God the Huntress

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
February 3, 2013

When you think of God as female, how does that change thoughts and feelings about God? When you think of God as a huntress, what kind of stories does that evoke? How would people, animals and the planet be affected by this picture of God?

The highest wisdom of the world tells us that there is no accurate or complete way to talk about God, however you define or think about the concept of God. “The Tao that can be named is not the Tao,” says Lao Tse. If you can describe the Mystery, you know you haven’t grasped it. This does not prevent there being many things to say about the One, the Mystery, the Force. In many cultures, even though the wise mystics at the top of the mountain of most faith traditions assure everyone that It is One, people describe Its facets as if they were separate gods. There is the king of all gods, but then again there is the king’s mother. There is the thunder god, the goddess who dwells by the sacred springs of water that come up through the earth to green the land and sustain the creatures. There is the god of creation and destruction, the goddess of love, the god of the rivers, the goddess of the crossroads, in whose cauldron all eventually go to die and emerge transformed. Some would call these spirits, others still call them gods, you might call them archetypes.

What I want to ask you to consider this morning is how a culture’s way of speaking about the Divine might shape its behavior, its sense of itself, its governance and the paradigms within which it understands humans and animals relationship with one another and with the Divinity, what is important, what is expected.

The view of God most people in the US have grown up with is a male god. He is spoken about in many metaphors in the Jewish and Christian scriptures: God of the mountains, El Shaddai, which might also mean “the breasted one.” He is the whirlwind, the warrior, the mother hen (I have heard preachers on the radio say “God is like a hen taking his chicks under his wings. I’m guessing that guy didn’t grow up on a farm.) The images most often used in our culture, though, are God the king, God the judge, and Jesus (God) the kind shepherd.

If your god is a king of everything, and he exists outside of you, your relationship to him is as a subject or as a rebel. Those are your main choices. Your concern is for what might please him. To displease the king brings bad luck and trouble. You must keep the king happy with you and yours. I’ve noticed, though, that the god who lives outside you also lives inside you. This seems to occur whether your relationship with this God you picture is as a believer, or if you are a faithful non-believer in this image of God. If this god lives in you as a part of you, you feel called always to be in control, and if people and events don’t go your way, you rain down consequences . Your question is “Am I pleased? Is everyone doing what I want them to do? If not, am I grieved? What am I going to do about it?”

If your god is a judge, and he exists outside of you, your primary relationship is as the one being judged. Your concern must be for the laws, and how to keep them in a way that makes the judgment come out in your favor. You can argue and you can appeal, you can have reasons and excuses, but you are always being evaluated. If this god is part of you, then you might always be evaluating, always judging “is this good or bad, right or wrong.”

If you think about god as a shepherd, your primary relationship to him is as part of his flock. You follow him. You don’t go off on your own or he comes to gently bring you back to the herd. His job is to fight off the bad things, and your job is to stay close by. You’re either a good lamb or a lost lamb. Those are your choices. He doesn’t need your help.

Our poet with the yellow beret bought one of the auction items in the fall, the one that enabled him to invite me to preach about a particular topic of his choosing. He chose “God the Huntress.”

I remember in seminary being introduced to feminist theology. The feminine face of God. I was steeped in Protestant culture, so my first thoughts were along the lines of : How do you imagine the king and the judge as female? Would she rule more compassionately? No one who knows history would say yes to that. Would she understand women better? Probably. My classmates and I spent time re-imagining God, having discussions about how different it felt to have the king and judge more womanly, even motherly. Thoughts about God the Mother varied with our individual experiences of our own mothers. She seemed more understanding to some, less powerful to others. Then thealogian (spelled this way to indicate the femaleness of god) Mary Daly, a wild and brilliant woman from Boston University, challenged us all. “A female god is not just Yahweh in drag,” she wrote. She was far ahead of us in lifting ourselves out of the paradigms in which we had been raised.

What if your god is a huntress? In order to be a good hunter you have to be comfortable in the wild. You have to be able to be quiet, alone, you are able to immerse yourself in the mind of the thing you are hunting. You have to be able to lose yourself, to wait, to be quick. You must be peaceful with taking life, with getting bloody.

The huntress we know the best is Diana, also called Artemis. She was one of the most important goddesses in the Mediterranean world. The Christian scriptures describe a riot in the city of Ephesus when a crowd gathered around the Apostle Paul as he was preaching and shouted him down for two hours “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!”

Her mother Leto was a consort of Zeus, so Zeus’s wife hated her. When it came time for her to deliver her twins, Hera hounded her across the globe, and there was no place on the land or sea for her to rest from her labor pains. Finally, a swampy and unstable mix of land and sea firmed up in order to allow her to give birth. Swans surrounded her. Artemis was born first, painlessly, it is said. She helped her mother deliver her twin brother Apollo, whose birth, by contrast, took nine days and nights. She was the moon, and Apollo the sun. Artemis/Diana is portrayed as a young woman, a virgin. What that meant in the ancient world was that she belonged to herself. The woods were sacred to her, and you disturbed her trees at your peril. In some places, in ancient times, it was in her woods that the contest between the current king and his challenger was held. Her voice, her power decided who would rule. The animals were sacred to her, especially the deer. Some stories have her traveling with a pack of dogs, and some with a pack of maidens. Diana does not say yes when she means no. She is not sweet. She is not accommodating. She is fierce about her body’s unassailability. When she caught a young man watching her bathe one afternoon, the faith story says that she turned him into a stag and confused his pack of dogs so that they tore him to pieces before he could go brag to his mates about having seen her naked.

If your god is a huntress, and she is outside of you, you are her helper or her prey, or she is your protector. What is she hunting? If it’s food, she’s showing you a way to feed your family, a way to take a life without displeasing her. If she is hunting you, she’s waiting for you patiently, she knows your mind, she sees you clearly, and she will take you completely. If she is hunting truth, she will track it inexorably. She glimpses it in all its forms, and she draws in its scent until that is all she is aware of. If she is within you, as I imagine all the gods you attend to are, she is that part of you that belongs to yourself, that is inviolate, the part of you that protects you, the part that can hide and wait and listen to the leaves rustle as what you seek moves ahead of you. She is a still point inside you, saying yes when she means yes and no when she means no.

We are in the Unitarian Universalist tradition here, and our forbear Ralph Waldo Emerson said “a person will worship something.” Whatever it is that guides you, whatever it is you steer by, that shapes you. To some degree you have a choice in the way you picture God, or the Divine, or the spirits or the Mystery. You choose what to believe and how, and it’s okay to try on different ideas. If Diana is the one you choose to explore, happy hunting!

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

Abandon Hope and Fear

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 27, 2013

The Eightfold Path. Buddhism teaches that there is a way to overcome suffering by coming to an understanding of the way the world is, and by living in a certain way. There is no requirement that you believe in it, they say, you just try it to see if it works.


I don’t know how many of you have seen the classic Buddhist movie “The Matrix.” In it, Keanu Reeves plays a young computer hacker who wakes up to the reality of the Matrix, a vast virtual reality grid that feeds off of human energy. Humans are kept asleep in embryonic eggs while a virtual life is played in their brain. The first message he gets from the deeper reality is: “Wake up Neo!” In the movie, once Neo woke up to the fact that the reality of the Matrix was an illusion, he grew capable of grasping that the bullets coming at him weren’t real, and he was able to move around among them. He was able to move around in the pseudo reality of the Matrix, aware of it as an illusion, more and more aware of the deeper reality.

