lives from nuclear waste, On has lethal capabilities that still live on in the half lives of our behavior that pervert our moral and theological imaginations. We also can not simply say we believe in hope for systemic reform, prayers for a better day, and conditional mutuality. These acts will not help love win, because conditional hope, and prayers by themselves never liberated anyone. Fugitivity is not unknown to Unitarian Universalists. We know that is because of our ideas. Micahel Servatus, because of his rejection of the Trinity, and eventual execution by burning for heresy, knew what fugitivity was he survived running from town to town and place to place writing and publishing his radical thoughts while resisting the prescribed and proper trinitarianism of Calvin.

Ethelred Brown in Jamaica had found his way to the Unitarian Universalism by rejecting the Trinity, and as a Unitarian Universalist minister he received nominal and limited support, and it was all conditional from the Unitarians, but he started a successful black church in Harlem 100 years ago. Rev. Brown like so many black Unitarians and Universalists over the last 175 years, became fugitives within our faith. Seeking theological and religious freedom, only to be met with racism, tokenism and pet-like curiosity. Remember, the Unitarian Universalist Black fugitivity walkout in 1967″ Black ancestral commitments to humanism is seen in these freedom seeking behaviors. Fugitivity, Escaping, Marooning and Hiding. These techniques have been the avenues to realize our humanity, as we resist the anti-humanism of whiteness. Along with our indigenous siblings, our commitment to our inherent worth and dignity makes us the first humanist in North America. Think about it so, think about it, friends. Think about it. Will the Black people ever come back to that town” What happens when we focus on the fugitive instead of the emancipated” What might we learn about justice from the runaway slave, the outlaw, the maroon” Is Òjustice” something that is state sponsored and can be bestowed, or must be fashioned from the broken shards and bits and pieces of life in the swamps and the hills seeking freedom” Can the memories, experiences, and unreconciled grievances of fugitivity expand our vision of the future in America” Now, at the end of the play, the town is an absolute disarray. In fact they’re thinking of calling in the National Guard to do laundry and cook for them. They just don’t know what to do without blackness. The Mayor pleads, pleads on a loudspeaker… “Please come back y’all. For my sake, please# All of you – even you questionable ones# I want you to come back. I…I promise no harm will be done to you. There will be no revenge dismissed. Dis…disallowed to you. We’ll forgive everything. I’ll kiss even the feet of those shoes of the first one that walks up and returns to show up. Just come back please.” In the next scene, the play ends as it starts with Clem and Luke, sitting side by side talking, when one of them notices Rastus coming down the street.

Is that a Negra I see” Sure does look like one to me. With their backs, single file held high and straight. Looking forward. They return to the town without a word. They acted as if nothing has happened when we asked where they were. You see the fear, the fear, the fear, the fear of fugitivity changes things. I would like to believe That they came back because the town had developed a powerful new vaccine or an anecdote to white supremacy culture. Is that possible” Friends, create a container with your arms and open up your own moral imagination. Visualize the words, behaviors, gestures and impulses that bring forth a new world that blackness can return safely to. Let us create a vaccine for the contagion of white supremacy. Let’s replace the symptoms of perfections with the cure of appreciation. Can you see that” Let us replace the urgency of white supremacy culture with measure discernment. Let us acknowledge our fear and relinquish defensiveness. Let us replace the characteristic of objectivity with particularity. Let us replace the characteristic of power hoarding with the shi.., with sharing and listening. Let us replace the characteristic of fear and open of, open conflict, with honesty and authenticity. Let us replace the characteristic of paternalism with real mutual regard. Let us stop thinking there is only one right way and cultivate cultural humility. If we do this, we will replace some of our individualism with communion. Now that we are filled up with an aspiration to imagine a new culture ask yourself friends, this question. Is this country, is our faith, is America ready for the fugitive to really return” Is this country redeemable” What will you do to help us figure it out” Blessed be, and Amen.

(music) I have to admit I am in the rough !Try to forget but it’s just so tough, yeah !Hungry for peace and whenever I ease it !The more it just brings me down, no, no

But I still hang onFor if there’s no pressure, there’ll be no diamonds !So I don’t mind it comin’ my way, no !I’m tired of putting out the fire !Freedom is all I desire !If there’s no pressure, there’ll be no diamonds !I know I will be a diamond, diamond, diamond !I know I will be a diamond, diamond, a diamond, oh !People say they’ll hear you !But they don’t really understand !It’s really so exhausting !They’re tryna reach out for someone’s hand !Keep on tellin’ me it gets better !It’s hard to see when all I get is bad weather, no !But I still hang on !If there’s no pressure, there’ll be no diamonds !So I don’t mind it comin’ my way, no !I’m tired of putting out the fire !Freedom is all I desire !If there’s no pressure, there’ll be no diamonds !I know I will be a diamond, diamond, diamond !I know I will be a diamond, diamond, a diamond, oh !Hunt for me, press on me !I don’t mind seeing it comin’ my way !Hunt for me, press on me !I don’t mind seeing it comin’ my way !Hunt for me, press on me !I don’t mind seeing it comin’ my way !Hunt for me, press on me !I don’t mind seeing it comin’ my way !If there’s no pressure, there’ll be no diamonds !So I don’t mind it comin’ my way, no !I’m tired of putting out the fire !Freedom is all I desire !If there’s no pressure, there’ll be no diamonds !I know I will be a diamond, diamond, diamond !I know I will be a diamond, diamond, a diamond, oh

Rev. Jen Crow:

