Day of the Dead

Marisol Caballero

October 28, 2012

The Day of the Dead (El Dia de los Muertos) is a Mexican holiday that celebrates the lives and personalities of our loved ones who have died. In this inter-generational worship service we celebrate and remember loved ones (pets included) who have died. A congregational ofrenda (altar) honors their memory. We briefly share the name of the deceased and our relationship to them. We bring items to place on our ofrenda, such as a favorite food, drink, photograph or another item that represents who they were and what they loved in life.


 

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

 

Kicking the Statue of Shiva

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

October 21, 2012

 

Using a story from an ancient Hindu text, we’ll talk about how a faithful bitterness toward a person, a place or a religious tradition can keep you as connected as you would be if you loved that person, place or tradition.


 

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

A Safe Place

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

October 14, 2012

Another part of our Covenant of Healthy Relations says that we promise “to make our church a safe place to express our deepest fears and our greatest joys.” What makes a place safe? How do you know abuse if you see it? What are its patterns and methods? How do you stop it?


 

Sermon: A Safe Place

The organization that is featured this morning that receives support from First UU is Front Steps. There are a lot of reasons why people end up on the street. For families who are homeless, it’s often the economy. For people who are on the streets by themselves, the reasons often include mental illness and substance abuse. Around two thirds of the adults on the street are there because of mental illness or substance abuse or some combination of those. Other reasons are domestic violence or being a gay teenager. The issues are tangled together. Some mental illness is triggered by substance abuse. Some is triggered by having been abused or neglected as a child. Some substance abuse is itself triggered by childhood abuse or neglect. Not everyone who was abused or neglected as a child struggles with mental illness or substance abuse, and not everyone who struggles with mental illness or substance abuse was abused or neglected as a child. I’m saying that in studies of homelessness, there is a significant overlap.

About 40 percent of the young people on the street are lesbian or gay. Other young people are on the street because they are abused physically or sexually at home. Some of that abuse is because the parents are substance abusers. This month is domestic violence awareness month, and we have just had national coming out day. It feels like a good time to touch on this tangle of issues, so we will not be ignorant of these things. And maybe we can figure out what to do about some of the roots of the problem.

One of the ways we help is by supporting the shelters for homeless people, for abused women and children. Another is to know about abuse so we can recognize it in our own lives and in the lives of our friends and family. I learned a lot about abuse when I helped start the shelter for battered women in Spartanburg. We didn’t do it exactly right. I realized that as I drove fast down the road with a woman in the passenger seat and her angry husband in the family station wagon with a rifle just a few cars behind us. We had asked the police to help, but they had said no. Now, of course, they work hand in hand with the shelter, but not at the beginning. But that is another sermon. We had a lot to learn really fast.

There is nothing simple about abuse. Most of it comes from people you love, people upon whom you depend for your life. Imagine for a moment that at some given moment this afternoon, the person you love most in the world attacks and hurts you. You have to leave. Where do you go? What do you take with you? What do you live on? They apologize and say it will never happen again, that they would rather lose their right arm than do that to you again. You forgive them, and everything is great. What a relief. Then the tension starts to build. You can feel it coming. It happens again.

If you are a kid, or if you were abused as a kid, your first thought is that you did something to deserve it. You ask yourself what you could do to be good enough so that it doesn’t happen again. If you were abused as a young child, it becomes more complicated in that your very wiring is affected so that your adrenaline pumps into your bloodstream at a lower threshold than people with less violent childhood experiences. It becomes even more complicated in that, for some who experience violence, the chaos and danger begin to feel familiar, sometimes more real than when things are peaceful.

Physical violence does not have to be in the picture for emotional or verbal abuse or neglect to be present. Emotional abuse most commonly consists of constant put-downs, belittling, explosions of rage, long days of silence, isolating you from friends and family, preventing you from doing what you want to do, either with intimidation or emotional blackmail. Emotional blackmail goes like this: “if you don’t do as I say, you don’t love me, or I will rage, there will be high drama, or I will hurt myself, or I will hurt things you love.

If you live with that, you might begin to feel that you are not good for anything, that you are just a burden, that you are unwanted wherever you are. It can make you feel ashamed inside, like there is something wrong with you.

Why am I talking about this here at church? Because I’m doing a sermon series on the covenant of healthy relations, which is our agreement on how we want to interact with one another, how we want to disagree, how we want to get things talked about, how we want to conduct ourselves. The section we’re looking at this morning says we want “to make our church a safe place to express our deepest fears and our greatest joys.”

The first sermon was about the word “covenant,” and all it implies. The second one, last Sunday, was about generously supporting the church with our time, treasure and talent.

We do a lot of things as a congregation, but if all we did was create a safe place for people to express their deepest fears and greatest joys, that would almost be enough. It would make one more safe public place in a world where there aren’t very many.

In order to be a safe place, it has to be somewhere a person won’t be attacked physically or verbally. A safe place should be free of outbursts of rage, it should be free of physical fear. Your sexual boundaries should be respected.

It should be a place where you can have your view and speak about it, even when others have a different view, a place where you will be listened to with respect, where when people disagree with one another they disagree with passion and with respect. Safety does not mean everyone agrees and everyone is sweet. During a discussion in another church far from here, a woman raised her hand and said “I’m not feeling heard.” The facilitator said, gently, “The gentleman who just spoke seemed to hear and understand your point very well. Could it be that you simply aren’t being agreed with?” In fact, when you disagree deeply with someone, it takes a lot of respect to engage with them and talk about your disagreement. When there is no respect, you don’t even have the will to engage, because it’s useless, so you are nice. And silent.

In churches that have felt unsafe, members have had very different experiences of the atmosphere and the events. In families where there is abuse, often it is directed at just one kid, not all of them, so the people in the family have very different experiences of life in that family. They tend to blame the person at whom the rage was directed. If those to whom it is not directed see it happening, they feel confused about what to do. If they can’t figure out how to make it stop, they may feel powerless or ashamed that they couldn’t make it stop. They blame themselves.

What is needed in order to live into a feeling of safety? Gentle interactions, acknowledgement of people’s right to their views and their feelings. Dependability, good structure, transparency, fun, allowance for disagreement, especially good strong disagreements where you learn that disagreement is not attack. The assumption of good intentions, where you hold on to the knowledge that people feel they are making the best decisions for the group, even though you feel they are absolutely wrong.

We make a safe place here not only so that we have a place to spread out wings and grow. We spread our wings so that we can help homeless people. We spread our wings so we can figure out how to reach out to gay teens to let them know they’re not going to hell, to let their parents know they don’t have to kick them out of the house. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but we’ve made a good start.


 

Stewardship Moment 

Marisol Caballero

Last time I was in this pulpit I spoke to you all about coming home to UUism and being vocal enough to help others do the same thing. Many of you have heard me speak several times about my joy in joining the staff here as Interim Director of Lifespan Religious Education, especially in light of the fact that I started my ministerial journey here many, many years ago. It was the people within this church who helped me to discover my call to ministry and encouraged me to pursue this path. So, when Meg called me up over the summer and asked if I could come in and help you all with Religious Education for a bit, I was thrilled at the chance to come home and even more thrilled to be asked to stay a bit longer, as I have!

After completing my undergraduate degree at St. Edward’s, I headed to New York to attend Union Theological Seminary, all the while intending to someday return to Austin and do ministry in some form or another. I wasn’t sure of the particulars, only about Austin. I knew that I wanted to live and work in the place and community I had loved and that had nurtured my call. I moved right back here after I graduated seminary and worked with kids in a day care and as a substitute schoolteacher while I took some time to figure out next steps. While doing so, I surprised myself by gaining admission to a prestigious 12-month chaplaincy residency at the Medical Center of the University of California, San Francisco. From there, I was invited to apply and was later accepted to become the shared Ministerial Intern of Throop and Neighborhood UU Churches in Pasadena, CA.

These experiences were invaluable, yet all the while; I pined for Austin, Texas. I wanted to journey with and serve UU’s who understood better that as a Chicana and a Tejana, I have no confusion about whether I’m Mexican or American or Unitarian Universalist or Lesbian. In Texas and in this church, we create room for everyone to be their whole selves and we work together to celebrate those differences! Many UU’s I met in other states often didn’t understand my love for this place and its people and wondered why liberal religious folk would ever stick around such a place. I longed to journey with and to serve those Austin UU’s who look injustice and the face and say, “we will stand on the side oflove (not move aside) and see love prevail!”

I came back as fast as I could. And yes, I am overjoyed to be back home with you all. But, the journey here was a long one wrought with many hardships along the way. Preparation for UU ministry is a very involved and very expensive endeavor, especially when your family is not able to contribute anything. I worked and borrowed my way through both of my degrees only to find my household a fast statistic of the Great Recession, as they are now calling it. When we must operate from a place of scarcity for so long, it becomes so difficult to imagine abundance. So many of us, including this church, are standing in that same place- having operated through a narrative of scarcity, we must re-teach ourselves to recognize our multitude of blessings and begin to embody the wildest imaginings of our highest potential. This year, I am personally digging myself out of a hole; playing “catch-up” with my personal finances and grateful for the privilege to do so. I am not yet able to give to this church as much as I would like to. But, I’ll be as generous as I am able and I urge you all to do the same in your pledges. Let’s imagine, together, and then become the wildest imaginings of our highest potential. It is, after all our mission. Thank you.


 

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

 

Land of Hope and Dreams

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

October 7, 2012

The Springsteen song ends “Well this train carries saints and sinners… losers and winners….” Can First UU be that kind of train? What would it look like for our faith to be rewarded? What does it take for the bells of freedom to ring?


 

Crazy, but that’s how it goes

Millions of people living as foes

Maybe it’s not too late

To learn how to love

And forget how to hate

THIS TRAIN

The theme of the stewardship campaign this fall is “All Aboard for the Long Haul!” Pledge 1-2-3! There are pictures of trains here and there, and we’re singing train songs. My sermon text for this morning said “This train carries saints and sinners, this train carries losers and winners. This train carries hussies and gamblers, this train carries lost souls. This train, dreams will not be thwarted, this train, faith will be rewarded. This train, hear the steel rails singing, this train, bells of freedom ringing! Meet me in the land of hope and dreams.”

I love that image of us all going somewhere together, getting on a different stations, hanging out the windows to greet the people we pass, handing food to them, trading snippets of conversation.

Is that something you feel like being part of?

