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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
May 26, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We celebrate the ritual of Flower Communion, created by Unitarian minister Norbert Capek, which lifts up the beauty of diversity and inclusion on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.

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

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
May 19, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Western psychotherapy has emphasized insight as a way of healing emotional pain. Dr. Shomo Morita, a Japanese doctor, created a way of treating patients’ emotional pain that draws wisdom from Buddhism.

Call to Worship
Barbara Wells

O Spinner, Weaver of our lives, 
Your loom is love.
May we who are gathered here
be empowered by that love
to weave new patterns of Truth
and Justice into a web of life that is strong
beautiful, and everlasting.

Reading
O. Eugene Pickett

WE GIVE THANKS THIS DAY

For the expanding grandeur of Creation, worlds known and unknown, galaxies beyond galaxies, filling us with awe and challenging our imaginations:

We give thanks this day.

For this fragile planet earth, its times and tides, its sunsets and seasons:

We give thanks this day.

For the joy of human life, its wonders and surprises, its hopes and achievements:

We give thanks this day.

For our human community, our common past and future hope, our oneness transcending all separation, our capacity to work for peace and justice in the midst of hostility and oppression:

We give thanks this day.

For high hopes and noble causes, for faith without fanaticism, for understanding of views not shared:

We give thanks this day.

For all who have labored and suffered for a fairer world, who have lived so that others might live in dignity and freedom:

We give thanks this day.

For human liberty and sacred rites for opportunities to change and grow, to affirm and choose:

We give thanks this day. We pray that we may live not by our fears but by our hopes, not by our words but by our deeds.

Sermon

I’m trained in the Western world’s methods of counseling. Listen to the pain. Explore the feelings. Look for patterns in the person’s life. Do the life archeology that tells you where the patterns start. When the client has insights into why she reacts the way she does, into why he self-sabotages, why she suffers from self doubt, why he is beset by anxiety, the insight will help things change. And sometimes it does. Over the years, though, I began to lose a little faith in insight. I knew why. People know why they drink, or why they gamble, but nothing stops drinking like – stopping drinking. People tell me they have a book in them, they just can’t get it written. They know all of the reasons why they can’t get it written, but the main one is that they don’t sit down and write.

Most of feel stuck sometimes, as if a piece of our life has become a mountain that is steep and forbidding, impossible to climb.

I was fascinated when I found my lack of faith in insight was shared by a school of therapy based in Japanese philosophy, developed by a doctor Shomo Morita. It has evolved into a school called Constructive Living.

Life they say, is like playing ball on running water. So much is coming at us. So much is disheartening, shocking, so much is sweet, and then terrifying, and then joyous, then disappointing. At times we go into overwhelm. Some of us grind to a halt.

Morita said: “There is a limit to the progress that can be made through insight.”

Morita saw that getting stuck in anxiety is a result of misunderstanding life. Life is hard. You can’t change your thoughts. You can change your actions. Remember that Buddhism teaches that our cations are all that we have. It’s natural that this school should arise in a culture where Buddhism is foundational. There is a famous Zen saying: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” It’s the day to day where character is built, where relationships are built, where a life is built.

Lots of times, in the midst of officiating at a wedding, I feel moved to talk about how relationships are built on ten small decisions a day. Do you look up and smile when the person comes into the room? Do you apologize first? Do you forgive first? Do you offer the first foot rub? Do you offer to make the tea? These are small things, but for most of a life there are only small things. That’s where the love lives.

Morita therapy was developed to help with overwhelming anxiety. In its early days it started with seven days of bed rest, just bed, no reading, no visits, meals in bed, just get up to go to the bathroom. This hits the reset button in someone who has been overstimulated, overcome by all that is to be done, all the decisions to be made. After seven days most people really want to get up and do something. For the next week you go into nature and sit. You may do light activity, like feeding the birds. In the next week you start by sweeping the patio, washing the car, paying attention to what you are doing.

The idea is to create in yourself the habit of doing the next thing. That’s the way to manage anxiety. Do the next thing. One thing. You trust your inner voice that tells you what the next thing is to do. You write a page. You cook a meal. You make a phone call. What if it doesn’t work?

Constructive Living encourages actions without attachment to outcomes. I’ve told you about the box of envelopes I bought to send out my writing. It’s scary to put yourself out there, to offer your words to the evaluation and judgment of strangers. Over the glue on the flap was a paper you peeled off to reveal the stickiness. “Detach before mailing,” it said. I thought that was good advice, so I hung one of those over my desk.

You can’t control or change anyone but yourself. Your mom is still going to bail your brother out of every mess. Your sister is still going to choose the wrong loves. You can say your piece, but you have to detach from results. Just do the next right thing. Maybe it’s eating breakfast, then washing the breakfast dishes. Action calms anxiety and lifts the fog of overwhelm. Not flailing random action. The next right thing. Breathing. Mindfully.

What if you think something is the right thing to do but it’s not? What if you make a mistake? I found out this week that I’d made a mistake. I still don’t know how big a mistake it was. I have already learned (or been reminded of something I already knew) from it. I still have the job of feeling out what the next right thing to do is. There is no same action that fits every situation. Morita says mistakes are good teachers.

They show you the next right thing. If you don’t know what it is, be quiet for a while and see if it comes to you. Mistakes teach you that you were paying attention to the wrong thing, they warn you about future embarrassment, frustration and trouble if we don’t adjust to the reality that confronts us.

You’re in traffic. You’re in a hurry. You can suffer by wishing all the cars out of your way. You can yell and pound the steering wheel, but the traffic is the traffic. You can choose another road, and then you can deal with the traffic on that road. Your computer is your computer, and sometimes it doesn’t do what you think it should do. You can pound the same keys as before, only harder. You can express your frustration. The reality of your computer doesn’t care about your feelings. It will be more likely to do what you want it to do if you press the correct keys.

You have feelings, but the goal is to do the next right thing in spite of the feelings. I hate going to the post Office. I mean, I HATE it. The PO doesn’t care. If I want something mailed I have to go. Or ask someone to go for me. Morita therapy is fairly blase about feelings. There are no “bottled up” feelings, they say. If you’re not feeling something right now, it’s not there. Your feelings are like clouds moving across the sun.

Most of you know the Buddhist story about the student who had a vision in group meditation. “Master,” he says proudly, “In my minds eye I saw the Buddha himself, and he was all made of gold.”

“Just keep paying attention to your breath and it will go away,” said the teacher.