It was a few months ago, when my son made the invitation. It was the first spring thunderstorm here in Minneapolis after what felt like a perpetual winter. Henry wanted us to join him outside in the rain. Now, this might seem like a typical invitation from a kid to their family, but it wasn’t for us. You see, it was just about five years ago, during a thunderstorm much like this one, that lightning hit our house in the middle of the night. The impact of the lightning the sound, it rocked us awake that evening. And we went stumbling through the house looking for each other and heading out into the rain. We lost almost everything in an instant. And we were incredibly lucky. We knew it could have been otherwise. Now, given that history, I can’t say that anybody in my family really looks forward to a thunderstorm. In fact, on that night, when Henry was inviting us to join him out there in the rain, I was considering cowering in the corner of the basement. But I figured as the only adult present at that point, I should probably stay upstairs. It wasn’t until the next morning that it dawned on me what Henry had been doing that night. He wasn’t hiding from the reality of the rain. He wasn’t hiding from the thunder and even the fires that had in fact returned to our city. He was out there in it. He was soaking up the joy of the first spring rain after six months of waiting in Minnesota. He was out there, even as the lightning was lighting up the sky, going past surviving and into thriving. And he was inviting us to join him in it. I tell you this today, not just because I want to brag on my son, which I always do, just to be clear. But I’m telling you this because when I woke up the next morning and realized what he was doing, I realized he was inviting us to go past the kind of living where it’s white knuckle Hold on, barely make it through and move past that out into joy. He was reminding me that another world and another way, was possible. And I was so grateful for that reminder. Now, we know something about fires. All of us do literal and metaphorical, whether we’re in Minneapolis or somewhere else. Fires happen in all kinds of ways in all of our lives. When one moment things are one way and the next, they are another. This past spring we were reeling here in Minneapolis, reeling from the trauma of the trial of Derek Chauvin, reeling from another police murder of a black body of Dante Wright over in Brooklyn Heights. And as this was happening, there were particular words ringing in my heart and mind. They were Rev. Soto’s words. They write, “Everything is still on fire.” “Everything is still on fire.” And, and in addition to living, it is clear that we are going to need to level up in what it means to thrive. “Everything is still on fire” they write and in addition to living, it is clear that fire or not, we must level up in what it means to thrive. Beloved’s, it is time for us to level up in what it means to thrive as individuals and as Unitarian Universalists. We are meant for more than survival, even though sometimes that is all we can do. We are meant for thriving. Our communities are meant to be spaces of collective liberation, places where we and all who join us know without a doubt their inherent worth and dignity. Places where we can be living examples of the embodied experience of what it means to be whole and holy and worthy welcome, and wanted. To know ourselves one more redeemer here on this earth. That is what our communities are supposed to be like. We are meant for thriving, a circle wide enough to welcome us all. A love that will not let us go. This is who we are meant to be. This is the love we are meant to embody. Now, the pressure is on these days, the pressure is on as Jake Zyrus and our First Universalist youth just sang to us. And if I am honest, I do not mind it coming our way at all. Because it is time. It is time for us to become the people we have long proclaimed ourselves to be the people of a true wide welcome. This is who we are meant to be. And I’ll tell you my fear is that we will continue to dream small. That we will dream small and fall victim to a miniscule change and call it progress. I’ll tell you I am haunted.

Absolutely haunted by the story of a young Howard Thurman, Howard Thurman, who would go on to become the spiritual adviser to Martin Luther King, Jr., Howard Thurman, who would go on to write words that continue to serve all those who are living with their back against the wall. It was the 1920s and Howard Thurman was a student at Morehouse College, and he was on his way with his mentor to an integrated meeting at the local YMCA. there at that meeting, he was going to hear from the white leaders in town about their plan to create greater racial equity in the city of Atlanta. So, Thurman arrived and sat down, and one of the most liberal white men in town got up and began holding fourth. Great change was coming. He said, they had done something magnificent. You see there in the auditorium in town, the seating had always been segregated, with whites sitting at the front of the theater and Blacks sitting at the back. But he and his friends had gotten to work. And they had changed things there in the city. They had made it so the dividing line in the auditorium now ran down the center, running vertically with whites on one side and blacks on the other. Wasn’t this amazing progress they had made” Thurman stood and turned and walked out of the room. This was the progress he had been promised. Was this really the best that the well meaning white folks in power could come up with” Simply a moving around of the lines that divided them. Such discouragement, so much frustration. I tell you, my fear is that we will be limited like this. Now 100 years later, that somehow we will still fail to imagine progress and change big enough to be worthy of the legacy we proclaim. That is my fear for us. It was 20 years later, after that meeting at the YMCA, that the Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman was called to serve the first intentionally multicultural, multiracial congregation in the United States. It was 1944. And Thurman and the people of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples did something more, they’d stopped moving around the lines that divided us and instead created a community that truly welcomed people of all identities, where folks had experiences of the transcendent together and felt a sense of unity, a place where they lived into their faith and moved with action out into the world. They created a community of collective liberation, the kind we are dreaming of creating now. Even in a world where the fires keep on coming, it is possible for us to level up in what it means to thrive. And this friends is the kind of transformation I am inviting us into as individuals and as Unitarian Universalists, even in the society that is so broken, and so soul breaking, we are called to live lives and create communities of collective liberation. Places where we can feel joy, where we can be welcomed in the fullness of who we are, and trust that we will be welcomed in love with the wide embrace that we talk about. This is who we are, this is who we are called to be. We can do this, we can level up in what it means to thrive, to be the people of the wide welcome. To be part of a love that will not let us go. To stay in the struggle friends until love wins. May it be so, and Amen.

