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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
March 31, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

How do we nurture our whole selves, especially those parts of ourselves that we may have been taught were no acceptable? How do we create communities and a society that are more whole?

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Call to Worship

ALL OF YOU IS HOLY
Anonymous

Forget about enlightenment, 
Sit down wherever you are, 
and listen to the wind that is singing in your veins.

Feel the longing, the fear, the love in your bones.

Open your heart to who you are, right now, 
not who you’d like to be, 
not the saint you’re striving to become, 
but the being right here before you, inside you… All of you is holy. 

You’re already more and less 
Than whatever you can know.  
Breathe out, Look in, Let go.

Reading

WHOLENESS
Parker Palmer

If I am to let my life speak things I want to hear, … 
I must also let it speak things I do not want to hear and would never tell anyone else!

My life is not only about my strengths and virtues; 
it is also about my liabilities and my limits, my trespasses and my shadow. 

An inevitable, though often ignored, dimension of the quest for ‘wholeness’ is that we must embrace what we dislike or find shameful about ourselves as well as what we are confident and proud of.

Sermon

“Making the World Whole Again” Video

During the upcoming month, our Lifespan Faith Development ministries and religious education classes will be exploring the topic of “wholeness”. 

How do we become our whole selves? 

What are some ways we can bring wholeness to our relationships with those whom we love? 

How do we create wholeness and holiness within this, our beloved religious community? 

In our larger community? 

Our society? 

Our world? 

One of the things I loved about the video with which we started just now is how, among other things, it points toward one of the paradoxes we encounter when we start examining this idea of wholeness. 

In order to help make our communities and our world more whole, we must move toward wholeness ourselves as individuals. 

And yet, it can be so difficult to do that when our society and our world can seem so fragmented and tom apart sometimes. 

So our journey toward wholeness, by necessity, is both an individual trek and yet a passage that must also be done in relationship and community with others and our world. 

Now, it might help to take a moment to examine what we mean by wholeness or to become our whole selves. 

There were several quotes that I found reading the materials for this topic that might be helpful. 

“Happiness is just one part of our existence, wholeness is to embrace all that is within us. It’s to embrace our shadow qualities, to embrace our self-doubt, fear, anxiety, as well as the brightness, joy, and curiosity. It is all welcome”. 

That’s from Dan Putt, a consultant and entrepreneur who works with folks on developing the ability to take risks and embrace change. 

That quote, and the reading from Parker Palmer that Carol read for us earlier I think both remind us about an aspect of finding wholeness that can be difficult – embracing and accepting the parts of ourselves that we do not like as much; the things we are not as good at; the sides of ourselves that might make us feel vulnerable about being judged by others. 

Part of learning to be whole is loving even the parts of ourselves that we may not like or that cause us challenges sometimes. 

My parents divorced when I was twelve, and my mom ended up having to work more than full-time to make ends meet. As the oldest child in the family, that meant I often ended up caring for and to a degree parenting my younger sister and brother. 

Later, as I moved into adulthood, I started to recognize this pattern I could easily fall into of taking on the needs of others – parenting people who were themselves adults and could therefore take care of themselves. 

Family Systems Theory calls this “overfunctioning”, and it is something I have to monitor about myself even today. 

The thing is, that experience of helping to raise my brother and sister and all of the tendencies it created within me are a part of who I am now – the whole human being I have become up until now. 

And those tendencies are not necessarily entirely unhealthy or bad. For instance, I suspect that they are a part of why I have spent most of my adult life within the caring professions, which has been amazingly rewarding. 

Perhaps paradoxically again, embracing the wholeness of ourselves, including the areas on which we may want to do some work means first, we have to accept those areas in order to be able do that work, and second some aspects of our whole selves may be both sometimes problematic and sometimes beneficial. In some instances, wholeness is not either/or. 

Unless you’re a narcissistic psychopath, in which case you don’t get to go “oh, that’s just part of who I am.” 

Anyway, author and editor for the spiritual series “On Being”, Kristin Lynn says “Wholeness is never lost, it is only forgotten.” 

What a wonderful way to think about wholeness, and one that I think leads us to some other ways in which our sense of wholeness can be challenged. 

Inevitably in life, we face loss and sorrow. Inevitably, we will encounter the judgements and prejudices of others.Inevitably, we will run up against constraints that cultural and societal norms place upon the expression of our full and whole selves. 

When we lose a person or even a creature that we love, a job, a physical or mental ability, it can feel like our wholeness has also been lost. 

I remember after my stepfather, Ty, died, my mom saying that it felt like a part of her was missing. It felt that way to me too, and I remembered feeling that same way after other times of loss. 

The thing is, we so often would not give up one moment of our relationships with those we loved and have lost. We carry them with us. They and our loss of them become part of the whole person we now are. 

Parker Palmer says it like this 

“We all know people who’ve suffered the loss of an important person in their lives. 

At first, they disappear into grief, certain that life will never again be worth living. 

But, through some sort of spiritual alchemy, they eventually emerge to find that their hearts have grown larger and more compassionate. 

They have developed a greater capacity to take in others’ sorrows and joys, not in spite of their loss but because of it. 

Suffering breaks our hearts – but there are two quite different ways for the heart to break. 

There’s the brittle heart that breaks apart into a thousand shards, a heart that takes us down as it explodes and is sometimes thrown like a grenade at the source of its pain. 

Then there’s the supple heart, the one that breaks open, not apart, growing into greater capacity for the many forms of love. 

Only the supple heart can hold suffering in a way that opens to new life.”

The supple heart allows us to find wholeness. 

Similarly, when we experience the loss of physical or mental abilities we once had, it can feel like we are less than whole. 

I went through this when I was temporarily disabled by an impacted nerve in my neck a while back. It did feel like a loss. I’m fortunate that it eventually got resolved, so I never had to reach acceptance and find a new sense of wholeness for myself. 