One of the ways we do it is by supporting the mission of this church with our time, our talents and our money. We ask that you be generous within your means, and that is usually difficult. It’s necessary if we want to build the foundation under our dream of the future. This year, we are asking you to consider making a 1-2-3 pledge, a three year commitment. Why? Because it is good for us to feel one another on board. It would feel wonderful to stand up here and announce that over half of the congregation had made the vote for a long term, stable foundation for this church, that they were in it for the duration, that they were betting on the future, betting on this train and where it’s going. I am making a three-year pledge that increases each year. I’m going to try the adventure of giving a little more than is comfortable for me, of trying the spiritual discipline of letting money flow out to support something I believe in passionately.

The stewardship season is also the time when the leadership of the congregation gets input from the members, so when you pledge you are asked a few questions about what you think a really hospitable congregation would look like, what you think a congregation that was fulfilling its mission would look like, how we could be a significant presence in Austin. I am so looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feelings about First UU.

This is an important train. The reason we’re going is expressed by our mission: “We gather in community to nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice.” The direction we’re going is expressed in the ends, or the goals set by the board, which can change depending on input from the congregation. We’ll talk about where the train is going, but first I’d like to remind you where these tracks originate.

Our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors are the monotheists from Abraham on, the heretics of the fourth century, the liberal Christians and heretics of the Reformation, during the 1500’s in Europe. The Unitarians and the Universalists were both Christian denominations until the 1800’s. Unitarians proclaimed that Jesus was a great rabbi, but not God. God was to be worshipped and that was it. The Transcendentalists joined the movement, declaring (influenced by Buddhist and Hindu teachings) that God was in everything. So everything was to be worshipped, really. Unitarians have been a mix of Christianity and Eastern religions for the past 170 years. The Humanist influence on the Unitarians began in the 30’s, as Biblical scholarship began to poke holes in claims of inerrancy (it contains no mistakes, and it is completely the word of God) of the scriptures. Imagining a world without religious wars, without faith-based limits put on scientific endeavor, without the anti-intellectualism of some religious conservatives, Humanism holds tremendous appeal to Unitarians. In 1961 the Unitarians merged with the Universalists, who were a Christian denomination, a Jesus-worshipping denomination, whose main message was that no one gets sent to Hell for eternity. That’s till real good news around these parts! The Universalist strengths of community, spiritual inclusiveness and love made a good balance for the Unitarian strengths of reason, rationality, individuality and democratic process. Is that something you feel like being part of?

Work for social justice has always been a part of what we do. Susan B Anthony and Clarence Darrow were Unitarians. Clara Barton, who founded the American Red Cross, was a Universalist. e.e. cummings, PT Barnum, Dorothea Dix, Roger Baldwin, who founded the ACLU, Christopher Reeve. Working to make things better through working in politics has always been part of what we do. People we claim as Unitarians either because of church membership or their writings were Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, John C Calhoun (not all of them had good politics), Millard Filmore.

We are scientists and artists: Linus Pauling, Ray Bradbury, Tim Berners-Lee, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Fannie Farmer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Horatio Alger, Charles Darwin, Bela Bartok, Florence Nightingale, Frank Llloyd Wright, Beatrix Potter and Melissa Harris-Perry… now I’m just mixing categories, because who stays with their own category of people on a train like this?

Is the something you would like to be part of?

Dale’s question: I have been asking people this week why they go to church. To belong, to have a chosen family, to build a community, to have people to talk to, to have a chance to do work that makes a difference, to be somewhere you can hear your name called with affection, to have people who will ask you good questions, to think about things together, to grow into a better person in the world, to give gifts of courage, attention, affection, challenge surprise, experience strength and hope to one another. We are building community. That doesn’t mean we do it perfectly all the time.

We have worthy opponents: world views we see as destructive or fear-based, the apathy and exhaustion that marks many lives, our consumer culture that tells us to work more to buy more things, and life itself with its struggle and suffering.

Where is this train going? We are guided by our mission and by the ends/goals the board created from conversations with you.

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

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

Compassion – To treat ourselves and others with love

Courage – To live lives of honesty, vulnerability, and beauty

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

Our Mission

At First UU Church of Austin, we gather in community to

nourish souls

transform lives

and do justice.

Ends

First UU Church of Austin is an intentionally hospitable community where:

  • All people are treated with respect and dignity
  • All people of goodwill are welcomed
  • People are supported in times of joy and need
  • People find connection with one another in fellowship
  • We are fully engaged and generous with time, treasure and talent
  • We invite people of goodwill to find a spiritual home with us
  • We engage as UUs in public life

 

First UU Church of Austin nourishes souls and transforms lives by:

  • Engaging and supporting members in spiritual practice and growth
  • Providing worship, programs and activities that awaken meaning and transcendence
  • Ensuring that members have a caring, supportive and safe place to rekindle the spirit

 

First UU Church of Austin witnesses to justice in our personal lives and beyond, by:

  • Practicing liberal religious values in the public arena
  • Empowering all people to access the richness of life
  • Providing leadership to the greater UUA community to expand the reach of our movement
  • Partnering with the interfaith community to live our shared values

 

Having listened to the church for a year now, and in studying the goals by which we steer into the future, I have a sense of where we would like to be:

Could we be a congregation with a reputation for generosity, a church that gives away 5-10 percent of its budget to efforts for justice? This includes giving away the (non-pledge) collection plate every week.

Could we be a congregation where the youth and adults have many experiences of hands-on justice work, from demonstrating on the steps of the Capitol to going on service trips?

Could we be a congregation whose strength in the arts is well-known in Central Texas, and where we weave art into worship, into justice work, into intergenerational projects and outreach projects?

Could we be a congregation whose people give and receive skilled pastoral care, where we teach one another, where we pass on our faith and our traditions from generation to generation?

Could we be a congregation with enough space to welcome all who need us, and that space reflects our pride and our joy in the gifts our church brings to our lives and the lives of others?

Could a church so skillfully and effectively run, where our staff and financial practices reflect our values, that other churches look to us as a model?

Could we be a congregation where people experience transcendence and deep connection, whether in worship, in chalice circle conversations, in justice work, in doing art, in teaching or fellowship?

Does this sound like something you would like to be part of? Let’s do it!


 

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

 

Coming Home

 

Marisol Caballero

September 30, 2012

We pride ourselves in being open and affirming toward all, yet it seems many people still do not know of our existence. Why are UUs so shy about talking about where we attend church? This sermon challenges us to be more willing to share our faith.


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

 

American Civil Religion

 

 

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

September 23, 2012

Years ago, Berkeley professor Robert Bellah wrote about the beliefs at the center of U.S. culture. These stories and symbols are a mixture of Puritanism, positive thinking, “the American Dream,” and capitalism. With the upcoming election, we can see all of this is high dudgeon.


 

The Presidential election is coming up fast, and one of the big kerfuffels during the conventions was that the Democrats took God language out of their platform and then put it back in. Why would you have to say something about God in your political platform? Why does every speech have to end with “God bless you and God bless America?” It’s because there is an American religion that has little to do with any church in particular. It has strong beliefs that you will hear described over and over. It requires that they be spoken of in broad sweeping language that sounds vaguely Biblical, but is not really Biblical. In fact, some of the tenets of this American religion are almost opposite to Biblical teachings.

UC Berkeley Sociologist Robert Bellah wrote an article back in the sixties, nearly fifty years ago, that gave language to something many people noticed but hadn’t studied. He called it “American Civil Religion,” and it described a system of beliefs, looking and acting like a religion, underlying the American cultural intersection of religion, culture, identity and politics. Those descriptions were rooted in Rousseau and deToqueville, but Bellah laid it out in a way that helped people see more clearly what has been happening in this country. American Civil Religion is made up of collectively believed stories that are deeply and sentimentally held that shape our identity as a culture. These myths orient us in the world and give us an understanding of ourselves in the history of the world. In election years they provide images for political rhetoric and they guide a majority of voters in choosing candidates. When you say something that contradicts these myths, you know you have breached some kind of deep societal taboo. You are met with hurt and outrage.

There is no church or institution involved in civil religion. It’s in the air we breathe. Some Protestant churches feed it by having the American flag in their sanctuaries, by praying for the government in their communal prayers, by teaching their folks that the elected officials are there because God put them in office. The culture feeds it with rituals and celebrations around the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Veterans Day and Inaugurals. These are the holy days of the American religion.

What is expected of us as Americans? Honesty, sacrifice, hard work, and loyalty to the tenets of the American Way. The chief of these tenets is that anyone can make it in the USA with a little luck and a lot of hard work. We are a God-fearing people, like the Founders of this nation. We are champions of religions liberty, a nation that God has mandated to carry out a special mission in the world. We have a classless society. Capitalism is God’s favorite economic plan. Anyone can strike it rich. Our way of life is the best. America is God’s chosen and blessed nation. Please look at the picture on the front of your bulletin. Imagine Jesus holding any other flag, the flag of India or Mexico, Sweden or Nepal. Intellectually, I think most Christian people would say Jesus loves all the little children, not just the Christian ones. But in American Civil Religion, the USA is the favorite, and Christianity is tolerated as long as it doesn’t contradict the American Way. Another such tenet is that we have a God-given responsibility in the world because we’ve been blessed. There is no reason for Anti-American sentiment except jealousy of how blessed we are. The President’s authority is from God. There can be no morality without religion – moral principles are based on scripture.

Another largely unspoken tenet of American Civil religion is from the Puritans. Wealth and power are seen as a sign of God’s blessing, so the wealthy are not just lucky in business or birth, not just hard-working or smart, but blessed by God – favored. The corollary, which is completely opposite to the Christianity of Rabbi Jesus, is that the poor are somehow un-blessed and un-favored. America’s wealth and power are the divinely given resources for carrying out this important task. It will be interesting to see how this view shifts as it sinks in to the collective consciousness that the vast oil resources are sitting underneath Muslim countries. Are they the blessed ones now? Do they now have a mandate to win the world for their way of life?

One reason why the Occupy Movement is irritating to people, eating at us with the 1% language, is that it is contradicting the American Way by forcing people to see that a large number of people aren’t making it. Corporations are being subsidized and banks are being bailed out, and whether that should happen or shouldn’t, people are feeling resentful. Anyone should be able to make it here, and when the curtain is pulled back for a moment, it causes dismay and unrest. When a candidate is out of touch with those average people and our average lives, they lose points. Harking back to a safer candidate to talk about, remember when we were told that George HW Bush had no idea how to be in a grocery store? He appeared to be amazed by the scanners at the cash registers. That story has turned out not to be true, but it made him lose points, because we want our leaders to be regular people. Of course, we also don’t.