Rev. Jen Crow:

Beloveds. May you each know yourselves as the beautiful and important people that you are. Each one of you born one more redeemer in this world. Whole and holy and worthy, welcome and wanted. And then friends, may you go share this love with the world. May it be so, Amen. (music)

 

 

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

When Trust is Hard

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Sage Hirschfeld & Bear W. Qolezcua
July 25, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In a world where trusting others feels harder each day, remembering lessons of trust and letting them guide us is an act of revolution. Join our RE Intern, Sage Hirschfeld, and Director of Communications, Bear Qolezcua, as they explore the topic of trusting in others and ourselves.

 

 

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

WAITING
Marta I Valentine

Step into the center
Come in from the margins
I will hold you here.

Don’t look back
or around
feel my arms,
the water is rising.

I will hold you
as you tremble.
I will warm you.

Don’t look out or away
Life is in here, between you and me.

In this tiny space
where I end and you begin
hope lives.

In this precious tiny space
no words need to be whispered
to tell us we are one.

You and I,
we make the circle
if we choose to.

Come, step in
I am waiting for you.

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

Trust is earned in the smallest of moments. It is earned not through heroic deeds or even highly visible adtions but through paying attention, listening, and gestures of genuine care and connection.

– Dr. Bene Brown

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

Sacred Vulnerability

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
July 18, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We live in a culture that often encourages us to project an air of invincibility. Yet research by Brene Brown and others in the social sciences indicates that the opposite may be the key to living whole-heartedly. Being willing to embrace and express our vulnerability may be the source of authenticity, human connection, and empathy, as well as the ability to both love and accept being loved.

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

No vulnerability – no empathy. In a culture where people are afraid to be vulnerable, you can’t have empathy. If you share something with me that’s difficult, in order for me to be truly empathic, I have to step into what your feeling, and that’s vulnerable. So there can be no empathy without vulnerability…. …Vulnerability is the path.

– Dr Brene Brown

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

I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more…. …Live your life. Live your life. Live your life. And that is my attempt to do so.

– Maurice Sendak

Sermon

Dr. Brene Brown, whose words we heard in our Call to Worship earlier has a lot more to say that I really love. She says, “Vulnerability is the core of all emotions and feelings. To feel is to be vulnerable.

To believe vulnerability is weakness is to believe that feeling is weakness.

To foreclose on our emotional life out of a fear that the costs will be too high is to walk away from the very thing that gives purpose and meaning to living.”

She defines vulnerability as “exposure, uncertainty, and emotional risk”.

Here is one of my favorite findings from her social science research on vulnerability.

She discusses people she that she calls the “wholehearted”, by which she means people who have embraced and can express their own vulnerability, and thereby are living more authentic, loving and connected lives.

Dr. Brown says that embracing vulnerability doesn’t mean never complaining about the bad things that happen in life – the things that hurt.

In fact, the wholehearted can complain as much as anyone else. They just do it in a specific and more life fulfilling way.

She says that they “piss and moan with perspective.” “Dang,” I thought, when I heard her say that, “Now that would have made a great sermon title”.

“Pissing and Moaning with Perspective; a Spiritual Practice for the Ages”.

Now, I want to be clear that she is not talking about suffering vulnerability at the hands of racism and other forms of oppression, health issues, abusive relationships and the like.

And certainly, we have all felt some very scary vulnerability due to the pandemic.

What she IS saying is that while embracing our vulnerability is not weakness, neither does it mean we will never have problems, make mistakes or suffer.

It is recognizing that we will, and loving ourselves and other people, not in spite of these things, but because of them.

To be alive is to be vulnerable.

And yet our cultural norms can often encourage us to project a false sense of invincibility.

The prior Presidential administration downplaying a pandemic, for instance.

But, cultivating this false sense of invincibility can drain our courage for loving and accepting being loved – rob of us of the belonging and connection that are at the center of what it means to be fully human.

Now, I have struggled with all of this at times.

Right after I started with the church as a new minister, I helped teach one of our Sunday morning religious education classes for kindergarten and first grade children.

After the lesson, it was too cold and rainy to let them go outside and play, so we had to come up with activities that they could do inside.

A few of them got bored with these activities and decided they would turn me into an indoor jungle gym instead.

Soon, I found myself under siege by a group of five- and six-year-olds.

I was outnumbered, out maneuvered and outlandishly on the verge of experiencing pure joy – if only I would let myself give in to it.

But I found myself resisting it instead.

Dr. Brown calls this resistance, “foreboding joy” – when we won’t let ourselves fully experience joyful moments because we start to project what can go wrong.

We start imagining all the sorrow that may come.

It’s like we try to ward off the sorrow in our lives by stifling the joy.

That doesn’t work.

So, here are all the foreboding and shaming thoughts I was having as I resisted joy:

“Oh my God, I have to keep them on the carpeted area or one of them will get hurt and I’ll never get to work within Unitarian Universalism ever again.”

– and – “What will their parents think if they come to pick them up and find that they’ve tackled their Sunday school teacher and taken over the classroom?”

– and – “Good golly man, you have Reverend in front of your name now, you can’t be seen acting the fool with a bunch of first graders.”

Sometimes my shaming thoughts have a British accent.

Luckily for me, the more I resisted, the more they upped the ante.

Five- and six-year-olds have a lot of energy and determination.

So, I discovered that if I gave in and joined in the fun, they would actually more easily accept some parameters like staying on the carpeted area.

And then it was pure joy.

In addition to the foreboding joy I have been discussing, Dr. Brown outlines a number of other ways that we avoid vulnerability and that ultimately rob of us of living fully.

Here are a few of the major ones. See if you recognize any of them.

“Perpetual disappointment” – you may know folks who do this – these are the Eeyores of our world. “Oh well, it’s never really as great as it seems. In fact, it’s usually worse.”

“Numbing” – These are the ways that we avoid feeling at all or at least dull our emotions to the point of becoming unrecognizable.

