Awe and Then Some

December 8, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
December 8, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

When we consider the magnitude of our universe; observe the intricate beauty and yet the sometimes seemingly random cruelty of nature; contemplate the mysteries of life and living, we can feel both small and humbled, as well as have a sense of being a meaningful part of something much, much larger than ourselves. We’ll explore this sense of awe and how we might cultivate it as a spiritual practice.

Chalice Lighting

As we await the return of the light, we kindle the flame of Community, the second of the five values of our congregation. May the light of Community burn bright, reminding us to connect with joy, sorrow, and service to the Beloved Community that begins within these walls.

Call to Worship

Robert Benson
“Between the Dreaming and the Coming True: The Road Home to God”

We do not always see that we should be moving about our days and lives and places with awe and reverence and wonder, with the same soft steps with which we enter the room of a sleeping child or the mysterious silence of a cathedral. There is no ground that is not holy ground.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Moment for Beloved Community

I was just reading a study that found that white employers were more likely to reject a job application without even doing an in-person interview if they thought the person’s name sounded “black” on their resume.

So, our question to ponder this week is what would it be like to be rejected for employment just because of how your name sounded to someone.
As we ponder this, remember there is no need to immerse ourselves in guilt or shame. In fact, these can be counterproductive, we need joy and community to sustain our struggle to do justice and build the beloved community. There is beauty to be found in the struggle itself.

Meditation Reading

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
“Who is Man?”

The Sense of the Ineffable

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things.

Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.

Sermon

In August of 2017, my spouse, Wayne and I flew to Denver, Colorado. There, we rented a car and drove to a rural area of western Nebraska, where we met up with Wayne’s best friend, Teresa and her two of her sisters.

One of Teresa’s sisters had arranged with a family who had a farm outside of the little town of Alliance, Nebraska, for the group of us to view the total solar eclipse from up on a hillside on their farm.

We gathered on the top of the hill, picnic supplies in hand to wait for the eclipse.

Now, neither Wayne and I, nor the Denny sisters, Teresa, Pamela and Lisa, very often find ourselves at a loss for words. However, when the eclipse began, as the moon moved over the face of the sun and the light began to fade, as night creatures suddenly began their chorus of early evening sounds, we humans fell still and silent.

Evening shadows fell over what had been mid afternoon brightness.

Eventually, the moon completely covered the sun, yet there was still a slight glow around the edges of the moon, casting a glimmer of light on us and all of the creatures and geography below.

I was awestruck. I could feel my skin tingling.

As the moon began to move further across the sun and one edge of the sun began to be visible again, we could see a glow of light in the distant horizon.

The glow surrounded us.

I turned around in a full circle and could see an orange glow, the color of a sunrise, at the edges of the entire 360 degrees of the horizon around us.

Birds began their morning songs.

I felt myself involuntarily inhaling a deep breath. My eyes were brimming with tears in reaction to the absolute beauty and enormity of what I was witnessing.

Later, after the eclipse had ended, and we had returned to the hotel where we were staying, Wayne and I talked about the experience of it.

We both had gotten a powerful sense of how tiny our planet, indeed we are, in the almost incomprehensible vastness of our universe and the limitless sweep of time.

Yet, we also had experienced a sense of expansion and interconnectedness, of being an integral part of that great immensity.

I wanted to start with that story this morning because it is such a strong example of the spiritual theme we are exploring as a religious community during December – the experience of awe.

What does it mean to be a people of awe?

To start, it may be helpful to define what we mean by that little word “awe” that names an an experience which can have such a profound effect on us.

The expression “awe” is rooted in the Greek word “achos”, which also gives us the word ache.

So, the experience of awe opens an ache in our hearts and thereby expands them with a desire to hold on to the change in perspective, the expansion of understanding that we are given by such experiences.

Dr. Dacher Kelner, researcher and Director of Psychology at the University of California, Berkley, who studies the experience of awe, offers this definition – “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world.”

He says that “Awe imbues people with a different sense of themselves, one that is smaller, more humble and part of something larger… “

Similarly, neuropsychologist, Nicholas Humphrey, who also studies awe, defines it as “An experience of such perceptual vastness you literally have to reconfigure your mental models of the world to assimilate it”

The scientific study of the experience and emotion we call “awe” is relatively new. However, we have already begun to discover some intriguing and potentially important aspects of these experiences.

Several studies of the physiological responses to awe across a variety of different cultures have found a number of commonalities:

A sudden, often vocalized, involuntary intake of breath.
The feeling of hair on the arms being raised and/or of having goosebumps.
Widened eyes and the formation of tears.
Stillness and a feeling of being struck silent.

And awe seems to be beneficial to us in a number of ways.

First, and this may be one of the reasons we evolved to have the capacity for awe, is that it seems to move us from individualistic and self-centered behavior toward collective interest and prosocial behavior.

And, of course, social behavior has been a major factor in the survival of our species.

Researchers theorize this may arise because of the psychological effects of awe that I described earlier – a sense of smallness and humility and yet at the same time a feeling of connection with something much larger.

For example, near the University of California at Berkley stands a grove of eucalyptus trees that are the tallest in North America. Staring up from beneath these trees with their peeling bark, their odor and the grayish green light their canopy creates can readily induce a sense of awe.

In one study, researchers had a group of students do just that for one minute. However, the researchers had another group of students look 90 degrees away, at the facade of a science building.

Then, the researchers arranged for each group of students to encounter a person who stumbled and dropped a handful of pens.

Sure enough, the students who had ben gazing up at the awe-inspiring trees were far more likely to help the person pick up the pens. They also reported feeling less self-entitled than the other group did.

And studies like this, demonstrating the prosocial influence of awe, have now been repeated using a wide variety of methods, in diverse subjects and in numerous different circumstances.

Studies have also found that experiences of awe may improve our relationship with time by anchoring us in the present moment, making us feel we are rich in time rather than always running out of it.

Further, researchers have also found that experiences of awe boost creativity and improve scientific thinking.

This may be because awe stimulates the dopamine system, which triggers curiosity and exploration in mammals.

Albert Einstein once claimed that experiences of awe are “the source of all true art and science.”

Finally, early research indicates that feelings of awe may also be physiologically and psychologically beneficial in numerous other ways also.

For instance, several studies have found that even short but regular experiences of awe can help our bodies regulate the cytokines in our immune system.

Cytokines can be thought of as chemical messengers that among other functions help manage our inflammatory response when we get injured.

Abnormally elevated cytokines, however, are associated with depression and other psychological and physical problems.

Awe seems to help us reduce cytokine levels when they are elevated unnecessarily.

Researchers even theorize that experiences of awe may be beneficial to people with post traumatic stress syndrome.

I was struck by the story of of a man named Stacy Bare. Mr. Bare had been through two deployments in Iraq. After returning to the United States, he was suffering from severe post traumatic stress syndrome, burdened by suicidal thoughts and was drinking heavily.

One day, he had gotten into an argument with his brother as the two were hiking in Utah’s Canyon National Park. Things were getting heated, when suddenly, they came upon an amazing natural structure called the Druid Arch. Here is a picture of it.

DRUID ARCH SLIDE

The men stopped short. Their jaws dropped. They began to laugh. They hugged each other. Bare says that in that moment he could no longer even remember what they had been fighting about.

That experience of awe was the beginning of Stacy Bare’s life turning around.

Today, he is the director of “Sierra Club Outdoors”, the environmental organization’s program that sponsors trips for veterans and at risk youth on just such awe inspiring wilderness excursions.

The program has documented clear “improvements in psychological well-being, social functioning and life outlook.

Now, here is something important to know.

It does not take stumbling upon the Druid Arch, seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time or experiencing a total solar eclipse for us to reap the potential benefits of awe.

Certainly, these and other large and stunning experiences of awe, such as to be found in these types of extraordinary natural phenomenon or pieces of art and music, ritual and religious or spiritual experiences and the like are so often unexpected blessings.

However, the research has found that smaller, more run of the mill feelings of awe may be both more common than we might expect and more beneficial over the long run if we look for them and recognize them on a consistent basis.

Here are just a few, more day to day events that people have reported moving them into a sense of awe:

Becoming absorbed in a pattern of light that the setting sun is casting on the floor through the living room blinds.
Simpler but more frequent experiences of going into natural areas (most of us can’t visit the Grand Canyon every few days, after all).
Gazing at the stars on a clear night or upon an extraordinary sunrise or sunset.
Witnessing a child we love’s astonishment and joy at discovering something new in their world.
Watching gold and red autumn leaves swirl and dance to the ground in a light wind.
Observing other people engage in acts of kindness, justice or courage.

And the list of these more common, smaller doses of awe goes on and on.

In fact science has found that on average folks feel awe every third day and that we can increase that frequency even more if we allow ourselves the time to slow down – open ourselves to the potential for awe.

We can even find awe through other’s experiences of it, including their digital video of it!

The Unitarian Universalist Soul Matters group even put together a YouTube play list of potentially awe inspiring short videos.

Here is a short URL I created that I hope may be easy to remember. It is https://tinyurl.com/aweatfirstuu

And here is just a short example from one of the videos.

VIDEO

I want to share one more video with you also.

It’s by philosopher and television and social media personality Jason Silva. Silva thinks that finding awe in what we might otherwise consider the mundane is not only possible, but that we need it to move us out of the banal and toward the more sublime and life fulfilling.

Let’s look and listen.

SILVA VIDEO

I think I agree with him, and I think that means that these smaller doses of awe, as well as the more immense ones we may be fortunate to experience once in a while, are a vital part of our spirituality.

They nourish our souls.

A fascinating study found that practicing scientists who held awe as a a part of their love of science, were much more likely to have deep sense of spirituality and even to hold a concept of God.

Now most often, they did not hold a classic or biblical sense of God, but rather a mystical concept of the divine.

They found God in the seemingly limitless creative potential of our universe, as well as the still profoundly mysterious nature of it – some of them metaphorically and others as an actual, mystical cosmic force.

Either way, they found through awe a deep meaning and beauty in life and a source of creativity and innovation in scientific their work.

What if we made being open to – even actively seeking these experiences, both the everyday and the more extraordinary, a spiritual practice?

Surrender to the mystery.

Immerse yourself in experiences of awe. For therein is where God lives.

Amen

Most sermons during the past 19 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

Lessons in Welcome from Thanksgiving and a Blow to the head

December 1, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Lee Legault, Ministerial Intern
December 1, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We experience the world differently. Those of us journeying life neuro-typically and with ableist privilege too often hold this truth abstractly and at a distance. Let us hold the truth of neuro-physical diversity closely and tenderly to transform worship and build the Beloved Community.

Chalice Lighting

As we await the return of the light, we kindle the flame of Transcendence, the first of the five values of our congregation. We are in awe at each glimpse of the Oneness of everything, the great truth that lives deep within ourselves and reaches to the farthest ends of the Universe.

Call to Worship

by William F. Schulz

This is the mission of our faith:
To teach the fragile art of hospitality;
To revere both the critical mind and the generous heart;
To prove that diversity need not mean divisiveness;
And to witness to all that we must hold the whole world in our hands.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Moment for Beloved Community

This moment comes from American feminist scholar – and white woman – Peggy McIntosh. She wrote an engaging and convicting essay called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” In it she says, “White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.”

In unpacking this invisible knapsack, she lists conditions of daily experience that she once took for granted because of her whiteness. Here are three that stood out for me because I’m raising three, white UU young people:

I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

I can be pretty sure that my children’s teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others’ attitudes toward their race.

She lists 50 items in the knapsack of white privilege. I invite you to explore her full essay on the website www.racialequitytools.org

Meditation Reading

YOUR BODY IS WELCOME HERE
by Rev. Sean Neil-Barron

Your body is welcome here, all of it.
Yes, even that part. And that part. And yes, even that part.
The parts you love, and the parts you don’t.

For in this place we come with all that we are,
All that we have been,
And all that we are going to be.

Our bodies are constantly changing, cells die and cells are reborn
We respond to infections and disease
Sometimes we can divorce them from our bodies,
and other times they become permanently part of us.

Your body and all that is within it,
both wanted and not wanted, has a place here.
Our bodies join in a web of co-creation,
created and creating.

Constantly changing, constantly changing us
Scarred and tattooed, tense and relaxed
Diseased and cured, unfamiliar and intimate
Formed in infinite diversity of creation
Your body is welcome here, all of it.

So take a moment and welcome it
Take a moment to feel in it.
Take a moment, to be in it.

Sermon

My Thanksgivings

When I think back to when I first internalized that people experience the world differently, I would say it was Thanksgivings at my grandparents’ house in Corpus Christi. My grandparents hosted seven or more family members in their small townhouse, so we got cozy, and I always looked forward to spending a couple of nights together.

I usually got to sleep on something other than a bed, and when I was little that felt like an awesome adventure. Would I get one of the couches? Maybe the air mattress?

As I drifted off to sleep, I fondly remember hearing my mom and my aunt whispering urgently to one another. It was always about the same thing: the thermostat.

My granddad kept the thermometer set to 78 at night. He slept in pajamas with long sleeves and long pants; he wore fleecy house slippers. My mom and my aunt were what we called hot-natured and that made them susceptible to “sweltering in the night,” which is why they kept their thermostats at 68 at night in their houses.

At Thanksgiving, my mom and aunt would wait about thirty minutes after my grandparents had gone to bed. Then they would hover about the thermostat debating how low they could turn it without the air conditioning waking my granddad up. My aunt always got up super early in the morning to “put her face on” before anyone saw her naked visage, so she would change it back to 78 before my granddad noticed.

I was pretty much impervious to temperature as a kid. I slept fine no matter where the thermostat ended up, but I could see at Thanksgiving that other people experienced the environment differently than I did ….