This is the first of eight sermons, over the upcoming months, on the eightfold path of Buddhism. The Eightfold Path is not like eight steps, or little boxes you check off one by one as you accomplish them. It is a path of eight elements interwoven, braided together, having to do with understanding, practice and behavior that Buddhism says will take you on a journey away from suffering and toward freedom. The first component of the path is “Right Understanding.” “Getting it” is the first and continuing job of the person on this path. You get “wake up, Neo” messages. You catch a glimpse of the truth of how things work. You have a glimmer of a sense that many people create their own suffering, that disquietude lurks at the corners of most lives, that grief, hope, fear, hunger for security or pleasure or acceptance drive people to do what they do and that satisfaction is elusive. A deeper reality crooks its finger at you and whispers in Laurence Fishburn’s voice: “Wake up. There must be satisfaction somewhere, let’s go look for it. ”

One of the things I find most relaxing about Buddhism is that it doesn’t ask you to take any of this on faith. It asks you to try it out and see if it works for you. Buddhism asks you to start with your experience. Most people’s attention is squandered on the anxiety, all the worry, and the fear in their lives. What will happen to us? Am I doing this right? Will people have a good time at my party? Will I get well again? Will I end up a bag lady? I have one friend who is haunted by the picture of people milling around at his funeral shaking their heads and saying “It’s a shame he never made much of himself.” Moment after moment, for most people, is filled with hope that things will go well and fear that things won’t. That life is a rollercoaster. In the words of the poet John Prine “Some times you’re up, some times you’re down, it’s a half an inch of water and you think you’re going to drown.”

Things happen to you, then you make stories about the things that happen: that they shouldn’t be happening, that they are a punishment for something you did, that your life is unfair, that you are unlucky and unblessed. Buddhism says all of these thoughts about what happens, all of the rollercoaster emotion caused by hoping and fearing makes you suffer. There is a way to end the suffering. In your life, you will have pain, but you don’t have to make yourself extra suffering over the pain. The eightfold path, with its eight elements, is the way to train yourself morally, mentally and emotionally, to be free from suffering from the thoughts you have about what happens. Here are the eight elements: right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

Right understanding, the first strand of the Eightfold Path, “getting it, ” involves seeing how things are. You understand that you suffer because you have attachments to how things should go. You crave, you cling, you hope, you fear. You have hopes that an interview will go well. You are anxious about it. You worry afterward about whether they liked you. If you get the job you worry about doing it well. If you don’t get the job you wonder why they didn’t like you. You have ideas about how it should go. You have interpretations of how it went, ideas from your interpretations, and you suffer over those.

Someone you love is drinking or using again. You worry about how bad it’s going to get. You feel the feelings from when it was at its worst. You interpret your friend’s using as his not loving you, because if he loved you he would want things to be good for you, and things aren’t good for you when he is using. It feels as though he is doing it to you.

In your thoughts is a way you wish things would go. You have fears about how things could be. All of these things, hopes and fears, cause you suffering. When you are anxious about these things you miss a lot of your life: seeing your other friends, you can barely hear what people are saying to you, you don’t enjoy your food, sleep, sex, beauty, things seem garbled and dim. You are suffering. How could that stop?

Wake up. “Get it” that if you calm and focus your mind you can see reality more clearly. “Get it” that what happens happens. There are certain things you can do to make the interview go well, and you do them. Or not. Then it happens. You get the job. Or not. You can interpret it any way you want to. They didn’t like you? Maybe. Maybe they had someone else who was a better fit. Maybe this is not your job, maybe yours is coming. If the job wouldn’t have been a good fit for you, you would have been miserable in it. Is that what you wanted? At times I tell people they need to be unattached to outcomes. You need to do what you do and leave what happens then to the Spirit or the Universe. Usually they respond with “So you want me not to care?” What do you say to that? If caring means you suffer and your suffering adds no good to the situation, do you want to keep doing that? Can you care in a way that holds the outcome lightly? Can you care in a way that understands that your loved ones have to find their own way, make their mistakes, feel your support but not your direction.

Buddhist practice is the foundation of this possibility. Meditation, spending time in quiet with your breathing allows you to see more clearly, gives you spaces between your moments in which to understand what part of this is pain that exists and what part is suffering you are bringing on yourself and can stop if you practice. Some spiritual paths attempt to give meaning to suffering – this one says it can be avoided, eventually, with practice and understanding. Wisdom will be cultivated and ignorance will be shed like an outgrown snake skin.

In meditation we have the chance of seeing the story we are telling ourselves about our life. You can notice the thoughts you are having about what is happening in your life. There are a hundred different stories, and seeing your story is part of getting it. Another part of Right Understanding, of waking up, is understanding the law of Karma. Its literal name is “right view of the ownership of action” The Buddhist teachers say: “Beings are the owners of their actions, the heirs of their actions; they spring from their actions, are bound to their actions, and are supported by their actions. Whatever deeds they do, good or bad, of those they shall be heirs.” The Buddhist scriptures, like the Christian scriptures, talk about results of actions as “fruits.” “By their fruits ye shall know them.” If our lives are like a river, it’s as if we are all living downstream from our actions, and the dirty or clean water that runs because of those actions catches us later. Good actions are morally commendable, helpful to the growth of the spirit, and productive of benefits for yourself and others. Unwholesome actions, to use a more Buddhist word than “bad,” ripen into suffering.

Getting it means that you see that suffering occurs from craving, desire and attachment, that the way to end suffering is to end craving and attachment, that the way to end craving is to attend to the eightfold path of right wisdom and right behavior. To own your actions, your part in any situation, to let go of blaming and clean up what you are putting into the water upstream from where you live.

I have a friend who tells the story of her mother-in-law, Carolyn, at the drive-through window at the bank. The teller had sent out a pen for her to use in filling out her deposit slip. She had dropped the pen, which had fallen underneath the seat of the car. Carolyn could reach the pen, she could get her fingers around it, but she couldn’t pull her hand out with the pen in it. Finally they made a present to her of the pen so she would go on. We are caught like that with our grasping, unable to be free. What is the pen under your seat? What is keeping you from moving? Do you need to let it go? Do you need to drive to a safe place in the parking lot of the bank, get out of the car, move the seat, and get the pen? Either way, you get unstuck, and unstuck is where we want to be.


Podcasts of sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

This new thing called Universalism

Marisol Caballero
January 20, 2013

Evangelical minister Rob Bell, in his book, “Love Wins,” articulates the concept of God’s unconditional love, and he has been widely condemned for it by the evangelical community. Join us as we explore Universalism’s history and delve into why this idea still causes such an uproar.


 

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

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

 

The Delicate Art of Forgiveness

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

January 13, 2013

What does forgiveness entail? Does one have to “forgive and forget?” How do we forgive ourselves? Another sermon having to do with our Covenant of Healthy Relations.