Civil religion will be preached in every speech this year. Some will describe the view of justice which is based more on the principles of English Puritanism than the Bible. “If you don’t work, you don’t eat,” “God helps those who help themselves.” That’s Ben Franklin, not the Bible, but most Americans don’t know it. You may hear some justice talk, and some peace talk. Studies show that most Americans say they want a just society, and 90 percent of us say we wish there were fewer hungry people in the world. Religious tolerance is always a waffle-y area, though. It’s not a Biblical or a Christian value, you know. It was a value upon which this nation was founded.

Most of them will stick to saying that our way is the best way, that other people would be better off if they did things our way, that our system works best. No one could be elected who pointed out the wrongs we have done in the world, that Denmark rates highest in citizen happiness, that the French have internet that is way faster than ours, that German phones have 300 hours of battery life (at least that’s what a German guy told me) They won’t make it if they say that some people can’t make it in America no matter how hard they work, that some people just need help and can’t contribute, like the 2/3 of welfare recipients who are children, that freedom of religion in the US should also include the option of freedom from religion, and that teen pregnancy rates are low in countries where sex education is comprehensive in the schools. Those truths would be death to a candidate because they violate the tenets of American civil religion.

I’m talking to you about this topic because Unitarian Universalism values clarity and consciousness. We have a deeply rooted faith in the democratic process, and knowing what’s going on, in my opinion, makes our engagement with that process more fruitful. Let’s be on the lookout for American civil religion this year, in all its forms, as American values and the American self-understanding meets the political process. God bless us all, and God bless the USA.


 

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

 

A Relationship of Promises

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

September 16, 2012

In this first in a series of sermons on the First UU Convenant of Healthy Relations, Rev. Barnhouse talks about being a “covenant community,” and how to nuture one another’s spiritual growth.


 

Sermon:

I’m going to talk to you today about the covenant of healthy relations that you all put together and voted on a couple of years ago. There is a Healthy Relations Team this year that is going to be asking you what you think of what’s included, whether it’s something you feel is reasonable, or whether it’s just too hard, whether it could be something we could take home with us and try on as a spiritual discipline. First, though, there is that word “covenant.” I want to talk a little about what covenant is all about. Unitarian Universalism is a denomination with deep historical roots, and we are going back to the 1600’s today as we explore the concept of covenant. We could go all the way back to Abraham and the covenant or promises God made to him and his family, but I think going back almost 500 years is enough for today. You may know that UUs, along with Quakers, do not have a creed. A creed is a series of statements of belief that the people recite together to affirm their faith. We do not have a statement of belief. We, instead, rely on covenant to be the center that holds us together. “Covenant” is a word that means something we promise, something we agree to do, rather than believe.

In the 1630’s, around 20,000 English Puritans had immigrated to New England. In 1637-38, a group of them began meeting in order to create a different kind of church. They did not want a hierarchy of bishops telling members what to do, as was the Anglican arrangement. They wanted a freer church, where the members could vote on the minister they got, and have a say in the way things were done. As they met in one another’s homes on Thursday evenings, they would talk about a topic chosen at the previous meeting. The host would speak first, and then everyone else could speak by turns. They wrote down how they wanted to speak within the group. Each one could, as they chose, speak to the question, or raise a closely related question and speak to that, or state any objections or doubts concerning what any others had said, “so it were humbly & with a teachable hart not with any mind of cavilling or contradicting.” The record reports that all their “reasonings” were “very peaceable, loving, & tender, much to edification.”

We are standing in the same tradition, almost 500 years later, holding as our ideal those same “peacable reasonings.”

(The quotations and history are from Alice Blair Wesley’s 6 part 2001 Minns Lectures. )

One question for the group in 1637 was: if we can meet like this, just as neighbors, just to talk, isn’t this enough? Maybe we don’t need a church. Their answer: This is not structured enough. The less structure you have, the more it can be easily taken over by noisy and dominant personalities, and then it’s not fair for everyone. If we really want to walk in the ways of the spirit of love, then we must intentionally form a much deeper community where the spirit of love is what guides us and demands our strongest loyalties. In addition to this, we need to speak out for and support a just and “civill society,” and that will take a concentration of care and visibility that we will have as a church. I am quoting Rev. Wesley’s lecture now:

“Free churches are made up of people who have covenanted to “walk together” – live together or meet often – in patterned ways, or “in order,” in the spirit of mutual love. People have covenanted to do this, over a great stretch of time, in the Hebrew Scriptures God makes a covenant with families, beginning with Sarah and Abraham; then with the nation of ancient Israel, beginning with Moses. This organizational pattern is the one element of our ancestors’ doctrine we liberals have most consistently kept in our liberal free churches

Historically, we religious liberals forget and then we remember again that no free church organization can work very well if it is not consciously, explicitly grounded in the spirit of love. We are now in a period of remembering. The Covenant you all voted on begins like this:

A Covenant of Healthy Relations

As a religious community, we promise:

  • To nurture the spiritual growth of people of all ages in our church.
  • To keep communications with one another direct, honest, and respectful in a spirit of compassion, love, and trust.
  • To support our church with generous gifts of time, talent, and money in gratitude for the fellowship, joy, and inspiration we receive.
  • To be present with others through life’s inevitable transitions.
  • To make our church a safe place to express our deepest fears and our greatest joys.
  • To forgive ourselves and others when we fall short of expectations, showing good humor and the optimism required for moving forward and calling ourselves back into covenant.
  • To engage with the larger world to promote justice and peace.
  • We acknowledge and commit ourselves to the work of sustaining our beloved community, welcoming all in good faith, and ministering to each other.
  • Thus do we covenant with one another.

 

It starts with a promise and ends with “thus do we covenant with one another” What we are after with our covenant is the exposition, the “unpacking” of the question “What does it look like to ground our community in the spirit of love, and what might it mean to influence the world, not with shouting at the world about how wrong it is, but with the love we can show it, our families and one another? Along with brilliant, clear, loving and well-reasoned conversation with the world too, I would add.

The first thing you all put into your covenant is :

To nurture the spiritual growth of people of all ages in our church.

Spiritual growth is what makes you a more loving person, more kind, patient, compassionate, joyful, peaceful, self-aware and self-controlled. A spiritual person (this is my take on it – you are welcome to your own) is able to be open to awe, able to be grateful, have perspective, concerned for others. A spiritual person eventually will know when to speak and when to be quiet, they will hear wisdom coming out of them from an unknown place, they will be fun to be around, not self-righteous, curious and interested in others more than in themselves.

We promise to nurture one another’s spiritual growth, and that of the children of our church. My friends, it’s not the parents of young children alone who are responsible for teaching. It’s all of us. You are the ones who carry the identity and traditions from generation to generation, who listen to the kids and learn their names and talk to them as if they were interesting humans and learn what they are interested in. You will be enriched and challenged and supported by the staff. We still have openings for teacher helpers, and you can find Mari, our Interim DLRE, in the Gallery to answer your questions about it.

Another way we invite spiritual development is with small group ministry. Being in a small group is one of the ways members get deeper conversations and experiences of connection and growth. Here is how they work. If you would like to sign up for one, they are in the Gallery.

The Gallery not only has interesting art to look at, it has gateways into experiences of connection and fun in the life of this congregation.

Ours is a covenantal church. We join by promising one another that we will be a beloved community, meeting together often to find the ways of love, as best we can see to do. We have found there’s always more to learn about how love really works, and could work, in our lives and in the world. It’s a hard path, but it’s a good one, and we’ve been following it for nearly 500 years.


 

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

 

Setting Sail

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

September 9, 2012

Magellan, Verrazano and Columbus were European explorers with three very different mixes of courage and caution, attention to detail and big-picture overview. So often a quality in a person that is useful in most situations is their downfall in others. What can we learn from these three?

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.

Water Communion and Ingathering

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

September 2, 2012

As we come together for the start of First UU’s program year, each of us brings to the service a small container of water from a place that refreshed our spirits this summer. We pour our waters together in a common bowl as we mingle our spirits in a common effort to nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice.


 

Reading: Drops of God

Tess Baumberger

God, God is water sleeping

in high-piled clouds.

She is gentle drink of rain,

pooling lake, rounding pond,

angry flooding river.

She is frothy horse-maned geyser.

She is glacier on mountains and polar ice cap,

and breath-taking crystalline ideas of snowflakes.

She is frost-dance on trees.

And we, we are drops of God,

her tears of joy or sorrow,

ice crystals

and raindrops

in the ocean of her.

God, God is air wallowing

all about us,

She is thin blue atmosphere embracing

our planet, gentle breeze.

She is wind and fiercesome gale

centrifugal force of tornado and hurricane,

flurry of duststorm.

She is breath, spirit, life.

She is thought, intellect, vision and voice.

And we, we are breaths of God,

steady and soft,

changeable and destructive.

We are her laughter and her sighs,

atomic movements,

(sardines schooling)

in the firmament of her.

God, God is fire burning,

day and night.

She is sting of passion,

blinking candle,

heat that cooks our food.

She is fury forest fire

and flow of lava which destroys and creates, transforms.

She is home fire and house fire.

She is giving light of sun and

solemn mirror-face of moon,

and tiny hopes of stars.

And we, we are little licking flames

flickering in her heart,

in the conflagratory furnace of her.

God, God is power of earth,

in and under us.

She is steady, staying,

fertile loam, body, matter, tree.

She is crumbling limestone and shifting sand,

multi-colored marble.

She is rugged boulder and water-smoothed agate,

she is gold and diamond, gemstone.

She is tectonic plates and their motion,

mountains rising over us,

rumble-snap of earthquake,

tantrum of volcano.

She is turning of our day,

root of being.

And we, we are pebbles

and sand grains,

and tiny landmarks,

in the endless terrain of her.

God, God is journal of time marching

through eternity.

She is waking of seasons, phases of moon,

movements of stars.

She is grandmother, mother, daughter.

She is transcending spiral of ages

whose every turn encompasses the rest,

history a mere babe balanced on her hip.

She is spinning of universes

and ancestress of infinence.

She is memory, she is presence, she is dream.

And we, we are brief instants,

intersections, nanoseconds,

flashing gold-hoped moments in the eons of her.