Now in addition to a fun story about my family at Thanksgiving, I have just given you some important, unspoken information: I carry able-bodied, neurotypical privilege. Like white privilege, able-bodied privilege is often invisible or unknown to those who have it, because they have the luxury of drifting through life oblivious to their role in an oppressive system. Able-bodied privilege is how I made it through childhood only aware once-a-year at Thanksgiving that people experience their physical environments differently.

Like white privilege perpetuates racism, able-bodied privilege perpetuates ableism. Ableism creates an unwelcoming environment for many, many people.

I was reminded of my able-bodied privilege last month when I got a mild concussion. I was unpacking luggage in a hotel and when I raised up I banged the heck out of my head on the open door of the hotel safe. Today I am back to my own normal, but for about a month, I experienced the world differently. I had trouble focusing, and my memory was unreliable. I fatigued easily and had to pare down my schedule to get enough rest. I got overwhelmed by sensory stimulation. I felt anxious in social situations because I was not sure what would come out of my mouth, or if I would be able to keep up with what was going on around me. These symptoms temporarily changed the way I lived my life and very much changed the way I experienced worship.

Vocabulary

The Accessibility Guidelines for Unitarian Universalist Congregations define a disability as a physical or mental challenge that substantially limits one or more major life activities. There are times when using the word “disability” makes sense, but being a welcoming congregation requires openness to moving beyond binary labels. UU Minister Teresa Soto, who identifies as a disabled person, reminds us that “disability isn’t medical when it comes to being in community. It’s ‘an experience’.”

Two emerging terms reframe the medical model of disability, and cast all of us along a spectrum of physical and mental differences. These two words – neurodiversity and bodily diversity – respect differences in neurological and bodily realities as variations in a shared human experience. Importantly, neurodiversity and bodily diversity are neutral words, that emphasize that we are all in relationship, working it out together. Here’s a sample sentence for neurodiversity: AcknowLedging her son’s attention deficit disorder as neurodiverse means that she understands he approaches time and organization differently than she does – and he is often more creative and innovative than she.

Things not to say

A few more words about diction because words shape and reveal attitudes. Words matter for welcoming.

A “handicap” is not a description of a person. It is a barrier that society places on a person with a disability. So it would be appropriate to say, “Stairs will be a handicap for John, who uses a wheelchair.” It would not be appropriate to say, “John is handicapped and can’t use the stairs.” It should go without saying, but do not refer to someone BY disability.

Here is a poignant anecdote from Reverend Soto:

“Very often people call me ‘wheelchair.’ You would think: that wouldn’t happen, but it does. The bus driver will say, the wheelchair is getting off here. Well, I’m hoping to go with it. So because people call me a wheelchair sometimes, I prefer to call myself a person with a disability.”

I apologize that these next few words are coming out of my mouth, but I want to be explicit about this from the pulpit. Drop the following descriptors from your vocabulary of neuro and bodily diversity: crippled, crazy, retarded, dumb, shut-in, invalid, sufferer, or victim. Those words do harm: reinforcing stereotypes, creating false narratives, and disseminating disinformation.

Neurodiverse testimonies

Theologically, mindfulness of neuro and bodily diversity is a way to practice our first and seventh principles: the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and the interconnected web of existence of which we are a part. Theologically, welcoming does not mean adapting the existing system for a few; it means the many shake up their attitudes and their way of thinking to make room for every whole person who might be in the room–their needs And their gifts. Theologically, welcoming means relying on our second source: Words and deeds of prophetic people which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love. Specifically, we need to listen to those among us — like Reverend Soto — willing to offer the wisdom of their lived experience that we all may grow spiritually.

Another of these prophetic people is Ramon Selove, a Unitarian Universalist from Virginia who teaches biology, identifies as autistic, and trains congregations on best practices for welcoming people with autism. He wrote about neurodiversity in worship in a piece called “Preventable Suffering: A UU With Autism Confronts Coffee Hour.” He says:

Meeting people, touching people, and general noise levels during and after a worship service can be real problems for me and others with autism. During services, just when things have quieted down and we are getting into the rhythm of the service, our minister asks us to stop and greet each other, shake hands, etc. It then takes the congregation a while to calm down again and get back into the service. I personally find that break disruptive. I really wish we wouldn’t do it at all.

It is stressful for me to be in the presence of a large number of people and it is much worse when many conversations are going on at the same time. I sometimes come to church late so that I can avoid all the conversations that occur prior to the service. At the end of the service I usually remain in the seats instead of going to the “social area.” Sometimes people come to talk to me (which I appreciate very much) and sometimes I just sit alone.

Welcoming Practices

First UU of Austin already has in place some of the best practices for a neuro and bodily diverse worship, like our quiet room with a window into the sanctuary, the choice of listening to the service from the fellowship hall, the large-print orders of service, streaming the service on Facebook, and the hearing loop system, among other things.

There is more to do, and that is all right. Let’s ask ourselves as a community of neuro and bodily diverse people: How could we do this better? If we can’t do it today, how can we work towards it and what would it take to do it in the future? We welcome discussion and suggestions. Let us know how to welcome you.

Reverend Helen McFadyen, coordinator of the UU Accessibility and Inclusion ministry, notes that true inclusion and welcome take sustained commitment, and that some of the most important changes are attitudinal.

One step we can all take, beginning today, is to make welcoming a spiritual practice. Some of our middle school youth are learning how to do this as part of their Crossing Paths RE curriculum. I offer you the Eight Practices of Welcoming that they are learning:

Be fully present
Be curious
Be open to being changed
Be comfortable with discomfort
Be an appreciative listener
Be light-hearted
Be gentle
Be yourself

Return to Thanksgiving and link church to sanctuary

At bottom, hospitality and welcome are not about social graces. They are about seeing the divine in every person. They are about Mutual Reverence. We call the room we are all in together right now “The Sanctuary.” “Sanctuary” can mean simply a place that a person can go to avoid harm. But it is more than that. The word “sanctuary” comes from “sanctus,” which is the latin word for “holy.” Let us make this place holy for all who seek it.

Most sermons during the past 19 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 happens in families

November 25, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 24, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In time for Thanksgiving, we will talk about family dynamics, focusing on “cut-off”, when someone decides they can’t be around the rest of the family.

Chalice Lighting

We light the fire of Truth and ask to be clear, wise, and humble enough to admit when we don’t know. We kindle the warmth of community and ask for open heartedness and patience. We are grateful to the Spirit of Life and ask to learn the secret to loving and being loved.

Call to Worship

May we be reminded here of our highest asperations and inspired to bring our gifts of love and service to the altar of humanity. May we know once again we are not isolated beings but connected in mystery and miracle to the universe, to this community, and to each other.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

THE LEGACY OF CARING
Thandeka

Despair is my private pain
Born from what I have failed to say
failed to do, failed to overcome.

Be still my inner self
let me rise to you, let me reach
down into your pain
and soothe you.

I turn to you to renew my life
I turn to the world, the streets of the city,
the worn tapestries of brokerage firms,
drug dealers, private estates
personal things in the bag lady’s cart
rage and pain in the faces that turn from me
afraid of their own inner worlds.

This common world I love anew;
as the life blood of generations
who refused to surrender their humanity
in an inhumane world,
courses through my veins.

From within this world
my despair is transformed to hope
and I begin anew the legacy of caring.

Sermon Notes

WHAT HAPPENS IN FAMILIES

Some of us are going to gather with family at some point during the holidays. It’s likely that there will be someone missing, maybe because now they live too far away, or they have to work, or they are with another part of the family. At some tables, though, there will be one, maybe even more, who are absent because they aren’t choosing to be part of the family right now. Family therapists call this “Family cut-off”.

I want to talk all about gratitude today, and I’ll get to it, but I do also want to talk about the reality of families.

Families.”are lovely, and they can be hard. Fault lines exist within all families. For thoseá of us in this sanctuary, religion is often a big one. Our families may hold different views, more conservative beliefs. Some of their understandings of faith say that their God demands that they attempt to convince us of those beliefs. If our beliefs aren’t correct, they have to try to save us. Hopefully they won’t do it at the holiday meal. Our faith invites us to stand up for what we believe, but we don’t have to stay in the debating society.

For those of us in this sanctuary in Texas, sometimes what shows up as a fault line is politics. It’s going to be hard to focus on the turkey instead of saying “Do you see it now?” You might be able to find common ground by saying “Boy, I sure do miss the GOP of fifteen years ago.” Common ground is usually easy. What TV shows you’re enjoying, what the kids are up to. Babies, travel. Common ground doesn’t mean that you meet in the middle, that you have to compromise your values. Common ground just means things everyone cares about.

Money is another fault line. Someone borrowed money and didn’t pay it back. Someone pays for things all the time and is starting to resent it. Some family members went into business together and it didn’t work out.

Styles of child rearing are another fault line. Some members of the family may not approve of others’ methods of discipline, or lack of discipline.

Maybe a new spouse is jealous of the children, or the ex. Maybe a spouse hates one of their in-laws, and something blows.

Pressure on any of these fault lines can cause arguments. Arguments can be survived, can pass. Arguing, in fact, is the style of communication in some families. A cut off can happen because of an argument, for sure. Or it can happen because people get exhausted with a difficult person. You put up with their behavior for so long, and then you decide “no more.” You might phase them out, little by little, or cut them off suddenly.

Some people cut themselves off from their family because the family knows their past, knows them before they started their new life, and they just don’t want to see that past in their family’s eyes. Maybe they are transitioning, and their family keeps using their old name, dead naming them in an effort to get them to be their old self. Maybe they just want a total new start for some other reason, and they don’t want reminders of their former life.

Clashes in loyalties can cause a cut off. As I said, if someone hates your new spouse, your new spouse isn’t going to want to go to the family. Then you have to choose. Cut offs can happen when someone feels they’ve been slighted. Insulted or belittled. Sometimes alcohol is involved. When someone feels slighted, an apology is in order. I’ll talk about that in a bit.

Abuse tears families apart. There is so much pain, violence, chaos. Who knew about it? Who reported it? Were they believed? Was the abuser believed instead? Who got to stay in the family?

Lastly, it happens so often that caring for a sick or elderly parent or for a sick child can Cause someone to get thrown out, or to leave the family. Especially if there is money involved. Death is a crazy time, and people can fight instead of feeling their grief. Lots of families pull together and handle these times well. More often, they try to handle them well, and they do, mostly. They have to get over the cracks that occur as the stresses multiply.

Life in families can be hard. Being cut off by family members is one of the greatest sources of pain. Especially when you’re not sure why you’re cut off. People feel shame, confusion, depression, stress, and a sinking feeling of disempowerment. What do you do?

One of the greatest sources of pain is being cut off by family members. Regardless of the reasons, people who are cut off feel shame, confusion, stress, and sometimes even depression and a feeling of being disempowered. This is particularly the case if no explanation is provided for the cutoff. Relatives may cut each other off for months, years, and sometimes even a lifetime with little to no explanation.

How do you stop the pain of being the one who is cut off? Usually, you have one big chance to make a good apology. What is that? Let’s talk about that.

A good apology is all about the other person’s feelings and they experience. It doesn’t matter what you actually said, or what you meant. What matters is what they heard. You have to be slow and wide as an ocean. Patient. Even if they are unreasonable, if you want to reconnect with them, you stand in their shoes, in their feelings.

You say something like “I’m so sorry that what I said felt awful to you. Can you help me understand how it was for you?” You don’t self-justify, you don’t let your emotions of being sorry overwhelm whatever emotions they are having. The focus is on your actions, not on the other person’s response.

For example, “I’m sorry that you felt hurt by what I said at the party last night,” is not an apology. Try instead, “I’m sorry about what I said at the party last night. It was insensitive and uncalled for.” Own your behavior and apologize for it, period.

A good apology does not have the word “but” after “I’m sorry.”

Even if you are only 23 percent at fault, you can make a good apology for your part in the break.

After a good apology, you try to take corrective action, and try not to have that happen again.

A true apology should not serve to silence another person (“I said I’m sorry at least 10 times, so why are you still bringing up the affair?”).

Nor should an apology be used as a quick way out to get yourself out of a difficult conversation or dispute.

A true apology should not be offered to make you feel better if it risks making the hurt party feel worse.

Not all apologies are welcome. Making amends may be part of your healing process, but find another way to heal if the other person doesn’t want to hear from you.

Your being right or righteous doesn’t matter. Their being unreasonable doesn’t matter. Be right or be happy.

Now, gratitude. Be grateful for the family you do have, bio family or chosen family.

There is great pain in families, and there can also be joy and strength. We are grateful when someone attempts to make a real apology, or when someone is willing to listen to ours. We can be grateful that our faith does not put the soul burden on us to convince others of our beliefs. I am grateful for this community, and I will be here Thursday afternoon to have a holiday meal with any of you who would like to come.

Most sermons during the past 19 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

Paying Attention

November 17, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
November 17, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Sometimes our lives can be so fast paced that we fail to notice the beauty all around us. Societal turmoil keeps us from noticing the suffering of others. We fail to cherish the moments with those we love. We will explore mindfulness and directing our attention toward all that we value.

Chalice Lighting

We light the fire of Truth and ask to be clear, wise, and humble enough to admit when we don’t know. We kindle the warmth of community and ask for open heartedness and patience. We are grateful to the Spirit of Life and ask to learn the secret to loving and being loved.

Call to Worship

REVERENT ATTENTION
by Rev. Chris Jimmerson

We gather in reverence
Mindful of the gift of each other and this our beloved community.

We gather in courage
Focused on doing justice and growing the beloved community in our world.

We gather in solemnity
Mindful of the sufferingJ sorrow and injustice still present in our world.

We gather with gratefulness
Expanding our awareness of the great beauty and wonder also to be found in our world.