Numbing includes the things we normally think of as addictions such as alcohol and drugs, but also includes things like excessive television, eating, video games, smart phone use; working too much; buying too much, etc.

Recent research says that all of this increased exponentially during the pandemic.

“Perfectionism” – She calls this the “20-Ton shield” when it comes to avoiding vulnerability.

Perfectionism is a trap though because we can’t be perfect all the time and for everything.

Thus, perfectionism can actually stifle our internal drive to strive for excellence because even excellent will not be perfect, so why take any real risks at all?

For me, it used to be a way of sort of super- numbing.

I was the oldest child in my family growing up.

Now, you may have heard about the oldest sibling syndrome wherein under stress, we can become over-functioning. We start trying to take care of everything and everyone, whether they want us to or not Ñ a form of perfectionism.

My mom was single, so I got a very strong dose of this.

Some of you may have heard me mention before that my maternal grandparents were like a second set of parents to me.

My Grandfather became my father figure, and I pretty much idolized them both.

They were my role models.

So, when I got the call one day, many years ago now, that my grandfather was in the hospital and it did not look good, I went into sort of an overfunctioner’s perfect storm.

I didn’t stop to cry or grieve or feel anything. I started making plans to make the drive over to take care of my family.

I was going to handle this situation perfectly!

And when we got to the hospital, and he was no longer conscious so that I did not even get to say goodbye, I didn’t cry or grieve. I took care of everyone else.

And when I got the call the next morning that he had died, I didn’t cry. I got up, got dressed and started planning and taking care of things.

And even when I gave the eulogy at his funeral, I still didn’t cry, nor at the reception afterwards, nor on the drive back home, nor after we got back home.

I was too busy “functioning”.

And then, I think it was maybe a couple of days later, I couldn’t find my glasses, and so I went out to our car, thinking maybe they had fallen under a seat or something and started searching for them.

I didn’t find them, but I did find a map my grandfather had given me – he was a traveler and big on maps – and he had written his name on it.

My grandfather had this habit of writing his name on all his belongings.

And suddenly, sitting there alone in the car, clutching his map, with no one left to take care of anymore but me, I ran out of ways to avoid it.

I started crying. And for a while it felt as if I might never stop.

A friend of mine who’s a playwright once had one of his characters, after having just lost her family in a car wreck, say, “I don’t have to cry now. I can cry tomorrow, or next week or next month or next year, because it’s never going to stop. It’s never going to stop hurting.”

I guess that was kind of what I had been doing – trying to put off feeling the hurt.

It doesn’t work eventually, but his character was right about this:

It never really does completely stop hurting.

We just learn to carry it with us.

And I think maybe that’s as it should be because for me it is also carrying them with us.

My grandparents are the people who taught me to have a love of nature.

To this day, even though they have both been gone many years now, I will be on a nature hike and see something so beautiful that it fills me with joy, and I will think that I have to call them and tell them about it.

Their old phone number, 409-962-2010 pops into my head, but, of course it is someone else’s number now.

The thing is, somehow because this happens, the joy of the experience is also deeper, greater, more complex.

It helps keep their memory alive in my heart.

It is a way in which I can at least somewhat re- experience their love.

I call it a joy so full that it is an aching joy, rather than that foreboding joy we talked about earlier.

Writer and poet Kahlil Gibran said it like this, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

And that’s why numbing robs us of living fully.

That’s the reason to seek lives of vulnerability and authenticity. If we refuse to allow sorrow to carve into our being, we will also never experience the fullness of that aching joy.

I think as the church and our world begin to deal with whatever the next phase of the pandemic may bring in the coming months, we will need to be willing to be vulnerable with one another, we will need honesty Ñ a willingness to share our emotions.

And I think we create in this church a space where we can bring our vulnerabilities and our whole selves, and that then can help us be more wholehearted in our larger worlds also.

I think it starts by being willing to ask for the space to be vulnerable and by being willing risk it – to reach out and say, “I have been trying to take care of my family, but I am emotionally exhausted myself”, or “I have been afraid about going back to work in person at my office because what if the vaccines start to fail? I don’t have anywhere else where it feels safe to share this fear.”

We work to create in this religious community a space where we can do that – a church where we can practice living authentically.

A place where we are allowed to be vulnerable and imperfect – to make mistakes and be forgiven for them rather than shamed for them.

A place where we are courageous enough for empathy to thrive.

A place where we love and accept love and radiate that love out into our larger world.

A community where life’s hallowed sorrows and aching joys can be sung into the rafters and held by beloved community.

A community that I love with my whole heart.

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

Collective Liberation

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
July 11, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

This is a rebroadcast of a sermon from January 27, 2019.

How do we ground our social justice work, our struggles against racism, oppression, and the destruction of our environment? Where do we find reliance and even joy? We will examine a theology that grounds this work in our collective interdependence or, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, “We are tied together in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality… This is the inter-related structure of reality.”

 

 

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
Aboriginal Activists Group, Queensland, 1970s

Call to Worship
Rev. Chris Jimmerson

I reach for my fullest potential in a world that pits my full potential against yours.

Together, we can all better reach for our full potential.

I am taught to fear difference.

By embracing our differences, we learn, grow and may be transformed.

The privileges I have been given, the power to oppress, leaves me trapped within those same systems of oppression.

Collectively, we can change those systems and liberate us all.

Racism, sexism, classism, radical capitalism, gender and sexuality biases, religious bigotries; these conspire together to bind us all into silos of spiritual emptiness.

Together, we can burst through these silos of disconnection and journey together toward wholeness and holiness.

Come, let us enter into this journey together.

Together, we celebrate our collective vision of Beloved Community. Together, we build that vision.