 

Forgiveness makes you strong. A spiritual practice is something you do over and over whether you feel like it or not, in order to have access to your inner wisdom when you need it, in order to be able to keep a heart of compassion, in order to keep your perspective when the going gets rough, in order to be unshakeable. Well, at least, if not unshakeable, a bit sturdier. Bitterness makes us brittle. Cynicism takes our hope. Ruminating on the wrongs done to us, or on the wrongs we have done, steals away our joy in life. A spiritual practice can help us let go of that kind of ruminating. The meditation we just said together is one such practice, and it can help with forgiveness.

Forgiveness is related to both emotional and physical healing. This week I read a study by Alex H. S. Harris and Carl E. Thoresen called: “Forgiveness, Unforgiveness,Health, and Disease” done in 2005 at the Center for Health Care Evaluation, which is part of the US Dept of Veteran’s Affairs. They concluded that hostile rumination was a chronic stressor with negative effects on health. It led to chronic hyperaroused stress response, which, to put it unscientifically, just wears a person out.

Feeling that you have been wronged is not good for you. You need either to talk about it until you can do something about it or let it go and move on. Holding on to impotent anger makes us cramped and closed. “Impotent anger ” is anger that is not doing anything for you, anger that has no fruitful power. Anger’s purpose is to move you out of hurtful situations, protect you from hurtful people, energize you to do what you can to make things better for yourself. Almost any time you are angry, one question that can move you forward is this one: “How much of this anger is anger at myself?”

Forgiveness is difficult because when we are wronged, we stiffen into righteousness. Righteousness is the root of much wicked behavior. We feel that, because we have been hurt, we have carte blanche to hurt other people. We can speak in destructive ways, we can lay waste about us with the sword of our tongue. We feel that, because we are right, we can be brutal.

Forgiveness is also difficult because, as I’ve said before, being righteously wronged can be a semi enjoyable state. We have a picture in our mind of how the one who wronged us should apologize. We imagine conversations where we articulately explain our P.O.V. and the ones who wronged us slap their heads in enlightenment, in realization. We exercise our arguments toward that imagined conversation. We polish our grudges, we repeat them to ourselves; we can drop into the groove of recrimination and resentment at a moments notice, we can do it in our sleep. We lull ourselves with the recitation. The resentment can become part of who we are. Part of our personality’s clothing, our identity. Forgiveness is especially difficult when it is ourselves we need to forgive. We can get addicted to the guilt and pain of going over and over our transgression or our mistake. We hold ourselves to a higher standard than the one we use for others. Other people can forget things, be hurtful, lie or cheat or make a terrible mistake, but not us. It’s hard to accept that we are human and prone to error. If we’re just regular human beings, then how will we be in control of the world? We might rather think of ourselves as bad and still in control than to acknowledge that we’re just regular folks.

Forgiving requires a willingness to look at the harm being done to you by not beginning to forgive. If you don’t forgive yourself, you may not allow yourself to have a good life, which affects the people who love you. And it makes you insufferable when you’re in the “I’m a terrible person” place, because they have to live their lives and spend time reassuring you that you are all right, which equates to dragging you along like a heavy suitcase with a broken wheel. Being a righteous victim does you harm because you have a stiffening righteousness. It does you harm in that you are stuck. You are also stuck to the person at whom you are angry, or to the bad mistake you made. You cannot go anywhere without dragging them along with you. It does you harm in that you feel that other people might hurt you the same way. You become braced. Ready to be hurt, to be left, to be abandoned, to be betrayed. You don’t have to look at yourself, if you are a victim of mean parents or two timing lovers, or if you are just a tragically bad person. You get to be the right about them, about yourself.. Being right is a big part of not wanting to forgive. You can be right, absolutely, and still be hurt by harboring anger against yourself or the person who hurt you.

Jungian analyst, author and teacher Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes: “Forgiveness seems unrealistic because we think of it as a one-time act that had to be completed in one sitting. Forgiveness has many layers, many seasons. It is not all or nothing, if you can do a 95% forgiveness, you are a saint. 75% is wonderful. 60% is fine. Keep working./playing with it. The important things are to BEGIN and to CONTINUE. There is a healer inside who will help you if you get out of the way. For some, temperamentally, this is easy. For some it is harder. You are not a saint if it’s easy, not a bad person if it’s not. You are who you are and you do it the way you do it. All in due time.” Forgiveness also does NOT mean to overlook something, to pretend the thing didn’t happen. Estes talks about the stages of forgiveness.

1. TO FOREGO: to leave it alone. Take a break from thinking about it for awhile Get your strength back.

2. TO FORBEAR: Containment. Don’t act Keep your self-protective vigilance. Have patience. Practice generosity. Ask what would happen if there were grace in this situation?

3. TO FORGET: Refuse to dwell on it, Consciously release it. Some people are wary of this step, and make definitions of forgetting for themselves that include bearing the wrong in mind. At the Israeli Holocaust Memorial, they say forgive, but never forget, because if you forget it could happen again. Only you can be the judge of whether the wrong that was done to you is something you can afford to forget. If not, ask yourself how you can bear it in mind without it continually poisoning you.

4. TO FORGIVE: Regard the other individual indulgently. Give compassionate aid to that person. You don’t think about the incident any more. You have nothing to say about it.

The metta meditation we use is directly related to this. The first step in forgiving is to direct compassion and love toward yourself. Say: May I be free from danger. May I be physically happy May I be mentally happy May I have ease of well-being. Do that for three weeks, then say it about someone you like, about a neutral person, THEN about the one who wronged you. If you can’t, go back to sending lovingkindness to yourself. You don’t have to forgive all at once. Today, maybe, just think about being ready to begin.


 

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

 

Burning Bowl Service

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 6, 2013

It is good to begin the new year by clearing out old regrets and resentments. We toss those things into the fire and get a fresh start.


 

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

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

 