I have a friend who was born with a condition that left her physically disabled in a number of ways. She says that her journey toward wholeness has involved unlearning the many ways in which other people and societal systems labeled her as and made her feel incomplete. 

And far too many of us have felt limits imposed upon us, barriers to becoming our whole selves because of gender role stereotypes and restrictive gender binaries, because of our race or ethnicity or religious beliefs (or lack there of) or our sexuality or our gender identity (or lack there of) and on and on and on. 

I’ll talk a little more about this in a moment, but for now I want to note that even the scars we bear from our losses, as well as those we may bear from fighting to become our full, whole selves even up against oppression and restrictive mores – they too, these scars are a part of who we are now – the whole person we have become. 

Many of you are probably aware of Kintsugi (Kin Sugi), the Japanese art that provides a beautiful metaphor for what I am trying to express, but here is a short video that explains it better than I likely could. 

Kintsugi video

Here is another quote related to all of this that I loved, from a UU named Paula Goldade 

“As a Unitarian Universalist, I have come to see that universal salvation is not just for all of us but for all of me. There is no crevice inside of me that love cannot touch.” 

Now, so far, I have been concentrating mainly on how we become whole as individuals, but I want to return to this idea that we also must be in relationship to find wholeness. We must work to create wholeness in our communities and our worlds to know wholeness for ourselves. 

Here is one more quote that I loved, from our own Unitarian Universalist minister, Rev. Anya Sammler-Michael 

“We don’t really know our own wholeness until we see the wholeness of another or work to serve wholeness in our world. Wholeness, a sense of our own fullness, a spiritual realization of our own strength and beauty, is given when we give of ourselves… We heal our own aches by healing the aches in others. We put back the pieces of our own souls by helping others redeem their own wholeness.”

I think she is so spot on there, and I also think that this has implications for the work we are called to do in our world to build the beloved community. 

My friends, I believe that we, none of us nor our communities or our society – we can never be whole while black lives are still so far too frequently being extinguished and destroyed. 

We cannot ever be whole when people are still being forced to proclaim that their lives do matter. 

Black Lives Matter. 

They do matter. 

And we can never be whole when brown and queer bodies are treated as if they are of little significance; when indigenous peoples are treated as expendable; when female and nonbinary gender identities are treated as “less than:”; when entire cultures and religious expressions are demeaned. 

We need all of humanity’s beautiful variations to be fully realized and embraced for all of humanity to become whole. 

It seems like you can hardly ever attend one of my sermons these days without also hearing from author and researcher Brene Brown, my personal guru and diva. 

I want to share with you a short video from Brown, because I think she has identified a root cause of what lies at our lack of feeling whole sometimes and then bringing and perpetuating that unwholesomeness and unholiness in our world. 

She says it has to do with how we are constantly receiving messages that make us feel we can never be enough. And this, in turn, undermines our feelings of belonging and worthiness. 

She says that to counter this, we have to be willing to be vulnerable and to live in a way that she calls “wholeheartedly”. 

But maybe I should shut up and let her speak for herself.

Brown video

Unitarian Universalist have seven principals that we affirm and promote and the first of those says that we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. 

I wonder sometimes though if whether we affirm that for and about our self. 

My beloveds, you are worthy. 

You have inherent dignity. 

You are capable of knowing and becoming the whole person you were born and are called to be. 

And by doing that – each of us individually and yet also together – by doing that, we may yet bring more wholeness and holiness into our world. 

And hallelujah to wholeness and holiness! 

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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. Chris Jimmerson
March 10, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We often talk about our spiritual path. But is that journey inward or outward or both? Sometimes to become our truest self, we also have to unbecome who we are not.

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Call to Worship

WE TRAVEL THIS ROAD TOGETHER
by Tess Baumberger

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

We travel this road together. 

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

We travel this road together. 

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

We travel this road together. 

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

We travel this road together. 

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

We travel this road together. 

Reading

HAVING COME THIS FAR 
by James Broughton

I’ve been through what my through was to be
I did what I could and couldn’t
I was never sure how I would get there

I nourished an ardor for thresholds
for stepping stones and for ladders
I discovered detour and ditch

I swam in the high tides of greed
I built sandcastles to house my dreams
I survived the sunburns of love

No longer do I hunt for targets
I’ve climbed all the summits I need to
and I’ve eaten my share of lotus

Now I give praise and thanks
for what could not be avoided
and for every foolhardy choice

I cherish my wounds and their cures
and the sweet enervations of bliss
My book is an open life

I wave goodbye to the absolutes
and send my regards to infinity
I’d rather be blithe than correct

Until something transcendent turns up
I splash in my poetry puddle
and try to keep God amused.

from Special Deliveries, New and Selected Poems 
(Broken Moon Press, 1990)

Sermon

Zen Buddhism has a story in which a man is on a horse which is galloping very quickly down a road.

A woman standing alongside the road shouts, “Where are you going? It seems like it must a very important destination”.

The man on the horse replies, “I don’t know! Ask the horse!” 

Sometimes, life’s journey can seem that way, can’t it? Like we are being carried along with much less control than we like to think. Like so much of what happens to us that can suddenly change the direction of our journey is random and beyond our control – illness, falling in love, death, accidents, sudden and unexpected experiences of beauty, joy, wonder and awe. 

Our life span faith development religious education classes and activities are exploring the concept of journey this month. 

Wow, that’s a big topic. 

There are so many ways to think about journey. There are so many types of journeys we take – from literal geographical travel to thinking of life as a journey. 

We often talk about our exploration of spirituality as a journey. And that can mean journeying inward, outward or both. 

So often, our spiritual journeys, our journeys of personal growth, involve not just becoming our full or true selves but also leaving behind, unbecoming identities, ideas and beliefs we were taught earlier in life involving religion, gender, race, sexuality and so much more. 