We gather to worship
Turning our attention now to the sacred interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

from “AN ALTAR IN THE WORLD”
by Barbara Brown Taylor

The practice of paying attention really does take time. Most of us move so quickly that our surroundings become no more than the blurred scenery we fly past on our way to somewhere else. We pay attention to the speedometer, the wristwatch, the cell phone, the list of things to do, all of which feed our illusion that life is manageable. Meanwhile, none of them meets the first criterion for reverence, which is to remind us that we are not gods. If anything, these devices sustain the illusion that we might yet be gods-if only we could find some way to do more faster.

Sermon

“Your attention is like a combination spotlight and vacuum cleaner: It highlights what it lands on and then sucks it into your brain-for better or worse,”

That’s a quote from psychologist, senior fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and New York Times best-selling author, Dr, Rick Hanson,

We’ll come back to Dr. Hanson’s ideas on how to grow the good in our brains through self-directed neuroplasticity a little later.

For the month of November, our religious education classes and activities have been exploring the question, “What does it mean to be a people of attention”, so this morning in worship we will turn our attention to, well, attention!

With so much vying for our attention these days, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed and distracted, We can end up just sort of moving through our hurried days on autopilot, simply reacting without much conscious thought or mindfulness of our lives, our world, our loved ones,

I caught myself doing this just the other day,

I’d had a long and somewhat frustrating day at the church, having spent much of it struggling both online and over over the phone with a financial institution that seemed to be fighting mightily not to release some funds that properly belonged to the church,

Then, after I left my office here at the church, I made an evening pastoral visit, ran several errands, including picking up laundry from the dry cleaners and finally made it home after dark and late for dinner,

My spouse, Wayne, was on the couch, reading and curled up with our Basenji dogs, Louisa Mae Alcott and Benjamin Franklin, The dogs both jumped up to greet me,

I walked right past them, went into the bedroom, closing the door behind me, hung the laundry in the closet, went into the bathroom and completed my nighttime get ready for bed routine, got my robe on and only then remerged into the living room, suddenly realizing that I had absentmindedly walked past everybody without so much as an even perfunctory greeting.

Wayne was kind enough not to give me a hard time about this.

Louisa and Ben not so much – a lot of complaining and fussing at me ensued until I had finally completed a proper greeting with them.

And it’s not surprising that we can easily lapse into inattentive states like this in situations both small and more significant.

We have so much competing for our attention these days.

Our busy schedules
Social media
Social division
Cell phones
Text messages
Email messages
The Twitter monster in the White House
Impeachment hearings
Etc., Etc. Etc.

A recent study found that on average each single minute results in 204 million emails, 16 million text messages and 350,000 new tweets.

The average smartphone user unlocks their phone in response to a notification between 80 and 110 times per day.

Columbia University professor Tim Wu says that we are being subjected to a multi-billion dollar industry that devises ever more ingenious and intrusive ways to farm and monetize our attention.

He calls them the attention merchants, who offer us “free” services and content – social media, search engines, mass media that use targeted ads, clickbait and sponsored articles and videos to lure our attention.

Thus having ensnared us into a distracted state, wherein we’re most susceptible to advertising, they “harvest our attention for commercial exploitation”.

His words. I don’t think Wu thinks very highly of the attention merchants!

Here are some ways Wu and others say that we can try to avoid having our attention distracted by these types of tactics so that we can focus instead on our values, relationships, goals – just the moments of our lives we may otherwise be missing.

Limit accessing news, social media and the like to at most twice per day
Turn our smarts phones off when not expecting urgent or emergency calls or texts. Just check them a few times each day.
Shut down our email programs and only check email at a few set times every day. (I sense a trend here).
Avoid “clickbait”: articles or videos with sensational and/or controversial titles or descriptions.
Look to see if a link contains the phrase “sponsored article”. If does, don’t click on it.
Ignore Twitter Monster Tweets.

OK, actually, I said that last one. Well, Rachel Maddow and I did.

Anyway, it turns out that gaining as much control as we can over where we focus our attention is important to our mental, physical and spiritual well-being.

Dr. Rick Hanson, whose quote I read at the beginning, describes how neurological research has shown that where we direct our attention can actually alter the structures and neural patterns of our brains.

For example, London cab drivers develop thicker neural layers in their hippocampus, which is associated with visual, spatial memory. This is likely from them having been required to pay great attention to London’s spaghetti snarl of streets in order to find their way around.

Long-term meditators have been found to have changes in the brain associated with reduced anxiety and stress, along with several other neurological changes thought to have enduring psychological benefits.

In general, directing our attention mostly toward negative thoughts, emotions and experiences wires the brain in ways that lead to greater reactivity, anxiety, depression, a focus on threats and an inclination toward anger, sadness and guilt.

Conversely, directing our attention toward the generally positive aspects of our lives can lay down neural patterns conducive to resilience, realistic optimism, positive mood, a sense of worth and less stress and anxiety.

As Dr. Hanson says it, in perhaps a bit of an oversimplification, “Mental states become neural traits.”

Attention is also vital to our relationships with our loved ones, as well as at work, in our larger community and here at the church.

Sociologist, clinical psychologist and MIT professor Sherry Turkle has studied this and found that relationships depend on authentic conversation. She also found that authentic conversation requires us to give our undivided attention to others, as well as depends upon our own capacity for self-reflection.

So just a couple of practical notes here. If you are at home talking with your spouse, and you take your smart phone out and start looking at the internet or checking Facebook, you are not paying attention. You are not having authentic conversation.

If you meet your friend for lunch, and the entire time they are sharing something with you, you are mentally preparing what you plan to say next, you are not paying attention. You may be having a competition or an argument, but you are not having authentic conversation.

Now, I mentioned that capacity for self-reflection, paying attention to what is going on inside ourselves is also important.

This can be harder than it might seem. Particularly when strong emotions have been provoked, we tend to just react in the moment. We don’t stop to reengage the reasoning areas of our brains.

Here’s an example, from an experience I had just recently.

Last Sunday, I sat in on the early service. Wayne and I sat over on that side way in the back, which I have not done since the new section of the sanctuary was completed.

The singing and music during the time for meditation and lighting candles in the window was absolutely beautiful.

And suddenly, I found myself with tears in my eyes. I couldn’t stop them. The story I told myself is that it was the beautiful music and that I always am touched by this part of the service anyway, and I hadn’t seen how magnificent the new area of the sanctuary really is from the vantage point of being across from it and that I have been feeling blessed lately more than ever to being doing ministry in this place and with this religious community.

And that was all true and all correct. And all of that was only part of the true story. The emotions were more complicated than that.

The other part of the story is that I had just officiated at a memorial service the day before and that in the days and weeks before, both as a minister and in my personal life, I had spent a good deal of time with folks who were grieving and/or suffering in other ways.

So, when I had time later that Sunday to go back to that experience and pay attention to what had been going on within me, I discovered that I had internalized some of the grief of other folks that wasn’t really mine to take on.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean we shouldn’t feel our own empathetic emotions when we witness other people suffering.

And it can be very easy to unconsciously absorb some of the grief and suffering of others. In extreme cases, this is called secondary trauma.

I just mean I think we have to pay attention to the possibility of this happening because if we don’t

those feelings will find a different and potentially more destructive way to get out anyway and
I do not think we can be as fully present for our our loved ones and others who may need us if we have not dealt with this within ourselves.

And this need to examine what is going on within ourselves plays out in so many settings.

So, for instance, when we find ourselves angry with someone else … when we are feeling anxious about something, if we stop, pay attention to what we are feeling and the story we are telling ourselves as a result, what we often discover is that there is a more accurate and less dire story than our negative emotions are causing us to construct.

One of the pernicious things about negativity is that it tends to be self-reinforcing.

Clinical psychologist and mindfulness coach, Tara Brach has a practical technique with the acronym RAIN for bringing our awareness back to a closer version of reality when we have been overwhelmed by such emotions.

R – Recognize what is happening. Pay attention to the emotions cOIning up within us, as well as any physical reactions such as shortness of breath or muscle tightness. Don’t judge them, just acknowledge them, which in and of itself sometimes reduces their power over us.

A – Allow life to be just as it is. Let yourself experience the feelings and the situation as it is. That does not mean we may not work for change later, but first we have to accept what the reality is.

I – Investigate inner experience with kindness. What story am I telling myself and is it accurate? What within me or in my life most needs my attention? In what ways am I judging myself and causing shame? How can I treat myself and others with the same kindness I would show to a hurt child?

N – Non-Identification. I am not the current situation. My present emotions are not the totality of all that I can and will feel. I have the agency to rewrite this story.

So, Dr. Brach’s RAIN is a practical way to stay mindful.

And I think contemplative practices can also help us become more capable of remaining mindful.

Meditation, journaling prayer. And prayer does not have to be directed to a higher power but can just be a way of focusing our intentions and attention.

Just sitting on the ground and truly paying attention to the intricacies of life all around us.

Noticing the sound of the water when we shower in the morning. Stopping to pay attention to how the sunlight feels on our face when we first walk out the door.

Stop. Pause. Notice. It can be that simple.

Dr. Hanson offers another practical way to draw our attention into the present moment and to focus it upon positive experience.

I’d like to invite you now to engage with me in his meditation for self-directed, positive neuroplasticity.

I invite you to close your eyes – close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and then follow along as I read Dr. Hanson’s guidance for this meditation.

Have: Find a pleasant sensation that’s already present in the foreground or background of your awareness.

Perhaps a relaxed feeling of breathing, a comfortable warmth or coolness, or a bodily sense of vitality or aliveness. Perhaps warmth you sense from those around you.

The sensation could be subtle or mild.

There may be other sensations, or thoughts or feelings, that are uncomfortable, and that’s alright.

Just let go of those for now and bring your attention to the pleasant sensation.

Enrich: Stay with the pleasant sensation. Explore it a little. What’s it is like? Help it last. Keep your attention on it.

Come back to it if your attention wanders. Open to this sensation in your mind and body.

Without stressing or straining, see if it can become even fuller, even more intense.

Let the pleasure of this sensation help keep it going.

See if you can embody it through small actions, such as shifting your body to breathe more fully or smiling softly.

Absorb: Intend and sense that the pleasant sensation is sinking into you. Imagine the experience weaving its way into you like water soaking into a sponge.

Let the sensation become a part of you.

In this absorbing, let there be a sense of receiving, softening, sinking into the experience as it sinks into you.

As we come out of the meditation now, I hope Dr. Hanson’s exercise gave you at least a sense of the potential power of paying deep attention to the good. If it did not this time, I hope you will give it a few more tries.

The latin roots of our word, “attention”, mean “to stretch toward”. Where we place our attention may well determine the direction that calls us into our future.

I leave you with words from writer and poet, Annie Dillard.

“At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening … “

As you go back out into the world now may your attention be drawn to that which is life giving, that which nourishes our soul.

Most sermons during the past 19 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

How to comfort someone who is suffering

November 11, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 10, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

“How to Comfort Someone Who is Suffering” Lessons from the recent “Lunch with Meg” study of the book of Job from the Hebrew Bible.

Chalice Lighting

We light the fire of Truth and ask to be clear, wise, and humble enough to admit when we don’t know. We kindle the warmth of community and ask for open heartedness and patience. We are grateful to the Spirit of Life and ask to learn the secret to loving and being loved.

Call to Worship

Thich Nhat Hanh
Water flows from high in the mountains.

Water runs deep in the Earth.
Miraculously, water comes to us,
and sustains all life.

Water and Sun
green these plants.

When the rain of compassion falls,
even a desert becomes an
immense, green ocean.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

EARTH TEACH ME
From the Ute Indians of North America

Earth teach me stillness
as the grasses are stilled with light.

Earth teach me suffering
as old stones suffer with memory.

Earth teach me caring
as parents who secure their young.

Earth teach me courage
as the tree which stands all alone.

Earth teach me limitation
as the ant which crawls on the ground.

Earth teach me freedom
as the eagle which soars in the sky

Earth teach me resignation
as the leaves which die in the fall.

Earth teach me regeneration
as the seed which rises in the spring.

Earth teach me to forget myself
as melted snow forgets its life.

Earth teach me to remember kindness
as dry fields weep with rain.

Sermon

HOW TO COMFORT SOMEONE WHO IS SUFFERING

I’m going to talk about being present with someone who is suffering, and we’re going to talk about the sufferings of Job, from the oldest book in the Hebrew Scriptures, and we’re going to talk a little about how the way Christians have read the book of Job shapes their thinking about Jesus’ suffering, and how all of that has shaped the way people around the world talk to those who are suffering. So that’s the map for today. Job to Jesus to how to comfort (and how NOT to comfort) people who are suffering.

Let me start by reminding you of the plot of this book, which is, as I said, the oldest one, and it deals with the oldest question of humanity: why do people suffer bad things?

The opening scene is in the heavenly realms, where Satan strolls in to where God is watching his good man Job. Job is the richest man in the East, he has ten sons and daughters, sheep, cattle, health and regular family parties. “Look at that man,” says God. “He loves me and blesses me.”

“Well, of course he does,” says Satan, (whose name translates to “The Accuser,” like the prosecutor in a trial. “He’s got everything! Just take all that goodness away and he won’t love you so much.” So God does that. All the children killed, all the crops ruined, the cattle stolen, and his health gone. All the way gone.

Then for the next 30 chapters, Job wrestles, struggles, strives with God over this completely undeserved suffering. Three or four of his friends come to comfort him. For the first week, they sit in respectful silence while Job cries out to God that he is a good man, and he doesn’t deserve any of this. That is a good way to be a comforter. To sit with someone in respectful silence, not defining their suffering for them, not comparing their suffering to others ( Hey, it could be worse,) not trying to explain it or minimize it.

Then they start talking. They say all the things that people say to folks who are in pain and loss.

“No one’s really good, you probably did something you’re being punished for.” “Maybe you are good, but maybe your children did bad things.”