2013 Sermon Index

2013 Sermons

Sermon Topic
Author
Date
 Surplus anxieties  Rev. Marisol Caballero 12-29-13
 A Sudden Flame, an Extraordinary Journey  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 12-22-13
 Christmas Pageant  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 12-15-13
 A UU Faith Story: John Murray  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 12-08-13
 How did we get the bible?  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 12-01-13
Guest at Your Table Kickoff  Rev. Marisol Caballero 11-24-13
 A Juicy Slice of UU History: The Iowa Sisterhood  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 11-17-13
 Dismantling Racism  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 11-10-13
 Creating Community  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 11-03-13
 Mystery, Spookiness, Magic and Wonder  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 10-27-13
Walking between the raindrops Rev. Meg Barnhouse 10-20-13
I’m a believer  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 10-13-13
Join what move  Rev. Marisol Caballero 10-06-13
Bedrock Values at the heart of humanism  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 09-29-13
 Not so good at mindfullness  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 09-22-13
 What if you can’t keep your promise  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 09-15-13
 Water Communion  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 09-08-13
 The serious business of play  Rev. Marisol Caballero 09-01-13
 Margaret Sanger  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 08-25-13
 Life of Pi  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 08-18-13
 The Oversoul  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 08-11-13
 Defense against the dark arts  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 08-04-13
 UU Minister – Some dis-assembly required  Nell Newton 07-28-13
 That little four-letter word called Hope Chris Jimmerson 07-21-13
 What is prayer? Rev. Marisol Caballero 07-14-13
 Who or what is God?  Rev. Nathan Ryan 07-07-13
 Like Slow-Growing Trees in a Ruined Place  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 06-30-13
 Joseph Priestley: The most hated man in Britain  Luther Elmore 06-23-13
 Amazing Grace  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 06-16-13
 The Rose  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 06-09-13
 Tales of the tribe  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 06-02-13
 Flower Communion  Rev. Marisol Caballero 05-26-13
 Youth Service  Audrey Lewis, Max Wethington and our youth 05-19-13
 Mother of all services  Rev. Marisol Caballero 05-12-13
 The right thing to do  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 05-05-13
 Fiery and Fearless: Olympia Brown  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 04-28-13
 The Gaia Psalms  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 04-21-13
 Lies, gossip and fighting words  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 04-14-13
 Will you harbor me?  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 04-07-13
 Only life and death  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 03-31-13
 Afri-kin  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 03-24-13
 Good question  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 03-17-13
 We’ve come this far by faith Marisol Caballero 03-10-13
As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 03-03-13
Large is beautiful, too  Rev. Stefan Jonasson 02-24-13
Recovery from Fundamentalism Rev. Meg Barnhouse 02-17-13
A Juicy Slice of UU History: Theodore Parker  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 02-10-13
God the huntress  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 02-03-13
Abandon Hope and Fear Rev. Meg Barnhouse 01-27-13
This new thing called Universalism Marisol Caballero 01-20-13
 The delicate art of forgiveness Rev. Meg Barnhouse 01-13-13
 Burning Bowl Service  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 01-06-13

Is there a place for God in Unitarian Universalism?

Andrew Young
December 30, 2012

Welcome to First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin. Whether this is your first time or you’ve been coming all your life, we welcome you.

My name is Andrew Young. I have been a member of this church for five and a half years and for two and a half of those years I have been the Youth Programming Coordinator, which means that I am in charge of our middle school and high school youth programs. Although I am still in this role, I am entering into a new role as well. This Sunday marks the end of my first semester at Starr King School for the Ministry where I am pursuing a Master of Divinity degree in preparation for ordination as Unitarian Universalist minister.

Today’s service is a part of my final project for a class aptly named “History of UU Religious Practices” in which we’ve studied how our liturgy has evolved since the Puritans arrived in North America. The word liturgy refers to the rituals of the church, especially the structure and format of the Sunday service since that is the primary ritual of our church. As such, this service diverges somewhat from our normal Sunday service in both format and content and I apologize in advance for any confusion this might cause.

The elements of today’s service and the selection of its hymns are rooted in our Unitarian and Universalist traditions. The hymns are from a hymnal published in 1955 that was used by both the Unitarians and the Universalists before the two denominations merged. Our responsive reading is taken from a Unitarian hymnal published in 1907.

It is sometimes said that the work of religion is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Today’s service is sure to do both. We will deal with topics that may be uncomfortable for some of you due to your past experiences, and my intent is not to make light of or invalidate your feelings on these topics. We each bring our own experiences to the conversation and all I ask is that you keep an open mind and reflect on how each element of the service today affects you. Pay special attention to the words and phrases which trigger strong emotions for you, either positive or negative.

Now, as we begin our sacred time together, please join me in reading the words for lighting our chalice which are printed in your order of service.

Love is the doctrine of this church,
The quest of truth is its sacrament,
And service is its prayer
To dwell together in peace,
To seek knowledge in freedom,
To serve human need,
To the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine —
Thus do we covenant with each other and with God.

Invocation / Prayer

Please join me in an attitude of prayer.

La Eternulo estas mia paŝtisto; mi mankon ne havos.
Sur verdaj herbejoj Li ripozigas min, Apud trankvilaj akvoj Li kondukas min.
Li kvietigas mian animon; Li kondukas min laŭ vojo de la vero, pro Sia nomo.
Eĉ kiam mi iros tra valo de densa mallumo, Mi ne timos malbonon, ĉar Vi estas kun mi; Via bastono kaj apogiĝilo trankviligos min.
Vi kovras por mi tablon antaŭ miaj malamikoj; Vi ŝmiris per oleo mian kapon, mia pokalo estas plenigita.
Nur bono kaj favoro sekvos min en la daŭro de mia tuta vivo; Kaj mi restos en la domo de la Eternulo eterne.

Language is powerful. And yet, language is arbitrary. The words we use have no inherent meaning, only the meaning that we give to them. And yet, the words we use are still powerful because of that meaning. Dr. Zamenhof knew this well. In the 1880s he invented a language now called Esperanto, which you have just heard a sample of. Dr. Zamenhof grew up in a community that spoke four different languages, each with its own cultural heritage, and he saw how the differences in language created walls between members of the community. This was why he invented a language that didn’t belong to any single country or culture. He hoped that this language, with its lack of cultural and linguistic baggage, could help bring people together by lifting up their commonalities and rejoicing in their differences.

How does language affect the way you see the world? This is what I would like you to meditate on for the next few minutes whether you sit quietly or come to the window to light a candle. Take a moment to reflect on how you react differently to the Esperanto verse and its English equivalent.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Amen

Sermon

Like many members of our faith, I am a relatively recent convert to Unitarian Universalism. I was raised in a non-religious home, the son of freethinking parents who were the product of the cultural revolution of the 1960s. As a child I attended Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Mormon, Pagan, and Jewish services with friends and extended family, but I was always only an observer and never a believer because I couldn’t subscribe to the central ideas of these groups. I didn’t believe in magic or in a God that would condemn so many of my friends to eternal damnation despite how much good they did in the world. After high school I discovered Buddhism and I embraced its teachings because they didn’t require me to believe in a deity or in superstition. By the time I found the UU church I considered myself a staunch atheist and skeptic. When I say that I was an atheist, I mean literally an a-theist, that is one who does not believe in God. This is subtly but importantly different from one who believes there is not a God. I had no proof one way or the other, and I knew for sure that I didn’t believe in the God of the Christian fundamentalists.

When I began attending here I didn’t realize was how much negative baggage I had attached over the years to many of the words associated with the church. Words like God, divinity, ministry, faith, spirituality, salvation, and grace made me bristle, and in the UU church I found a place where I could be in ethical and moral community with others without the need to use such terms. I remember that soon after joining the church a friend of mine was explaining his Pagan religious beliefs to me. He told me that he used to be an atheist, but he had realized that there was more to life than that. He felt that there was something that connected all of us together, and he had found an expression of this belief in Paganism. I remember that at the time I thought his beliefs were silly and superstitious and I was glad that I had found a church that was more enlightened. His use of divine language, such as god, goddess, and even ritual, had built up a wall between us. If you asked me then if I believed in God, my immediate answer without hesitation would have been “no”. Not only that, I thought that discussing the idea of a god or goddess was silly superstition. What I didn’t know was that my own journey of faith was only just beginning and I was yet to learn the underlying theology and history of Unitarian Universalism.