Facing life’s inevitable difficulties and struggles, as well as moving through life passages (coming of age, marriage, beginning or ending a career, etc) can all seem like their own distinct journeys even as they are also wrapped up within the overall journey of life. 

And as I mentioned earlier, so much of what happens to us during life’s journey is beyond our control. Like the man on the horse in the Zen story, we have some agency – we can try to point our journey in a general direction through the education we obtain, the spiritual and health practices in which we engage, the relationships we cultivated etc. 

But like that spirited horse in the story, our life events have a mind of their own and our journey can suddenly be altered by unexpected events that cause our lives to go galloping off in a different direction, whether we like it or not. 

And so to make some sense of our journey, we create a narrative – we tell ourselves a story to make meaning of our lives, and it is through these stories, how we respond to our journey, that we may find more agency. It is not complete agency because much of the story we create is unconscious and the events of our ongoing journey keep altering the narrative we are creating for ourselves. 

However, the opposite is also true. The stories that we tell ourselves can also alter the direction of our journey, and this is especially true if we take the time to examine what implicit, unconscious narratives we are creating for ourselves, thereby making them conscious and explicit. By doing so, we can change the story if it is one that is not helping us; that is pointing our journey in an unhealthy and harmful direction. 

Frank Loyd Wright, one of the greatest architects of the twentieth century told the story of how he used to visit his uncle’s farm. 

One winter when he was nine, Wright and his uncle took a walk across a snow covered field. His uncle stopped the young Wright and pointed to the tracks in the snow they had left behind. 

His uncle told him, “Notice how your tracks meander all over the place from the fence to the cattle to the woods again, while mine go in a straight line from start to finish aiming directly at my goal. There is an important lesson in that.” 

Years later, Wright realized he was going to have to unlearn the story his uncle had implanted in his young mind that day. 

To become the architect he wanted, to live the life he wanted, he was going to have avoid walking the straight line. “It was then I determined” said Wright, “not to miss most things in life as my uncle had.” 

He had taken a story that had been implicit, made it explicit and then changed it to a story that better suited the journey he wished to pursue. Now, of course, recognizing the subliminal stories we are telling ourselves so that we can change them to more beneficial narratives can be difficult, so I want to share with you a few thoughts that might be helpful for doing so. 

Many of you are likely familiar with author and comparative mythology/comparative religions scholar Joseph Campbell’s concept, “The Hero’s Journey”. 

Here is a short video that takes us through the key components of this concept. 

Hero Video

Campbell said that these myths exist in all cultures because they help us make sense of the challenges, fears, and difficulties we face in our own journeys. 

We all face problems in life. We all have to leave our comfort zones sometimes. 

And yet, how often has it been difficulty, failure, even loss that has eventually led you to an experience of transformation? 

What if we all thought of ourselves as on a hero’s journey (and to avoid misogyny and gender binaries a “Shero’s or their o’ s journey)? 

Might that help us live more richly and fully? If we could see ourselves as moving through the cycle described in our video, might it help us change what could otherwise be an unhelpful narrative we have constructed when confronted with challenges we fear? 

Campbell once said, “In the cave you fear to enter lies the treasure you seek.” 

David Whyte is a poet and philosopher that has another concept that I think can help us construct more helpful narratives. 

I want to let you hear him briefly describe what he calls, “The conversational nature of reality.” 

Whyte Video

I loved that story because I think the immigration officer grabbing his attention so humorously demonstrates this “conversational nature of reality”. It changed the story he was telling himself about that immigration officer.” 

I think one of the false stories that we tell ourselves is that we can construct an identity separate and apart from our world and other people, when, in fact, we can only do so in relationship to all that we encounter – this is the conversational reality of our journey. 

Whyte talks about having spent almost two years in the Galapagos paying deep attention to the animals and birds and landscape around him. He began to realize, he says, “…my identity actually depended on how much attention I was paying to things that were other than myself and that as you deepen this intentionality and this attention, you started to broaden and deepen your own sense of presence.” 

Larry Smith, author, journalist and editor stumbled upon another tool that I think might be very useful to us in unearthing the implicit stories we may be telling ourselves about our journeys. 

Smith heard a legend about Earnest Hemingway being challenged to write a novel in six words and Hemingway’s powerful response. 

I’m not going to share his response in worship today because it could be emotionally triggering for some of our folks, but you are welcome to ask me about it one on one later. 

Smith started a project he calls six word memoirs wherein he ask people to describe where they currently are with their journey – tell their current story and state of mind in 6 words. He created a website for folks to do so. 

I think this is a powerful way to access our unconscious stories and get at the emotional content because we have to engage our most creative selves in order to tell our stories in six words. 

The six word memoirs people have shared range from the poignant to the humous to both. I want to show you just a few examples. You can see more at www.sixwordmemoirs.com.

Six word video

I may have written that last one after experiencing several unexpected, potentially life-changing and certainly challenging life events all within a short time period. 

I invite you, as you are moved to do so, to think about what you might write as your six word memoir. We have provided pens and Postit notes here in the sanctuary. There are more on a table in front of the windows overlooking the courtyard from inside the foyer. 

If you choose to share your story, please post it on those same windows in the foyer. 

You do not have to include your name if you don’t wish to do so. 

Cheating by using contractions is allowed. 

Six words! 

That brings me to the last thought about unearthing our stories I’d like to discuss today. 

I think a wonderful purpose this church serves is sharing our stories like this in this our beloved religious community. 

A couple of Saturdays ago, I was here for the launch of the monthly “First Arts at First UU” presentations our Gallery Ministry Team is presenting. First Arts allows artists to showcase their work. 

Church member, Shirley Steele shared with us some of her wonderful artwork. Even more so, I was touched with how she shared with us some of her journey as an artist, as well as some of her personal story because, of course, you can’t really separate the two. 