“Maybe you are being tested, to see if your faith in God is strong enough.” “Life is like a school, and there are lessons we must learn.”

They skipped the one I’ve heard, which is “I wonder why you wanted to attract this kind of suffering into your life?”

They did not talk of past lives and karma, which is how some people deal with suffering.

You may have heard the phrase “the patience of Job,” but he wasn’t that patient. He yelled at God, questioned God, defended himself and demanded an in-person answer to his question of why this was happening to him when he was such a good person.

For thirty some chapters the argument rages, as the comforters insist he must know he deserves this in some way and he holds his ground. They suggest that his very self-defense and protestations of righteousness are themselves sinful, and that his questioning and anger at God are sinful too. The words of Job’s comforters could be said from any Jewish or Christian pulpit in the world. Their poetry is beautiful. Then, in chapter 39, God comes and says to the comforters “Who are you who obscure my plans with words without knowledge?…… where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand, who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know….” The voice goes on to say things like “are you friends with the water-spurting whale? Do you know how to open the storehouses of the snow?

God lays out credentials as the creator of all things, but he doesn’t answer Job’s question. Job gets ten new children, and his cattle are replaced. He gets his health back. But there is never any admission that what happened to him was the result of God trying to prove that he could take all Job’s good things away and Job wouldn’t abandon God. Which he did not. He yelled and demanded, but he never turned his back. God doesn’t look that good in this old book. Its message should be that yelling and demanding answers is a faithful act, and that no one has the answer to why bad things happen. We’re. All. Wrong.

People can’t live with that, though, so they talk about Job’s patient suffering. Christians talk the same way about Jesus, who really was killed by the military and religious leaders of an empire, but it’s a lot better for the empires of this world to say he was killed by his father, who needed blood in order to forgive sins. This makes the violence an intimate violence instead of state violence. They say Jesus went willingly to be tortured and killed because it was God’s will. Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, says Jesus was God’s answer to Job, along the lines of “I made you suffer for no good reason, so here, I’ll come suffer too. You were righteous, I’m righteous, and we both suffer.” This is not widely taught.

What is widely taught is that God has a reason, and that we should suffer whatever we suffer with patience and humility. This translates, unfortunately, to intimate violence within families being given an almost religious meaning. Suffer patiently and God will reward you. You will be like Job and Jesus. What is widely taught in Christianity around the world is that the father did violence to his child to pay for your badness. Submission to the violence, obedience to the situation is seen as love, is held up as virtue. Fathers have their reasons.

“What happens when violent realities are transubstantiated into spiritual teachings? “You’ve heard it or said it yourself. A mother loses her son to suicide. In an effort to comfort her you say, ‘God has a purpose in this. He sends pain to make us strong. You may not feel it now, but you will learn to give thanks for this experience, because through it, God will strengthen your faith.’ “These words take the grieving mother away from the reality of her lost child. Tragedy is renamed a spiritual trial, designed by God for the mother’s edification. God becomes the sender of torture, who injures us then comforts us — a perverse love.”

Rita Nakashima Brock, Proverbs of Ashes

And in personalizing this violence, the role of the state and its violence is smoothed out and hidden, where, if it were help up, Christianity might have always taught that resisting the violence of the state was an act of faith and love for the world and its people.

How do we comfort those who suffer? Presence. That’s the biggest thing. Be there. Do something useful if they need it done. Listen to them talk if they want to. Don’t explain their suffering, or ask them what they are learning from this lesson, or compare it to something that happened to you. Everyone is living their own life, and even if the exact same thing happened to you, their experience of it will be different from yours.

Further notes

From its language, the oldest book in the Canon. The story of an epic battle, not between God and Satan, but a battle of a person within themselves, theologically, wanting to love God and yet haven’t gotten attacked at all as he expected God to act.

C.S. Lewis puts his wages on a God who holds goodness and pain in a paradox. The Problem of Pain demonstrates a more distant, less emotional reaction to humanity’s situation, while A Grief Observed reads like a psalm of lament from within pain itself. The two texts compliment one another by identifying parts of our struggle, the intellectual and physical difficulty life will bring, and how pain can bend us toward a loving God if we let it.

The Problem

From the loss of his mother at a young age to the untimely death of his wife Joy, Lewis experienced pain as God’s megaphone, as he says, to rouse a deaf world. Pain leads us somewhere – to something. That something is a life of faith. Just as there is importance placed in a strong rope when you’re dangling from a precipice, faith is the only way to pull ourselves out from a life of desperation, a life of anxiety and need, a life of doubt and insecurity. But how can faith be present if we don’t realize we need something beyond our own person? How do we believe unless we recognize how frail our efforts have become to maintain everything just so?

Lewis says that we must understand our fallenness. He interprets the fall of humanity not only as an opportunity for evil to thrive, but also the choice to ignore the purpose of pain. Christianity creates the problem of pain because it provides hope for righteousness and love. Without the revelation that God loves us, the painful world would make sense. Pain would have no cause. Let’s face it: it’s much easier to dismiss God or to regard him only as an airman regards his parachute, as Lewis says, there only if he needs it but he hopes he never does. When we run headlong into God, Lewis contends that pain is demanded. Why? “How impossible it is to enact the surrender of the self by doing what we like,” he says. The truth is that at the heart of God’s love is a suffering Messiah and followers who take up crosses and follow in like fashion.

“If I knew any way of escape I would crawl through sewers to find it,” Lewis writes. “I am not arguing that pain is not painful. Pain hurts. That is what the word means. I am only trying to show that the old Christian doctrine of being made “perfect through suffering” is not incredible. To prove it palatable is beyond my design.”

PROVERBS OF ASHES

I counsel some of the religious kids, and the more attached they are to traditional ideas about Jesus, the more likely they are to think of their abuse as ‘good’ for them, as a trial designed for a reason, as pain that makes them like Jesus. They are often in denial about the amount of pain they live with. Violence denies presence and suffocates spirit. Violence robs us of knowledge of life and its intrinsic value; it steals our awareness of beauty, of complexity, of our bodies. Violence ignores vulnerability, dependence and interdependence. A person who acts violently disregards self and other as distinct, obliterating the spaces in which spirit breathes. We can resist and redress violence by acting for justice and by being present: present to one another, present to beauty, present to the fire at the heart of things, the spirit that gives breath to life.

We show how theological claims about Jesus’ death have become proverbs of ashes. We turn our faces toward a different theology.

“Pat,” I said, “the only way you could have helped Anola more is if the whole Christian tradition taught something other than self-sacrificing love. If it didn’t preach that to be like Jesus we have to give up our lives in faithful obedience to the will of God.”

“This is how I feel about the church. I love the church. It’s my home and has been my family’s home for generations. And I love the liturgy in all its beauty. At the same time, I feel something is dreadfully wrong. When I preside at the Eucharist, am I not reenacting images and ideas that tell people God wants them to sacrifice their lives? Am I right to do this? Does this give them life? Now when I pray in the church before the congregation arrives, I ask God to forgive me for performing the Eucharistic rite.”

P. 21 went to my priest twenty years ago. I’ve been trying to follow his advice. The priest said I should rejoice in my sufferings because they bring me closer to Jesus. He said, ‘Jesus suffered because he loved us.’ He said, ‘If you love Jesus, accept the beatings and bear them gladly, as Jesus bore the cross.’ I’ve tried, but I’m not sure anymore. My husband is turning on the kids now. Tell me, is what the priest told me true?” Lucia’s deep black eyes searched my hazel ones. I wanted to look away, but couldn’t. I wanted to speak, but my mouth wouldn’t work. It felt stuffed with cotton. I couldn’t get the words to form. I was a liberal Christian. I didn’t believe God demanded obedience or that Jesus’ death on the cross brought about our salvation. I hadn’t forgotten Anola Reed, though I thought of my theology as far from hers. But just that past Sunday I had preached a sermon on the willingness of love to suffer. I preached that Jesus’ life revealed the nature of love and that love would save us. I’d said that love bears all things. Never breaks relationship. Keeps ties of connection to others even when they hurt you. Places the needs of the other before concern for the self. In the stillness of that moment, I could see in Lucia’s eyes that she knew the answer to her question, just as I did. If I answered Lucia’s question truthfully, I would have to rethink my theology. More than that, I would have to face choices I was making in my own life. After a long pause, I found my voice. “It isn’t true,” I said to her. “God does not want you to accept being beaten by your husband. God wants you to have your life, not to give it up. God wants you to protect your life and your children’s lives.”

I could see that when theology presents Jesus’ death as God’s sacrifice of his beloved child for the sake of the world, it teaches that the highest love is sacrifice. To make sacrifice or to be sacrificed is virtuous and redemptive. Do we really believe that God is appeased by cruelty, and wants nothing more than our obedience? It becomes imperative that we ask this question when we examine how theology sanctions human cruelty. “If God is imagined as a fatherly torturer, earthly parents are also justified, perhaps even required, to teach through violence. Children are instructed to understand their submission to pain as a form of love. Behind closed doors, in our own community, spouses and children are battered by abusers who justify their actions as necessary, loving discipline. ‘I only hit her because I love her.’ ‘I’m doing this for your own good.’ The child or the spouse who believes that obedience is what God wants may put up with physical or sexual abuse in an effort to be a good Christian. “Theology that defines virtue as obedience to God suppresses the virtue of revolt. A woman being battered by her husband will be counseled to be obedient, as Jesus was to God. After all, Eve brought sin into the world by her disobedience. A good woman submits to her husband as he submits to God.

“When Jesus’ crucifixion serves as a metaphor for spiritual processes of transformation, or a mystical illumination of God’s abiding presence, violence is justified as sacred. In this mode, the infliction of pain can be re-inscribed as a holy action. Violence can be justified as a disciplining of the spirit.

But Nelle took a different tack. She spoke about the power of listening. She said there is a quality of listening that is possible among a circle of human beings, who by their attentiveness to one another create a space in which each person is able to give voice to the truth of her life.

I was haunted by Sylvia’s conviction that God was letting her be hurt, the passivity and resignation it elicited from her. I heard such ideas from youth struggling with the violence in their lives, pain inflicted by the deliberate cruelty of their parents or others they loved. Believing in the benevolent protection of a powerful God, they interpreted violence as divine intent, pain for their own good. And the Christian tradition reinforced this impulse by upholding Jesus as a son who was willing to undergo horrible violence out of love for his father, in obedience to his father’s will.

When the Christian tradition represents Jesus’ death as foreordained by God, as necessary to the divine plan for salvation, and as obediently accepted by Jesus the Son out of love for God the Father, God is made into a child abuser or a bystander to violence against his own child. The seal of abuse is placed on their relationship when they are made into a unity of being. If the two are one, Jesus can be selfless, can give himself totally to God, a willing lamb to slaughter. I thought of this system as cosmic child abuse.

Never underestimate how much assistance, how much satisfaction, how much comfort, how much soul and transcendence there might be in a well-made taco and a cold bottle of beer are called at certain moments to comfort people who are enduring some trauma.

Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

Many of us don’t know how to react in such situations, but others do. In the first place, they just show up. They provide a ministry of presence. Next, they don’t compare. The sensitive person understands that each person’s ordeal is unique and should not be compared to anyone else’s. Next, they do the practical things–making lunch, dusting the room, washing the towels. Finally, they don’t try to minimize what is going on. They don’t attempt to reassure with false, saccharine sentiments. They don’t say that the pain is all for the best. They don’t search for silver linings. They do what wise souls do in the presence of tragedy and trauma. They practice a passive activism. They don’t bustle about trying to solve something that cannot be solved. The sensitive person grants the sufferer the dignity of her own process. She lets the sufferer define the meaning of what is going on. She just sits simply through the nights of pain and darkness, being practical, human, simple, and direct.

David Brooks, The Road to Character Tags: comfort, sensitive, sensitivity

Most sermons during the past 19 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

Battle for Harvard

November 4, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 3, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

“Jedediah Morse and the Battle for Harvard.” Another juicy slice of Unitarian history. What about this story from the 19th century might still be affecting Unitarians and Universalism?

Chalice Lighting

We light the fire of Truth and ask to be clear, wise, and humble enough to admit when we don’t know. We kindle the warmth of community and ask for open heartedness and patience. We are grateful to the Spirit of Life and ask to learn the secret to loving and being loved.

Call to Worship

A PERSON WILL WORSHIP SOMETHING
Ralph Waldo Emmerson

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 out.

That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and 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.

Meditation Reading

IT MATTERS WHAT WE BELIEVE
Sophia Lyon Fahs

Some beliefs are like walled gardens. They encourage exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged.

Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper sympathies.

Some beliefs are like shadows, clouding children’s days with fears of unknown calamities.

Other beliefs are like sunshine, blessing children with the warmth of happiness.

Some beliefs are divisive, separating the saved from the unsaved, friends from enemies.

Other beliefs are bonds in a world community, where sincere differences beautify the pattern.

Some beliefs are like blinders, shutting off the power to choose one’s own direction.

Other beliefs are like gateways opening wide vistas for exploration.

Some beliefs weaken a person’s selfhood. They blight the growth of resourcefulness.

Other beliefs nurture self confidence and enrich the feeling of personal worth.

Some beliefs are rigid, like the body of death, impotent in a changing world.

Other beliefs are pliable, like the young sapling, ever growing with the upward thrust of life.

Sermon

“JEDEDIAH MORSE AND THE BATTLE FOR HARVARD”

The opening scene in the birth of American Unitarianism as an organized denomination took place in 1805 in the halls of Harvard University.

I love reading church history. We need a Donimick Dunn or Emily Jane Fox to write about it for Vanity Fair magazine. There is intrigue and the clash of personalities, vanity and ambition, integrity and the clear sense that what is obvious to one group seems dangerously misguided to another.