You see, Unitarian Universalism is a faith with deep theological roots. We can trace our direct lineage to the colonial era when English dissenters journeyed to America in search of religious freedom. The church of England considered them heretics because they believed in ideas such as universal salvation – the belief that all people will be saved – and unitarianism – the idea that Jesus was not God, only a man. And even though the dissenters were a product of the enlightenment, the ideas they supported were much older, almost as old as the Christian church itself. For the majority of our history the members of our denomination have considered themselves Christians and have been at home with the language of divinity. However, for the last hundred years our vocabulary has shifted to the language of philosophy and morality. This shift began, to some degree, in the early 19th century with the transcendentalists and their focus on the inherent goodness of both people and nature. It continued in the late 19th century with the translation of the great religious texts of the world into English. But it didn’t really pick up speed until the late 1940s with the introduction of the Unitarian fellowship movement.

At the time the American Unitarian Association was trying to find ways to increase growth. They found that there were some people who were interested in Unitarianism who weren’t comfortable in a traditional church, so they began to sponsor Unitarian fellowships as alternatives to churches. Fellowships could be started with as few as 10 members and without any ordained clergy. They could also meet in people’s homes or in rented space. To increase the likelihood of their success, the American Unitarian Association targeted largely white communities which also had universities in them. Add to this the popularity of humanism among this particular demographic sparked in part by the release of the Humanist Manifesto in the 1930s and the result was a boom in small groups which were lay led, often highly educated, and largely humanist in nature. Hymnals written at the time began to include readings and hymns which lacked the traditional language of divinity. Over time these fellowships became larger and either merged with existing churches or became churches themselves. This led to a large increase in humanism in the Unitarian church as a whole as well as a steady decline in the use of religious language. So complete was the removal of religious language from the denomination that our statement of principles and purposes, often pointed to when someone asks what we believe in as Unitarian Universalists, contains no divine language at all, except for the word “covenant”.

This is why, when I joined the church, I felt so at home, so comfortable with the language used here. However, things changed as I began to apply what I was learning in church to the rest of my life. As I attempted to truly live my UU principles each day I noticed two interesting side effects. The first one was that I was less and less defensive when other people used divine language in my presence. My understanding of words such as “God”, “ministry”, and “faith” began to change and take on new meanings, thanks in part to a large number of younger UUs who were adopting this language as their own. I came to think of God as the best hopes and dreams in all of us and when others would speak about God, I realized they were speaking about the same basic ideas. This led directly to the second side effect: Other people began to comment on what a good Christian I was. The first time this happened it took me completely by surprise. For a split second I was insulted, but very quickly I recognized the comment for what it was: not a slur, but a compliment on how I lived my life. I came to realize that there was an entire group of Christians, really the silent majority, who cared more about doing good in the world and following the teachings of Jesus than about commandments, sin, and hell. I also realized that many devoutly religious people were speaking of God not as a literal man in the sky – like the one on the order of service today – but as a metaphor for that something greater that connects us all. My ability to tolerate the use of God language had changed my entire outlook not only on Christianity, but also on religion as a whole. The walls which I had built up began to be broken down.

What I came to realize is that I had been doing the same thing that the religious fundamentalists had been doing. I had been taking words such as “God” and “faith” and putting them into little boxes of meaning instead of letting their meanings expand to meet me where I was in my personal journey. I thought that “God” had to mean a physical being, and that “prayer” meant talking directly to that physical being. I thought that “faith” meant blind trust of what you’ve been taught and that “salvation” meant that you would go to heaven after you die. I’m sure that if I asked a group of UUs about these words, many of them would have similar reactions. Many of us have attached the baggage of our previous religious experiences to these words. We hear the word “sin” and we think of angry signs at a protest. We hear the word “ministry” and we think of groups giving bibles to villagers in other countries. But to many these words mean much more.

As a religious educator and a parent I have seen another side of this issue as well. Many UUs want to spare our children from the negative effects that words such as “sin” had on us when we were their age. We want to shield our children from closed minded zealots who spew hate and intolerance in the name of religion. But in doing so, we often rob our children of the power that comes from having a language to describe that which is so difficult to describe in our lives. If we taught our children that “God” refers to the great mystery of life or if we taught them that “grace” refers to those gifts that we receive simply by being alive, then they would be equipped with those words when events in their lives moved them to use language which embodied the awe and wonder of life more directly than our everyday speech does. Instead we have given that power to the fundamentalists by making sure that their definitions of these words are the only ones that our children will ever learn.

I’m not trying to influence you one way or the other about your personal belief in God. Instead, my goal is to make you think about why the word itself is so problematic for Unitarian Universalists. I think that one of the reasons is that many times when we are asked “Do you believe in God?” we are expected to give a yes-or-no answer to a very complicated question. I think another reason is that many of the popular concepts of God are so simplistic and confined that we resist forcing the indescribable spiritual intuitions of our minds and hearts into such a simple and narrow description. The real question is not “what do you believe?” but “In what do you have faith?” When all seems lost and darkness is everywhere, to what do you pray for salvation from the darkness? If you put your hopes out to the universe, then perhaps the universe is God. If you rely on the inherent goodness of all people, then perhaps that is God.

I knew that my understanding of God, and especially of the word God, had changed significantly when I was asked by a high school youth if I believed in God and I was able to honestly answer “yes”. Although I don’t believe in a personal God whom I am able to interact with, I do believe in a wonderfully complex universe and in the spark of the divine in every living thing. To me, this is God. My belief in God hasn’t really changed since I became a UU, but my participation in this church has helped me define it as something more than “I don’t believe in the God they believe in.” I still consider myself a rational skeptic who doesn’t believe in superstition, but what has changed is my relationship with the word God. Instead of shrinking away from it I embrace it as my own. And I am beginning to see the fruits of my labor.

This year my 9 year old daughter began attending Redeemer Lutheran School, a local private school that is a part of Redeemer Lutheran Church. When we first started looking at private schools for my daughter I was concerned because many of them are very conservative. We chose Redeemer because of its rigorous academic program, but it came with some possible drawbacks. Two of these are the weekly chapels and bible verse memorizations, but the more serious one is that the church which runs the school is a member of the Missouri Synod. For those of you who have never heard of them, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is the fundamentalist branch of Lutheranism in the US. It is balanced out by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Whereas the ELCA ordains gay clergy, the Missouri Synod doesn’t even ordain women. They hold to the fundamentalist stance of strict biblical inerrancy. I’m sure you can imagine why this concerned me.

When we interviewed the principal we were assured that they taught evolution and that they were tolerant of other faiths at the school. The principal told us that a Muslim girl had even been student body president a few years ago. When we spoke to my daughter’s teacher he told us that they had an atheist student the year before and enjoyed having conversations with him about religion, so we signed my daughter up and hoped for the best. All of my fears were swept away on the very first day of school. The kids all put together bags with objects in them which represented who they were. The idea was for the kids to try and guess which bag belonged to which child based solely on the things in the bag. Among the things my daughter placed in her bag was a chalice. When they made posters that told other students about their interests and hobbies, my daughter wrote “I’m a Unitarian Universalist” as the very first thing on the poster.