At the same time, an Austin Chamber Music concert was going in here in the sanctuary. We had only just gotten permission from the City of Austin to use the sanctuary addition and had not even had our first service with it ourselves. 

Some how though, it seemed appropriate, even touching somehow, that one of our partners with whom we have chosen time after time to journey would be getting to use the new space even before us. 

Here at the church, we walk our spiritual journeys together in beloved community. Our journeys can bump up against each other and those of our partners with whom we journey, and that can sometimes help us turn our journeys in more life-giving, life-fulfilling, creative directions. 

We can share our stories with each other from a place of trust and vulnerability. We can sometimes help each other rewrite the story we are telling ourselves if needed to make our most life-fulfilling journey more possible. 

Like with Campbell’s “hero’s journey”, being capable of changing our story in ways that turn our journey toward transformation is an almost divine-like ability. 

Helping each other to do so is a gift of grace that we can give to one another. 

Amen.

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Text of this sermon is not yet 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. Chris Jimmerson
February 24, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Unitarian Universalism has historically been a faith that questions and can even be skeptical. Yet, we call ourselves a faith, which implies a trust that we are a part of something larger than ourselves. What does it mean to trust and to be trustworthy? How do we rebuild trust when it gets broken and is it healthy sometimes to withhold trust that has been badly violated?

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Call to Worship

THE BLESSINGS OF TRUST SOUL MATTERS 

We gather today to receive the blessings of trust. 
May the relationships in this room, help us notice we do not walk alone. 
May the quiet we share, help us connect to and trust our deepest self. 
May the music offered, help us feel and hold tight to the restorative rhythms of the world. 
May the words offered, remind us that we too have a voice, one that must be trusted and shared.

Reading

A HIDDEN WHOLENESS: THE JOURNEY TOWARD AN UNDIVIDED LIFE
-Parker J. Palmer

If we are willing to embrace the challenge of becoming whole, we cannot embrace it alone-at least, not for long: 

we need trustworthy relationships to sustain us, tenacious communities of support, to sustain the journey toward an undivided life. 

Taking an inner journey toward rejoining soul and role requires a rare but real form of community that I call a “circle of trust.” 

Sermon Notes

What does it mean to trust? What does it mean to be trustworthy? What does it mean to have faith – to trust that we are a part of something larger than ourselves.

This month, our faith development classes and activities have been exploring these and other questions involving the subject of trust. This morning I want to explore the concepts of trust, trustworthiness and faith a little further.

Research from psychologist John Gottman.

In romantic relationships (and family/friends/etc.) it’s not the grand gestures that build trust over time – it’s the small gestures.

• noticing a spouse or partner seems upset and putting aside our smart phone to ask them what is going on with them.
• Remembering that your sister has the big presentation that is important to her at work tomorrow and sending a note or giving her a call to wish her luck.
• My grandfather brought my grandmother coffee in bed every morning of their life together. He banked lots of trust points for that!

Here at church – yes the caring team checking in when we are in the hospital, the minister doing the memorial service for our loved ones, these are important, but trust in our church community is likely also built upon the smaller gestures:

• noticing the visitor who looks lost and not sure where they are supposed to go and offering to help.
• the phone call or card to say I heard about your loss and wanted you to know I am thinking about you.
• the friendly smile in the fellowship hall
• saying “thank you” to the flocks of fine folks who do the many marvelous ministries of this church.

Loss of trust also comes in small moments of betrayal.

So, trust is built in small moments. But what is trust. How do we define it?

One answer can be found in Brene Brown’s video at brenebrown.com. “SuperSoul Sessions: The Anatomy of Trust”. In the video she quotes a definition from trust researcher and consultant Charles Feltman.

“Trust is choosing to make something important to you vulnerable to the actions of someone else.” 

“Distrust is when what I’ve shared with you something that is important to me is not safe with you.”

Dr Brene Brown describes the elements that make up trust with the acronym “Braving”.

BRAVING

B– Boundaries
R– Reliability
A– Accountability
V– Vault
I– Integrity
N– Non-Judgement
G– Generosity

Boundaries – yours are clear and expressed openly and you respect mine. 

Reliability – we do what we say to each other and not just once but over and over again. Don’t overcommit.

Accountability – when we make mistakes, which we will, we own it, apologize and make amends. And we allow each other to do so. Exception when trust has been repeatedly been broken and abused – if it becomes clear accountability is not possible.

Vault – we acknowledge confidentiality and hold to it both each others’ and other peoples. Sharing with me something that it not yours to share destroys trust.

Integrity – choosing courage over comfort, doing what’s right over what’s fast fun or easy and practicing our values not just professing them. Example – if say compassion is a value and then I do not act with compassion it shows lack of integrity and destroys trust.

Non-Judgement – being OK with asking for help and not judging when others do. We are better at giving help than asking for it.

Generosity – we make generous assumptions about each others words and actions and we check in with each other. So if I tell a good friend I am having a rough time and then do not hear from them for a while, I don’t start by presuming they are uncaring. Check in. Not assuming good intentions – more the reverse – having the generosity to NOT go immediately to presuming ill intent.

Why I believe this is a spiritual matter; a spiritual discipline, especially for UUs. As I often talk about, we are a faith without creed. We do not have a proscribed set of beliefs we all share. And unlike our friends of some other faiths, some of us do not believe in some higher power, some being in which we can trust to take care of us and our world. So we root our faith, our trust, in a set of principles and values that we share.

Here at this church, we place our faith in the mission we have discerned together, we trust in it as our higher common purpose. And so Unitarian Universalism finds the holy, experiences faith through loving, accountable, healthy relationships with one another, with our communities, with our larger world, with the web of all existence. This is where we experience what some of us call the divine, others that which is ultimate, other that which is larger than us but of which we are a part and can place our trust. And we root our relationship with each other through a covenant, a set of sacred promises that we make to one another about how we will be with one another in healthy, accountable ways. And that requires trust, yet do not think of trust in a large religious community like this doing challenging and sometimes difficult work together as no one will ever make mistakes – no one will ever feel hurt. We Will make mistakes and Agree to be called back into covenant.