In 1803 the man who had been Hollis Professor of Divinity died, leaving the post open. Ministers were trained by the Divinity professor. There was no Divinity School before this. Ministers were trained during their college years. Many went on for further study in Germany. At Harvard, the Hollis Professor of Divinity had been a moderate Calvinist. If it strikes you that you aren’t completely clear any more about what Calvinism is, I’m about to remind you. John Calvin, in the 1550’s, revived theological ideas of Augustine of Hippo, who was an Ethiopian Bishop of the Christian church in the early 400’s.

“TULIP” is the mnemonic device by which students remember the Calvinist precepts:

T Total depravity of human nature

U Unconditional election of the saints

L Limited atonement

I Irresistible grace of God

P Perseverance of the saints

Total depravity of human nature: the belief that humans are basically bent, and we choose to do destructive things more easily than we choose to do good. No amount of peace education will take the warring out of us, no amount of coddling or challenging in school or at home will take the crime and stupidity out. Mostly we are inclined to choose selfishly, and it is mainly the fear of punishment that keeps us between the lines. This has been the most difficult of my Presbyterian beliefs to give up. I find it a moderately cheerful and relaxing doctrine. If we’re bent to the extent that it’s easier to choose to do destructive things than creative and live-giving things, we’re pretty amazing whether or not we’ve built hospitals or cured cancer. We’re doing well to have gone this long without knocking over a gas station, we’re doing amazingly well to be pretty good people most of the time. Now I try to believe in the basic goodness of people, but it opens one up to more episodes of disappointment.
Unconditional election of the saints: God, for his glory, chose some from the beginning of time to be saved. It follows logically that there are some who are chosen to be damned to eternal punishment. This is the “double predestination” that they somewhat sheepishly teach in Calvinist seminaries. Predestination does NOT mean that everything is foreordained by God, fated, only that the end of things is foreordained. Free will can operate in-between. Your end is the only thing that is predestined. Over the centuries, many Christians shrank from the harshness of this doctrine. After Augustine proposed it in the 5th century, a church council met to declare it “anathema” which is Greek for really really icky and not true.

Limited atonement: Also following logically from the election of some to be saved: that Jesus died, then for those who are chosen to be saved, and NOT for those who weren’t chosen.

“Irresistible grace of God,” If God chooses you to be among the elect, the saved, you will be, because God’s will is always done. If you get saved, it is because you were one of the ones chosen. Don’t worry that you are getting saved all for nought, acting right even though you are doomed to damnation. If you are saved, you are one of the elect. If you refuse to believe, if you don’t act right, if you don’t believe, it is because God’s grace isn’t reaching out to you. If it were reaching out to you, you would “get it.” Since you don’t get it, it’s because, sadly, God doesn’t care whether you get it or not.

Perseverance of the saints: Once you’re saved, you’re always saved. You may struggle, but God will not let you go.

That is traditional Calvinism. There were a hundred years in New England where that was the only brand of Christianity taught by the churches. That is what counted as orthodoxy, right belief. The society in New England was fairly homogeneous. All the Quakers were in Pennsylvania. The Baptists were in Rhode Island. There were Catholics, some Quakers, some Baptists, but most of the citizens of Massachusetts were Congregational Calvinist.

Every town had a church whose minister was paid with tax money. This was called the Standing Order, and it had been in effect since the Puritans. Attacked now and then as unfair, it had gone through several versions. By 1805, ministers were paid with tax dollars only if their church didn’t make its budget, and if you were a Quaker, a Baptist or a Catholic, you didn’t have to pay the tax. The Congregational ministers, by this time, were varied in their theology. Some were strict Calvinists, others were more moderate Calvinists. Some had become Liberals. Liberals did not believe or preach the doctrines of Calvinism. Some of them did not believe that humans were born in Sin. They had begun to believe that God had created human beings basically good. They did not see God as demanding blood to forgive sins. Jesus was a savior who saves by his teachings, and by awakening the mind and heart, not by his death on the cross. William Ellery Channing, likened the doctrine of the crucifixion as to having a gallows at the center of the Universe, and that the spirit of such a god, “whose very acts of pardon were written in such blood, was terror, not love.

Enter the Bad Guy. There was a Calvinist named Jedediah Morse, who had moved to Massachusetts. He was amazed that the Liberals and Calvinists got along together there so well. He did not approve of this ease, and felt that ministers should be asked to take a stand, to be counted and categorized by where they stood on the TULIP principles. Morse began hinting that the Liberals were tainted with the “Unitarianism that was being preached in England.” Those Unitarians, most notably Joseph Priestly, a scientist and minister whose most well-known discovery was Oxygen, were preaching that Jesus was just a man, possessing no divinity at all. Dr. Morse was troubled that the lack of controversy came from differences not being voiced or pointed out. People were being too nice, and it was getting in the way of knowing who was who. Who could be trusted to preach correct doctrine and who could not.

Before the controversy of 1805, most Liberal preachers doubting Calvinist doctrines did not preach these Liberal thoughts from the pulpit. To avoid controversy and keep peace in the congregations, they did what many Liberal preachers do today. They just preached around the Calvinist doctrines, choosing to preach instead about social responsibility, ethical behavior, and the loving kindness of God. The ministers in Massachusetts, as a rule, got along peacefully and well together. At the ministerial association meetings, they avoided speaking of their Liberal beliefs. No one really stood up to be categorized as strict, moderate or liberal. The ministers in the association were in the habit of pulpit exchanges. A minister would be in his own pulpit about half the time. The other half he would preach at other churches. This provided relief to the congregations, who got to hear other voices and other points of view. It also provided relief to the ministers, who had to write fewer sermons, since they could repeat their better ones when they visited another pulpit. The Standing Order of tax-supported worship and the pulpit exchanges were what gave what happened at Harvard the importance it had.

The Hollis professor who died and left his Chair vacant was a moderate and well respected Calvinist. These things were written about him at the time: “In him, never were orthodoxy and charity more closely aligned. and “He was desirous of correcting his own errors, and was willing that others should enjoy their sentiments. “That is the kind of man who can get along with both liberals and conservatives. Those people are hard to find, like a treasure when you come across them”

Here’s where academic politics come into the story. The President of Harvard procrastinated in suggesting a candidate because the most obvious candidate was a Liberal Boston minister named Henry Ware, and the President was a Calvinist. He didn’t want the controversy. The President just never brought up the subject of a replacement at meetings of the Harvard Corporation, and for two years the post was left vacant. By 1805, a candidate had to be found soon. The Boston papers were making trouble, even intimating that the money in the endowment for the Hollis fellowship was being used for purposes other than that for which it was given. Then that President exited the fray by dying.

A professor. named Eliphalet Pearson took over the acting Presidency, and was widely understood to want the permanent job very badly. In the writing of people who knew him at the time, he was characterized as an “ultra-Liberal before the President’s death, and a staunch Calvinist after. Hm. Why the switch? Some thought he was playing a part for political expediency. He was disliked by the students as a bully, and he tended to alienate even those who agreed with him.

Eliphalet Pearson and five other men made up the Corporation that governed the university. There was one other staunch Calvinist, two liberals, and two moderates. One of those was Judge Oliver Wendell, a liberal whose daughter was married to the conservative Calvinist Abel Holmes. (She was the mother of Oliver Wendell Holmes.) The selection process began with each man in the Corporation writing down two names. The two Calvinists each wrote down names of two Calvinist candidates, the two Liberals each wrote down the names of two Liberal candidates, and the two Moderates each wrote down the names of one Calvinist candidate and one Liberal candidate. Within a few weeks the choice was narrowed to two:

Jesse Appleton (a moderate Calvinist) and Henry Ware. The meetings were sour due to the personality clash between Eliphalet Pearson and Dr. John Eliot, a Liberal minister. It was said that Eliphalet Pearson’s personal attacks on Eliot were school boyish and mean.

Finally Judge Wendell proposed a compromise. How about Appleton for professor and Ware for President? No, they answered. Henry Ware was not suited for the position of President. How about Appleton for President and Ware for professor? NO from John Eliot, who was concerned that Jesse Appleton had an unpleasant and dissonant voice, unsuited to conducting public worship for the community, which as President he would have had to do. Appleton could have won in spite of Eliot’s “no vote if Eliphalet Pearson, wanting the presidency for himself, had not voted against the compromise. Judge Wendell’s compromise failed. Finally, several months later, Henry Ware was elected by a margin of one vote. There was no candidate settled on for President.

The appointment then had to be okayed by the Board of Overseers of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, made up of ministers and politicians. The Calvinists were understandably distressed that the professor of Divinity would not be orthodox. All the ministers that would come out of Harvard now would be taught by a a man they all thought of as a Unitarian.

The only point open for discussion was whether Ware fit the stipulations of the Hollis grant. Dr. Jedediah Morse, who was an ally of Eliphalet Pearson, saw this as an opportunity to show the people how sneaky and deceitful the Liberals were, not wanting to declare outright their position. Here was a chance to cross-examine and bring the Unitarianism to light. With 45 of the 47 members of the Board present, he attacked. What procedure had the Corporation followed to satisfy itself that Ware’s views were in accordance with the terms of Thomas Hollis’s gift. Hollis had written that the professor should be “a man of solid learning in divinity, of sound and orthodox principles. ORTHODOX, said Morse. SEE? This man doesn’t fit! He will not adhere to the Calvinist Westminster Confession. Hollis was not an Arminian (someone who believes that everyone can be saved) or a Unitarian, and he would NEVER have countenanced the election of a man who had departed from sound doctrine. The Liberals’ position was that Hollis, as a Baptist, had already departed from the Westminster Confession, whose doctrines the Baptists did not believe. Baptists believed in Jesus death being for everyone. Hollis himself had written that the only article of belief to be required of his professor should be that “the Bible was the only and most perfect rule for faith and practice, and that it should be interpreted “according to the best light that God shall give him. The election of Ware was no breach of trust, as Morse and Pearson were accusing, but was in keeping with Hollis’s intent. Ware was elected.

Within a matter of weeks, Morse had written and published a pamphlet complaining about the election of Ware. Then, months later, another Liberal was chosen for President. Eliphalet Pearson resigned and went to be head of Phillips Academy. Morse and Pearson founded Andover Theological Seminary, now closed, and within three years, in response, Harvard Divinity School was founded.

The ministers in the Standing Order, at Morse’s urging, started organizing. Trinitarian orthodox congregations made their own associations, refusing to exchange pulpits with liberals, accusing them of “Unitarianism.” Jedediah Morse in 1815, published a pamphlet called “American Unitarianism”, accusing the liberals of, well, believing what they actually did believe. The Standing Order broke down as the Congregational churches split into Orthodox Trinitarian and Liberal churches. The liberals increasingly felt pressure to defend themselves against charges of English Unitarianism, since they held a higher view of Jesus as savior than the English Unitarians. “Unitarian did, however describe their view of the Oneness of God, and finally in 1819, in Baltimore, William Ellery Chaning preached the sermon that was the manifesto of American Unitarianism. In it he asked why God would created us with free will and then punish us for using it. Why he, as a supposedly loving father, would choose some of his children to go to eternal damnation. Weren’t his listeners all better parents than that? Why should we be better parents than God?

Our task from the beginning has been to define ourselves other than as against Calvinism. We still struggle with that. Many UU’s are most comfortable saying what we DON’T believe. At the beginning of our movement, we were pushed into declaring ourselves, “outed” by the attacks of the opposition. We still have a legacy of hiding, not wanting to make a fuss, not wanting to be right out there with our faith.

Unitarian means we believe in the unity of God, that there is only one. Or, as some agnostic UU’s put it, “at MOST one God, and Universalist, meaning we believe everyone is saved. No one dies into eternal damnation. This, to me, is truly good news, and I would like to join William Ellery Channing in his passion to proclaim that truly good news.

Most sermons during the past 19 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

Room on the Broom

October 28, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 27, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

This is a child friendly service. We bring photographs of those we would like to claim as our ancestors and teachers.

Chalice Lighting

This is our circle of chalice light,
where peace and love are burning bright.
A place of wonder, a place for fun,
Welcome, Welcome, Everyone!

Affirming Our Mission

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

Most sermons during the past 19 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 Belonging

October 21, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
October 20, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

There is something about connection and sense of belonging that is essential to us as human beings. Any yet, true belonging is more than just fitting in with others. In fact, sometimes it means being so spiritually grounded in both a sense of self-acceptance and at the same time a sense of being a part of something larger than ourselves that we can stand alone even while maintaining connections. We’ll explore developing a sense of “right place” and sacred belonging.

Chalice Lighting

May the flame we now kindle light the path back to our center, back to that place of belonging again to our deepest self. And may our chalice remind us that we are held and welcomed whole, without the need to hide a single piece or part of who we are.

Call to Worship

HERE WE ARE TO EXPLORE THE MYSTERY
Chris Jimmerson

Here we are to explore the mystery of life together. In this place that is sacred to us we gather to experience the awe that rises from being part of the great unknown. On this hollowed ground we glimpse with wonder that which is larger than us and difficult to fully fathom. Yet, in which we are an intergral part within which we find a true sense of belonging. We gather to ask questions more profound than answers, to dwell together for a while in a great openness of mind, heart and soul.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

BRAVING THE WILDERNESS: THE QUEST FOR TRUE BELONGING AND THE COURAGE TO STAND ALONE.
Brene Brown
True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in being both a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are, it requires you to be who you are.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Protected on the Journey

October 14, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 13, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

With the help of some folks at the church with Judaism in their heritage, we will have a traditional “booth” in the courtyard that reminds us of the story about how the people were protected on their long journey through the desert. What protects us on our journey?

Lighting the Chalice

May the flame we now kindle light the path back to our center, back to that place of belonging again to our deepest self. And may our chalice remind us that we are held and welcomed whole, without the need to hide a single piece or part of who we are.