God, God is.

And we, we are.


Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. They can be found here.

 

Becoming an Ally

Marisol Caballero, M.Div.

Interim director of Lifespan Religious Education

August 26, 2012

There has been much dialogue within our congregations and within our movement about working to become a more welcoming and a more multicultural/multiethnic faith. This is both exciting and challenging work that grows the humanity of all those who venture to undertake it with an open mind and in humility. What will this work require of those of us who are already here, in order to better welcome those who we’d like to join us? What will we gain and what must we sacrifice? What does it truly mean to be an ally to those who live as members of less dominant groups?


 

Sermon:

Good morning. I cannot express how thrilling it is to be in this pulpit! Each time I stand here, I remember standing here and delivering my first sermon as a twenty-year-old member of this congregation. It was part of a lay-led gay pride service that focused on the coming out process as a means of celebrating one’s authentic self. I remember using the then-recently released film, Pleasantville, as my text, of sorts, and compared shamefully hiding away parts of ourselves that we should be proud of to living in a black-and-white world, rather than in Technicolor. Through this experience, and with the encouragement of this congregation, I was able to listen to that still, small voice within me and uncover my call to ministry.

I first heard that whisper many months before, when I attended my first service here. One of the two Interim Co-Ministers, the late Rev. Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley, was leading service that day. Having grown up in conservative northern West Texas, I had never before laid eyes on a woman minister, let alone a woman of color minister! In fact, my little fellowship was too small to even have a minister, so I had no idea that Unitarian Universalists ordained anyone, and before me stood a role model whose existence was proof that I could bring my whole self into service of this faith that I love in a way I had never before imagined.

As I got to know Marjorie better over the years and she took me under her wing, she told stories of her difficult journey as a UU minister of color. She experienced sexism and racism within our ranks, most often in the form of the less tangible microagressions, than the easy-to-recognize acts of bigotry that make levelheaded, compassionate people recoil.

Microagressions are small acts that are done, often without thought or malicious intent, which serve to remind others that they exist outside of what is considered normal or acceptable. We have all born witness to various microagressions and, most likely, have uttered them ourselves without realizing it. A boy is told, “Stop being such a girl!” A woman, “Wow, who knew you could fix a flat tire!” A plus sized woman, “You know, you have a very pretty face.” A lesbian couple, “So, I guess she’s more of the man, right? And you’re the woman?” Or, “that’s funny, I couldn’t tell you were Chinese on the phone!” Or, “It’s so rude when you say things in Spanish with others when you’re hanging out with me.”

We would be hard-pressed to find a soul in this room that hasn’t had such an experience that made them feel diminished in some way, which made them feel as if they did not matter. When someone fails to see us as an individual person of worth, it has the effect of isolating everyone involved from recognizing our inherent connectedness. Just as we all can recall feeling diminished, we all have experienced pain. We all yearn to feel loved. We’ve known the joy of friendship and the agony of loss. We’ve all had hard days that we cannot wait to close the door on with a good night’s sleep. We all have known what it feels like to laugh so hard or to worry so much about someone that it hurts.

And yet, we have all been enculturated since birth to fear and judge those who are different from ourselves. I become so frustrated when I hear otherwise progressive folks lifting up the word “tolerance.” In my youth, I was so proud to be a member of the UU Fellowship of Odessa, TX, as its sign read “Freedom, Reason, and Tolerance.” But, as I grew into adulthood, & I began to notice more & more that the majority of Unitarian Universalists don’t look like me, tolerance sounded less and less appealing. Those who are tolerated do not fully have a place. Sure, blatant name-calling and the like are frowned upon with tolerance, but does that mean that tongues are being bitten? Maybe, maybe not. One who is tolerated is never certain.

As the “good liberals” who we are, we would like to think that we have moved beyond tolerance to acceptance. But have we, truly? It may be safe to say that many if not most or all of us would like to have greater diversity in our UU congregations. Most congregations, this one not withstanding, have a smattering of ethnic, gender, ability, and sexual diversity, but by and large, ours is still a predominantly a White, heterosexual, upper middle class, highly educated denomination. If we are accepting, why is this the case? Why are we not more diverse?

Acceptance is a tough place to come to. It requires intention and deep soul work to become a reality. We do not simply become accepting because we wish ourselves to be or because we believe ourselves to be. Because we are all taught racism, to varying degrees, (either by our families of origin and/or by our society that values as the norm European influence and culture and Whiteness as the standard of beauty and intelligence) as well as all of the other “isms” (sexism, heterosexism, ableism, ageism, classism, etc.) it takes deliberate time and energy to unlearn all that we have been taught, much of which has been buried deep in our wiring, where we keep the less cute parts of ourselves. We don’t usually expose these parts to the light of day for fear of judgment by ourselves & by others. Without taking the risk and doing this work in faithful community, of engaging in a remedial education of love, an increase of diversity will be a faade and we will be engaging in tokenism. We may gain the appearance of an accepting denomination but we will, in essence, be merely tolerant of difference.

Robert W. Karnan, UU minister to a church in Portmouth, New Hampshire that was able to grow in diversity through multiculturalism, writes similarly about the experience, “Inclusive Congregational membership means intentionally opening the doors and pews with a genuine welcome to all who come in goodwill. It means a natural concomitant fear among the existing members about the many unknown people who begin to sit next to and join them in worship with those who have been there a long time. We found that this is the frontier for confrontation with racism, class phobia, ageism, genderism, homophobia, and all other prejudices that we hold mostly privately just under the surface of our daily lives…”

How will we go about achieving an authentic celebration of difference? The answer must begin by stating that diversity, in and of itself, cannot be the ultimate goal absent from working toward ending oppression and becoming allies to one another. We have a spiritual imperative to end racism and other forms of oppression, to become allies to the marginalized. Doing this work helps us to grow more fully into our humanity. It recognizes the worth and dignity of every person and embraces our interconnectedness. Anti-racism and anti-oppression work, in general, requires us to look directly at ourselves and at others and do away with rhetoric which values “colorblindness” and ignoring difference. Joo Young Choi, a lifelong UU and friend I met through DRUUMM, a UU people of color organization, once addressed a 2005 UU youth conference with the following,

“Friend, if you wish to love me, do not be blind to my color, my sexuality, my abilities, my class. If you wish to love me, do not be blind to systemic oppression, and do not be blind to the oppression that has affected me. My color is beautiful.”

I have certainly experienced my share of racism in my life, not to mention my experiences of sexism, homophobia, and whatever the “ism” is called by which people from elsewhere negatively judge Texans. Within UU congregations, I often hear comments such as, “you don’t look like a Unitarian! You look like you’d be a Roman Catholic.” Or, “Wow! That was powerful! Do you write your sermons yourself?!” Or, “So, what part of Mexico were you born in?” (To that one I answer, “Texas- the northern part of Mexico.”) I’ve been mistaken for the Latina childcare worker after preaching and while standing in my robe! The list can go onÉ But, in doing this work, I have found that my stories are not unique. We have all been damaged by the continued existence of oppression. Our humanity has been tried and lessened. Our work begins by undoing these lessons and learning to become an ally, to be a community of allies to the historically marginalized, among us and outside of these walls.

There are many ways to begin this crucial work of becoming an ally. By increasing our awareness of culture and difference, we become more mindful- more mindful of our “attitudes, values, and assumptions.” We must examine our cultural “norms” and begin to become curious about how they came to be. I have a funny story about this from seminary: we were placing our snacks out before a Student Senate meeting when my friend, Dominique, a black woman, and I began teasing two of our white friends, Margaret and Jessica, about their dish. They had brought hummus and baby carrots. We pointed out the fact that at every meeting there was always sure to be a white girl who brought baby carrots and hummus. After the four of us had a good laugh, Margaret and Jessica gained an awareness of the reality and existence of white dominant culture and planned a seminary chapel service that explored whiteness further, calling it the “White Girls’ Chapel Service”. What began as a joke between friends, ended up bringing some healing and opening the eyes of all who attended the worship service.

So, to achieve the goal of diversity begins in anti-racism/anti-oppression but it must end in working toward multiculturalism, for diversity on its own is not sustainable without multiculturalism and multiculturalism cannot be built without the foundation of anti-oppression. The journey toward becoming truly welcoming to all, of becoming allies, is tough work, but it’s soul-feeding work. These subjects are easier not to talk about. This is work that requires courage to move beyond denial, guilt, shame, and apathy.

But, I wonder, what will our congregations look like when we arrive? How will we measure our success? Is there truly a destination, or should we view the journey as an ongoing process, forever growing our humanity? Rev. Paul Rasor says, “Liberals want to create a strong and inclusive community, but we often want to do it without giving up anything, without letting down the barriers we erect around ourselves in the name of individual autonomy.” Change can be a scary thing. But, if our church culture changes to more fully embrace multiculturalism, we need not change our core values, which is what makes us Unitarian Universalists. We won’t throw out all of the great old hymns or traditions, we will simply add to our repertoire. True multiculturalism does not recognize one culture as normative over any other, be it heterosexual culture, English-speaking, two-parent households, white, upper middle-class, gender normative, or able-bodied cultures, but it does embrace each as a rich and valuable member of the human family.

What do we have to gain? Karnan admits that, “An inclusive opening brings discomfort. The discomfort exists for those who are already members and it exists for the newcomer, tooÉ[but] the journey has meant that we speak more honestly & listen more carefully. It has meant the growth of the heart and the spirit of love to encompass more than the congregation has previously been willing to see & know. It has meant becoming a close friend to someone who ten years ago might have been avoided because of their identity or looks or presumed status. We have begun to remake our world, beginning with ourselves, and the transformation has been as liberating as it has been demanding.”

I look forward to engaging in this transformative, community building, justice ensuring; this holy work with this congregation this fall. We will laugh, cry, discover, and grow in spirit together as we strive to become better allies. May it be so.


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

The least of things

Chris Jimmerson

August 19, 2012

 

Sometimes we make things that are really not all that valuable more important than they really are. Paradoxically, sometimes we miss that the seemingly smallest of gestures can make all the difference. After spending this summer serving as chaplain at the largest level one trauma hospital in our area, these are among the many lessons I learned – sometimes the hard way, and sometimes through the humor and amazing resilience of others.

 

CALL TO WORSHIP

Come into the circle of caring,

Come into the community of gentleness, of justice and love. Come, and you shall be refreshed.