BRAVING Trust gives way to live the promises of our covenant and be accountable to it and one another when we fail.

BRAVING provides a framework that can help us keep the promises alive and a way to think about trust that acknowledges the work we must put into it. Otherwise, covenant can become shallow and can be used as a weapon to silence folks when they point out that we are not living out our professed principles and values.

BRAVING implicitly acknowledges that loving, accountable relationships involve risk and they come at a cost but that love is worth it. Besides making mistakes, if we love, we all experience loss, sorrow and grief at some point. 

My friends, you can trust that love is more than worth braving it.

BRAVING says that we can trust that love is worth the risk and our efforts to create and maintain it.

BRAVING love is how we do religion as UUs and the place wherein our faith can be found.

May we go about the holy work of braving trust and love together.

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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. Chris Jimmerson
January 27, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

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

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

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“IF YOU HAVE COME HERE TO HELP ME, YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME. BUT IF YOU HAVE COME BECAUSE YOUR LIBERATION IS BOUND UP WITH MINE, THEN LET US WORK TOGETHER.”
Aboriginal Activists Group, Queensland, 1970s

Call to Worship
Rev. Chris Jimmerson

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

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

I am taught to fear difference.

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

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

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

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

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

Come, let us enter into this journey together.

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

Reading

A NETWORK OF MUTUALITY
by Martin Luther King Jr.

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

Injustice anywhere is a threat justice everywhere.

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

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

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

The foundation of such a method is love.

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

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

We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.

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

Sermon Handout

COSTS OF OPPRESSION TO PEOPLE FROM PRIVILEGED GROUPS

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

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

Social Costs: Loss and Diminishment of Relationships

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

Moral and Spiritual Costs: Loss of Moral and Spiritual Integrity

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

Intellectual Costs: Loss of Developing Full Range of Knowledge

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

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

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

Benefits of Social Justice for People from Privileged Groups

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

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

Benediction
by Bell Hooks

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

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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. Chris Jimmerson
January 13, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Though Unitarian Universalists are a people of many theological or philosophical perspectives, the human possibility, our potential for doing good in our world has always been central to our world-view. What are the ways in which we are being called toward our full potential. What lures us toward creative, life-fulfilling possibilities?

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Call to Worship:

DO NOT LEAVE YOUR CARES AT THE DOOR
By Norman V Naylor

Do not leave your cares at the door. 
Do not leave there your pain, your sorrow or your joys. 
Bring them with you into this place of acceptance and forgiveness. 
Place them on the common altar of life and offer them to the possibility of your worship. 
Come then, and offer yourself to potential transformation by the creative process that flows through you and all life.

Reading 

FOR A NEW BEGINNING
John O’Donahue

In out of the way places of the heart 
Where your thoughts never think to wander 
This beginning has been quietly forming 
Waiting until you were ready to emerge. 

For a long time it has watched your desire 
Feeling the emptiness grow inside you 
Noticing how you willed yourself on 
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown. 

It watched you play with the seduction of safety 
And the grey promises that sameness whispered 
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent 
Wondered would you always live like this. 

Then the delight, when your courage kindled, 
And out you stepped onto new ground, 
Your eyes young again with energy and dream 
A path of plenitude opening before you. 

Though your destination is not clear 
You can trust the promise of this opening; 
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning 
That is one with your life’s desire. 

Awaken your spirit to adventure 
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk 
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm 
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Sermon

Earlier, we lit the flame of our chalice, calling it into being. And yet “being” is not quite an accurate description. A flame is not a stable object, but rather an ever becoming process of fuel and oxygen being burnt, one flame dying so that the next can arise, giving the impression to our eyes of one steady flame. 

A worldview called process theology says that we are like that flame. We are ever changing processes of becoming, changing into something new with each moment of our experience. 

For process theology, God is not omnipotent, but rather is a benevolent force, offering to us almost limitless possibilities from which to choose in each moment, luring us toward those potentialities that are life-giving and life fulfilling, that move our world to-ward greater goodness and beauty, that expand our awareness and spiritual wellbeing. 

God then holds our experiences, as well as those of all else, to retain what has been actualized in our world. 

The non-theistic version of this substitutes the possibility for novelty, the creative processes inherent in our universe, for God. Love and justice become what lure us toward the creative choices that will enhance our live and world. 

Now that is probably that shortest, most simplified version of process theology ever spoken. Process theology is much more complex than what I have just outlined. 

I wanted to start by sharing a little about it with you this morning though, because I think it provides one useful way for examining the subject of this month’s theme that our Faith Development classes and activities have been exploring – the Soul Matters theme of possibility. 

Unitarians and Universalists have always been a people of possibility. When other faiths have placed depravity at the core of humanity, we have seen potential instead. 

A couple of Sundays ago, we talked about how what we do not know, uncertainty and mystery can sometimes create within us experiences of awe and wonder and beckon us toward creative exploration and possibility. 

Last Sunday, we thought about how letting go of what may be holding us back can oftentimes create new, more life-fulfilling potential for us. For example, letting go of relationships that have become unhealthy or toxic, so that we can spend more time building those that mutually enhance one another’s lives. 

Today, I would like to explore some other ways that may offer us more creative means for reaching toward our full potential. 

First, I talk about something closely related to the idea of the things we need to let go to make our full potential possible. 

Far too often, I think we tell ourselves stories that make the challenging or difficult seem like impossibilities for us. 

• I’m too old/too young. 
• I have to be perfect. 
• What would other people think? 
• It’s too risky. 
• I am not good enough/smart enough! talented enough, worthy enough, etc. 
• If I do this, they won’t love me anymore.