So far our experiences have been very positive. Even though I’ve attended every chapel service to make sure I can explain to my daughter any theological bits that I disagree with, so far I haven’t needed to. She is so completely grounded in her faith and so at home with words like God and prayer and salvation that she has instead often come to me to tell me how she disagreed with the sermon topic before I even had a chance to bring it up on my own. We often discuss how we as Unitarian Universalists can apply the teachings of Jesus to our daily lives while maintaining our own beliefs about God and the spark of the divine within all people. She even asked her prayer leader at school to pray for me when I was traveling on a business trip, not because she believes in a personal God who answers our prayers, but because she wanted to express her desire that I come home safely.

So what is the point of all of this? My sermon is titled “Is There a Place for God in Unitarian Universalism?” I believe that the answer to this question is yes, there is a place for God. There is at least a place for the word “God” regardless of what your personal beliefs are regarding the existence or non-existence of one or more particular deities. We need to bring the religious language of our predecessors back into our daily experiences and embrace that language. It isn’t the words themselves that we have a problem with, it is the meaning that others have assigned to them. If we take back these words we will regain a descriptive vocabulary which we desperately need in these trying times. My challenge to you today is to reevaluate your relationship with the language of divinity. I realize that many of you have been hurt by religious zealots using these words to spew hate, but I ask that you try your best to embrace these words and to make them meaningful in your daily lives. Doing so will rob those same zealots of the power that these words have given them.

Benediction

I will leave you today with a quote from the book, Fluent in Faith: A Unitarian Universalist Embrace of Religious Language.

“God is the voice or impulse calling us toward goodness, beauty, creativity, love, justice, growth. God is a mysterious impulse available to us, a too-often unheeded voice within me and you and all of life. This god calls and invites, prompts and lures, but it is up to us whether to respond. We are a part of an interconnected web of life in which each affects all. There is a sacred spark, a spiritual energy and power, in each of us. It matters what we do with our lives. The great, ultimately unnameable mystery of life is a call to goodness and love. As we choose love, decide for love, stand on the side of love, we are part of the growing god in the universe.”

I implore you to find ways to embrace religious language in your daily lives and to teach your families and others about your faith by using the language of divinity. Words only have meaning because we give them meaning. If we don’t give these words a deeper and broader meaning, if we aren’t comfortable using them to describe our faith, then they will always be used to rail against us and the walls between us and those of other faiths will continue to stand.

Go now in peace until we meet again. Amen.


 

Podcasts of sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

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Blue Christmas

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

December 23, 2012

We will have merry holiday celebrations this year. We had a wonderful pageant last Sunday, and afterwards we had a feast. Tomorrow night we will have our traditional Lessons and Carols service with candlelight and Silent Night. This morning we are going to talk about another reality of this season: the blues. This is a hard time for some among us. Maybe you are one of those. The whole world is celebrating, and you are terrified because you can’t make the house payment, or you have had to let your insurance lapse. People are glowing in green and gold and you have lost someone close to you this year. This is the first Christmas without them. You are feeling the loss keenly.

Maybe you are alone in the world. Your family is gone, or they are toxic to you, and the world is papered in snapshots of families eating together, laughing and watching movies and going over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house. You feel like a motherless child.

You might look around you and see people who look like they have plenty of money, lots of friends, a good love life, radiant health and all their thoughts in order. You are comparing your insides to other people’s outsides, and that is a no-win situation. It’s hard to keep that in mind, though, as you feel tendrils of shame invading your spirit.

We are having a Blue Christmas service this morning to give ourselves a place to recognize this element of the holidays together. The shadow side of all the good cheer can get to us, and it can make confusion and heartbreak more keenly felt. If your marriage is in trouble, or if you or your parents or kids are going through a divorce, the “empty chair syndrome” can make everyone miserable. Everything is different this year. It’s harder, it’s easier, but it’s different. If you are in any of these hard situations, you’re probably having a hard year this year. Your feelings are reasonable and appropriate. You can’t stick the grief and confusion into a little closet for the duration of the season. It’s good to have a time when you can feel its weight and sorrow. Perhaps that will make room for some of the more joyous feelings too. It’s not all or nothing. How do we take care of ourselves and those we love when the season is a hard one?

They say “lower your expectations,” but I don’t like that. It sounds like we’re going to have something that’s not as good. I would say “lighten your expectations.” Having a house that’s decorated to the nines, saddling your family with debt so everyone can have what they think they want, cooking until you are grumpy, snapping at your family members because you are so stressed by giving them the Christmas they want — well, it’s not a “higher” realm in my book.

This is the celebration of the return of the light. Light means love and truth. Those things make room for sorrow.

Look for little things to enjoy. Before the house is decorated, before the presents are bought and wrapped and sent, it’s okay to breathe in the air of a day like today. Just breathe in and breathe out. Wear brown if you want to. Yellow. Watch people do the good cheer rituals as if you were an anthropologist studying the customs of a strange tribe. Look how they totter on ladders to put the icicle lights on their houses. Look how they run from one store to the next buying plastic things. Look how they make mountains of food to eat with people they ordinarily don’t get along with that well. Before you get too smugly above it all, though, remember that you may be doing exactly what they are doing in another year and that it will feel just right.

Instead of carols, listen to the music that speaks to your soul. Hang out with friends. Let yourself be sad that you are going through a hard time this year. Let your friends be happy. It takes a spiritual discipline sometimes, a maturity, to be glad for other people’s good lives. You can smile at them and in the spirit of truth, say “I’m so glad things are going well for you and your family.” Or you could take a sarcastic tone and say “I’m glad things are going well for you and your family,” and then they would have to take care of you for a few minutes, but that’s not quite as mature.

Notice your habits of attention. Are you making yourself worse by focusing on the contrast between your inner state and the one everyone else looks to be in? Are you like someone who has a sore tooth and keeps moving it with their tongue just to make sure it still is hurting? Gently shift your focus to something else. I’m not saying cover up your blues. I’m just reminding you they are not all there is to you.

Sometimes just acknowledging that this is a hard time of year can help. When you make room for the truth of what you are dealing with, the clamps come off of your heart and movement can occur.

More practically, or maybe I should say more biologically, if you are feeling depressed and sad you should lay off alcohol and recreational drugs. They cause depression to get worse. Exercise and eat well. Nutrasweet has been shown to lower your serotonin levels. That is a body chemical that helps with a feeling of well-being. Try to surround yourself with people who are good for you. Don’t force yourself to be around the awful people this year.

Usually your instincts will kick in and your spirit will try to make itself well again.

One friend, the year her husband died, was so mad about Christmas and all the expected good cheer that she painted the front door of her house yellow. Then she went shopping for the worst looking tree she could find. Finally she found one – a scrawny white number flocked with diseased-looking fake snow. She found some khaki colored balls to hang on it and stuck it on a table in the living room. Her intention had been to sneer at it every time she walked past, but she found herself feeling kind of sorry for it. Then affectionate toward it. They bonded, my friend and that ugly tree. It looked like she felt, and they were companions in sorrow.