Accept your feelings. Know your purpose. Do what needs to be done. These are the stepping stones toward skillful living. OF COURSE I fight with this. “What about the unconscious? What about fate and deep urges, intuition and desire? No one school of therapy has a big Theory of Everything that works and makes sense. I like the Buddhist-ness of this school, which says “Just try it and see if it works for you.”

One of the things you do in this school of therapy, as in others, is to write your epitaph, and write your obituary. You can see what you’d like to be remembered for, what stories people will tell at your memorial service. You can make adjustments if you don’t like where your current path is taking you. You write out your bucket list we call it in the west, of things you would like to do and see before you die.

I would suggest adding another list of things you want to let go of doing, things you don’t want to spend energy on any more. In my life, the title of that list rhymes with “bucket” but has more of a “I’m going to let this go,” meaning.

Knowing when to act is as important as knowing when not to act. Sometimes productive waiting is what needs to be done. Letting the water boil. Letting the glue set all the way before testing it. Letting a friend have time to get their thoughts together before responding to us.

The fully functioning human being isn’t one who is pain-free and happy all the time. We feel horrified by the suffering caused by unjust laws and the actions of elected officials. In addition to stewing and shaking, we go get trained to register people to vote, then we register people to vote, and then we VOTE. We are disheartened by our guest in sanctuary’s situation, so we ask the Sanctuary Network what needs doing, or, if we have Spanish, we come over to visit Alirio. As we say in the Carolinas: You can extrapolate from there.

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

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
May 12, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Olympia Brown is one of the “mothers” of Unitarian Universalism. This morning we’ll take a look at some UU history and let it inspire us.

Call to Worship

By David C Pohl

We come to this time and this place:
To rediscover the wondrous gift of free religious community;
To renew the faith in the holiness, goodness, and beauty of life;
To reaffirm the way of the open mind and full heart;
To rekindle the flame of memory and hope; and
To rekindle the vision of an earth made fair, with all her people one.

Reading

STAND BY THIS FAITH
Olympia Brown

Stand by this faith. Work for it and sacrifice for it.

There is nothing in all the world so important as to be loyal to this faith which has placed before us the loftiest ideals,

Which has comforted us in sorrow, strengthened us for noble duty and made the world beautiful.

Do not demand immediate results but rejoice that we are worthy to be entrusted with this great message,

That you are strong enough to work for a great true principle without counting the cost.

Go on finding ever new applications of these truths and new enjoyments in their contemplation, always trusting in the one God which ever lives and loves.

Sermon

I have preached a few sermons on Unitarian history. Here is a little slice of Universalist history for you. The Universalists are a Christian denomination of people who believe in the divinity of Jesus (which makes them Trinitarian as opposed to Unitarian) and the love of a God who would not send anyone to hell. This is the story of a woman Olympia Brown, born without a lot of patience, who had lost it all by the end of her life. This is the story of a woman who got a lot done, the story of a person who, like all of us, had good times and hard times. This is a story of a person living her soul. This is the story of one way social justice happens.

The first of four children, Olympia Brown was born in 1835 to Universalist pioneers in Michigan. After beginning her education in a schoolhouse her dad built on the farm, Olympia went to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. In first year English, the instructor assigned in-class orations and readings, stating “all of the young men will be required to give speeches before the class. “The young women must bring manuscripts to class and read from them.” Many believed women inferior public speakers to men, and unable to recite from memory. Olympia did not argue, but when her turn came the next day, she delivered a rousing oration with her manuscript rolled up in her hand. Olympia and other independent young women caused Antioch continuing consternation. In the mid-1850s the Amelia Bloomer dress came into fashion, a sort of pants-skirt combination, comfortable, practical, and scandalous, as it only reached halfway down the calf. Apparently a woman’s ankles had the power to cause great excitement! Bloomers let the young women move freely, so they could run and climb stairs quickly. Olympia always wore her Bloomer dresses as a student, and ignored the ridicule she received from the many outraged Yellow Springs students.

Physical education was not available for Antioch women in Olympia’s day, and she and her friends took long walks for exercise. When the college president found out that young Antioch women were seen in nearby towns laughing, running, and talking noisily, he sent to Boston for a professional chaperone. No such person had been hired to watch the men, so Olympia and her friends expressed their displeasure by teasing the poor woman relentlessly — in German. The chaperone lasted a week.

She and other students invited Antoinette Brown to come speak. Antoinette Brown was a Congregational minister who had gone to Oberlin. “It was the first time I had heard a woman preach,” Olympia said in her autobiography, “and the sense of victory lifted me up. I felt as though the Kingdom of Heaven were at hand.” She decided she wanted to be a minister, and finally found one seminary that would admit her. It was a hugely radical thing to do on the part of the seminary.

It was not the Meadville Theological School in Pennsylvania, which on June 16, 1861, sent this response to her application: After apologizing for having kept her waiting for a reply, a Mr. Stearns wrote: “were it my private concern, I should say at once ‘come!’ I have no prejudice against a woman’s studying anything she can or against a woman’s speaking in public. From what I’ve heard of you, I’d be glad to have you for a pupil and more like you. But I have no right to commit the Institution to a new course of action.” I heard that a lot too, as a young seminary graduate, interviewing with search committees. “We have no personal sense that women shouldn’t be ministers,” they would say, “it’s just that my congregation would have difficulties. They’re not quite ready…”

Finally Olympia received a letter from Ebenezer Fisher, president of the Canton Universalist Divinity School at St. Lawrence University advising her to study Greek there and board with a private family. He confirms September 25, 1861 as the beginning of her study. This was one of only three theological seminaries in the Unites States that would admit women students. At the end of the letter he adds: ” It is perhaps proper that I should say you may have some prejudices to encounter in the institution from students and also in the community here. Nothing very mighty or serious, I trust…The faculty will receive and treat you precisely as they would any other student. My own judgment is that it is not expedient for women to become preachers, but I consider it purely a question of experience and not at all of right–the right I cannot question. The other matter of expedience or duty I cannot decide for you. I am willing to leave it between you and the Great Head of the Church. (For the few of you who may be confused by that, he was talking about God, not the President of their denomination!) If you feel He has called you to preach the everlasting Gospel, you shall receive from me no hindrance but rather every aid in my power.” (June 21, 1861) Quite amazing, actually, for a man of that day. I head much the same thing from fellow students at Princeton Seminary. They would say “I’m so concerned about your feeling that you have a call to the ministry. Can you tell me what the story of that is? Can you tell me why you feel you would be a good minister?” In other words, “justify yourself.” Women students were asked to justify their presence daily. Some of the male students were there (and this is no fault of theirs) because they weren’t sure what else to do, or because someone had said “You have such a nice voice, you should apply to seminary. Here, let me help you fill out the application.” I’m sure there are places where men have to justify their existence every day too. It makes you tough. You have to be determined. Olympia Brown was determined.