And there are so many more false stories we tell ourselves. I think fear of rejection, loss of belonging, is involved in a lot of these stories. Fear of rejection is one of the big ways we stifle our creative potential. 

Jia Jiang is an entrepreneur who, in his early 30s, realized that a childhood incident had caused him to develop an even higher level of anxiety around being rejected than might be the norm. He ran from any possible chance of rejection, which was harming both his personal life and his entrepreneurial efforts. 

So, he decided to go into a period of 100 days wherein each day he would do something that was likely to lead to being rejected. He wanted to see what he could learn from this and whether it could help him work through his fear of rejection. One day he asked a complete stranger if he could borrow $100. 

Another, he went to a burger joint, had his lunch and then walked back up to the counter and asked for a burger refill. He convinced a Starbucks manager to let him be a greeter all day like they do at Walmart stores. On yet another day, he knocked on the door of a stranger’s house and asked if he could plant a flower in their backyard. 

Needless to say, he got rejected a number of times. But, he also began to notice if he stayed engaged. if he did not immediately flee if told, “no”, that creative possibilities began to open up. 

When he admitted to the Starbuck’s manager that his request to be a greeter was a little weird, the manger said, “OK, go ahead. Just don’t do anything too weird”. 

The person at the first house he asked about planting a flower in their backyard said, ‘no.” By now, a more confident Jia asked, “why”? The person answered that they had a dog that would just dig it back up anyway but then referred him to the lady across the street who loved flowers. The flower is now growing in her backyard. 

So in a way, what he did was to desensitize himself to rejection and even learn to embrace it as a gift. I want to let you hear his conclusions from his experiment. 

VIDEO 

I think Jia’s story also reveals a couple of other ways that we are called to creative possibilities first, we have greater possibilities when we educate ourselves – open ourselves to having our consciousness raised, and, second, we reach our greatest potential in relationship with others. 

We can educate ourselves by formal means, but also by putting ourselves in situations from which we can learn, as Jia did. 

One of the ways in which we are learning together here at the church, is how we can better recognize and dismantle a culture of white supremacy and other systems of oppression, within ourselves, within our church community, and beyond our walls, as one of our new ends statements related to our mission puts it. 

To that end, a subset of our change team, a group that is working on antiracism and multiculturalism here at the church, has put together an exercise for us this morning. 

You will see up on your screen and on a handout you have were given on your way in, a question related to the Language of Anti-Oppression, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. 

What is discrimination against someone based on race and reinforced by systems of power? 

• a. white privilege 
• b. Jim Crow-ism 
• c. racism 
• d. apartheid 

Please decide how you would answer the question and then pair up with someone near you. You’ll each take one to two minutes each to talk about why you chose the answer that you did.

OK, you may begin now.

Let’s come back together now. You’re Unitarians, so I know you are wanting to know if you got the correct answer, but to find out, you’ll have to come to workshop at 12:30 today mentioned on your handout and announcements, where you can learn more of the vocabulary of building the Beloved Community. 

So, we can learn from each other. Even further, each one of us can only realize our own greatest potential, I believe, in relationship with others, especially those who have much different life experiences than our own. 

We grow the most when we learn to not only encounter but value difference and alternative perspectives. This is one of many ways that our silos rooted in racism, bigotry and ideology harm all of us. 

And especially when it comes to movement building, we absolutely must have relationships and community, we must have solidarity, to maximize the social possibilities for which we yearn. 

I love the way poet Marge Percy expresses the possibility to be found in building movements in her poem, 

“The Low Road” 

What can they do to you? 
Whatever they want. 
They can set you up, 
they can bust you, 
they can break your fingers, 
they can bum your brain with electricity, … , 
they can take your child, wall up your lover. 

They can do anything
you can’t stop them from doing. 
How can you stop them? 
Alone, you can fight, 
you can refuse, 
you can take what revenge you can 
but they roll over you. 

But two people fighting back to back can cut through a mob … 
Two people can keep each other sane,
can give support, conviction, love, massage, hope, sex. 
Three people are a delegation, a committee, a wedge. 
With four you can play bridge and start an organization. 
With six you can rent a whole house …
and hold a fund-raising party.

A dozen make a demonstration. 
A hundred fill a hall. 
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter; 
ten thousand, power and your own paper; 
a hundred thousand, your own media; 
ten million, your own country. 
It goes on one at a time, 

it starts when you care to act,
it starts when you do it again after they said no, 
it starts when you say WE and know who you mean, 
and each day you mean one more.

Here is another take on how movements start. 

VIDEO 

I think that advice about learning to follow might be a great source of possibility, especially for those of us who are managerial class, white and used to being in positions of authority. 

I’d like to end by returning to the process theology with which I began. 

What if God is calling you to toward those potentialities that are life-giving and life fulfilling? 

What if God is answering your desire to reach for your full potential, with a “yes”? 

Or, if you prefer, what if the possibility for novelty, the creative processes inherent in our universe – what if love and justice are luring you toward possibilities that expand your awareness and spiritual wellbeing and move our world toward greater goodness and beauty? 

What if the universe is saying, “yes” to the world of which we dream? 

How will we answer? 

Benediction 

GOD SAYS YES TO ME 
– Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be 
melodramatic 
and she said yes 
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is 
I asked her if I could wear nail polish 
or not wear nail polish 
and she said honey 
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly 
what you want to 
Thanks God I said 
And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph my letters 
Sweetcakes God said 
who knows where she picked that up 
what I’m telling you is 
Yes Yes Yes

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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. 

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 6, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

We begin the year by thinking about elements in our lives which are doing us a disservice, and what possibilities might become open to us if we let them go. We whisper these things into flash paper and burn them together, scattering the ashes to the wind.