Call to Worship

John O’Donohue

You travel certainly, in every sense of the word. But you take with you everything that you have been, just as the landscape stores up its own past. Because you were once at home somewhere, you are never an alien anywhere.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

A NEW HEART
Chaim Stern

Who can say: I have purified my heart, and I am free from sin?

There are none on earth so righteous that they never sin.

Cast away all the evil you have done, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.

A new heart will I give you, a new spirit put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and give you a heart that feels.

For thus says the Eternal God: I, Myself, will search for My sheep, and seek them out.

As a shepherd seeks them out when any of the flock go astray, so will I seek out My sheep.

I will put My spirit within you, and teach you to live by My laws.

For I desire love and not sacrifices, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

Sermon

SUKKOT Protection in the Desert

Tonight at sundown those among and around us who are of Jewish heritage begin to celebrate Sukkot, a festival of returning to temporary shelter to remind yourself of how you were protected in times of being lost, in times of wandering, of transition. Those whose holiday this is to celebrate build a hut, a sukkah outside. It has to have three walls and a roof made of natural materials that used to be growing in the ground. You have to be able to see the stars through it, so you have some shade and some openness to the sun and rain. It’s a temporary shelter. Obviously not ideal. Some of our congregation with ties to the Jewish tradition have made a Sukkah out in the courtyard. The sukkah is decorated with fruits and vegetables. The family eats meals out there for seven days.

The layers of symbolism range from “this is the kind of hut the harvest workers used out in the field, so they didn’t have to go all the way home when night felL” To “this is the kind of thing we built in the desert while we were wandering for 40 years.”

Rosh Hashannah, the birthday of the world, comes first. Then, on the tenth day of the new year, comes Yom Kippur, a day of fasting and confession.

Sukkot always comes 5 days after Yom Kippur, when the community has fasted for a day and thought about wrongs they’ve done. They’ve made an apology where it’s needed.

Maybe there is a connection. When you strip yourself out of your routine, let something else drive other than your ego, doing ritual with your people, when you confess, face your wrongs, when you do a “searching and fearless moral inventory,” you can start again, in a way. You might want a ritual that reminds you of how your people started. Maybe the holiday comes right after Yom Kippur because you have fasted and stepped out of the regular day to day, and maybe that gives you a lightness of being. This festival of Sukkot embodies this lightness of being, this acknowledgement that you only need a few things.

It can also remind you that your body is a tiny fragile shelter. Sometimes you are temporarily strong. Other times you get sick, and we all get old.

The Jews are reminded by these sukkot that they were at one time a wandering people, looking for their place to settle and grow things. They were migrants. What they had they carried with them. They didn’t belong back in Egypt where they had been enslaved. They didn’t have a land of their own (although their faith story says God had promised them a land, but it already had people on it, and they killed some of those people and took the land. This is a whole other sermon) If you remind yourself of the story of your people, that leads to a sense that you don’t belong to one place, but rather you belong to the people with this story.

Many of our families have stories about the family: the story of when we came over through Ellis Island. The story that this is the land we’ve been on and fought for for the past 600 years, remember when our great grandparents owned all of that over there. Remember when the dust blew and the whole family got in the old car and moved to Bakersfield, and they called us Okies even though we were from Arkansas? Remember our grandfather and his three sisters who had a band that played at all the dance halls. Unitarians have stories of our people too. Remember when a minister in SF did a civil union between two men in 1957. Remember when our press, Beacon Press, at great risk, published the Pentagon Papers. Remember John Quincy Adams and John C Calhoun, both Unitarians but with bitter political differences, built All Souls Unitarian Church in DC ? Remember Elliot Richardson, the AG who refused to fire Archibald Cox, the Watergate Prosecutor, was a Unitarian Universalist. We tell the stories of our people and feel those stories resonate within our spirits.

For the Jews, building the Sukkah outdoors, near your sturdy house or apartment, eating meals out there for 7 days, interrupts your daily routine enough to invite thoughts like “What is enough? What do we really need in life? How grateful I am for the sturdy walls where I can have books and be dry and cool or warm and watch TV, but life at its most basic can still exist, and it is the people who are in the sukkah with you who are part of your heart, you support and sustain one another, just eating outside together, that is enough.

The sukkah reminds us of how fragile our shelter, our bodies, our life plans, our mores and institutions are, and how vulnerable others may be, and what it feels like to be vulnerable. Knowing how little you need can help you be brave, to stand up, even though it means you might get fired in the Saturday Night massacre, to resign, even though it means there might be a mean tweet coming your way. Knowing the fragility of shelter, having just a kind and gentle reminder of what people have lived with and without, makes you strong in the world. That is what makes a mighty spirit.

Let’s turn it around, too. Maybe we are meant to be shelter for one another when we’re see our siblings wandering. This church is now being a shelter for our guest in Sanctuary. Maybe this week your heart, your voice, your stories have been a shelter for someone who is lost. Maybe at a time when you were lost, you felt a protection come from the Mystery, by whatever name you call it. This is a day to be grateful for the protections and the shelter in our lives, and to look for ways to be shelter for one another.

Dr. Brene Brown says people who have the deepest sense of true belonging are those who also have the courage to stand alone when called to do that. They are willing to maintain their integrity and risk disconnection in order to stand up for what they believe in.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

The Concord Genius Cluster

October 7, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 6, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

A Juicy Slice of Unitarian History: Transcendentalism & the Concord ‘Genius Cluster’ We sometimes forget that our forebears in this faith were human. Thoreau, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne. How were they all in relationship to one another?

Chalice Lighting

We light the fire of Truth and ask to be clear, wise, and humble enough to admit when we don’t know. We kindle the warmth of community and ask for open heartedness and patience. We are grateful to the Spirit of Life and ask to learn the secret to loving and being loved.

Call to Worship
Black Elk

That which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

THE OVERSOUL
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us learn the revelation of all nature and thought; that the Highest dwells within us, that the sources of nature are in our own minds.

As there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so there is no bar or wall in the soul where we, the effect, cease, and God, the cause, begins.

I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.

There is deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is accessible to us.

Every moment when the individual feels invaded by it is memorable.

It comes to the lowly and simple; it comes to whosoever will put off what is foreign and proud; it comes as insight; it comes as serenity and grandeur.

The soul’s health consists in the fullness of its reception.

For ever and ever the influx of this better and more universal self is new and unsearchable.

Within us is the soul of the whole; the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One.

When it breaks through our intelect, it is genius; when it breathes through our will, it is virtue. when it flows through our affections, it is love.

Sermon

Sometimes there is a cluster of people who make things happen, who influence one another, build on one another, challenge and inspire and complement one another until each is greater than they could have been alone. In the eighteen thirties, forties and fifties such a group of people lived in Concord MA. It could not have happened without Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson was born to a Unitarian minister and his wife in Boston MA in 1803, as Beethoven was writing the Eroica Symphony, as Napoleon was considering invading England, and the Louisiana Purchase is made, doubling the size of the United States. Emerson’s father died when he was almost eight, and his mother struggled to make ends meet. His aunt Mary Moody Emerson became the one who paid for Waldo’s education at the Boston Latin School, then Harvard, where his academic career was undistinguished. He was class poet his senior year, but only after six others had turned down the offer. Mary Moody is said to have been a curmudgeon, having the questionable gift of being able to say more unpleasant things in half an hour than anyone else living.

Waldo became a Unitarian minister and fell in love with a delicate young woman named Ellen Tucker. They married as soon as she turned eighteen. She was from a wealthy family, and had a great deal of money coming to her when she turned twenty-one. Unfortunately she died before that birthday, leaving Emerson heartbroken, crazed with grief. He visited her grave often, even opening her casket a year after she died because he missed her so terribly. His belief in God began to fall apart, or it began to evolve, from my perspective. The members of his congregation were not so supportive of these changes.

Then there was the obscure little lawsuit that changed everything Waldo was a young man, grieving over his beloved wife. Emerson’s brother-in-law felt he should not get the money that had been coming to Ellen, but an angry Waldo sued the family and was granted the inheritance. This money made all the difference. The money made all the difference for him. It made all the difference for Thoreau. It made the difference for the Alcott family and for many men and women escaping from being enslaved in the South. Interest on the money granted to him by the courts paid him as much per year as he was making as a minister.

He finally quit the church because he couldn’t stand the ceremony of communion any more. People should pay attention to living their principles during the week instead of focusing on having communion on the weekend to make everything okay. He began writing and lecturing, making his living through his stirring speaking style, which drew enthusiastic crowds.

He was asked to give the graduation address at Harvard, where a class of ministers was graduating, and he came down so hard on the local churches, talking about how dull they were, how rule-bound, how frozen and intellectual their ministers’ sermons that it was impossible for their people to get nourishment for their souls at church. Harvard did not appreciate the alternative vision he painted of finding the divine in nature, in the oneness of all things, of following your inner wisdom, respecting the knowledge that comes fresh to you from your experience rather than quoting people whose wisdom may have been good for their own times but might have nothing to do with the now. The people at Harvard asked him not to come back, and he did not, until he was an old man and they asked him to help with the memorial service for those killed in the Civil War.

One of the places he spoke was on Cape Cod, where, at the post-lecture reception he met a slender woman named Lydia. They had a nice conversation, and several months later he wrote her a letter proposing marriage. He apologized for not having time to ask her in person. She wrote him a letter accepting his proposal. He asked that she change her name to Lydian, and she did. They bought the big house by the road in Concord and started a family.

Emerson made a practice of inviting people who interested him to come to Concord. Bronson Alcott’s Temple School in Boston had just gone broke due to his not being a very practical headmaster and because they believed that there was no original sin, that the children were basically good and their spirits did not need to be broken. They believed the children should move around a lot during the day and have various experiences as they learned, rather than sitting still and reciting the knowledge the teachers were imparting, and also perhaps because there was a slight scandal as they believed in teaching the children frankly about procreation. Emerson wrote and invited the Alcotts to come to Concord. He found a house for them to rent. They came and stayed.

Mostly it was Emerson who paid their rent, another neighbor who paid their taxes while Bronson taught his daughters and expounded his theories about vegetarian eating and proper education. His daughter Louisa May Alcott was a wild pony of a girl, always pretending she was a horse. She told her parents she’d been a horse in a former life. She was outspoken and had dark eyes and dark hair, unlike his blonder daughters, and he felt there was a correlation between having a divine nature and being blond. As you know, Louisa May came through for the family, and when Emerson wasn’t around to support them any more, she did it with her writing.

Another friend in Concord was David Henry Thoreau, who changed his name to Henry David Thoreau. He was another Harvard graduate whose family owned a pencil factory in Concord. He was a green man, always in the woods or on the river, with strong views on simplicity of living, on the divine being found in nature, of living without getting drunk – drinking only water. He had a child like spirit, scorning nice clothes, baths and haircuts in favor of befriending the foxes and trees, and knowing the call of every bird and the name of every plant. Emerson and his family found him delightful. He became a teacher for their two sons, who adored him.

For a while he courted Lydian’s sister Lucy, who was staying with the family. He was in his twenties and she was nearly forty, but he thought she was elegant and sophisticated. Mostly though, as the years went on, he loved Lydian. When Emerson went on speaking tours he stayed at the house to look after everything. He planted the garden, fixed the porch, built Lydian a secret compartment under one of the dining room chairs to store her good gloves. The Emerson children loved him. Did Lydian? We don’t know. The Emersons supported Thoreau, and when he wanted to move to the woods, they gave him use of a woodlot they owned by Walden Pond, where he built a tiny shack in which he lived for a time to write a book about his boat trip up the river with his brother John. John had died of Lockjaw the same year the Emersons’ young son Waldo died of Scarlet Fever, and the community was bonded in sorrow over these two terrible losses.

Another frequent house guest was the brilliant, beautiful and radical Margaret Fuller. Lydian took to her bed when Margaret was in the house. The way Emerson looked at her, the letters they wrote back and forth across the hall from his study to Margaret’s bedroom, the long walks they took in the woods together, all were too much for Lydian to endure. Margaret’s father had educated her well beyond the limits normally observed by young women of the day. She had studied Latin and Greek, astronomy and history, theology and literature. She was the first women allowed access to the sacred halls of the Harvard Library. In a time when women were forbidden to get paid for speaking in public, she made her living by hosting “Conversations” at the Boston bookstore run by Elizabeth Peabody. Women would come from far and wide to hear these conversations on marriage, the role of women, sexuality and all manner of topics challenging the commonly held mores and values of the culture. She was a challenging woman, who would “break her sword on your shield,” and the men loved to engage with her. It helped that she had large beautiful eyes, abundant hair and a lovely figure, and that she was as well educated as any of them.

Another friend who came to Concord because of the people gathering there was Nathaniel Hawthorne. He had courted Elizabeth Peabody, but had ended up marrying her less challenging and sicklier sister Sophie. Emerson arranged for a friend of his to rent them a house within walking distance of his own and the Alcotts. Hawthorne was handsome and moderately successful as a writer. He was a member of the Transcendental Club that Emerson hosted, where they talked about Eastern religion and philosophy, about the oneness of everything, about the old mores and what the new ones should be. If Emerson was in love with Fuller, Hawthorne was more so. He would come take her for walks, and they would sit in the woods on a blanket and talk for hours. Sophie Hawthorne handled it the opposite way from Lydian, declaring that she adored Margaret too, maybe more than Nathaniel did. When Emerson came looking for Margaret and found her in the woods with Hawthorne, though, suddenly the man whose house the Hawthornes were renting needed his home back and they had to move to Salem. In his fever of loss he wrote a book about a sensual and lovely young woman who was made to wear a scarlet letter A after having been caught in an affair. She embroidered it with gold thread, insisting that coming together with her lover was a sacred act. Sophie hated the book, as she knew exactly who that woman was. Horace Greely offered Margaret a job as an editor of the New York Tribune, so she left for New York to do that.