Reading

A NETWORK OF MUTUALITY
by Martin Luther King Jr.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

Injustice anywhere is a threat justice everywhere.

There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought be maladjusted.

Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that.

We must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation…

The foundation of such a method is love.

Before it is too late, we must narrow the gaping chasm between our proclamations of peace and our lowly deeds which precipitate and perpetuate war.

One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.

We shall hew out of the mouton of despair, a stone of hope.

Sermon Handout

COSTS OF OPPRESSION TO PEOPLE FROM PRIVILEGED GROUPS

Psychological Costs: Loss of Mental Health and Authentic Sense of Self.

 

  • Socialized into limited roles and patterns of behavior
  • Denial of emotions and empathy
  • Limited self-knowledge and distorted view of self
  • Discrepancy between others’ perceptions and internal reality
  • Pain and fears (of doing and saying wrong thing, of retaliation from oppressed groups, of revealing self for fear of judgment, of different people and experiences)
  • Diminished mental health (distorted view of self and reality, denial, projection)

 

Social Costs: Loss and Diminishment of Relationships

 

  • Isolation from people who are different
  • Barriers to deeper, more authentic relationships
  • Disconnection, distance and ostracism within own group/family if act differently

 

Moral and Spiritual Costs: Loss of Moral and Spiritual Integrity

 

  • Guilt and shame
  • Moral ambivalence (doing right thing vs. social pressures and realities)
  • Spiritual emptiness or pain

 

Intellectual Costs: Loss of Developing Full Range of Knowledge

 

  • Distorted and limited view of other people’s culture and history
  • Ignorance of own culture and history

 

Material and Physical Costs: Loss of Safety, Resources, and Quality of Life

 

  • Social violence and unrest
  • Higher costs (e.g. for good and safe schools and homes, for qualified employees)
  • Waste of resources (to deal with effects of inequality)
  • Loss of valuable employees, clients and customers
  • Loss of knowledge to foster societal growth and well-being
  • Diminished collective action for common concerns
  • Negative health implications

 

Benefits of Social Justice for People from Privileged Groups

 

  • Fuller, more authentic sense of self
  • More authentic relationships and human connection
  • Moral integrity and consistency
  • Freedom from fears
  • Improved work and living conditions
  • Access to other cultures and wisdom
  • More resources to address common concerns
  • Greater opportunity for real democracy and justice

 

From: Diane J. Goodman, Promoting Diversity and Social Justice: Educating People from Privileged Group (Routledge, 2011). www.dianegoodman.com

Benediction
by Bell Hooks

The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom.

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

We’re still here; Our Journey Continues

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
July 4, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

For over a year and a half, we have all been on an often challenging journey together, but we are still here as a religious community. As we contemplate an upcoming return to in-person church activities, our journey will change course again. What might we need to consider to smooth the potential bumps and avoid potential roadblocks when we begin that new journey?

 

 

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 TRAVEL THIS ROAD TOGETHER
By Tess Baumberger

From the busy-ness of everyday we gather once a week to remember who we are, to dream of who we might become.

We travel this road together.

As companions on this journey, we share the milestones we meet along the way. Individual moments of joy and sorrow become shared moments of comfort and celebration.

We travel this road together.

We share this journey across differences of belief and opinion Because we value diversity and because care for one another.

We travel this road together.

Today as we take the next steps, let us notice our fellow travelers: The burdens that they carry, the songs that inspire their hearts.

We travel this road together.

As we gather in beloved community, let us open the holy havens of our hearts, Let us share the sacred places of our souls For we are pilgrims who share a common path.

We travel this road together.

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

A BLESSING FOR TRAVELING IN THE DARK
By Jan Richardson

Go slow
if you can.
Slower.
More slowly still.
Friendly dark
or fearsome,
this is no place
to break your neck
by rushing,
by running,
by crashing into
what you cannot see.
Then again,
it is true:
different darks
have different tasks,
and if you
have arrived here unawares,
if you have come
in peril
or in pain,
this might be no place
you should dawdle.
I do not know
what these shadows
ask of you,
what they might hold
that means you good
or ill.
It is not for me
to reckon
whether you should linger
or you should leave.
But this is what
I can ask for you:
That in the darkness
there be a blessing.
That in the shadows
there be a welcome.
That in the night
you be encompassed
by the Love that knows
your name.

from Jan Richardson’s blog, The Advent Door
© Jan Richardson, janrichardson.com

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

In the Stream of Your Life

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
June 27, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

So much of our experience of life is influenced by things we can’t control. Weather, illness, coworkers, friends, family. They say we can control how we respond to things, but that does not always feel true. Mostly, Buddhism teaches, we control what we do. Our actions are what we own in the end.

 

 

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

The prayer of my soul is a petition for persistence; not for the one good deed, or the one single thought – but deed upon deed, thought upon thought, hope upon hope, love upon love, prayer upon prayer, and work upon work until Day calling unto Day shall make a life work living.

– W.E.B. Du Bois

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

May all sentient 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.

– Bodhisattva Vows (Adapted)

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

Play – Fun – Humor – Love

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
June 20, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Getting through challenging times like this, working for justice, building the Beloved Community all require serious contemplation, hard work and allowing ourselves to feel the painful emotions that may come up. We must remember also that play, fun, and humor are necessary to sustain us. We must allow ourselves moments of joy. Love is our ultimate source of resilience, and one of the ways we express that love is through playfulness.

 

 

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

It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila, lila meaning play. And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance.

– Alan Watts, Zen and the Beat Way

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 rare moments of deep play, we can lay aside our sense of self, shed time’s continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world’s ordinary miracles. No mind or heart hobbles. No analyzing or explaining. No questing for logic. No promises. No goals. No relationships. No worry. One is completely open to whatever drama may unfold.