No woman at the time, most books say, was ordained by more than one local church. No woman was ordained with the full authority of a whole denomination, which is what Olympia Brown wanted. She thought this would be a step in women’s access to authority and roles in decision making. When the Northern Association of Universalists were in session, she successfully presented her case for ordination.

When she was ordained in June 1863, Dr. Fisher, who had had such doubts about her coming to St. Lawrence, participated in the ceremony. He participated in the ceremony. That makes him a hero in my book. Rev. Olympia Brown later paid tribute to Dr. Fisher, saying: “This was the first time that the Universalists or indeed any denomination had formally ordained any woman as a preacher. They took that stand, a remarkable one for the day, which shows the courage of these men.”

The way it works is that the ones without power have to push and push and be told they are rude. They have to put up with folks acting like they are crazy or thoughtless or disloyal for pushing for change. Again, this isn’t the fault of individuals as much as it’s the way culture is. When you are Ôout of line,” when you are calling for justice, you all know that first they ignore you. When that doesn’t work and you become a little more powerful, they begin to ridicule you. Next, when you have more people gathered to your side, they begin to fight you. When you prevail, they say they were with you the whole time. In fact, it was their idea. Someone on the inside has to have the courage to stand up, to stand with those asking for justice if justice is to be done. You have to have help from the inside.

The Presbyterians did not ordain women untill 1955, the Episcopalians in 1973. The Roman Catholics, not yet. The denomination I grew up in, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church? Not yet.

1864 she was called to her first full-time parish ministry in Weymouth Landing, Massachusetts. At this time Olympia Brown became active in the women’s rights movement, working with Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and other leaders. She and the people in that first church loved one another. It was not so with her next parish, a Universalist congregation in Bridgeport, CT. More about that in a moment, but first, her husband.

While still in Weymouth, she’d met John Henry Willis, a member of her congregation’s Board of Trustees, and they married in 1873. She “thought that with a husband so entirely in sympathy with my work, marriage could not interfere, but rather assist. And so it proved, for I could have married no better man. He shared in all my undertakings.” As did Lucy Stone, Olympia Brown kept her maiden name, with Willis’s agreement. It was a most felicitous marriage. When her husband died, unexpectedly in 1893, she wrote: “Endless sorrow has fallen upon my heart. He was one of the truest and best men that ever lived, firm in his religious convictions, loyal to every right principle, strictly honest and upright in his life,….with an absolute sincerity of character such as I have never seen in any other person.”

Her ministry at the Bridgeport church seemed to have been one fraught with peril from the start. It was a struggling church, the only kind then open to having a woman minister. There is a letter written to her that first year begging her not to leave, as this parishioner felt the church is just starting to prosper under her guidance. He regretted the difficulties she had encountered in the past year, but was optimistic about a brighter future and noted that, “with one exception, all are satisfied with your course.”

That one was a Mr. James Staples, “a bitter agitator,” who stepped up his pecking away at her ministry “like a raucous crow.” When she took a leave of absence for the birth of her first child, ministers were brought in to preach who would say to anyone who would listen, “What you need here is a good man.” Despite the efforts of her many supporters in the church, including PT Barnum, she was able to stay there only six or seven years, before he ran her off and split the church. Churches suffer when the raucous crow doesn’t get shut down by members craving the health of the church. She had lots of support, even powerful help, but apparently James Staples was allowed to continue pecking away at her. I wonder if anyone in that church said to him “You are not just hurting our minister and her family, you are hurting the church when you do that.” Perhaps they did and he kept on. Perhaps this was the reason it was a struggling church when she got there. It was split and weakened when she left. She was strong and mighty, and she endured for seven years.

She and her husband moved to Racine, WI, where he published a newspaper and ran his own printing business. Olympia was pastor of the Good Shepherd Universalist Church in Racine, WI. It was a disheartened church, apathetic and broke. She was asked to come turn it around. Under her leadership they perked up somewhat, and it was a happy time for the family. Both of their children became teachers: Henry Parker Willis was professor of banking at Columbia University and key in writing the Federal Reserve Act, and Gwendolyn Willis taught classics at Bryn Mawr.

At the age of 52, immersed in the fight to enfranchise women in WI, she left the full time ministry Women could vote there on matters pertaining to the schools. Olympia and her fellow suffragists were of the opinion that every vote eventually had something to do with the schools. They won the fight, but two months later the new law was overturned by the state Supreme Court.

Gwendolyn Willis describes her mother as “indomitable and uncompromising, traits that do not lend themselves well to politics and leadership. She cared little for society, paid no deference to wealth, represented an unfashionable church, and promoted a cause (woman suffrage) regarded as certain to be unsuccessful. She was troublesome because she asked people to do things, to work, contribute money, go to meetings, think and declare themselves openly as favoring a principle or public measure.” (Olympia Brown: The Battle for Equality, Charlotte Cote, Mother Courage Press, 1988, p. 171) Thank goodness we have some folks like that here too!

No longer having the patience for a state-by-state campaign, Olympia joined the militant “Woman’s Party.” I belonged to this party before I was born,” she declared. At the age of 82, in 1917, she was one of 1,000 women who marched in freezing rain and strong winds, picketing the White House to make known to President Woodrow Wilson their demands for a constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage. Many of the marchers chained themselves to the fence in front of the White House when the police came to break up the demonstration. June 1920, when she was 85, she marched to demonstrate at the Republican Convention in Chicago.

Later that year women were granted the right to vote. Of all the pioneers, Susan B Anthony, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Olympia Brown was the only one who lived long enough to cast a vote in a Presidential election.

Asked to preach, near the end of her life, at her former church in Racine, she testified to the importance in her life of Universalism, “the faith in which we have lived, for which we have worked, and which has bound us together as a church. . . . Dear Friends, stand by this faith. Work for it and sacrifice for it. There is nothing in all the world so important to you as to be loyal to this faith which has placed before you the loftiest ideal, which has comforted you in sorrow, strengthened you for the noble duty and made the world beautiful for you.”

After the suffrage victory, Brown dedicated herself to promoting world peace and became one of the original members of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She died in 1926 at the age of 91. In the Universalist Church of Washington DC, a plaque honoring her reads:

Olympia Brown
Preacher of Universalism
Pioneer and Champion of Women’s Citizenship Rights
Forerunner of the New Era
THE FLAME OF HER SPIRIT STILL BURNS TODAY.