Let the healing power of this people penetrate you,

Let loving kindness and joy pass through you,

Let hope infuse you,

And peace be the law of your heart.

In this human circle,

Caring is a calling.

All of us are called.

So come into the circle of caring.

PRAYER

by Dr. Davidson Loehr

We pray to the angels of our better nature and the still small voice that can speak to us when we feel safe enough to listen.

Help us to love people and causes outside of ourselves, that we may be enlarged to include them.

Help us remember that we are never as alone or as powerless as we think. Help us remember that we can, if we will, invest ourselves in relationships, institutions and causes that transcend and expand us.

Help us guard our hearts against those relationships and activities that diminish us and weaken our life force.

And help us give our hearts to those relationships that might, with our help, expand our souls and our worlds.

We know that every day both life and death are set before us. Let us have the faith and courage to choose those involvements that can lead us toward life, toward life more abundant.

And help us find the will to serve those life-giving involvements with our heart, our mind and our spirit.

We ask that we may see more clearly in these matters, and that we have the will to hold to those relationships that demand, and cherish, the very best in us. Just that, just those.

Amen.

SERMON

Chris Jimmerson

“The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.”

That’s a quote from the Swiss Psychologist and Psychiatrist, Carl Jung. Many of the world’s wisdom traditions express similar ideas. The bible speaks of the simple treasures of the heart far exceeding in value those of the material world. Islam embraces modesty and talks of the meaning in doing for others. Many of the Eastern traditions emphasize compassion and the letting go of unnecessary attachments.

Anyway, I’ve always really liked that quote, and I had thought I understood it.

I found out this summer that I didn’t.

Not really. Not the way we understand things down deep in the gut; down in the cellular level; in the soul.

I spent this summer doing a unit of professional education for ministry students on pastoral care. I was assigned to a group of six other seminary students, 3 Episcopalians, a Presbyterian, a Catholic and a Muslim. Sounds like a setup for one of those jokes, doesn’t it? “Three Episcopalians, a Presbyterian, a Catholic, a Muslim and Unitarian Universalist are in a bar…”

Of course, since we were all ministry students that never happened. Much. OK, some of us, sometimes.

Anyway, we spent the summer learning together while serving as chaplains at local hospitals. I was assigned to Brackenridge Hospital, where I worked on a floor that provided care for people struggling with a number of illnesses. We were also required to take turns serving as the on call chaplain overnight, covering four local hospitals.

During on call shifts, our home base would be the little Chaplain’s sleep room down in the basement of Brackenridge Hospital. Some of my fellow students decided that the sleep room was haunted. Being a good, rationality-based, Unitarian Universalist, I secretly dismissed the notion, and did my best to ignore the inexplicable sounds that often startled me awake at 3 in the morning, uneasy and shivering in the little sleep room at the bottom of the hospital.

The day before my first on call shift, I was too slow to react while driving, and I a hit another car from behind. No one was hurt, but my car was damaged pretty badly and not driveable. We managed to pull the cars off the road into a parking lot and called for a police officer and a tow truck.

I was frettin’ – frettin’ about my car; frettin’ about how I was going to arrange for having something to drive for my upcoming on call shift; frettin’ about how much all of this was going to cost me!

But as we stood waiting together, the young guy who’s car I had hit asked me what I did for a living, and so I told him about being a seminarian. He said, “Oh, wow. Can I talk to you about something?”

And so that’s how it happened that I ended up in a parking lot off North Lamar Boulevard, standing around in 103 degree heat, leaning against my wrecked car, providing pastoral care for the guy who’s car I had just crunched.

I suppose it was the least I could do.

The funny thing was, after listening to him for that time, my wrecked car seemed the least of things to worry about.

By the way, though I have tried to keep the essence of the stories I am telling you today intact, I am changing enough details to protect the privacy and identity of those involved.

The next morning, I arrived at the hospital in my freshly acquired rental car at 8 am. My pager went off immediately, calling me to the emergency room. When I got there, a woman was lying on a stretcher, holding the body of her 21-year old daughter. The daughter had just died from injuries she sustained during a car wreck in which the mother had been driving. The mother’s sorrow filled the air and for a while it was all there was left to breathe.

Over the next five hours with her and the other family members, there were no words that would console the inconsolable. The only thing anyone could do was just to stay with them in their grief.

And yet, somehow, families hold each other; and tell their stories; and hold tightly to the love that exists between those who survived; and begin the process of honoring the memories of those who have been lost; and somehow they pick themselves up and leave the hospital and find a way to go on with their lives. Their stories continue, including those of the ones that were lost. It is a testament to courage and resilience of the human spirit that defies even the tragic – that overcomes even great loss.

Later that day, I went down to the sleep room, and I called my partner, Wayne, and I said, “I need you to stay on the phone with me while I cry.” He did. I love him so much.

You see, that little chaplain’s sleep room in the basement of the hospital is haunted. It is haunted with memories so strong, losses so profound, yet courage, love and the will to live on so boundless, that they awaken you at three in the morning and demand to be heard.

But, you know, somehow, so often, we miss the things that really matter. Instead, we make “the greatest of things” out of the stuff that is not really important at all.

In fact, some of the things to which we assign such meaning are actually almost comical if you really think about them. For example, here are just a few things we make way more important than they really are – that when you really think about how much meaning they truly have, are the least of things:

  • Most church budget battles;
  • Anything having to do with “reality” television;
  • What the neighbors think of our car, house, clothing, etc.
  • U.T football. (Don’t throw things at me. I enjoy it too.)
  • Most of the material things in our lives.

Don’t get me wrong; I know we love our iPads and Priuses. I do too, and to a certain extent enjoying them is great. But we also have to remember what truly brings us comfort and joy and meaning and beauty.

And that’s where a paradox about the least of things comes in. There are things that can seem so small and so unimportant, yet they can be so meaningful, so powerful, so life-giving – a kind word, a loving gesture, the friend who shows up to visit us just when we need them, prayer.

I know. I know. As UU’s, we often shy away from prayer, and yet, as a chaplain, I was often called upon to pray with people and to do so in religious language that you might never hear in a Unitarian Universalist church.

And I saw prayer calm the disturbed, bring peace and hope to families experiencing great loss and release the tears that allowed people to finally express their grief so that they could begin to reclaim hope.

Here is one example. Late one evening, I was called to the room of a woman who was too distraught to sleep. She had just made it through a protracted legal battle to regain custody of her children from an abusive husband, only to be diagnosed with leukemia.

We talked for a while, and she shared both tears and laughter. Finally, she asked if I would pray for her. I asked her what she would like me to pray for. She answered for God to be with her children.

And so, we prayed the prayer she needed, together.

At the end of the prayer, she squeezed my hand and said, “I think I can go to sleep now.” Later, she said that it was the first time she had slept through the night in months. Later, she looked at me one day and said, “You know, I’m starting to be able to laugh and tell jokes with my kids again.”

It might seem counterintuitive, but that’s another of those seemingly little things that can be so meaningful — humor. So often, humor can bring light into the darkest of situations; bring humanity to people who had been feeling as if they had become their disease.

During the summer, I got to know an older gentleman who was in for surgery to remove a non-malignant mass attached to his brain. We had talked several times before his surgery. He had expressed his fears about it and talked with me about some decisions he had made in his life that he regretted.

The afternoon after his surgery, I saw him walking around in the hallway with the help of a physical therapist. He smiled, pointed at the stitches on his head and said, “Hey look chaplain, they say I can go home tomorrow — the new brain fits just fine.”

Before I even thought about it, I laughed and said, “Well, I hope it works better than the last one did.” Luckily for me, we had formed a relationship that already included humor, so he returned the laugh!

There are so many of those little things that can matter so much, but what it seems to always come down to is loving presence. It always comes back to relationship – to love for one another and the sacred and fragile web of existence of which we are part.

One Sunday, I brought a young woman back to the Intensive Care Unit to see her younger brother. He had just died as the result of an accident at his summer. She had fought with him before he left for work that morning and needed to say her goodbyes and seek forgiveness before the rest of the family would get there. As we stood by his bed and she spoke the words she needed to say to him, she suddenly turned and placed her head on my shoulder, cupped a hand over each of my shoulders and collapsed her entire weight onto me. I hadn’t expected this, and it was as if her body had suddenly become a stone weight and her overwhelming grief was pouring into me though the tears she was shedding on my shoulder.

In that moment, I thought I would collapse too. That I didn’t have the strength, and that we were both going to fall down in great puddles of sorrow on the cold tile floor of that room in the ICU.

But we didn’t. Somehow, the experience was as if something was holding me up, so I could keep holding her up. Rebecca Ann Parker, one of our UU theologians, calls this an “upholding and sheltering presence” that is “alive and afoot in the universe”. Others might simply call this God. Still others might say that it’s some sort of a bio-psychological reserve built deeply into our DNA that helps us help others survive so that our species can go on.

I’m happy just to dwell in the wonder and awe and mystery. I am just grateful for it.

I think that it has everything to do with love.

That young woman was eventually able to go on, not because of anything I or anyone else did, but because there was love in that room that Sunday — love that transcends everything else; love that upholds us; love that we carry with us always and that is simply present. It is there, and we can find it in the least of gestures, the fewest of words, the silences we share when there is nothing to be said, and yet we stay connected with each other nonetheless. Simple, loving presence can be the least of things and yet the most meaningful of things.

It is where we find purpose — a comforting hand on the shoulder, a kind word, a meal for an ailing neighbor, just remembering to say “I love you” before leaving the house in the morning; these are where we ultimately find meaning. These are the things worth more in life.

For all I know, that loving presence with each other and within all of life and creation is the place where, in the end, we find beauty and truth and joy. For all I know, it is where God lives.

Amen.

OFFERING

We all have so many needs-

A thousand prayers-a thousand needs–

That really need only one answer:

Let the world not be indifferent.

And may we live and be with

each other in the way that

shows this truth whatever the day brings:

That neither are we indifferent to each other.

BENEDICTION

As we go forth today, I wish you love.

And even more so, I wish you the courage to love and to love deeply.

Let us live it in the smallest and the greatest of ways. Let us always be asking ourselves, “what would it look like if we were to truly live love?”

All blessings upon you and yours.

Go in peace and love.

Amen


 

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

 

Inside the Words on the Wall

Nell Newton

August 12, 2012

We have a lovely mission for our church and it is the result of a tremendous amount of work! Now that we’ve had it on our walls for a couple of years, let’s take a deeper look at what these words say about who we are and what we believe.