– Diane Ackerman

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

What did you just say?

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
June 13, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The third strand of the eightfold path is right speech. How do we become mindful of our speech? How do we practice telling the truth, being kind, knowing when to speak and knowing when not to speak?

 

 

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

“It [speaking with words that bring about harmony] consists of speaking of what is good about people, instead of what is wrong with them. For some people this is an almost impossible exercise, for they have become totally habituated to speaking critically. We all seem to have a special talent for finding critical things to say about the world, about others, and about ourselves.”

– Jean-Yves Leloup

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

“Always being truthful gives you a certain kind of freedom. It springs forth like a fountain splashing throughout your body until it floods your soul. To be honest and to be trustworthy are great attributes. Ah, the power, Ah, the freedom.”

– Amaka Imani Nkosazana

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

Just a Reminder

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
June 6, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The second in our series on the Noble Eightfold Path. In order to reach peace of mind, we understand how the mind and spirit work, and we make powerful intentions to keep impermanence in mind, to hold onto joy lightly, and to remember that everyone dies in the end. Does this turn out to be cheering or depressing, or both?

 

 

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

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“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.”

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

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder.
Help someone’s soul heal.
Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

– Rumi

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

Flower Communion 2021

by 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 30, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Facing Texas’ anti-Trans legislation, what does our faith tell us about our responsibility to respond?

 

 

Chalice Lighting

Sacred flame,
bloom in our hearts,
bloom in our minds,
bloom in our bones,
bloom in our eyes,
bloom in our mouths,
bloom in our hands.

Make us each a garden of love, shining, crackling, burning.
We gather today to remember beauty and the abundance of beauty.
We gather to share the beauty we have found in this world with one another, in love.

Call to Worship

Behold now your flowers their liveliness and beauty fashioned by the Earth and all the invisible forces of creation. Each plant’s energy within it moves and transforms. This collection of atoms is simply in the process of flowering. Do you see their other lives? This flower has been seed, dirt, sunshine, insect, beast and star, and one hundred thousand other things and more. Witness the infinite becomings of this flower as the flower process witnesses the infinite becomings of you.

– Bis Thornton

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

I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibililty, not this: In order to love you I must make you something else. That’s what domination is about. In order to be close to you I must possess you, remake you, and recast you.

– Bell Hooks

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

Why should I believe that?

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
May 23, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Conspiracy theories have always been with us. People like to make sense of the events happening in their world. How do you know what’s true. Who falls for conspiracy theories, and why.

 

 

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

I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom or the words that might inspire hope and courage in the face of fear. My weapons are peaceful, for it is only by peace that peace can be attained. The song of freedom must prevail.

– Paul Robeson

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

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

– Frederick Douglass

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

The Power of Storytelling

by Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
May 16, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The stories we tell ourselves both as individuals and as a culture have powerful effects on how we live our lives, make meaning of our world and treat one another. Might some of them be retold in ways that would improve our lives and our 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 that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

It’s no coincidence that just at this point in our insight into our mysteriousness as human beings struggling toward compassion, we are also moving into an awakened interest in the language of myth and fairy tale. The language of logical argument, of proofs, is he language of the limited self we know and can manipulate. But the language of parable and poetry, of storytelling, moves from the imprisoned language of the provable into the freed language of what I must, for lack of another word, continue to call faith.

– Madeleine L’Engle, “A Circle of Quiet”

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

“Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I’m beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative – they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told. Fiction and nonfiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons that I don’t fully understand, fiction dances out of me, and nonfiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.”

– Arundhati Roy, “The God of Small Things”

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

Abandon Hope and Fear

by Posted in Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
May 9, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

This Sunday we begin revisiting the Buddhist 8 fold path. I am not a Buddhist, but I am fascinated by what I’ve read and heard. This Sunday we will talk about the way things are, according to Buddhist thought, and why abandoning hope and fear might not be a bad thing.

 

 

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

THE GUEST HOUSE
Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness
comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all.
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

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

For me it is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

– Carl Sagan

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

Waiting to Exhale

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Guest Speaker Rev. Bill Sinkford
First Unitarian Portland
May 2, 2021

When the justice system is bent against black lives, those black lives lose faith in justice until there is proof it is served. They hold their breath, bated and unsure, waiting to finally exhale when justice rings true. We have all been changed, we are all grieving, there will be more lives lost but perhaps there is still evidence for hope.

 

 

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

THE HILL WE CLIMB
Amanda Gorman
(Biden inauguration poem)

When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We’ve braved the belly of the beast
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn’t always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished
We the successors of a country and a time
Where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one
And yes we are far from polished
far from pristine
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect
We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious
Not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid
If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made
That is the promise to glade
The hill we climb
If only we dare
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy
And this effort very nearly succeeded
But while democracy can be periodically delayed
it can never be permanently defeated
In this truth
in this faith we trust
For while we have our eyes on the future history
has its eyes on us
This is the era of just redemption
We feared at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation
Our blunders become their burdens
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation
and every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it

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

COULD WE PLEASE GIVE THE POLICE DEPARTMENTS TO THE GRANDMOTHERS
Junauda Petrus-Nasah

Could we please give the police departments to the grandmothers. Give them the salaries and the pensions and the city vehicles, but make them a fleet of vintage corvettes, jaguars and cadillacs, with white leather interior. Diamond in the back, sunroof top and digging the scene with the gangsta lean.

Let the cars be badass!

You would hear the old school jams like Patti Labelle, Stevie Wonder, Anita Baker and Al Green. You would hear Sweet Honey in the Rock harmonizing on “We who believe in freedom will not rest” bumping out the speakers. And they got the booming system.