Thoreau came out of the woods and began living in Concord again. His book about the boat trip was published but it didn’t sell well. He began putting his journals from the pond together, looking for a publisher. No one wanted to touch them. He kept polishing them until they were the first American memoir, one of the books that shaped American thought and philosophy. Finally Emerson paid to have them published.

Emerson also paid the way for the runaway slaves who were on their way to Canada. The homes in Concord were a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Throughout the story of this group is the refrain “Emerson paid ….. ” If Thoreau had had to get a job, where would American thought be? If the Alcotts had disintegrated under the grind of their poverty, where would American literature be? If the Transcendentalists hadn’t been rooted un Unitarianism, hadn’t formed the thought of a religion which could contain those who believe that everything was connected, that all was one with one soul, that wisdom comes from within, that there is a spark of the divine in everyone, that the divine can be seen and felt in nature, where would UUism be? Emerson paid for the space where all of this could happen.

In this congregation we have people who don’t make much money, people who have just enough to live on if they don’t go on vacations or send the kids to private school, and people who have enough to share. It’s sometimes hard to be one of the ones who gives more than others do. This congregation needs about two thousand dollars per family to be sturdy, to have the people it needs to hold the sacred space for us to have the indescribable and life-sustaining experiences we have here, to have the outreach that supports justice work in this state. For some, two thousand is not possible. For others, ten thousand or twenty thousand is a possibility. Some can step into the role of being the Emersons of this community. It will never be fair. Did Emerson always support the community happily and without a thought of resentment? No. Sometimes he felt he was the only grownup around. Sometimes he gave openheartedly. He always gave. Think about whether it might be your time to be an Emerson here.

Whatever happened to Margaret Fuller?

She became a journalist, and traveled overseas, the first female foreign correspondent reporting on the Roman revolution. She wrote about Garibaldi and the rebels, and news made its way back to MA that she was in love with a Count. The Count had been disinherited because of his revolutionary activities. He was going to make her a Marquesa. She was pregnant. Had they married? She wanted to come home. There was hardly a place for her around Boston with her radical ideas, her education, her conversation. How much less would there be a place for her now, married to a foreigner. If not married, then with a child out of wedlock. It was beyond imagining. The boat left the harbor too low in the water from all the Italian marble in the hold, including a bust of John C Calhoun bound for Cola SC. He was also a Unitarian, although not one of the angels on the abolition issue. Margaret’s friend Robert Browning begged her not to get on the boat. She herself had a sense of foreboding. She and the baby, Nino, and the Count set off. The Captain died of smallpox and was buried at sea before they’d gone very far at all. Nino, the baby, got smallpox too, but his parents nursed him back to health. The new Captain, inexperienced, overshot the NY harbor and the ship ran aground off of Fire Island at three in the morning in gale winds and high waves. The ship began to break apart. All that marble in the hull began to break through. One ship board friend jumped into the water to try to swim to shore, visible and not too far away through the pounding surf. They watched him drown. A sailor who had befriended the baby offered to take the child to shore. They strapped Nino to the man’s chest and then had to watch them both drown. Margaret was seen by folks on shore standing on the deck, her long dark hair whipping around in the wind, her white nightgown already making her a ghost, and then the ship and everyone still on it disappeared under the waves. The bust of John C Calhoun was recovered and sent to Cola. The Count’s body washed up on shore, but Margaret was never seen again.

“All the Gossip from Concord”
Roses reading by Emerson
Readings all from the Friends in Concord
From Margaret Fuller. Rock star, radical thinker
From the Hymn book
A new manifestation is at hand

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

This Apple

October 7, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
September 29, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We hold an apple and talk about how apples developed. Were they developed by humans or did they develop themselves in order to appeal more to humans, insects, birds, and animals so their DNA would be spread far and wide? How smart is this apple?

Chalice Lighting

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading
THE BOTANY OF DESIRE
by Michael Pollan

We’re prone to overestimate our own agency in nature. Many of these activities humans think they take for their own good puposes in agriculture (outlawing certain plants, fighting bugs, and replacing other) are mere contingencies as far as nature is concerned. Our grammar might teach us to divide the world into active subjects and passive objects but in a coevolutionary relationship every subject is also an object, every object a subject. That’s why it makes just as much sense to think of agriculture as something the grasses did as a way to conquer the trees.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Celebration Sunday

October 7, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
September 22, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

It’s Celebration Sunday. This is our 65th birthday as a congregation. We kick it off with a celebration of faithful giving, dedicated leadership, and maybe just a bit of cake.

Chalice Lighting

Call to Worship
from Book of Micah in the Hebrew Bible

How shall I enter the Eternal’s presence. Shall I come with sacrifices of yearling calves to offer. Would the Eternal care for lambs in the thousands or for oil flowing in myriad streams. What does the eternal ask of you but to be Just, Kind, and live in quiet fellowship with your God.

Affirming Our Mission

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

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Faithful Expectation

September 16, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
September 15, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our religious values are aspirational expressions of our highest expectations for ourselves. Expectations can provide powerful inspiration and help us live out our Unitarian Universalist faith and reach for our best selves. So too though, sometimes the unexpected and letting go of expectations that are not serving us well can also bring enrichment to our lives. We will explore the intricacies and paradoxical nature of expectation.

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice, the flame of our heritage, in solidarity with Unitarian Universalists and all the peoples of the world lighting candles of planetary hope. May it ignite a spirit of solidarity and enthusiasm for the new world we can create, together.

Call to Worship

Now let us celebrate our highest values. Now let us worship together.

Transcendence
To connect with wonder and awe of the unity of life

Community
To connect with joy, sorrow, and service with those whose lives we touch

Compassion
To treat ourselves and others with love

Courage
To live lives of honesty, vulnerability, and beauty

Transformation
To pursue the growth that changes our lives and heals our world

Now we raise up that which we hold as ultimate and larger than ourselves. Now we worship, together.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

TRUST YOURSELF TO THE WATER
By Alan Watts

Faith is a state of openness or trust. To have faith is like when you trust yourself to the water.

You don’t grab hold of the water when you swim, because if you do, you will become stiff and tight in the water, and sink.

You have to relax, and the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging and holding on.

In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe becomes a person who has no faith at all. Instead they are holding tight.

But the attitude of faith is to let go and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

Sermon

All of this month, our religious education classes and activities are exploring expectation as a spiritual topic, so today, we will also spend some time considering expectation as it relates to our Unitarian Universalist faith.

To begin this morning, I thought we would start with a reflection on expectation taken from one of our great Unitarian Universalist sacred scriptures, National Public Radio.

Power of Expectations video

I loved that chapter from our NPR sacred texts because it captures so many of the conundrums we encounter when we examine our expectations, especially from a spiritual or faith-based perspective.

So, for example, we set expectations for ourselves, and yet, as the video demonstrated, other folks also place expectations upon us. On top of that, we quite often internalize the expectations placed upon us by others without even realizing that we are doing it, and so they become unconscious self-expectations.

Our expectations and those of others toward us can be greatly beneficial to us.

Studies have shown that positive expectations can beneficially influence everything from health outcomes to psychological well-being to career and sports performance, and on and on.

Yet, expectations can also limit us when they are set so high as to be unachievable, or our life situation changes such that what was once possible for us can no longer remain a reasonable expectation.

Conversely, expectations that are too low can also adversely influence us. For example, many studies have shown that teachers having lower expectations towards students of color or with disabilities greatly disadvantages such students.

So sometimes we have to learn to let go of unreasonable or harmful expectations, and sometimes we try to defy expectations that would otherwise limit us.

Interestingly, our expectations not only impact our behavior and that of others toward us, as pointed out in the video, now research indicates that expectations can have actual physiological effects upon us.

My favorite study I found about this involved drinking beer.

The researchers randomized people into two groups. Both groups were asked to taste test two different beer samples. One sample was just plain beer. The other was the same beer to which the researchers had secretly added balsamic vinegar.

The researchers did not tell the first group the difference between the two beer samples.

The folks in this group overwhelming preferred the taste of the balsamic vinaigrette infused beer.

The researchers told the second group the difference between the two beer samples before they tasted them.

Almost to a person, the second group hated the beer with the vinaigrette in it – many going so far as to spit it out and exclaim something like, “this is terrible.”

The expectation that adding the vinaigrette to beer would ruin the taste caused them to experience exactly that.

Subsequent tests showed that it was not just mental perception. Telling the second group up front about the balsamic poisoning of their beer had subtly altered the physiology of the second group’s taste buds compared to that of the first group.

Other research has identified physiological effects from our expectations that are much more potentially life altering than the tase of our beer.

Other research has also found that our expectations can draw our attention and focus so strongly that we may miss other important information.

This probably had a survival advantage at one time by, for instance, allowing us to focus on what we expected a potential predator might do and not get distracted by less life threatening things.

Today though, that focus itself can sometimes become the distraction.

Let’s watch an example of this phenomenon.

As you watch the next video, following the instructions at the beginning of it, please try not to express any verbal reactions so as not to break the concentration of your fellow congregants.

Ball Passing Video

How many of you saw the man in the gorilla suit before they played it back a second time?

This is probably an experiment that is better done in an individual versus group setting because those who see the gorilla may give off subtle reactions that clue others in the group to then see it also.

I watched it alone the first time and did not see the gorilla. The researchers have found that well over 50% of people who watch it do not see the gorilla because we are focusing so intently on our expectation about being able to correctly count how many times the folks in white pass the ball.

And I did get the count right, by the way, even if I did miss the damn gorilla.

Next, I want to introduce you to Daniel Kish, whose story I think so embodies the power of letting go of unhelpful expectations, defying expectations that limit us – keep us from claiming our full potential and humanity.

Daniel Kish Video

Daniel was born with a form of ocular cancer. His doctors had to remove one of his eyes when he was 7 months old and the other eye when he was 13 months old.

The first thing he did after waking up after his second surgery was to climb out of the crib and crawl around the nursery they had put him in at the hospital.

For whatever reason, his mother decided not to try to hold him back, even though she feared he might get hurt.

And he did a few times, but he says it was worth it.

Daniel learned to echolocate that clicking noise you heard him making in the video allows him to listen to how the noise bounces off things and determine shapes and motions around him.

It is much that same way that bats use sonar to navigate when they fly.

As you saw in the video, Daniel learned to ride a bike. By the time he entered elementary school, we was able to walk to school on his own and pretty much take care of himself through out the day.

Because his mother never enrolled him in an assistance program for the blind and let him go to a regular school, Daniel did not encounter other blind people until he got older.

He was dismayed to discover that so many blind folks he met were unable to take care of themselves in so many of the ways that he was capable.

Daniel came to believe that the well intentioned efforts of loved ones and non-profit services to help blind folks with so many aspects of daily living was creating expectations well below their potential.

So, he started the non-profit organization he discusses in the video. Through it, he teaches echolocation to others and sets expectations allowing folks to live more fully and more independently.

Researchers using MRI scans have found that people using echolocation light up the brain in the same patterns of those of us with ocular vision.

They can correctly identify and describe the shape of objects placed in front of them, as well as the direction of motion.

So, in a real since, by raising expectations through teaching echolocation, Daniel Kish is giving people of form of vision.

With that, I want to close by talking briefly about how I think expectation is such a large part of our Unitarian Universalist faith.

As Unitarian Universalists, we share 7 principals that we affirm and promote.

The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

It is likely we will be adding an 8th principle regarding dismantling racism. At this church, we also have a set of religious values that you all read together earlier with Elizabeth.

Our faith principals, our religious values, they are our aspirations, the expectations we have set for ourselves concerning how we will be in our world – how we will be with each other – how we will live our lives.

And we are reaching for those expectations all of the time, in so many ways through the many ministries and programs of this church, as well as our our larger denomination.

Next Sunday, we will have the chance to live our values when we celebrate this religious community and all pledge together to support it into the future.

Our green sanctuary ministry team has been living our principle about respect for the interdependent web in so many ways, including getting the Austin City Council and the Travis County Commissioner’s Court to pass resolutions that require our city and county governments to put into high gear actions across their departments to fight the climate crises.

And this Friday, September 20, Unitarian Universalists from across the country will live out the expectations of our faith by joining in a world-wide climate strike.

Led by our youth, people from across the world will join together to demand urgent action on the climate crisis before it is too late.

And folks we do not have long. A few years at most.

Some links where you can get more information are posted on the church website.

Here in Austin, the climate strike will begin with rallies at the state capital at 10 a.m. and again at noon on Friday.

I hope as many of us who can will live our religious values by participating. Our youth are expecting us to leave them a world that is at least livable.

Our youth are expecting us to act as if our house is on fire.

Because it is.

As Unitarian Universalists, our faith has always been one of hopeful expectation.

For Unitarian Universalists, our faith expectation is that there is meaning and beauty in our world that has yet to be fully revealed.

As Unitarian Universalists, our faith tells us that we are the ones who must unveil those revelations yet to become.

May we make it so.

Amen.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

How to Change Minds

September 9, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
September 8, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

How to Change Minds: Notes from the FBI Hostage Negotiators Handbook
Continuing last week’s glimpse into the satisfactions and challenges of relationships, we’ll talk about loving and being loved by people with very different beliefs, sacred tenets, and styles from our own.

Chalice Lighting

Call to Worship
Lao-Tse

If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors.
If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading
Thich N’hat Hanh

Let us be at peace with our bodies and our minds. Let us return to ourselves and become wholly ourselves.

Let us be aware of the source of being, common to us all and to all living things.

Evoking the presence of the Great Compassion, let us fill our hearts with our own compassion – towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

Let us pray that we ourselves cease to be the cause of suffering to each other.