“We gather in community to nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice.” The mission of First UU Church of Austin, TX

Such fine words! When our leadership set out to create this mission two years ago we listened to the whole congregation. We gathered hundreds of ideas and thousands of words that people gave as their dreams for the work of our church. And then we sifted, sorted, and winnowed out the most salient ones and worked them into our mission. They are a powerful vision of what we believe, and who we hope to become. And, if we look carefully they reveal some important ideas that we might not otherwise articulate.

And articulating is the whole point of a mission. Here’s a little bit of the back-story. A few years back it was determined that no one was clear about the mission of our church – the reason we all keep showing up here. And, without a shared mission some folks were unclear of what was helpful and was distracting us from our larger purpose.

Larger purpose – a reason bigger than, but inclusive of, each one of us.

Yes, there was a wonderful mission statement that had been drafted almost a decade earlier, but after the initial work it was lovingly placed in a secure location and never looked at again. That is how mission statements don’t work. Some wondered if we could just take the old one and dust it off, but wiser folks explained that it’s not like sourdough and it’s better to start from scratch each time. So, that is how we wound up conducting a series of workshops and exercises that resulted in page after page of beautiful words to work with.

Then one fine spring day the church board, our interim minister, and a wonderful consultant all holed up in a room with these pages and began the process of finding out what was important. What were we doing that was bigger than, but inclusive of, each one of us? We looked at examples from other churches. Some were really, really detailed, but we decided to keep ours short enough to fit into one sentence. Something you could carry around easily. There were many, many drafts, but it wasn’t a sausage-making process of argument and compromise. It was something far sweeter and exciting. And, once these words coalesced we collectively stopped and I think a few of us gasped. I know I got tears in my eyes because when I saw them all together, I saw us, this congregation. It was cool.

These words are powerful. And this time we were not going to let them out of our sight! We made sure that they would be in common usage, and someone saw fit to put them up on the walls. Now, let’s see what they say.

First off — we are agreeing to be in community. Even if we believe that each person is tasked with creating a personal theology we are still coming together in community. In Community is where the richness our many voices form a chorus of experience. In Community is how a potluck feeds a multitude. In Community, we can hold one another in times of joy and sorrow and hold one another accountable to our highest aspirations. There are some things that you just can’t do by yourself, no matter how beautiful your theology. Despite assorted statistics that suggest church membership is a quaint old habit on the decline in the US, we are bucking the trend and coming together as a church community!

Now, let me jump ahead and look at the middle part. We have charged ourselves with the work of “transforming lives”. This indicates that we feel that change is possible within a human life. We are not predestined, fixed, beyond help, or already perfect. Lives can be transformed. Maybe even our lives. Granted, we didn’t specify if we will transform lives for the better or worse! But I suspect that we aim to improve.

This speaks of an optimism that presumes progress is possible and that things can get better with intentional work. And we are indicating that this is work that WE will do — instead of waiting for a force outside us or above us to sprinkle transformation powder down upon us. And notice that we’re not doing this work in the aim of redemption or connecting ourselves to something from which we were disconnected by sin or failure or simply birth.

However, note that we stop with just the lives — we are not offering to help with any afterlife activity one might engage in. This is straight up, classically optimistic Humanism with no need for anything supernatural. We have the power and, some would say, the duty to transform lives

Now, let me go back to where we announce that we intend to nourish souls. Two words. Big Ideas. We are being bold here in stating that there are such things as souls and they require nourishment — AND that we will attempt to provide this nourishment! Now, let’s skirt around a few fiddly details about souls and any afterlife (again, we’ll stick to this life) — and acknowledge that if we use the word “soul” it is setting us apart from strict Humanists, who would place the use of reason and development of the human personality above all else. We are saying that we will feed something more than just our minds. And we believe that our community can be a source for this nourishment. It won’t just fall out of the sky upon a deserving few. From what I’ve seen around here, nourishing souls seems to be an active process using poetry, music, and ritual to feed and comfort in times of celebration and crisis.

Nourishing souls! This kind of talk can still get you tossed out of plenty of UU pulpits! In making this statement, we place ourselves among the contemporary UU’s who are reclaiming spiritual language and creating a place for such discussions in our church. We are still a little new at this and I suspect that we don’t have a good working definition of “soul” that everyone agrees on. But the fact that we are ready to use this word and do this work is a big step into a broader theology. Really. It’s big. Y’all are brave and bold.

We will “Do Justice”. This is biblical talk here! Straight from Micah 6:8. But I suspect we were just channeling that unconsciously —

He has told you, O man, what is good;

And what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God?.”

Yeah… we’re probably not ready to go that far… And, yet, there is electricity in these words! “Do Justice!” They indicate that we are aware of injustice, and intend to do something about it. We won’t wait for an afterlife for fairness to be meted out, or wait for Karma to tidy up this mess. Instead, we will strive to discern just from unjust — it’s not always as easy as it sounds — and then attempt to be part of the weight that bends the arc of time towards justice.

Nourish souls, transform lives, do justice. Great words. There were some good words that wound up on the cutting room floor — sacred, beauty, love, nature. They were sprinkled in among all the words we received from folks, but they didn’t show up with the frequency of the others.

Here’s a word that didn’t make it up there: TRUTH. I think it did show up a couple of times – generally in the familiar phrase “free and responsible search for truth and meaning” that is one of our UU principles. But for the most part “truth” did not feature heavily. Why is that? I don’t know for sure, but I have my personal favorite theory. It goes like this – and, I’m sorry, but I have to bring up Postmodernism to get there – but here goes.

I suspect that many of us have let go of the notion that there is such a thing as a pure, unchanging, universal Truth. Even the idea that one-plus-one-equals-two really only works if you are measuring discrete objects. You already know that one drop of water plus another drop of water makes one fatter drop of water! So, I suspect that we are no longer in pursuit of a solid, lovely, singular and fixed, capital “T”, Truth.

But, we’re also probably not falling into the nihilism or relativism that is the dark side of Post-modern thought. That would be the idea that since there is no single Truth, that there is no truth at all. That doesn’t feel quite right either. Instead, I suspect that we are wandering into the Alter-modernist (oh yeah… I’m in grad school) the Alter-modernist understanding of Truth as a multi-faceted, shimmering thing that can only be appreciated from many angles and through many voices. And this gets us back to why we are gathering in community!

And there were some words that never showed up in the first place because they simply are not part of our collective theologies. Those were words like suffering, mercy, repentance, or judgment. We don’t find redemption in suffering or feel the need to repent in order to live our lives fully.

Oh, and there was one other word that made a couple of appearances, but not enough to register. It’s BODY. We didn’t think to include our bodies up there. That’s probably okay for now. I suspect they are implied. But I can’t be sure… Just in case, I’m bringing mine along…

Nourish souls, transform lives, do justice. This is our current mission. It reflects the theologies we bring with us and hope to create together. In a few more years, we’ll start from scratch and do the whole exercise over again. And then, because we are comfortable with change — new words will appear on the walls! And it will be cool. ©

Blessed Be!

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The magic of I am

Dwayne Windham

August 5, 2012

The Magic of I Am (you fill in the blank). Inspired by the Harry Potter book series, this sermon delves into the pensieve of words we use to describe ourselves.

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Bringing Justice Home from General Assembly

First UU Church of Austin General Assembly Attendees

Gillian Redfearn, Mike LeBurkien, Judy Sadegh, Carolyn Gremminger & Peggy Morton

July 29, 2012

Bringing Justice Home from General Assembly. FUUCA members Gillian Redfearn, Mike LeBurkien, Judy Sadegh, Carolyn Gremminger & Peggy Morton share their General Assembly experiences and human interest stories from immigrants, undocumented workers, undocumented children, and UUs around the nation who are working for Social Justice.

Gillian Redfearn

I don’t want to assume that you all know what General Assembly is and so I won’t. General Assembly, also known as GA, is the Unitarian Universalists’ annual meeting. It is attended by thousands of UUs and is held in cities all across the United States. This year’s GA held in Phoenix, a decision which had been made some years ago, left many of us wondering how could we possibly go to Phoenix in light of its anti-immigrant laws, best known as the Arizona Senate Bill 1070, put into place in 2010. BUT IN TRUTH, HOW COULD WE NOT GO TO ARIZONA?! It was our opportunity to live our UU faith, live our UU principles, make a difference and most importantly, understand what doing justice really means. This GA, in fact, quickly became identified as the Justice Assembly. It was an opportunity to learn from, partner with and support the many groups and individuals whose daily work, seven days a week, is for the greater good of all people.

There are so many organizations hard at work in Arizona and some of those organizations include the ACLU, ALEC, Grassroots Leadership, National Day Laborers Union, Amnesty International, Puente Arizona, American Progress, and No Mas Muertes.

In coordination with these many groups and during GA, the UUs decided to hold vigil at the local Phoenix prison and it was this vigil that most made me want to attend this year’s GA. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the Phoenix prison, but it is rather infamous and is best known as America’s toughest jail or Sherriff’s Appaio’s tent jails, where 1,000 plus undocumented people are being held for no REAL crime. This place resembles a concentration camp, even Sherriff Appaio describes it as such. There is no a/c in a place where temperatures can be as high as 118 degrees, meals are only served twice a day, and medical attention is often denied. The tent jails were established in 1993 when Sherriff Appaio decided to use tents acquired at a surplus sale after the Gulf War, rather than add on to the existing building, seemingly a cheap solution. Since then approximately 138,000 people have passed through these tents and approximately 150 people have died there.

Every night in Phoenix at the prison, a small group of people hold a vigil for those held in those tents, probably in many cases, their own family and friends. On the evening of Saturday night, June 23rd, we were able to add to their support in a BIG way. Approximately 2,000 of us, many of us wearing our “Standing on the Side of Love” t-shirts, boarded school buses and were driven to the prison to stand with these people. For the “regulars” at the prison, it must have been quite a sight to see as bus after bus arrived and dropped off 100s of people, then leaving again only to return with even more people.