If you are not the sad one, but if it is someone you love, here are some things to do. Keep in mind that this is a hard time for them. Listen with compassion if they want to talk. YOU DON”T HAVE TO FIX IT. Don’t try to cheer them up, to change their inner weather. You don’t have to be sad just because they are sad. It’s fair to be happy next to someone who is not. It’s not fair to demand that they be happy too. That’s all. Let’s be easy with one another at this time of year. Let’s be grateful that we have hearts that are big enough to feel loss, to feel complicated combinations of happy and sad, cheery and mad. A friend of mine was telling his mentor that he was getting a divorce. The old man is very hard of hearing, so my friend had to shout several times “I’m — getting – a – divorce!” Finally his mentor, a man with ninety years of living behind him, held his hands up in the air, and with a gentle smile and merry eyes, said “Life.”

Thank you for coming here this morning as we all move through life together. Merry Christmas, or —whatever.


 

Podcasts of sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

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Christmas Pageant

Rev. Meg Barnhouse and Marisol Caballero

December 16, 2012

The Christmas Story. Costumes are laid out for our children to choose what role to play in the pageant.


 

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

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

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Rekindled

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

December 9, 2012

Hanukkah is coming, one of the many celebrations of the return of the light to the northern hemisphere… Whose light could you rekindle? Who rekindles yours?


 

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

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

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Sweet Honey from old failures

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

December 2, 2012

 

In our culture we have to make straight As, be partnered up with an attractive person, raise children who are accomplished and useful, have a good job, and stay healthy and strong. What use is failure?


 

Reading: Last night as I was sleeping

by Antonio Machado

Last night while I was sleeping,

I dreamt – blessed illusion! –

that a fountain flowed

within my heart.

I said, “By what hidden canal,

water, are you coming to me,

wellspring of new life

where I have not ever drunk?”

Last night while I was sleeping

I dreamt – blessed illusion! –

that I had a beehive

within my heart

and the golden bees

were going about inside it

concocting white wax and sweet honey

out of old failures.

Last night while I was sleeping

I dreamt – blessed illusion!

that a burning sun shone

inside my heart.

It was burning because it

flashed embers of a red hearth,

and it was sun because it gave light

and because it made one cry.

Sermon: Sweet Honey From Old Failures

I remember, in SC, writing a chalice circle lesson on the topic of “Failure.” One of the groups, who normally were game to try whatever topics I came up with, called me on the phone to ask if I had anything else besides that they could do, that it just seemed too depressing. They were welcome to come up with whatever else they wanted to do, I said, but that was all I had this month. They ended up using the lesson, and said it turned out pretty well. We don’t like looking at it, but when we do, it’s not usually as awful as we think. I know people who have hit rock bottom have a special way of looking at life. One of my friends won’t date anyone who hasn’t got his “bottom certificate.” Marianne Williamson is often quoted as saying “Nervous breakdowns can be highly underrated methods of spiritual transformation.”

Once you have lost everything, you can face the next thing with more courage. You have hit bottom and survived. It’s demythologized for you, no longer mysterious and full of dread. A person who has lost everything has good odds of being kinder, more compassionate afterwards. Failure can make you more supple in your approach to life, less rigid. Thinking back to survey my failures, I couldn’t find any that fit into the word, exactly. I learned how to think about failure by reading Thomas Edison : he said “I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” Also:

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. It was not always that way. I used to send my writing out to publishers, and I would get a letter back that said this: ” Dear Ms. Barnhouse, We have read your pitiful attempt at a story and we have to say that, really, it would be better if you never again attempted to write. You are also ugly. It also would probably be better if you had never been born.” It really hurt. Then I would read it again and what it really said was Ôthank you for sending this. It doesn’t fit what we are trying to do at this time.”

I found some ways that don’t work for me. I failed to stay with the Presbyterian Church. Even in seminary I lost my faith regularly. “Explain it to me again,” I would ask my roommate, or my fiance. Tell me how someone else dying for me could erase my sins, and what are my sins, anyway? I’ve been doing my best my whole life, really trying to be a good person. I don’t identify with the whole “you need to be saved because you’re a miserable sinner. Yes you are. Yes. You. Are. Now, there’s good news! You’re saved by this man being killed by God so God could forgive you.” No. It didn’t make sense. It took me fifteen more years to leave. I don’t see that as a failure, though. It wasn’t a good fit for me. They loved me in spite of who I was, which is not fun.

I failed at my marriage, kind of. I mean, It lasted seventeen years, and a lot of those years were good and happy. Then I found out he had voted for Bob Dole, and that was it. I don’t want to make light of that, but I also don’t believe in preachers over-exposing themselves. The marriage doesn’t feel like a failure. We have two great sons, and that feels like success. It’s complicated, isn’t it?

I’m not sure that all of the things we label failures really are failures. Many “failures” happen when you go against what your inner voice tells you to do, or when you try to make yourself into something the others want from you, rather than what you need to do and be to live authentically. Maybe it happens when you don’t measure up to what the Perfection would be, in your place, but perfection doesn’t really exist.

Another possible translation is “old bitterness.”

the golden bees

were going about inside it

concocting white wax and sweet honey

out of old bitterness.

“Failure” is such a dualistic word. You succeeded or you failed. Life is more organic in shape than that, more complex. There is overlap between bitterness and failure, certainly. When you fail, there is bitterness at the situation, at the others involved, about your inadequacies, your lack of perfect knowledge. Failure sounds like something happened. Bitterness sounds like something you choose.

When you have a picture of how things are supposed to be, and they don’t turn out that way, there can be bitterness. In the 12 step program they call expectations “premeditated resentments.”

When you fail, there is bitterness about the circumstances, the other people involved, yourself, the things no one told you. How can the bees visit those things, draw out the essence, chew on it, distill it, carefully fan it dry and turn it into sweetness?

How can you make honey from those? I re-read “when smart people fail,” and they talked about telling the story differently, redefining failure, learning from mistakes, etc., but none of that felt like what this text was taking me. The man is sleeping. The water breaks through, water from a new life that he has never drunk before. The bees are busy, busy making white wax and sweet honey from old bitterness, old failure. He dreams that there is a sun inside warming like a hearth fire. I realized, late in the week, that these were not to be made into instructions about how I, a strong smart UU can make honey out of my own failures! The poet is sleeping. These things are happening beside his will and control.

Last night while I was sleeping,

I dreamt – blessed illusion! –

that a fountain flowed

within my heart.

I said, “By what hidden canal,

water, are you coming to me,

wellspring of new life

where I have not ever drunk?”

Last night while I was sleeping

I dreamt – blessed illusion! –

that I had a beehive

within my heart

and the golden bees

were going about inside it

concocting white wax and sweet honey

out of old failures.

Last night while I was sleeping

I dreamt – blessed illusion!

that a burning sun shone

inside my heart.

It was burning because it

flashed embers of a red hearth,

and it was sun because it gave light

and because it made one cry.

Last night while I was sleeping

I dreamt – blessed illusion!

that what I had within my heart

was God.