With humility, with awareness of the existence of life, and of the sufferings that are going on around us, let us practice the establishment of peace in our hearts and on earth.

Amen.

Meta Meditation

May I be free from danger.
May I be mentally happy.
May I be physically happy.
May I have ease of well-being.

Sermon

HOW TO CHANGE MINDS:
NOTES FROM THE FBI HOSTAGE NEGOTIATORS HANDBOOK

This is a question I hear over and over. “How do I talk to my fundamentalist family about being a unitarian universalist?”

We all have family members who think very differently from the ways we do. This sermon is a series of suggestions and some crucial bits of information about how liberals can talk to conservatives. We not only have family whose religious beliefs are more conservative than ours might be, we have family whose politics are more conservative. How can we talk to them? How can we listen, love, and stand our ground?

Hard Wired

The news from science about changing a person’s mind through rational discourse is this: When someone feels something strongly, you can talk yourself blue in the face and not make a dent. You can post the wittiest and most cogent memes on Facebook, you can email jokes and facts and charts and not make a dent. You won’t make a dent in them and their memes won’t make a dent in you. We almost can’t help it. Study after study is showing that the very brains of liberals, conservatives and moderates are wired differently. In a study at University of Nebraska, the scientists follow people’s involuntary responses, including eye movements, when they are shown scary, neutral, pleasant or disgusting photos. It turns out that conservatives react more strongly to the pictures which might create fear or disgust. John Hibbing, of the University of Nebraska, says conservatives are more attuned to fearful or negative stimuli. So the conservative focus on a strong military, tough law enforcement, resistance to immigration, and wanting the widespread availability of guns may go with an underlying threat-oriented biology. I heard a white woman on tv say the other day, in a frantic tone “I’m not living without guns!”

John Jost from NYU drew a lot of backlash from conservatives when his studies seemed to show in 2003 that conservatives have a greater need for certainty and an intolerance of ambiguity. Their funding was looked into, but so many peers were finding the same results that it makes everyone safer. The correlations between the body’s reactivity and political ideology are so striking that they can predict a person’s political views from simply watching the eye movements they make when seeing the aversive photographs. There is a common sense evolutionary imperative for threat-oriented wiring. Conservatives also tend to be happier, more emotionally stable. Liberals a bit more neurotic. Being sure of things, having strong ideas of what’s familiar and an aversion to what’s strange or icky keeps you happier, apparently, than being open to new experiences, being bothered by inequality and fretting about the suffering of others. I’m not saying conservatives don’t fret about the suffering of others. They just have a more certain, rule oriented plan for what should be done. I think, since there seem to be almost even numbers of those on the right and left, that nature decided we need people with their foot on the gas and people with their foot on the brake, in terms of social change or systems of belief.

Moral Code

It’s hardwired. The only way to change someone’s mind is to show them that their behavior or practice is counter to their own moral code. Not counter to your moral code, their own. But other studies show that the moral codes used are different. In a study by Jesse Graham, Jonathan Haidt, and Brian A. Nosek University of Virginia, liberals cared more about fairness and compassion. Conservatives cared about those two sets of moral imperatives too, but also measured things in terms of respect for authority, the purity and sanctity of ideas and institutions and in-group loyalty. Those last three were less important to liberal’s thinking, although I think liberals could give conservatives a run for their money in the purity/sanctity section if they had talked about boycotts. We like to be pure in where we get our chocolate and consumer goods. I am flummoxed because Target is on the list of “good on guns” but it’s also on the list of companies implicated somehow in the burning of the rain forest. Purity is hard to achieve. We are also purity nuts about recycling. In Berkeley, where we were in an Air BNB for a month, there were five bins. One for yard waste, one for clean paper, one for dirty paper, one for glass and one for plastic. The host finally just said, “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ll sort it when you leave.”

Steps to Change

Talk about the FBI hostage negotiators about this. What they know is that arguments are emotional. It is rare that someone you’re arguing with will change their mind due to a rational argument. Negotiators have diagramed what they call the Path to Behavioral Change.

Behavioral Change Stairway
Listening is the foundation that supports each step.

				5. Behavorial Change
			4. Influence
		3. Rapport
	2. Empathy
1. Active Listening

The first step is active listening. When a Republican is talking to a crazy liberal, or a liberal is talking to your wacky uncle who listens to Rush, the first step in changing someone’s mind is active listening. So you would say “tell me more.” You would say “How did you come to this view?” As they talk, you don’t evaluate: “hm, that’s a good point,” or “I’m not sure your facts are straight….” You just say small encouraging things. “hm.” Or “I hear you.” You might ask open ended questions, like I mentioned before “How did you come to that view?” “What do you think about the front runners?” “What policies really feel important to you?” You can also just, without being weird about it, repeat the last phrase they said. If they say “I just think this is the stupidest group of leaders we’ve ever had.” You could say “the stupidest we’ve ever had?” Using pauses can be extremely effective. When the Moonies and I were talking about their beliefs, sometimes all I would need to do was stay quiet after they had said something and let their words hang in the air. “You say Mr. Moon takes away your sins before he marries you? How does he do that, exactly? By dabbing some wine on your photographs Hm.” It also can help to name the emotions you hear. “That sounds like it was upsetting.” “That makes you mad.” “It doesn’t seem fair to you.”

It’s hard for even the most passionate and committed person to carry on a one-sided argument. You are listening, and not only that, you are showing them that you are listening. This is a rare enough experience for anyone to being to open things up between you.

Empathy is the second step of the ladder to change. This doesn’t mean making understanding noises or saying an understanding phrase. This means really having empathy, emotionally relating, to the other person’s perspective. This is what the active listening is for, partially. To actually ask the questions which will help you get to a place of understanding.

Rapport, when the other person feels in their body, their mind and their spirit, that you understand, when they begin to actually feel you with them, is the next step. See, this is hard. I rebel at this point. I don’t want to look at the places in me that actually relate to their fears, phobias, suspicion of the stranger, “disasterizing” about the future, cruelty to the suffering, what I see as lack of communitarian spirit. Without getting in touch with those places in you, conversation is not going to be fruitful. If you are a conservative talking to a crazy liberal, you may need to get in touch with the places in you that feel for other people, that want to help, that can face suffering and the reality that it isn’t always the person’s fault who is suffering, the idea that the world is big and overwhelming and our country might not be the greatest country there ever was, that we might have bad decisions, greed and cruelty in our history, that some of us are victimized by others, that security is an illusion, etc.

After rapport is established, then comes influence. It is at this point that you might be able to influence the thinking and feeling of another person. Since empathy, though, you are open to their influence as well. Our mistake is that we try to jump right into influencing other people. Things seem so clear to us. The facts seem to make our conclusion so obvious. One problem is that it seems everyone has different facts.

It used to be that people thought facts were supposed to be – you know, factual. When JFK debated Nixon, though, he later confessed that he just made up the statistics he cited. Made them up. They sounded great. Now it seems that people will say things with great authority whether they are true or not.

It used to be that media outlets had to give both sides of an argument. They had to seek out viewpoints on all sides, facts which supported all sides, present them to people so they could decide. During the Reagan administration, the Fairness Doctrine was abolished. I think that was 1987. In 1988 Rush Limbaugh started his radio show. These days, most people watch Fox news or MSNBC. They get red facts and blue facts. They hear about red issues and blue issues. You have to really work to hear both sides. Reasoned and civil discussions are not the style. It is easier and more fun for people to mock one another, to imagine that the people on the other side are ridiculous, crazy, clowns! All this does is to make you feel energized and good in a nasty way about your own side. I’m not asking us to stop that, but you have to understand that we can’t ask those who feel differently to stop their emails, jokes and memes either. It sounds like a lot of listening is recommended. And love even though they may not be able to see how right you are.

Your religious conservatives have a scripture they rely on. They are in a paradigm that is like a train track. They can see you here, where they are, or over there, wrong within the paradigm. You are in the field beside the track, waving from wild territory. My father says, “But, Meg, the Bible says….” I nod and say “yes it does.” He’s not wrong. I say “I don’t go by what the Bible says all the time.” “But it’s bread, it’s the word, it’s the authority,” he says. I smile with as much love as I have in my heart and say “I know you believe that.”

“In terms of their personalities, liberals and conservatives have long been said to differ in ways that correspond to their conflicting visions. Liberals on average are more open to experience, more inclined to seek out change and novelty both personally and politically (McCrae, 1996). Conservatives, in contrast, have a stronger preference for things that are familiar, stable, and predictable (Jost, Nosek, & Gosling, 2008; McCrae, 1996). Conservatives – at least, the subset prone to authoritarianism-also show a stronger emotional sensitivity to threats to the social order, which motivates them to limit liberties in defense of that order (Altemeyer, 1996; McCann, 2008; Stenner, 2005). Jost, Glaser, Sulloway, and Kruglanski (2003) concluded from a meta-analysis of this literature that the two core aspects of conservative ideology are resistance to change and acceptance of inequality. How can these various but complementary depictions of ideological and personality differences be translated into specific predictions about moral differences? First, we must examine and revise the definition of the moral domain.”

“Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations
Jesse Graham, Jonathan Haidt, and Brian A. Nosek University of Virginia
How and why do moral judgments vary across the political spectrum?

To test moral foundations theory (J. Haidt & J. Graham, 2007; J. Haidt & C. Joseph, 2004), the authors developed several ways to measure people’s use of 5 sets of moral intuitions:

Harm/care
Fairness/reciprocity
Ingroup/loyalty
Authority/ respect
Purity/sanctity

Across 4 studies using multiple methods, liberals consistently showed greater endorsement and use of the Harm/care and Fairness/reciprocity foundations compared to the other 3 foundations, whereas conservatives endorsed and used the 5 foundations more equally.”

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Many Rivers to Cross

September 2, 2019 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
September 1, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Annual Water Ceremony: We bring water from a place that has fed our souls and spirits over the summer months and mingle these waters together to remind us of our connection to one another. In connections with friends, family, work mates and church members there is both joy and learning. How do we find ease and joy as we cross the rivers that present themselves?

Chalice Lighting

Call to Worship

WATER
Phillip Larkin

If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench!

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

WATER
Wendell Berry

I was born in the drought year. That summer my mother waited in the house, enclosed in the sun and the dry ceaseless wind, for the men to come back in the evenings, bringing water from a distant spring. Veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank.

And all my life I have dreaded the return of that year, sure that it is still somewhere like a dead enemy’s soul. Fear of dust in my mouth is always with me, and I am the faithful husband of the rain. I love the water of the wells and the springs, and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns.

I am a dry man whose thirst is praise of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup. My sweetness is to wake in the night after days of dry heat, hearing the rain.

Sermon

Water Ceremony: Many Rivers to Cross

Many rivers to cross describes a feeling of defeat and despair, in what feels like a foreign land. Sometimes we are at home in this place and sometimes we feel like we are in a foreign land. This is one of the reasons we gather here. We need one another, more at some times in life than others.

In UU congregations across the country we have Ingathering services this time of year. In the old days UU churches shut down in the summertime. In September the “church year” started up again, and people would bring water from their summer travels. We go through the summer here, and we bring water from places that have nourished our spirits, which can be from far flung places or from the tap in the kitchen. The places are important, because we learn a little more about the people around us, but what’s most important is seeing the waters coming together. You can’t tell which water is from Brazil and which is from the Brazos. More of us are becoming more and more aware of how precious water is, and some cultures are putting into law their understanding of water as a being with rights of its own.

Lake Erie, last February, was granted the right to flourish without being polluted, and citizens of OH can now sue polluters on behalf of the lake. In the past decade the nature rights movement has grown, with rivers and forests winning legal rights in Ecuador, Colombia, India and New Zealand.

Living near Appalachia, it never made sense to me that someone upstream from your land could dump poison into the water, hurting your crops and your livestock, and that not be against the law. In our Western philosophy so far, humans have “dominion” over the land, and can take anything from it they want to. They take whole tops off of mountains, and that’s not against the law. This water is a precious resource, and clean water should be a human right, not just the right of someone with the money to buy water that Nestle has drawn from Florida springs or one of the great lakes.

This water also can be a teacher. What properties does water have that we might want to study? It’s very flexible in its liquid state. It runs around barriers, it sinks through soil, it flows down roof gutters into the rain barrel, down streets to the drains, down the sewers to the treatment plant, etc. Can we wonder, in a difficult situation, “I wonder what this moment would be like if I were like water?”

Water is also persistent. It trickles over rock and carves grooves, then canyons.

Can we wonder, as we struggle with despair over cruelty and injustice “I wonder what would happen if we were as persistent as water?”

I say “we” because one little drop of water is not going to make any kind of a groove, much less a canyon. These are our waters together, and they teach us that if enough drops get together they will have to work harder to evaporate us, to mop us up, to make us go away. Remember the story of King Canute, who ruled England long ago. Walking by the shore, his followers, sycophants and so called advisors praised him, the way some rulers like to be praised. “O King, you are the greatest man in the world, all bow before you. None would dare disobey you. You shall have anything you want, and your will shapes the universe.” Canute was a man of good sense, and he grew tired of this foolish talk.

“Bring me my chair and I will command the waves.” He sat and held up his hand, commanding the waves . “Very well. Sea,” cried Canute, “I command you to come no further! Waves, stop your rolling!. Surf, stop your pounding! Do not dare touch my feet!”

He waited a moment, quietly, and a tiny wave rushed up the sand and lapped at his feet.

“How dare you!” Canute shouted. “Ocean, turn back now! I have ordered you to retreat before me, and now you must obey! Go back!”

No ruler on earth, no company boss, no President can hold back the people forever if they demand justice. Hong Kong, Moscow, in myriad US towns, the people move. Like water. Flexible, persistent, together.

SERMON INDEX

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