For two hours, we stood together, peacefully, singing songs and chanting words of support that we hoped and believed could be heard by those locked up inside. The experience of standing with so many people who share your core beliefs is a rare one and it touched me greatly, but what I most remember about the vigil is the gratitude of the “regulars.” As we reloaded onto the buses, they thanked us at large and in many cases, thanked us individually. One woman, in particular, and I made eye contact and I noted that there were tears running down her face as she said, “Gracias. Thank you.” I was so sad in that moment, but I have to believe that our presence brought a renewed energy and hope, but at the very least, that they, the inmates, the families, the Phoenix Latino community, know that they have support outside their own communities and that we, who do not suffer the same injustices, are aware of theirs. I hope and pray that we can live up to the call to “do justice. “

Judy Sadegh

I am Judy Sadegh and I have attended GA several times in the past, but this Justice GA was a very special experience for me.

Describing GA is almost as challenging as trying to decide one’s schedule from all the programs offered from 7am to 11pm during the four and a half days of the conference. It is really unique for each individual as I think you will hear today. If you would like to get a better picture of the entire experience, you can see and hear many of the sessions on the UUA website.

Daily worship services were inspiring and the music was wonderful. There were a lot of new songs introduced, but it is also amazing how great our familiar hymns sound with 3000+ UUs singing together.

Every day we heard stories from members of the partner organizations in Phoenix about the hardships people suffer there. We heard of children afraid parents would not be able to pick them up from school, of parents afraid to go out or send their children to school after hearing about issues going on in the community.

One family’s story especially affected me. Maria’s mother came to the US with her young son before Maria was born. Last year the mother was stopped because of a burned out taillight, detained and deported as a result. Maria remained in Arizona with an aunt and finished high school. She spoke to us of her sadness that her mother could not attend her graduation. Maria is very close to her brother and his family, but she fears that he will be deported, as well. Maria’s sister-in-law spoke while holding her young toddler of the fear that her husband would be deported. He had an opportunity to go back to Mexico to try to get a Visa. However, he was told that it might take a year before he got an answer and there was no guarantee that he would be able to return. He decided to stay in Phoenix so that he could participate in his daughter’s early years. Although the stated policies of ICE and the administration focus on deporting criminals and dangerous individuals, the reality is that families are being torn apart and individuals who have lived peacefully in our communities for many years are being swept up and sent back to countries where they are no longer familiar.

In my recent reading I came across a quote from Max Frisch, a Swiss playwright which struck a note with me. In 1965 when guest worker programs were starting in Europe, he wrote, “We called for workers, and there came human beings.” May we never lose sight of the fact that we are all human beings, documented or undocumented.

Carolyn Gremminger – Exposing For Profit Incarceration

One of the talks that hit close to home was on For Profit Incarceration and Detention Centers.

I am reminded by our Principle that all people have inherent worth and dignity, not just some, not just the documented..

The talk focused on Corporations that profit from the detention of undocumented people. They treat this population as profitable new market. The Industry lobbies for and drafts harsh anti-immigration legislation. The owners profit from the suffering of others. They exploit inmate labor by contracting with outside corporations, paying the inmates roughly 40 cents an hour.

In my mind, this is exploitation. I hope it is in your mind, too. I learned that the facilities are often sub par for both the incarcerated and the staff, while the owners profit enormously. Security is lax and there is very limited governmental oversite of their operations.

Corporations should not be allowed to profit from the incarceration of Human Beings.

What can we do?

Visit the website: Grassrootsleadership.org. Attend Teach in at First UU on Saturday, August 4, at 6pm.

Contribute to organizations working to stop incarceration and detention for profit.

Get educated.

Join other faith based organizations in the opposition.

Make Family members and friends aware of this issue

Talk with elected officials.

Strive for a more accountable and humane Criminal Justice System.

Peggy Morton

Hello, I’m Peggy Morton and I’m you’re new Social Action Chair, and I bet you can guess why I was attracted to attending my first GA, it’s Justice Theme.

Now, I’d like for you to imaging these snippets of stories you’ve just heard, multiply that times 25 and that’s how my head was spinning the the third night when we heard Keynote speaker Maria Hinojosa, who you may know from her NPR Radio program Latino USA.

After having been an undocumented student and worker, she eventually became an American citizen and one day when she was talking about illegals, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Ellie Wiesel said “Don’t say that.” and asked “Why do you call them illegals?”

When we get a speeding ticket, you don’t hear anyone call us illegal drivers. Lou Dobbs first call them illegals like the Nazis had called Jews illegals. I left GA with the new language of calling them undocumented workers, undocumented students or undocumented children.

Another lesson I learned at GA was that I had to travel to Arizona to connect with fellow Austin UUs, not only from our church but also our other Austin UU churches Live Oak in Cedar Park & Wildflower in South Austin.

We returned and joined forces to work with Austin immigrant rights and labor worker rights groups to protest in front of Sheriff Greg Hamilton’s office July11 because he gives Immigration Customs Enforcement officers 24-7 access to our Travis County jails, which is why we have one of the highest deportation rates of non-criminal undocumented workers in our nation.

At the rally, we heard a local undocumented female student tell about being picked up for J-walking and held at Travis County taxpayer expense in jail for 4 days. Yes, for a misdemeanor J-walking offense she served time. She’s not being deported, she’s a law abiding student.

I appreciate all of you here today listening to our stories because just hearing what’s happening in our own city can be heart-wrenching and for many of you that in it’s self is major, but for those of you wondering what you can do, I hope you’ll join me as our Social Action committee adds immigrant rights to our mission to do Justice.

Next weekend we will host 30 members of the National Day Labor Organizing Network, who are traveling across the country to tell their stories. They’re traveling on the UndocuBus and they say “No papers, no fear” to put a spotlight on the dehumanization that’s taking place in our country. They will roll out sleeping bags in Howson Hall Friday night through Monday morning and you’re welcome to sign up to help us feed and host them.

We also want to invite you to join us and our guests as we head over to Sheriff Hamilton’s office again next Friday at noon to stand behind our Standing on the Side of Love banner and work to convince the sheriff that he doesn’t have to keep giving ICE 24-7 access to our jails. We want to build trust between our law enforcement officers and our community.

On Saturday, I hope you’ll attend the TeachIn that Carolyn told you about and then next Sunday before the Worship service, please come to a casual meet and greet breakfast in Howson Hall eat tacos and visit with our guests personally to get to know them as fellow humans.

We will also have future opportunities to learn what we can do to stop the dehumanization because we must return to civility as we recognize the worth and dignity of all people.

After the service today, our group will line up as usual outside the sanctuary, except for me because I’ll head to the Social Action table in the gallery to visit with you, give you flyers about our planned activities and tell about how you can help us host the UndocuBus travelers.

If you want to join our grassroots effort, please visit with me at our Social Action table to see how you can join the good fight with the Power of Love.

Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker’s lecture “Standing on Holy Ground” can be found on our iTunes podcast. Podcasts of sermons are also available for free on iTunes. Click here.

It looks like the world is going to hell. So let’s change it and ourselves religiously

Amanda Yaira Robinson

July 22, 2012

The news is grim: war, hunger, poverty, global warming. Sometimes the scope of these challenges is overwhelming, and we wonder whether our efforts even matter. Jewish teachings remind us to focus on the distance between our experience of the world as it is and visions of what it could or should be. What do we do with these tensions? How can we bridge the distances? Today, we’ll talk about possibility, transformation and what Karl Barth called an “uprising against the disorder of the world.”

Amanda Yaira Robinson coordinates Texas Interfaith Power and Light (TXIPL), the environmental program of The Texas Interfaith Center for Public Policy. TXIPL is one of 39 state Interfaith Power and Light programs, each voicing a religious response to global warming. Amanda served for five years as director of religious education in Unitarian Universalist churches before joining TICPP staff in 2008, and she’s working on a Master’s in Theological Studies at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Granddaughter of a Christian minister and daughter of Sufi teachers, she is joyfully Jewish.

Story

Today I have a story for you. It is based on the teachings of the 16th century Jewish mystic, Isaac Luria. Every people, every culture, every religion all around the world has at least one story about the creation of the world-this is one of those stories.

In the beginning, all that was, was the Divine Mystery that some people call God. We can imagine this God Mystery as being like a giant sphere that extends in all directions as far as we can imagine.

When God starts to create the earth and the stars, the galaxy and the universe and everything that is, God constricts a little bit to make room for the Universe. God squeezes in and a hole opens up right in the middle of God-and that’s where we are now, on planet Earth, in the Milky Way galaxy, part of the Universe, part of Creation, and all of it right in the middle of, surrounded by Divine Mystery that stretches out in all directions.

Now that there’s room for creation, God fills some vessels, some containers, with Divine Light. This Divine Light is Divine Essence, it’s God Stuff. And God sends the vessels to creation, and everything is going to be perfect-but then something goes wrong. The vessels cannot contain the Divine Light. They shatter, sending sparks of Divine Essence everywhere, all around the world-they are in rocks and streams; in plants and trees; in every kind of animal, from bees to elephants-little, lost shards of Divine Light. This is not at all what God had wanted.

So God creates people to help lift up the Divine sparks that are still scattered everywhere, to piece the broken shards back together, to be partners with God in a continuing process of creation.

Sermon

Good morning! Thank you for having me here today; I am happy to be with you. Some of you might know that I have a background in Unitarian Universalism, having served for five years as a Director of Religious Education at two different congregations-for the last two years of that time, at your neighbor church to the north, Live Oak UU. Sometimes, spiritual paths can take unexpected turns… and so it was that a few years ago, I found myself studying to become a UU minister at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and having a profound religious experience in the Jewish tradition. Now I’m joyfully Jewish, and finishing up a Master’s in Theological Studies at the seminary. My religious journey is really not our focus this morning, but I wanted to let you know a little bit about where I’m coming from.

It is my privilege to be the Coordinator of Texas Interfaith Power & Light, the environmental program of The Texas Interfaith Center for Public Policy. The Texas Interfaith Center is a 39-year old, statewide, interfaith organization that offers people of faith the information, tools, and resources they need to effectively engage on public policy issues. In my work, I focus on environmental issues, and in that capacity, it has been my great pleasure to work with several of you!

The Bullas and the Halpins have been especially involved in recent efforts through our local affiliate, the Interfaith Environmental Network of Austin, and your own Rev. Barnhouse helped lead our interfaith worship service last fall just outside the LBJ Library, on the morning of the State Department’s public hearing on the Keystone XL pipeline. That was some mighty faithful witness. I know that this church community strives to put its values into action-for that, I am thankful. Please, keep it up!