May it burn within each of us, when we feel a call, when something needs to be done. May our sense of a loving God sustain us, or our faith in the strength of justice and truth uphold us, may we honor those among us who have the fire. We need them.

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

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 21, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

If you were planted, what would grow? What is left in a room when you leave the room? What is left in a group when the group scatters? What would be left here on Earth when you leave?

Call to Worship
by May Sarton

Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers. 

Meditation Reading 
THE GARDENER 85 
by Rabindrahnath Tagore

Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence? I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds. 

Open your doors and look abroad. 

From your blossoming garden… gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers an hundred years before. 

In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years. 

Sermon

Long ago and far away, I went on a pastoral visit to an old man in the hospital. Mr. Hatcher had a career as a civil rights and social justice activist, retiring from being the head of Piedmont Community Action, bringing the Head Start program to the county and improving hospital transportation for marginalized communities. In the back of the house was a deep gulley, covered in brush and poison ivy. He started puttering in the yard, and gradually overspilled the yard and began clearing out the gulley. “By that time, I was burned out on trying to solve human problems, and I took to the woods, where I could have a little more control over my environment and my friends the plants.” Thirty years later it was a ten acre garden open to the public. He had always told me he hoped his life would end before his legs gave out. “I always wanted to live to 95, he said, ” but living to 90 has made me think about changing my mind.” I took him a big sprig of rosemary from my garden, so he’d have something from the outside in his room. He held it to his nose and smelled deeply. “Ah, that rosemary really pulls its weight.”

He was himself a seed, you see, starting small, making his way through obstacles, a centimeter at a time, gathering helpers slowly. “I find an ugly spot and make it a beauty spot.” He said.

If you were a seed, what would grow from you?

Theologian Howard Thurman wrote “Do not ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

We all know of people who started small and made a big difference. 16 year old Greta Thunberg started Friday Climate Protests in Sweden, and now she speaks all over the world. She starts her speech with “I’m Greta Thunberg, and I want you to panic.”

There is Yacouba Sawadogo, a man in Burkina Faso, who began planting trees to stop the desertification of his country. There is Kate Sessions, a botanist and horticulturalist in the late 1800’s who lived in San Diego. She did research and found trees all over the world that would grow in that dry climate, and she planted them there in San Diego. You can see the results of her efforts… it’s called Balboa Park. People have started great businesses in garages and kitchens. A publishing company started up and revitalized the town I lived in in upstate South Carolina. It started when a few friends were having coffee one morning. They wrote some words on a napkin. Now they publish amazing literature by Southern writers. A whole town now thinks of itself as a writers’ town. It’s not only starting something small, we carry beginnings within us like seeds.

We can be a seed in nearly every interaction. You have had people who have been an inspiration to you, who have said encouraging words that energized you. You have had interactions with people that discouraged you. You’ve read a line in a poem, a novel, a Scripture verse, you’ve heard lyrics of a song that made you stop short and say “I never heard it put that way…”

Here are some seeds that blossomed in me and changed my thinking. One was a teacher named Byron Katie, who said “We suffer when our thoughts argue with reality.”

One was in a 12 step meeting, when someone said “what other people think of me is none of my business.”

We can plant a seed of discouragement too: In my experience, someone bustling up and saying in an impatient voice “here, let me help you with that” can be nice, or it can communicate a lack of belief in your capability. In my Southern family, one way to sweetly diminish someone is by use of the word “little.” How’s that little project of yours coming?’ “How’s your little job?”

To be encouraging you might say something like “You’ve got this,” “You know what to do.”

“I’m right here if you need me.”

Some people are gifted at inspiring others to think, or to be courageous. If you look up the 10 most inspiring speeches, you get famous people saying things like “never give up, define success for yourself, make the world better, joy is always in process, it’s always under construction (Matthew Mconaughey) and Yoda “Do or do not. There is no try.” Which makes absolutely no sense to me. Then, of course, the ultimate inspire-er, (also fictional,) Coach Taylor, who wins, in my opinion, with “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose”

I’m not saying that you have to be Coach Taylor every day as you move through your life. I’m saying this. We’ve all watched CSI enough to know about Locard’s Exchange Princple, which says that wherever you go you leave traces behind. Fibers, fluids, skin cells, words, feelings. “every contact leaves a trace.” Some of us are carriers of anxiety. We worry so much, and we worry when other people aren’t worried enough, so we agitate them a bit so their foreheads are more rumpled when we leave them. Some carry laughter, some carry a listening presence. Some people carry peace. You just feel better when they’ve been around. Some are calming, some are strengthening. Some carry love. After interactions with them, you know you are loved, and you can love more. These are little things, the size of a seed sometimes. 

Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

Some of you have touched so many lives. You have been teachers, coaches, you’ve been in business with people, you have co-workers, you’ve had family and interacted with strangers. You may never know what seeds you’ve planted. You may have a student communicate with you and tell you years later what something you said meant to their lives. If you have had such a teacher, or such an interaction, think about making contact with that person to let them know.

Letter to Agnes De Mille from Martha Graham

There is a vitality,
a life force,
a quickening
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique.

And If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.
The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine
how good it is
nor how valuable it is
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly
to keep the channel open….

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 14, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In advance of a church storytelling event the first weekend in May, we will talk about the power of our stories. We will talk particularly about the stresses put on us by the stories told about people with our particular identities, women, LGBTQ, people of color, white men, Etc. How do those stories shape us and put pressure on our thinking?

Call to worship 

A HAT FULL OF SKY
Terry Pratchett

There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world. 

Meditation Reading

THE NAME OF THE WIND
Patrick Rothfuss

Chronicler frowned. “Is that the one where the king sells his crown to an orphan boy?” 

Bast nodded. “And the boy becomes a better king than the original. The goosegirl dresses like a countess and everyone is stunned by her grace and charm.” He hesitated, struggling to find the words he wanted. “You see, there’s a fundamental connection between seeming and being. Every Fae child knows this, but you mortals never seem to see. We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.” 

Chronicler relaxed a bit, sensing familiar ground. “That’s basic psychology. You dress a beggar in fine clothes, people treat him like a noble, and he lives up to their expectations.” 