If you up to mischief, they will pick you up swiftly in their sweet ride and look at you until you catch shame and look down at your lap. She asks you if you are hungry and you say “yes” and of course you are. She got a crown of dreadlocks and on the dashboard you see brown faces like yours, shea buttered and loved up

And there are no precincts.

Just love temples, that got spaces to meditate and eat delicious food. mangoes, blueberries, nectarines, cornbread, peas and rice, fried plantain, fufu, yams, greens, okra, pecan pie, salad and lemonade.

Things that make your mouth water and soul arrive.

All the hungry bellies know warmth, all the children expect love. The grandmas help you with homework, practice yoga with you and teach you how to make jamabalaya and coconut cake. From scratch.

When your sleepy she will start humming and rub your back while you drift off. A song that she used to have the record of when she was your age. She remembers how it felt like to be you and be young and not know the world that good. Grandma is a sacred child herself, who just circled the sun enough times into the ripeness of her cronehood.

She wants your life to be sweeter.

When you are wildin’ out because your heart is broke or you don’t have what you need the grandmas take your hand and lead you to their gardens. You can lay down amongst the flowers. Her grasses, roses, dahlias, irises, lilies, collards, kale, eggplants, blackberries. She wants you know that you are safe and protected, universal limitless, sacred, sensual, divine and free.

Grandma is the original warrior, wild since birth, comfortable in loving fiercely. She has fought so that you don’t have to, not in the same ways at least.

So give the police departments to the grandmas, they are fearless, classy and actualized. Blossomed from love. They wear what they want and say what they please.

Believe that.

There wouldn’t be noise citations when the grandmas ride through our streets, blasting Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Alice Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, KRS-One. All that good music. The kids gonna hula hoop to it and sell her lemonade made from heirloom pink lemons and maple syrup. The car is solar powered and carbon footprint-less, the grandmas designed the technology themselves.

At night they park the cars in a circle so all can sit in them with the sun roofs down, and look at the stars, talk about astrological signs, what to plant tomorrow based on the moon’s mood and help you memorize Audre Lorde and James Baldwin quotes. She always looks you in the eye and acknowledges the light in you with no hesitation or fear. And grandma loves you fiercely forever.

She sees the pain in our bravado, the confusion in our anger, the depth behind our coldness. Grandma know what oppression has done to our souls and is gonna change it one love temple at a time. She has no fear.

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

Blues Theology (Revisited)

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
April 25, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

This sermon was originally presented on February 10, 2019.

Wynton Marsalis, in his book “To A Young Jazz Musician: Letters From The Road”, talks about the philosophy of the Blues, how it both expressed and healed the lives of black people as they lived in a society which was structured to marginalize them. How do we learn from the Blues to express suffering, to face it, and to build and celebrate resilience?

 

 

Meditation Reading

THE STREET
by Ann Petry

(About Billie Holiday) Her voice had a thin thread of sadness running through it that made the song important. That made it tell a story that wasn’t in the words. A story of dispair, of loneliness, of frustration. It was a story that all of them knew by heart, that they had always known because they learned it soon after they were born and would go on adding to it until the day they died.

Sermon

Ok, what is a white woman doing talking about the blues? That’s my identity, and I put it out there right here at the beginning. I’m not a Blues expert, but I love listening to the blues, and I wanted to learn from the Blues and talk to you about what I’m learning.

It’s a cliche that ‘all blues starts “woke up this morning.” ‘ this meant more than ‘I opened my eyes in bed as the sun came up.’ Here is what the singers and the listeners, at least at the beginning of the Blues in the South, knew was the meaning of the words:

“I woke up this morning knowing that in half an hour I’ll be pushing a massive plow behind a stubborn mule or bending over to hoe weeds, and I’ll be doing that until it’s too dark to see. And tomorrow and the next day and the next day, I’ll do it again, until, most likely, I work until I die, broke, just like my parents and grandparents. But right now I’m dancing.”

The Blues talk about real life. They tell the truth, even if in coded language, and the expression is true. If, as Keats says, truth is beauty, then the Blues are beautiful. The sadness is beautiful when it’s true.

 

Ralph Ellison said that ‘the blues is an impulse to keep painful details and episodes of brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain.’

The blues are the voice of an oppressed and alienated people. The blues has always provided a unique way to ‘find one’s voice’ and to attest to the hardships of life in a way that draws others in rather than turning them away . Your friend might say to you “My Baby cheated on me. It has changed the way I feel about them. My love has been diminished, and I wonder whether I should break up with them, because if I do, I won’t have anyone.”

OR your friend could sing The thrill is gone

 

The thrill is gone away
The thrill is gone baby
The thrill is gone away
You know you done me wrong baby
And you’ll be sorry someday
The thrill is gone
It’s gone away from me
The thrill is gone baby
The thrill is gone away from me
Although, I’ll still live on
But so lonely I’ll be
The thrill is gone

 

– BB King

 

The music can capture the pain of life, and the massive scale of exposure to painful trauma, loss, and adversity associated with enduring the humiliation and brutality of slavery and its transition to sharecropping. After slavery came the way its legacy was built into the culture, with Jim Crow laws, enforced through lynchings beatings and the KKK’s terrorism. Extreme poverty and harsh lives on the streets, and frequent arrest, incarceration, and the experience of prison road gangs, compounded by devastating and uprooting natural disasters (including droughts, floods, and hurricanes) perpetuated the pain.

Its musical expression followed the massive displacement of large populations from the plantations of the South to Northern cities such as Chicago, and later incorporated the experience of black soldiers returning after World War II and the Vietnam War. In this way, the blues served to hold and document memories, create a sense of community, and provide a platform to share their visceral impact with others.