As part of my work, I visit with folks in congregations around the state about caring for the environment. In my conversations about these issues, I am almost always asked some variation of this question: “Where do we find hope?” This question emerges in a context of looking honestly at some of the environmental-and related human-challenges facing us today. It comes from religious people of different faith traditions who care deeply about the world we share and the life in it, and who know enough of the facts to feel some amount of despair.

The way I see it, anyone working on environmental issues today-or any other social justice issues, as far as I can tell-must wrestle with this question of hope and purpose. And if people are unable to find a meaningful answer, they won’t be able to stay engaged for very long. People burn out, give up, shut off some piece of their hearts… It is so much easier to go shopping, turn on the TV, drink a beer-that’s what all the ads tell us to do, anyway. There are those, too, who carry around a dark cynicism and a story about how, once upon a time, they cared and tried to make a difference-and then they figured out the hard way that none of it really matters, and so now they don’t even try anymore. I’ve met some of these people. Maybe you have, too. Without some kind of deep wellspring, the struggle of facing the world’s troubles is too frequently, too much.

I want you to know that the sermon I had planned to give this morning is not quite the sermon you’re getting. Within the last few days, I’ve read two recent essays about global warming that directly get at this question of hope-and I feel like we need to address them today, so that’s what we’re going to do. Before we go any further, let me issue a couple of disclaimers: first, these thoughts are my own, and may not reflect the opinions of The Texas Interfaith Center; second, because I know that language can be a barrier to understanding, I’m going to use the word, “God” to mean that Source of Life in the universe that is called by many names-and I’ll trust you to translate the word, “God” and maybe even “Christ” into language that makes understanding and connection possible for you. Thank you.

The first article that’s on my mind is Bill McKibben’s latest in Rolling Stone magazine, on the subject of global warming. In his piece, he talks frankly about the numbers of global warming-about “acceptable” temperature increases, and the fact that the world’s economic and business systems are moving forward with operations that will put us way over and above those so-called, “acceptable” limits. He also notes that, so far, governmental systems have been unable or unwilling to make agreements or change policies in order to seriously address the very real threat of an ever-more-quickly, warming world. The article paints a pretty bleak picture-and whether you agree with McKibben or not, it’s worth reading.

The second article I’m thinking about also paints a pretty bleak picture of the road ahead, based on the science of global warming. And this is the article I’m going to most directly work with today. It’s actually a sermon that UT professor, Robert Jensen, delivered a couple of Sundays ago at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church-another neighbor of yours to the north-and that was published later on AlterNet. The title of the sermon is, “Hope Is for the Lazy: The Challenge of a Dead World.” Even if you haven’t read it, I think you get some idea of the content just from the title.

In the piece, Jensen argues that the systems of our world-“patriarchy, capitalism, nationalism, white supremacy, and the industrial model”-are dead, and cannot be reformed or revived. He says, “The death-worship at the heart of those ideologies is exhausting us and the world, and the systems are running down.” Noting that the task of creating new systems to replace the old is a monumental one in which “the odds are against us,” he writes, “What we need is not naive hope but whatever it is that lies beyond naivete, beyond hope.” What this “hope beyond hope” is, he doesn’t exactly say. He does say that we won’t win by “praying for deliverance by the hand of God,” or by putting all our hope in science and technology. And he’s right about that-we can’t just sit around waiting for God to intervene and stop global warming, and we can’t rest easy thinking that technological advances will make it possible for us to maintain our environmentally-unsustainable lifestyles. No. It’s not that easy. The way we’re living right now is not sustainable-we will have to make very real changes in order to address the environmental problems we’ve created. Jensen says that the world defined by those capitalist, industrial, consumer systems cannot be saved.

What we need is something different. He says, “There is always hope, but it is hope that lies beyond these systems, beyond the world as it is structured today. To be truly hopeful is to speak about a different world structured by different systems.”

Okay, Dr. Jensen. Let’s talk about that.

The story that we heard this morning about broken vessels and scattered shards is one way that the Jewish tradition approaches the contrast that we humans feel between things as they are and things as we think they should be. We’ll come back to this story again in a bit. Another way that the Jewish tradition approaches this contrast is by talking about the olam ha’ze and the olam ha’ba-this world and the world to come. There is some question as to whether these worlds should be understood literally or figuratively, tangibly or mystically-and probably there is no one “right” answer. Some people hold onto the promise of a real, idealized, transformed physical world to come-while others say that the world to come is really just every next moment-a moment of infinite possibility.

In considering these contrasts in our world-the contrast between where we’re at right now and where we’d like to be-the question becomes: How can we bridge the gap? How can we move the world closer to these visions of how we’d like it to be? And: is that even possible, or is working for peace, justice, and an environmentally-sustainable world really just a big, Pollyanna fantasy of “lazy hope” and a waste of everyone’s time?

Dr. Jensen, in his sermon, said, “We shouldn’t distract ourselves by looking to someplace up there, somewhere above or beyond, something that we pray is just around the corner.” In one sense, I get what he’s saying-again, that we can’t expect some kind of Divine Intervention to save us from our troubles. But I don’t think we should too casually dismiss the power of prayer and prophetic religious vision-because actually, I think we need those things to help transform this world.

Let’s talk about prayer for a bit. Prayer can take many forms, but the basic idea is that through prayer a channel is opened between you and God. One time a reporter asked Mother Theresa about prayer. “What do you say when you pray?” he asked. “I listen,” she said. The reporter paused a moment, then asked, “Then what does God say?” and she replied, “He listens.”

In addition to regular prayer, Jewish tradition has a rich practice of saying blessings. Ideally, we say 100 blessings each day. The basic idea is that for most of our regular, daily actions-including eating and drinking-and also, seeing beautiful trees or animals, smelling fragrant herbs, or studying Torah-we should give thanks to God. These prayers and blessings are a frequent acknowledgement and reminder that life is a gift for which we are grateful. But they do something else, too-often, our prayers and sometimes, our blessings, make radical claims about God’s action in the world.

Let’s consider maybe the most common blessing-the blessing over food. It says, “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.” But the bread that graces our tables doesn’t come that easily, just springing forth, fully-formed, from the ground. We’re not eating manna that just falls from the sky, after all. So what’s going on here?

Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman explains that this blessing is “a statement of faith in a time to come when all will have enough to eat,” free of hard labor. In this way, the blessing connects our present reality to one that is promised and hoped for. The blessings bring a heightened awareness and gratitude for the present moment into our everyday lives, which I love… At the same time, they keep that visioned world fresh before us as an imagined possibility.

Let’s think for a moment about what effect this continual invoking of God’s majesty and of the world to come might have. I wonder if, by praying and saying blessings, we are participating in calling that reality-the reality of the world to come, the world as God wants things to be-into this one.

“Inbreaking” is a word used by some theologians to describe the effect that this focusing on, calling forth, and visioning the world to come has on our world, and it’s a good word, inbreaking-I like this word. Our prayers and blessings are a way that we can invite God and the world to come to break in to our lives and our world, to break in and begin to transform us here and now, in the world as it is. Jurgen Moltmann is a Christian theologian who writes about this transformative potential; he says, “Those who hope in Christ [and again, we can substitute other words-God, the Divine, etc.]…

“Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God,” he says, “means conflict with the world, for the… promised future stabs… into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.” That last bit about the future stabbing into the present is inbreaking. And what Moltmann suggests here is that when we hold fast to God and to visions of the world as it could or should be, then we more keenly see that our experienced reality is out of alignment with God’s intent and hope-and we become change agents. As Rabbi Arthur Green says, “There is nothing mere about poetic vision.”

In the story that we heard this morning, God had one idea of how the world would be-but something went wrong. The vessels broke, and divine essency-stuff scattered everywhere. We could consider that and say, “Oh well, this is a broken world-and nothing I could do is going to fix it.” But according to the story, God created humans to participate in the work of mending. That mending, I’d like to suggest, is not about repairing the world and its systems as it is now-rather, this is a deep, transformative, creative-in the sense of creating things-kind of mending. We are to bring into the world a little holiness, to lift up divine sparks, to bring our lives and the world closer to God’s vision of how things are supposed to be.

Whether we achieve all the things we’re working for in the world is not the point. I can tell you from personal experience that freeing yourself from a goal-orientation can be very helpful in sustaining environmental and justice work. What matters isn’t whether we “win.” What matters is whether we are faithful in thought, word, and deed to our highest visions-or, if you’re comfortable with such language, whether we are faithful to God. I completely agree with Dr. Jensen when he said, “We don’t become fully human through winning. We embrace our humanity by acting out of our deepest moral principles to care for each other and care for the larger living world, even if failure is likely, even if failure is inevitable.” See, what really matters is that we’re faithful. And being faithful, in this time-as we face very real climate crisis-means taking action, and not giving into immobilizing despair.

And here, I think, Jensen has another interesting point. In his sermon, he said, “The balancing of [grief and joy] is the beginning of a hope beyond hope, the willingness not only to embrace that danger but to find joy in it.” Those of us who deeply care about the world experience grief, yes, in seeing things as they really are.

But where do we find the joy? The joy that, Jensen says, in balance with grief, can move us toward a “hope beyond hope”? Let’s hold that question for a minute. We’re almost there.

Karl Barth, a Presbyterian theologian of the 20th century, wrote, “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” Let me say that again: “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”

When we pray and say blessings; when we invoke God’s presence into our daily, imperfect lives and this broken, hurting world; when we hold before us a vision of how things could and should be-this is the first step in making real change possible. Even though the climate science is grim, and the way forward unclear and perhaps bleak… Even though it looks like the world might just be going to hell-we must hold onto the real and transformative power of prayer and story, and the deep-I don’t want to say “hope”… the deep faith that comes with aligning ourselves with another vision of how the world should be. If all we do is focus on the trauma and despair of this world, then we will be consumed by it, I promise you.

Let us, instead, call future, imagined, visioned possibilities of another world-a world to come, or maybe, a “world structured by different systems,” as Jensen put it-let us call that world into this one-and let us do so as we act to care for people and the planet. When we bring our actions into alignment with God’s intent and hope for us and for the world, then-pow!-that is transformation; that is revolution; that is an uprising against the disorder of the world. Also, that is faithfulness, that is wholeness, that is joy. Living and acting in accord with our highest visions is the joy that leads to a hope beyond hope-a joy that will sustain us as we continue the work of mending, even in the midst of brokenness. As poet Wendell Berry said, “Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.”

May it be so for us and for this world, amen.


 

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