“That’s only the smallest piece of it,” Bast said. “The truth is deeper than that. It’s…” Bast floundered for a moment. “It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” 

Sermon

We talk a lot about story in this pulpit. How events happen, and then we tell stories about what happened, to ourselves and to others. People experience the same event and tell different stories to make sense of it. The stories shape how you respond to the event. If someone is rude, you wonder if you did something to them. Maybe they were in pain, maybe they were tired. I’ve told you about my friend Pat, who, when cut off in traffic, says “Bless her heart, I bet she just got out of the hospital.” That’s one possible explanation. It changes how you feel about what just happened. If a bad thing happened some people will think it’s bad luck. Others will think the God of their understanding is punishing them for something. If someone sees a toddler crying, they might think “that baby is tired,” Someone else might think the parent is doing something wrong, or not doing something they should do. Someone without kids might think “When I have children, they will never behave like that.” The Karma Fairy laughs. My daughter-in-law posted a photo of my granddaughter crying. “She’s crying because her tongue is wet and I won’t let her keep drying it off.” No one would have guessed that story. 

Today I want to talk about a different aspect of story this morning. Stories other people you grew up in a family with more than one kid, there may have been stories about each one of you. One is the quiet one, one’s the pretty one, one’s the smart one, one’s trouble. Family roles are assigned. Usually one kid is the hero kid, does everything right, gets good grades, doesn’t cause trouble. Sometimes one gets the “scapegoat” role, where, when something breaks its assumed to be their fault. When there is a fight, they are assumed to have started it. One kid sometimes is the family clown, where their humor diffuses tension, or distracts the rest of the family from something that might cause a fight. One kid sometimes has the “distractor” role, and they will sometimes develop a problem in order to give the parents something else to focus on besides their deteriorating relationship or financial situation. This kid’s problem is a semi-conscious try to pull the family together. If you were the hero kid, that story told about you that you never gave your parents a moments trouble, or that you were the smartest one, or the story that you were trouble – those stories can shape your life forever. We tend to re-create the roles we had in our families in our grown up families, in our chosen families, in our workplaces and in our church community. 

What about stories that are told in the broader culture about us and our people, our identity groups? Studies since 1995 are showing that those stories affect us. This is called stereotype threat, or identity threat, and the stories cause stress if you are aware of them. 

Girls are bad at math. Boys are bad at verbal skills. There are stereotypes about Black and Brown kids, sometimes borne out by statistics. There are stereotypes about Asians, sometimes borne out by statistics. Stereotypes about gay men and lesbians, stereotypes about older white men, about young brown women, angry black women …. What the psychologists found is that when you are aware of stereotypes about your group, you sometimes stress about being lumped in with the negatives about your group. You carry your whole group on your shoulders, or you are aware that you will be allowed fewer mistakes than someone else, or that you will not be given the benefit of the doubt. 

Studies find that this awareness, this worry, interferes with some of the executive functioning of your brain. Updating, a skill of the part of your memory that is available for immediate work, is diminished. Learning new things is harder, the ability to take risks is suppressed. If a female student is treated in a sexist way by a male experimenter, she tends to do less well on tasks. When Slack students are told to do a task, and stereotypes about African-Americans are highlighted, they tend to perform less well than Black students who didn’t hear the stereotypes mentioned. When, before an experiment, men are reminded that the stereotype is that men are not so good at verbal skills, they do more poorly on verbal tasks than men for whom this stereotype isn’t highlighted. 

In progressive circles, now, white men might be worrying about not talking or acting like “a typical white guy.” People of color might step on their expressions of anger and outrage. I’ve heard friends talk about not wanting to come across like “that angry Black woman.” 

POEM I WROTE TO MY BLACK AND BROWN SISTERS: 
by Rev. Kristen Harper

My beautiful black, brown, sister with your 
Nonconforming grace and rhythm radiating soul. 
You with the big deep brown eyes and piercingly fierce gaze. 
You with the long, short, curly, straight, locked crown 
You in all your regal baldness. 
I know what lies beneath that controlled voice, that diminished expression
I can see behind the veil of servant, of surrogate. 
I feel the anger, the sadness, the frustration, the slow death 
of shrinking, of trying to become small so other’s won’t be intimidated,
won’t be afraid. 

I know the depression of stuffing, pushing down the roar of righteousness 
the roar that claims our humanity, our value, our right to name the truth. I see your goddessesness, your divine love, 
the depth of your black, brown brilliance. 
I hope someday you will too. See the 
years of survival not as a test-but a testimony, 
to a stubborn love born from generations of strong black, brown sisters –
Mothers who refused to give up, grandmothers who passed down 
more than recipes of arroz con polio, tandoori or fried chicken. 
Sisters, many sisters and aunts who held one another up, reached out a hand, shook us when we needed to wake up. 
My beautiful black, brown sister with your 
doubt, and your brokenness, and your dusty knees …
You are loved. 

How do we counter this? The studies show that derogation works with some people, sometimes. It’s the old “consider the source” tactic. If you can think derogatory things about the person or people thinking bad things about you and your identity, you do better. Constructive behavior works also, where you just put your head down and do an amazing job. Some people try denying their identity group, or its importance to them. 

So what is the take away from all of this? It’s natural to be a bit dimmed, a bit daunted and slowed down when you are worried about the stereotypes about one of your identities. When you see black and brown kids not doing as well at school, consider that one of the factors is this identity threat, that they pick up all kinds of subliminal cues about how teachers, administrators, other kids, and society at large “stories” about them. 

Hearing and seeing positives about your group helps a lot. If you’re a Black woman in a STEM field, lifting up Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, the women who were calculators for NASA, whose work helped the US land on the moon. If you’re a Latinx kid, knowing about Latino scientists, journalists, authors and warriors can help. 

I don’t know if history erases the accomplishments of women and marginalized people on purpose, but it has a tremendous effect. The recent photograph of a black hole was taken in large part through an algorithm created by Dr. Katie Bouman. It only took the internet a day or two to notice that her contribution was downplayed, that she was an unnamed grad student in some stories, and that the right wing corner or the net began claiming that a white man in the lab was the one who really wrote the algorithm. He shut that down quickly. That’s an ally. 

Hold in mind the proud things about your identity. Know the proud things about other identities. The stories are strong. Tell all the stories, dig them up, hold them in your hands like smooth stones, reminding yourself of your strength and power. Then go shining. 

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 7, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Using the music of Townes Van Zandt, combined with the April Soul Matters theme of Wholeness, we will talk about how we need one another in order to be whole. How can we care for one another? Is there a way to be loving and challenging at the same time? How do we reach out with compassion? Is compassion always the best approach to another person? How much are we supposed to take care of ourselves and how much do we take care of others?