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Call to Worship

“We Hold a Place for You”
By Chris Jimmerson

Come into this sacred space. 

Bring with you your joys, your hopes – all that you love; that which you hold holy. 

Come into this, our beloved community. 

Bring with you also your imperfections, your secret fears and unspoken hurts – those things that you still hold but that you yearn to release. 

Come onto this hallowed ground. 

Bringing too, your wildest imaginings of what, together, we might create or create more of in our world. 

Come, we hold a place for you in this our hour of worship. 

Reading

“Burning the Old Year”
by Naomi Shihab Nye 

Letters swallow themselves in seconds. 
Notes friends tied to the doorknob, 
transparent scarlet paper, 
sizzle like moth wings, 
marry the air. 

So much of any year is flammable, 
lists of vegetables, partial poems. 
Orange swirling flame of days, 
so little is a stone. 

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t, 
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space. 
I begin again with the smallest numbers. 

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves, 
only the things I didn’t do 
crackle after the blazing dies.

Sermon

This is the story of a woman, whom I’ll call Eve, though that is not her real name. 

Eve sought grief counseling: after losing her husband to Lou Gerhig’s disease. 

Eve and her husband were devout Catholics and were married in their Catholic church. They were very much in love. The marriage was a happv one. Eve described her husband as a good father and a wonderful spouse. 

After he developed the disease, she took care of him as it progressed which became difficult, as it is a cruel and degenerative disease. As he became more disabled, he resisted becoming more and more dependent, and they sometimes fought. 

Still, every night, they would lie in bed with their hands clasped so that their wedding rings touched together, and they would repeat their wedding vows to one another. 

Until his very last day, their love for and devotion to one another remained strong. 

When she sought counseling, it had been six years since his death. 

Eve told the counselor that she knew she needed to move on with her life. to start dating again, “But I can’t take my wedding ring off,” she said. “I can’t date wearing mv wedding ring, and I can’t take it off.” 

Intellectually, she knew she had honored her commitment to her husband. Emotionally and spiritually. she could not let go of her belief that marriage is for life, which the wedding ring symbolized so strongly for her. 

The counselor worked with her priest to put together a “reverse wedding” ritual for her. 

At the same church were they had originally been married, with many of the same family and friends who had attended their wedding, the priest called her up to the altar. 

He asked her. “Were vou faithful in good times and in bad?” 

“Yes,” Eve replied. 

“In sickness and in health?” 

“I was,” she replied. 

The priest led her through the rest of her wedding vows, but in past tense, and she affirmed in front of the loving witnesses who had gathered that she had loved, honored and been faithful to her husband. 

Then the priest said, “May I have the ring, please?” 

And Eve took it off and handed it to him. 

They had her ring and her husband’s ring interlocked and then affixed to the front of their wedding photo. 

Eve later described finally taking the ring off to her counselor by saying, “It came off as if by magic.” 

This story illustrates so perfectly the power of ritual. 

Like Eve, sometimes we can know intellectually that we need to let something go, and yet it can be so difficult to move past it emotionally – spiritually. 

Ritual allows us to embody our thoughts and intentions. It allows us to hold them in a much deeper place inside – or to release something from that same deep place – from our hearts and souls, not just our minds. 

That’s why we have made it our tradition here at the church, to begin each New Year by conducting a burning bowl ritual- each of us reflects upon something that we are carrying that may be holding us back – something we would like to let go because it may be keeping us from fully living out our life goals and values – reaching out with love to manifest more of what we would like to see in our world. 

Then, we whisper whatever it is into the pieces of flash paper you were given as you came in and toss them into the flame in our bowl and watch it burn away before our very eyes. 

Here are some examples of what we might want to let go: 

• Trying to control things that can’t be controlled. 
• Making other people do right 
• What other people think of you 
• Taking over other people’s problems 
• Helping when you weren’t asked to help 
• Having the same old conversation over and over

Burning Bowl Ritual 

May your life, your spirit be unburdened of that which you have burned here today. May you experience a lightness and a joy. So unburdened, may your heart reach out in love to help build the beloved community. Amen. 

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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. 

PODCASTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
December 30, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

As we close out this year and look forward to the new year, the mystery and uncertainty of what is to come also opens up almost unlimited possibilities and creative potential.

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All of this month of December, our faith development/religious eduction activities have focused on mystery. 

What does it mean to be a people of mystery? 

For a faith tradition such as ours, wherein both our Universalist and Unitarian forebears were the heretics, the questioners, the embracers of mystery and questions more profound than answers, I think this is a great topic for us to be exploring. 

What does it mean to be a people of mystery? 

And I think that exploring mystery and uncertainty can drive both a sense of humility and a sense of increased spirituality – humility over the enormity of what we do not yet know, some of which lies beyond the current tools available to us through science humility when we consider what a tiny part of the vastness of our universe we are; that our lives are but a blip in the magnificence of eternity. 

And yet I also find a sense of the spiritual in knowing that we are a part of and integrally interconnected with that great vastness, that eternal movement of time, that sacred web of all existence. 

And grounded in that sense of humility, embracing that we exist in uncertainty, diving into all that still remains mysterious to us, I think opens up the possibility of almost limitless exploration, creative opportunity and both personal and societal transformation. 

I want to share with you how Neuroscientist and author David Eagleman expresses this need to embrace uncertainty, mystery and what we do not know. 

Eagleman video 

Given the enormity of what we do not know, Eagleman goes on to talk about his discomfort with the duality going on in the debate between the so called “new atheists” and religious fundamentalists. He says that we know far too little to rule out the possibility of God with such certainty, and we know far too much to believe any of the world’s religious stories so literally. 

Now, whether or not you agree with him, he holds out the prospect that if we let go of the either/or thinking, and, like when science does not yet have the tools for measuring and observing certain phenomenon and must therefor hold multiple hypothesis at once, if we open ourselves to exploring the multitude of possibilities between these two extremes, we may find new opportunities for spiritual creativity and growth. 