Research done at Mt Sinai Hospital has shown that trauma makes changes in DNA, and this trauma, the PTSD, can be passed on through subsequent generations. These genetic changes can cause depression, differences in ways of regulating emotions, being wired to see threat and tragedy. This is what our government has set in motion by separating children from their parents on the border. The very DNA has been affected, and brains were re-wired.

The blues to create a shared narrative, a story that the system of white culture constantly tries to erase. You hear people say “We’re a nation of immigrants,” and they are lovely people, but they “forget” that 12 million African teachers, mothers, fathers, children, medicine people, farmers and merchants were captured and dragged to the Americas in chains.

About 350,000 were brought to the 13 colonies, and the rest were sold to the sugar plantations in the Carribean and Brazil. You hear politicians even today say “America was built on freedom and enterprise,” erasing the fact that the labor of enslaved men and women was a big engine of the American economy. There was even an article in Forbes Magazine a couple of years ago laying all of this out. To have the story of your people ignored and erased makes you feel crazy and angry, and the retelling of these stories can strengthen solidarity among the people, reminding them that they are being affected by these traumas, and that a lot of what happens has roots in the history that the culture around them is working hard on forgetting.

There are ongoing arguments about whether people who don’t live their lives as Black Americans can authentically sing the blues. The blues have a form, so anyone can technically play. 4/4 time, 12 measures, a blues scale. They are also an expression, though, of trauma and pain. Almost all people have trauma and pain, some say, and you express that through the blues.

 

“I am not maintaining that only African-Americans should be allowed to perform the blues. The point is only that blues authenticity depends upon group membership. While cultural outsiders can sing the blues, it should be understood that what is being sung in these cases is a variant of a cultural expression derived from a very different kind of experience”.

 

– Philip Jenkins

 

I was doing some learning about this last week. In my southern culture, the way we deal with bad things happening is that we ignore it or we refer to it in a vague way. And we move on. Well, there is a big lump under the rug, but we step over it. Sometimes we trip over it. “What’s wrong with Aunt Clara?” Well, she married a Catholic.” Whispered. I heard a whisper that one of my cousins had cancer, but then, when I asked about it, I got just vagueness. I’ve done this myself here, because I got here after the church had a big trauma. They had dismissed the minister, who was a controversial figure from the beginning. (I’m nervous talking about this because there are still folks here whose feelings about that time run high.) Anyway, no one was really talking about it when I got here. Being a family therapist by training, I knew talking about it needed to happen. I started calling it “The Troubles.”

This week, though, I had a couple of conversations about restorative justice, where, when a mistake happens, where damage is done, the thing that caused the damage needs to be named. You may have heard that a year ago we invited a man named Fidel to come do a program about the Water Protectors. He claimed he would bring some Native friends to do a ceremony. We did our due diligence, we checked his references, his social media, all good. Then he came, and brought an insulting and shallow program that lasted too long, and instead of Native friends to lead us through a ritual, he had a white lady who sang what sounded like fake Native songs. When some of our guests from the Indigenous community spoke up, toward the end of the thing, Fidel treated them dismissively. Harm was done to the Indigenous community and to the relationship between this congregation and the Indigenous community in Austin.

“Say the words,” the church member said to me. I told her I would think about that, but it was hard to figure out what she meant. I asked Jules what she thought that meant. She said “saying the words, naming the thing that did damage, is a way of letting everyone in the conversation know that you haven’t forgotten what happened. It lets people trust that you aren’t trying to sweep something under the rug. It is a way of bringing your history with you into conversations with people who may not be “over it” yet, who may not be ready or able to “move on.”

The Blues are about saying the words, repeating the words because repeated telling is how people process trauma. You shout and cry, confess and complain, all to a party dancing beat. You can dance and grieve, shout out your pain, all at the same time, if you want. The shouting comes from the field shouts, back and forth, singing in coded language while doing the back breaking work of hoeing or picking cotton. Talking about a mean woman taking all your money, when you really mean the boss man who is mean and takes all your money. The Blues scale has flatted notes and minor notes which express sadness, and bent notes, quarter tones, which don’t appear in Western classical music, but are all over classical African, Middle Eastern, and Asian music. The note which is not quite the note, and then resolves into what our ear was expecting, creates a tension and then a release of the tension that is part of the healing.

Saying the words, repeating the words, creating tension then relieving tension, all to a dance beat, within a structure that frees you to create within it, those are ways of healing trauma.

People from many cultures can learn from the Blues, and I think sitting at the feet of these artists, this music, can teach us. In the culture in which I was raised, it is shameful to struggle, shameful to be traumatized. We try not to speak of it, or we speak of it in whispers. Speaking your trauma in this midst of a positive life? My people don’t know how to do that.

Speak of the trauma. Speak it as many times as you need to. Put it into a structure that helps contain the sorrow, and tell your truth about it. If you can put it to a beat that lets you know you can be sorrowful and dance at the same time, that is amazing. The healing doesn’t mean the history goes away. It means you have a group of people who can listen to what happened and dance with you because you share the suffering.

What history do we in this church, and as members of the UU denomination, need to speak about and bring with us? How has the Unitarian movement and the Universalist movement attracted and then driven away so many among us who are black and brown over the past 100 years. The mix is a lot whiter now than it was years ago, and there are reasons for that. We have some work to do “Saying the words.”

 

“Living is a positive experience. That’s what the blues teaches you. That’s why it continues to exist. And that’s why it’s in so much music. Yeah, all of this tragic stuff happened to you, but you’re still here. And you can still express being here with style. Like laughing to keep from crying. And you keep dancing, man….

 

– Wynton Marsalis

 

 

 

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