Call to Worship

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

Something should remind us once more that the great things in this universe are things that we never see. You walk out at night and look up at the beautiful stars as they bedeck the heavens like slinging lanterns of eternity and you think you can see all. Oh, no. You can never see the law of gravitation that holds them there. When I speak of love I’m not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of love. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.

Reading

LITANY FOR PEACE (adapted)
Thich Nhat 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 suffering that are going on around us,
let us practice the establishment of peace in our hearts and on earth.”

Sermon

“Heart of Compassion” story

I wanted to use the music of Townes Van Zandt because I love his lyrics, and he’s a local man. Some of you probably knew him. Some have been sharing your stories about him this week. I don’t know him, though, just watched a documentary of his life, which was lovely and frustrating and sad to watch. “To live is to fly,” he wrote, “low and high.” He certainly did both. In the movie friends tell a story about him being at a party. I’m not sure I remember the details exactly, but they were on on the balcony of a place, pretty high off the ground. He sat on the balcony’s ledge, and then, he explained afterwards, he just wondered what it would feel like to fall, so he fell. Throwing himself at the experience of life. That looks like something he did over and over. It looks like he was one of those people who are both amazingly easy and hard to love. There is a story in our culture about genius, about artists, that the more brilliant they are, the more messed up they are. The picture of the writer banging away on the typewriter keys, a bottle of whiskey on the table, or the rock star barely about to stand up, trying to get to the gig… It’s almost as if our culture both loves and loves to punish artists. They get to ride with the muse, they get to live in a garret and stay up all night and be adored, and then their passion, their excesses, carry them swiftly toward their own destruction. If you live too long they make jokes about you, about how after the nuclear winter, there will just be cockroaches and Cher. They blame you for aging, for continuing to be passionate about making art long after you should have thrown it over for a more responsible job.

In the writings of my colleague James Ford, I came across this: He says “I found myself thinking of something Achaan Chah Subato, the great Theravandan meditation master once said about broken glasses. I have it framed and hanging on a wall in my office:

“One day some people came to the master and asked ‘How can you be happy in a world of such impermanence, where you cannot protect your loved ones from harm, illness and death?’ The master held up a glass and said ‘Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. I touch it and it rings! One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it incredibly.'”

When I read some of Townes Van Zandt’s poetry I see someone beating their wings like a moth against this truth. Everything and everyone is already broken. It takes the Sages years of humility and meditation to come to a place where they can look this truth fully in its face and find the joy in it, in being absolutely present in every moment with the beauty that is also there. Can you enjoy a friendship if there is always the lurking danger of one of you doing something that will end it? Can you look back at a marriage that ended and see that it was good for a while? Can you love your children knowing all of the dangers that are around and within them? Most of us can block out the knowledge that security is an illusion, that pain and joy intertwine in life, that when you love, you open yourself up to loss. Poets and artists don’t have that ability. They might try to forget what they see using drugs or alcohol, but when the daylight comes they see it all over again, the bright sharp truth that can blind you with its urgent light and send you spinning. 

In the song “Rake,” Townes Van Zandt writes:

You look at me now, and don’t think I don’t know
What all your eyes are a sayin’
Does he want us to believe these ravings and lies
They’re just tricks that his brains been a playin’? 
A lover of women he can’t hardly stand
He trembles he’s bent and he’s broken
I’ve fallen it’s true but I say unto you
Hold your tongues until after I’ve spoken

I was takin’ my pride in the pleasures I’d known
I laughed and thought I’d be forgiven
But my laughter turned ’round eyes blazing and
Said my friend, we’re holdin’ a wedding
I buried my face but it spoke once again
The night to the day we’re a bindin’
And now the dark air is like fire on my skin
And even the moonlight is blinding

Sooner or later what you know in the day stays with you at night, and what you know and do in the night comes all into your day until you can’t pretend any more that they’re separate. What you know when you are conscious and awake stays with you even when you are in your chosen oblivion. Once you see the fragility of things you can’t unsee it. You have to love if you can, knowing that what you love can go away. And for a poet, you have to keep writing about it.

What is the proper response to this painful realization? Is it to say “Gracious, that’s depressing, let’s not talk about it?” That is what most of us tend to do. As we grow in our spirit, though, we can learn that the best response to the pain, the joy, and the impermanence of this life is to embrace it with a wild courage. To respond to the pain with compassion. For others and for ourselves.

The British writer Warsan Shire writes:

“later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered 
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.” 

I am a happy person by nature, even though I worked as a therapist for many years and held oceans of pain in my ears, my eyes and my heart. I want to hold an atlas in my hand, acknowledge what Dr. Shire saw, and add “Where is beauty and joy? Everywhere. Everywhere.”

In Townes Van Zandt’s song “If I needed you” both are there.

If I needed you would you come to me
Would you come to me for to ease my pain
If you needed me I would come to you
I would swim the seas for to ease your pain
Well the night’s forlorn and the morning’s born
And the morning shines with the lights of love
And you’ll miss sunrise if you close your eyes
And that would break my heart in two

How do we deal with a world of such impermanence? By being present to each moment, not wishing it away or clutching it to us. As the English poet Blake said 

“he who binds to himself a joy, doth the winged life destroy. But who kisses the joy as it flies lives in Eternity’s sunrise.” 

Being present to each moment, and having compassion for all beings. Now, this part feels wearying to me. All beings, really? Most of us survive by blocking out some of the horrors of the world, or acknowledging them but not dwelling on them. I remember the Buddha lived in a world without TV, much less the 24 hour news cycle. I take him to mean compassion for everyone you meet in your day. Still that’s wearying. Some people are hard to keep feeling compassion for, as their problems seem to be self-inflicted and they don’t seem to learn. An addicted friend is hard to stay compassionate towards. 

Then I remember. Oh, compassion doesn’t mean you have to fix it. You just feel for them in their struggle, if there’s no more to do for them. The Yogic teaching is helpful here. When you are acting with compassion toward someone for whom your compassion is not doing any good, and you are emptying yourself for someone who lets whatever you pour into them leak out, or when someone is just playing you, that is called “idiot compassion.” In this world things change fast. We try to stay present to the moment we’re in, compassionate to the people we’re with, and to ourselves. We learn as we go. 

As Townes wrote:

To live is to fly
Low and high
So shake the dust off of your wings
And the sleep out of your eyes

Hardly anyone in this life is healthy enough or wealthy enough not to need other people. Some of us have strong ideas about the people we need, but we’re often wrong. Teachers, another learning experience. Compassion fatigue. Not for any of you all, but for the world. “Where does it hurt?” Everywhere.