All of those, the spring that breaks through, the bees making honey, the sun, those are pictures of the Mystery. I try so hard to control everything, to use my will. It occurred to me that the poet is talking about things that happen in that part of yourself which has a life that is not always rational, that breaks now and then into your conscious experience. Many of you have experienced a shift in your mind or heart that feels like something new breaking in, bringing you water you haven’t drunk before. Many of you have felt warmed by a sight, some music, a relationship, a connection that flashed embers of home, that made you feel this, yes this, is the center of the universe. When you feel stale or exhausted, when you feel stuck in bitterness or ashamed of your current life, ask for the water of new life to break through, listen to the bees, busy making honey, turn your face to the sun. It is all within your heart, and it is on your side.


 

Podcasts of sermons are available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

The lovers, the dreamers, and me

Marisol Caballero

November 25, 2012

Kermit T. Frog’s famous ballad, “The Rainbow Connection,” has had a profound impact on my life, my theology, and my call to ministry. As I age, I have begun to recognize that Jim Henson’s words and characters have helped form so many of us in similar ways. This sermon will celebrate the wisdom of this unexpectedly prophetic man, who together with his puppets, continues to help change the world more than 20 years after his death.


 

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

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

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Thank you, I'm going downhill

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

November 18, 2012

One of the spiritual practices I enjoy is the practice of gratitude. I don’t always remember to do it, but it’s easy and, in my experience, it changes things immediately.


 

This is what I wrote when I was at the beginning of this practice. “Thank you, I’m Going Downhill” from Waking Up the Karma Fairy

I have told you all that I have found a spiritual practice that works for me — when I remember to do it. It is simple, you don’t need equipment, it’s easy to learn, and I feel its effects right away. If I were really clever, I would string this out, singing the praises of this practice, and make you feel lots of suspense before I told you what it was, but it’s Thanksgiving this week, so you can guess I’m going to talk about gratitude.

To start: why have a spiritual practice? To become a deeper and richer person, to handle life’s twists and spins better, to be better to live with and work with, to have a happier life. Some people want to know “what do you mean by ‘spiritual?'” The answer I’m working with these past few years comes from the Christian scriptures, where the fruits of the Spirit are listed in the Christian Scriptures as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. If those are increasing, deepening, my spirit is thriving. If I can’t find my peace or my kindness, something is off kilter and I need to pay it some attention. You are, of course, welcome to figure out your own definition, or you are welcome to use mine for a while to see how it works for you.

A practice of gratitude starts with habits of attention. Habits of attention shape your experience of your life. What you pay attention to fills your life. Gratitude begins with a habit of noticing the good things in your life and being grateful for them. You might say “thank you, Spirit of Life, Higher Power, God, or Spirit, or Force, or Universe, Ground of Being or Soul Of All Things. Meister Eckhart says if you only ever said “thank you” as a prayer, it would be a good prayer life.

Cicero, born about a century before Rabbi Jesus, wrote : “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others,” he said. By the 18th century, the free-market thinker Adam Smith, in his “Theory of Moral Sentiments,” supposed that people who did not feel gratitude were only cheating themselves out of happiness in life. And in the 19th century, Immanuel Kant described ingratitude with “the essence of vileness.”

The poet Rumi said “Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.”

I’m still in the stage where I am just grateful for the good things. Just in all of life’s joys? In its blessings? Those who are farther along than I am in this practice say not. They say have a heart of gratitude in the midst of everything. Well, surely not everything. We all know Anne Frank’s diary, but there were others recovered after the Holocaust. I want to introduce to you Etty Hillesum, a Jewish woman who lived in Amsterdam. Etty Hillesum wrote in her diary: “Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on earth, my eyes raised towards heaven, tears run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude.” The camp she speaks of is a Nazi death camp.

Her entry for July 3, 1942, reads:

“I must admit a new insight in my life and find a place for it: what is at stake is our impending destruction and annihilation…. They are out to destroy us completely, we must accept that and go on from there…. Very well then … I accept it…. I work and continue to live with the same conviction and I find life meaningful…. 1 wish I could live for a long time so that one day I may know how to explain it, and if I am not granted that wish, well, then somebody else will perhaps do it, carry on from where my life has been cut short.” In the midst of suffering and injustice, she believed, the effort to preserve in one’s heart a spirit of love and forgiveness was the greatest task that any person could perform.

On September 7, 1943, Hillesum and her family were placed on a transport train to Poland. From a window of the train she tossed out a card that read, “We have left the camp singing.” She died in Auschwitz on November 30. She was twenty-nine.

[From Robert Ellsberg’s book All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses From Our Time.

See Also: An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943 (New York: Pantheon, 1983). ]

I don’t know if I could be like that in a concentration camp. You never know about that kind of situation until you’re there. When I think about her, I have the feeling that it is misguided to try to be grateful and open in the midst of a situation like that. But then I think “how could it make things worse? Why not be present and open? Wouldn’t that stance make any situation better?” When I lived in Israel, the people had a well grounded sense of gratitude, a grounded appreciation for life, which could be taken away at any moment. The bus blows up. The army shells the men, women and children in Gaza mercilessly in retaliation. There is pain all around. Is this the reality of things, and all joys are temporary, or is war and affliction temporary and joy and love are what outlast everything? The religions of the world ask us to trust that this is the case, and that the molten flow of love is at the heart of it all, and that we can feel it if we decide to do so. Maybe this is what Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, in the mid-1800s, meant when he said “The arc of the universe bends toward justice.” Is everything going to come closer to justice? Can we trust the universe? Is everything going to be okay in some way? Are we part of that? I think we can be. Gratitude seems easier if you are willing to believe that love is the most real, the most lasting thing. Believing that just means choosing to act as if it is true. To see what happens.

All will be well


 

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Jazz and UU Theology

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

November 11, 2012

Equilibrium with Elegance: Jazz and UU Theology

Wynton Marsalis writes: “To improvise means to find your own way of intelligently using what you have in order to improve your environment; to swing means to maintain equilibrium with elegance, to be resilient; and to play the blues means that no matter how tragic a situation may be you have the capacity to conquer it with style.” UU theology and practice is very much like jazz.


 

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Our Religious Imagination

Rev. Brian Ferguson

November 4, 2012

Albert Einstein was one of the great thinkers of the 20th century and knew a lot but said “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Our Unitarian Universalist religious tradition places great emphasis on the use of reason to interpret our experience to derive meaning in life. But the solutions to some of the most difficult intractable problems in our lives seem to lie beyond our experience and reason. This worship service will explore what possibilities could be open to us if we make imagination a bigger part of our religious life.

Rev. Brian Ferguson is currently serving in his third year as the Consulting Minister to the San Marcos Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Prior to serving at San Marcos, Brian completed a year of chaplaincy training at Seton Family of Hospitals in Austin, specializing in the areas of Intensive Care, Trauma, and Mental Health. He was honored to serve as the ministerial intern here, at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin, in 2008 and also the Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church in Cedar Park. Brian earned a Masters of Divinity degree from Starr King School for the Ministry, the Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley, California. His ministry is driven by the desire to explore and improve the human condition in an interdisciplinary and holistic way.

He is a native of Scotland but has lived in California since 1986 prior to moving to Austin in August, 2008. In his previous life, before attending seminary, he earned an applied physics degree from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, and worked for 24 years as an electronic design engineer and project manager. Brian is joined on life’s journey by his partner and our office manager, Natalie Freeburg, and nine year old daughter, Isla Ferguson.


 

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

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776