He calls this possibilianism, a sort of mysticism rooted in reason and the scientific method – more on that later. 

Speaking of mysticism, I looked back at some research I did for a sermon on the subject a couple of years back and was reminded that mystic sects have developed within all of the world’s major religions. 

These are people who, depending upon their individual belief systems, have found that God or the Divine or enlightenment or nirvana or a sense of transcendence or an experience of the holy or peak experiences – these were to be found by embracing uncertainty, diving into mystery. 

Even non-theistic humanists and scientific naturalists have folks who find a sense of awe and wonder, connection to something larger than themselves by staring up at the vastness of the stars at night or marveling at the beauty of a sunset. 

And I have found this embracing of the unknown quite comforting as we move through all of the uncertainty generated by our construction and renovation process. 

In fact, I wrote us a call and response liturgy to help us embrace the uncertainty. You do not need anything in writing because it is very simple. I will speak, and then when I gesture toward you, please say with me, “It’s a mystery”. 

It’s more fun if we say it like that — like my South East Texas relatives would, “It’s a mystruy”. 

OK, ready? 

I wonder when we’ll get to use the new area of the sanctuary? It’s a mystery. 

I wonder when the new kitchen will open? It’s a mystery. 

I wonder when we’ll get our parking back? It’s a mystery. 

I wonder when we will lose the use of Howson Hall for a bit? It’s a mystery. 

The staff offices? It’s a mystery. 

The classrooms? It’s a mystery. 

All together three times now. It’s a mystery. It’s a mystery. It’s a mystery. 

OK, I do not exactly experience God or anything in that, but surrendering to the uncertainty does relieve some anxiety and I have a growing sense of excitement about the creative possibilities for growing our church and our faith that this time of uncertainty will eventually create for us. 

So let us embrace uncertainty and the vast mysteriousness within which we dwell, For the Israelites of biblical times, the mysteriousness of God was considered so vast and beyond human comprehension that even his name was beyond human ability to pronounce correctly. Even trying to say his name was blasphemy and could get you stoned to death by your neighbors. 

Well, your male neighbors as women were not allowed to participate in anything like stonings. 

Except in the imaginings of Monty Python that is. 

Python Video 

A humorous illustration of why Eagleman says we know too much to take ancient scriptures literally. 

So, mystery and uncertainty are a part of life whether we like it or not. Yet, they can also be, when we are willing to embrace the uncertainty, to swim in the mystery for a while, a powerful source of awe and wonder and creative possibilities. Mystery can stimulate transcendent experience and lead to spiritual transformation. 

I’d like to share with you just a part of author and world traveler Pico lyer’s talk, which he titled, “The Beauty of What We will Never Know”. 

VIDEO 

I loved the image of the Dali Lama having the wisdom to say, “I don’t know” when that is the simple truth. What powerful modeling of the wisdom to be found in a little humility in the face of circumstances for which we cannot have certainty. 

And I loved the quote, “the opposite of knowledge …isn’t always ignorance. It can be wonder. Or mystery, Possibility” and his observation that it is often the things we don’t know that push us forward even more more than the things we do. 

Later in that same talk, Iver also observes that mystery is a source of intimacy in our personal relationships – that we cannot ever know everything about those whom we love and that is actually a wonderful wellspring of continued growth and deepening of our relationships. 

I certainly have experienced this with my spouse Wayne, Even after 27 years, we still have more mystery in one another to explore. He still surprises me sometimes. We still have more to learn about one another. 

And even if it were some how possible to learn everything there is to know about someone else, which it isn’t because we will never have the same lived experience, even if it were possible, they would still be growing and evolving and changing. 

So the Wayne I met all those years ago and the Wayne I talked with over coffee before leaving the house this morning are not the same. And the Wayne I will meet for lunch later will not be exactly the same as the Wayne I was with this morning. 

We are always in a process of becoming with each experience and each passing moment, and for Wayne and I that has driven an abiding and ever deepening love and intimacy and an enchantment with the ever unfolding mysteries of one another. 

And so Iver says it is with our human relationships and our broader human lives and spirituality – the mystery creates almost unlimited possibilities and creative potential. 

I agree with him, and that brings me back to David Eagleman’s possibilianism that I mentioned earlier and called a sort of mysticism rooted in reason and the scientific method, 

Possibilianism says that we cannot claim certainty over that for which we have no way of being certain – the existence or none existence of God; even how we might conceive of such; how we find meaning; our place within this vast universe. 

Possibilianism requires that we be open to ideas that we don’t have any way of testing right now, be open to new, previously unconsidered possibilities and be comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind all at once. 

It also requires, though, that we apply reason to these ideas and when possible test them with scientific methods. 

I think it is also important to note that this is not agnosticism, a sort of passive response to questions we cannot answer, but rather an active diving into the mysteries. 

I loved this explanation of the difference: 

• Agnostics end with the lack of an answer. 
• Possibilians begin with the lack of an answer. 
• Agnostics say, we can’t decide between this and that. 
• Possibilians say, there are other choices than this or that. 
• Agnostics say, I Don’t Know, it’s impossible to answer that question. 
• Possibilians say, I Don’t Know, there must be better questions. 

For those of you desperately searching your smart phones about now, it’s possibilian.com. You can find links to articles and videos on the subject there also. 

It occurs to me though, that possibilianism might be one great avenue of exploration for we ever questioning, ever seeking, ever heretical Unitarian Universalists. 

As we move into a new year filled as it is with uncertainty and mystery over what is to come, perhaps we can all try on possibilianism for a while. 

Perhaps we can become that people of mystery. 

In doing so, we might just open up almost unlimited possibilities and creative potentialities. 

May it be so. Amen. 

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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. 

PODCASTS