Yes. And. There is joy and pleasure everywhere too. I’ve needed a lot of help in my life. I’ve given a lot of help in my life. I have to say I like giving it more.

IF I NEEDED YOU
Townes Van Zandt

If I needed you would you come to me
Would you come to me for to ease my pain
If you needed me I would come to you
I would swim the seas for to ease your pain
Well the night’s forlorn and the morning’s born
And the morning shines with the lights of love
And you’ll miss sunrise if you close your eyes
And that would break my heart in two
If I needed you would you come to me
Would you come to me for to ease my pain
If you needed me I would come to you
I would swim the seas for to ease your pain
Baby’s with me now since I showed her how
To lay her lilly hand in mine
Luke and Lil agree she’s a sight to see
A treasure for the poor to find
If I needed you would you come to me
Would you come to me for to ease my pain
If you needed me I would come to you
I would swim the seas for to ease your pain

We take care of each other to a certain extent, but not over certain boundaries. American Pema Chodron describes a conversation she had with an old man who was living on the streets for over four years. No one looks at him or talks to him. Sometimes someone gives him a little money, but no one really looks at him. No one asks how he is. It’s very lonely for him. People respond from discomfort, fear, anger, or judgment. According to Chodron, 

“Only in an open space where we’re not all caught up in our own version of reality can we see and hear and feel who others really are, which allows us to be with them and communicate with them properly.”

This openness is sometimes called emptiness in Buddhism. It means not shutting down or holding on too tightly When Things Fall Apart, 

I found myself thinking of something Achaan Chah Subato, the great Theravandan meditation master once said about broken glasses. I have it framed and hanging on a wall in my office:

“One day some people came to the master and asked ‘How can you be happy in a world of such impermanence, where you cannot protect your loved ones from harm, illness and death?’ The master held up a glass and said ‘Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. I touch it and it rings! One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it incredibly.'”

The false view of being an artist meaning you have to be tortured and addicted.

RAKE
Townes Van Zandt

You look at me now, and don’t think I don’t know
What all your eyes are a sayin’
Does he want us to believe these ravings and lies
They’re just tricks that his brains been a playin’? 
A lover of women he can’t hardly stand
He trembles he’s bent and he’s broken
I’ve fallen it’s true but I say unto you
Hold your tongues until after I’ve spoken

I was takin’ my pride in the pleasures I’d known
I laughed and thought I’d be forgiven
But my laughter turned ’round eyes blazing and
Said my friend, we’re holdin’ a wedding
I buried my face but it spoke once again
The night to the day we’re a bindin’
And now the dark air is like fire on my skin
And even the moonlight is blinding

FLYIN SHOES
Townes Van Zandt

Days full of rain
Skys comin’ down again
I get so tired
Of these same old blues
Same old song
Baby, it won’t be long
‘fore I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes
Flyin’ shoes
Till I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes

Spring only sighed
Summer had to be satisfied
Fall is a feelin’ that I just can’t lose.
I’d like to stay
Maybe watch a winter day
Turn the green water
To white and blue
Flyin’ shoes
Flyin’ shoes
Till I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes

The mountain moon
Forever sets too soon
Bein’ alone is all the hills can do
Alone and then
Her silver sails again
And they will follow
In their flyin’ shoes
Flyin’ shoes
They will follow in their
Flyin’ shoes

Days full of rain
Skys comin’ down again
I get so tired
Of the same old blues
Same old song
Baby, it won’t be long
Till I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes
Flyin’ shoes
Till I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

Using the children’s book Zen Ties, by Jon J Muth, we will tell the story of the summer when Koo, a young panda bear, came to visit his Uncle Stillwater. Uncle Stillwater encourages the neighborhood kids to help an elderly neighbor in need, and friendships blossom. All ages service.

Call to Worship
Dalai Lama

This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple. Your philosophy is simple kindness.

Reading
– Amit Ray, Yoga and Vipassana: An Integrated Life Style

We are all so deeply interconnected we have no option but to love all. Be kind and do good for anyone and that will be reflected. The ripples of the kind heart are the highest blessing of the universe.

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
March 17, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The Celts developed a Christianity that was intricately intertwined with the earth based faith of the land. Friendlier toward the body, toward women, and celebrating good beer, the Celts’ version of Christianity might be a delightful and refreshing insight into other possibilities than those some of us were raised with.

Call to Worship
M Scott Mumaday

“To encounter the sacred is to be alive at the deepest center of human existence. Sacred places are the truest definitions of the earth; they stand for the earth immediately and forever; they are its flags and shields. If you would know the earth for what it really is, learn it through its sacred places. At Devil’s Tower or Canyon de Chelly or the Cahokia Mounds, you touch the pulse of the living planet; you feel its breath upon you. You become one with a spirit that pervades geologic time and space.”

Reading
– Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark

“Later, when I stood in front of an alter waving incense, I would remember standing in front of the bar at Dante’s waving cigarette smoke out of my face, and the exact same feeling of tenderness would wash over me, because the people in both places were so much alike. We were all seeking company, meaning, solace, self-forgetfulness. Whether we found those things or not, it was the seeking that led us to find each other in the cloud even when we had nothing else in common. Sometimes I wondered if it even mattered if our communion cups were filled with consecrated wine or draft beer, as long as we bent over them long enough to recognize each other as kin.” 

Sermon

I arise today, through
The strength of heaven,
The light of the sun,
The radiance of the moon,
The splendor of fire,
The speed of lightning,
The swiftness of wind,
The depth of the sea,
The stability of the earth,
The firmness of rock.
I arise today, through
God’s strength to pilot me,
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s host to save me
From snares of devils,
From temptation of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
afar and near.

St. Patrick is said to have brought Christianity to Ireland, but it was already there when he got there. There was also a robust paganism. The word “pagan” just means “the religion of the countryside.” People traveled a lot in those days too, and the Celtic peoples were, at one time, living in northern Europe and France, and got driven up into England, Scotland and Wales by the encroachment of the Roman Empire. In the year 313, as you all know, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, By the fifth century, though, the empire was falling apart, and people in the far-from-Rome fringes of the empire were feeling freer to return to their pagan practices.

The man we know as St. Patrick was born to Roman parents who were probably functionaries for the Emperor in England. When he was 16, the story goes, he was kidnapped from his village by Irish invaders. Other people say he may have gone to Ireland himself because he didn’t want to become a tax collector like his father. His story is that he was enslaved as a shepherd for a tribal chieftan, starved and naked. He said he escaped with the help of God, traveled back to England, and became a priest. In middle age he requested to go back to Ireland, and began preaching Christianity.

Most of the people in Ireland were Celts, part of a vast group of tribes who had swept westward from Turkey (some say from India) through central Europe and into Gaul. The Romans called the Celts “Galli, and the Greeks called them “Keltoi.” Some say these were the Galatians to whom St Paul’s letter to the Galatians was written. They were fierce warriors whose men and women both fought in battle, naked, with their hair bleached with lime and spiked, sometimes with their bodies painted blue. Their religion was one of warrior-heroes, who were gods and human, both at the same time and in-between. When you died you went under the hills with the fairy-folk, who were able to pass between the world of the spirits and the human world. The Celtic gods were not particularly loving or kind, they were tricky and mean. The Roman historians claimed the Celts practiced human sacrifice. Other sources say that was propaganda. We do know they liked to cut off their enemies’ heads in battle, after which they would take the head home to its niche in the dining hall and on special occasions the heads were thought to have the power of speech. There were spirits in the rocks and trees, spirits in wells and springs, in animals and in the ocean. 

Remember, the divinities were tricky and a bit capricious, so the spirits too, needed appeasing. The ones who were experts in this were the Druids. The Druids were a learned group of people in whose care was the oral tradition and knowledge of each tribe and clan. They frowned on writing, some say, but others say their writing was just secret. Tales of heroes were memorized and sung by the bard-druids, who were said to have the power of healing, killing in their poetry. The Bards would watch the court and write songs about the royals. They would observe battles from afar and write songs and poems about the bravery of their side. The Druids spoke in code and riddles, and took great delight in confusing and confounding rivals in riddle “slams.” In one old story, one Druid so overwhelmed and amazed his competitor that the loser just dropped dead.

It was into this arena that Patrick came. Familiar with the Irish language and culture, Patrick chose not to try to eradicate native Irish beliefs. Instead, he would incorporate traditional ritual into his lessons of Christianity. He used bonfires to celebrate Easter since the Irish were used to honoring their gods with fire. Holy wells were honored, and the churches were built next to them or on top of them. He also superimposed a sun, a powerful Irish symbol, onto the Christian cross to create what is now called a Celtic cross, so that veneration of the symbol would seem more natural to the Irish.

The Druids fought him, but the people took to his Christianity easily. They were primed for the message. They were used to all the paradoxes in Christianity. They were used to warriors who were divine and human, so they didn’t have a problem grasping that about Jesus. They were used to the idea of living forever, so they grasped that easily. They were used to the triple-faced goddess, the hag, the mother, and the maiden, so the trinity of father, son and Holy Spirit was not a new one. The reason we have three-leafed clovers on St. Patrick’s Day is that he used the three-leafed clover to explain the trinity to the people. Many of the Druids became the first priests.

The reason I wanted to talk about Celtic Christianity today is that it is a different kind of Christianity from the Roman version that so influences even Protestant churches today. The world-denying, flesh-is-evil, women are awful, sexuality is sin Christianity that took over for such a long time came from St. Augustine of Hippo. He was an African man whose mom was Christian, but he didn’t want any part of it. He had a mistress for 15 years who bore him a son, but then he got converted. His sexuality gave him the most trouble in his desire to become a spiritual person, he felt, so he became extremely anti-sexual. Anti-woman. He talked a lot about “concupiscience” the way that Original Sin is passed into the Human race. It seems the more lust one feels at the time of conceiving a child, the more Original Sin. the child has. So the best thing to do is not feel much passion at any time. That way you rid the human race of original sin. The Roman way took over Ireland eventually, but for a while the religion was world-embracing. Women were leaders in the faith, dancing and good beer was celebrated in ritual and song.

How did they escape that twistedness for a few centuries? Bad manners. A different Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory to convert the pagan Anlgo-Saxons, and he was installed as Archbishop of Canturbury. The Celtic bishops traveled to see him , first asking a wise hermit if they should follow him. “If he is of God, follow him,” the wise man said. “How will we know?” “If he rises courteously to greet you, then he is of God. If he is rude and proud, he is not. Augustine did not rise, insisted the Celts change their customs to concur with those of Rome, and lost the attention of the Celts that way. 

So the Celtic Christians kept a love of creation, an acceptance of sexuality, and a respect for women unlike their Continental brothers and sisters in the church. Creation had a soul. Now some Christians are coming back to this in the church. Matthew Fox and his Creation Spirituality, Teilhard de Chardin saying “Every atom has consciousness” , Martin Buber saying we should have an “I- Thou” relationship with all of creation rather than an “I- it” relationship. There are movements within contemporary liberal Christianity that echo back to Celtic earth-loving green Christianity. Maybe the Christians and the pagans can sit down together after all and drink meade and ale in the halls of the believers in the summerland.

The Abess Brigid’s Grace 

I should like a great lake of ale, 
For the King of kings, 
I should like a table of the choicest food 
For the family of heaven. 
Let the ale be made from the fruits of faith, 
And the food be forgiving love. 

I should welcome the poor to my feast, 
For they are God’s children, 
I should welcome the sick to my feast, 
For they are God’s joy. 
Let the poor sit with Jesus at the highest place,’ 
And the sick dance with the angels. 

God bless the poor, 
God bless the sick 
And bless our human race. 
God bless our food 
God bless our drink, 
All homes O God, embrace. 

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

James Baldwin said “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” On this Sunday we will be lifting up one chapter of our Unitarian Universalist history, the black empowerment controversy of 1969. What can we learn from these ancestors, if we can call them that when many of them are still lively and very much with us? What is the 6th end of this congregation? What is the 8th principle of Unitarian universalism? The Promise and the Practice is hopeful lifting up of our commitment to live into a new chapter in the story of our congregation and our UU faith.

Call to Worship 
Lao Tze

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.

Reading

THE ENDS OF FIRST UU 

1. We live our unitarian universalist faith and values, teach them to our children, and act on them in the world. 

2. We support and challenge one another in worship, spiritual growth and lifelong learning to practice a rich spiritual life. 

3. We engage with one another to care for the earth and the interdependent web. 

4. We care for one another in intergenerational community and connect in fun and fellowship. 

5. We embody the principles of unitarian universalism and invite people of goodwill to find a spiritual home with us. 

6. We partner with other organizations and faith communities to dismantle a culture of white supremacy and other systems of oppression, within ourselves, within our church community, and beyond our walls. 

7. We provide leadership to and collaborate with the greater unitarian universalist community to expand the reach of our movement. 

8. We are generous with time, talent, and treasure to realize our mission. 

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button above to listen.

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