The Elderly, the Beautiful, and Children of God

July 15, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Rev. Kathleen Ellis

July, 15, 2012

Rev. Ellis is a Unitarian Universalist minister, ordained in 1993, who has served several congregations in the Southwest and Southeast Districts. She served as treasurer of the UU Ministers Association, ministerial settlement representative for the Southwest, and most recently minister of Congregational Life at Live Oak UU Church in northwest Austin for eight years. She is now Good Offices person for the Southwest. (Good Officers advise and advocate for colleagues who experience difficulties in their ministries.)

As Bollywood brings glimpses of India into our consciousness, the overall impression is that India is complex on multiple levels. Beauty competes with squalor; spirituality competes with greed; generosity competes with corruption; elders, children and homeless people compete for scraps of welfare. Compare it all with the United States: We’re not all that different, but issues become invisible for the most part unless we have some philosophical discussion about it. Nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice?

On sabbatical last year she traveled to India on a three-week spiritual pilgrimage. Kathleen’s husband Jon Montgomery is a member of First UU.

Sermon:

When I picked up Anne Lamott’s book Some Assembly Required, I thought, “How nice, a memoir about a mother who reflects on motherhood through the eyes of her son and infant grandson. My sister had sent it to me for my birthday although I am not (yet) a grandmother. The story was engaging. It brought back a lot of wonderful memories of raising two baby boys.

What I didn’t expect was for the author to take me with her on a two-week trip to India that brought back additional wonderful memories of my own trip to India almost 18 months ago. The journey for both of us was a cultural immersion into the complexity of India; it was a spiritual experience beyond easy description or understanding.

Take a dive with me into that spirituality. [Symbols on trucks and tuk tuks; puja; experience at Chidambaram; symbology of the Ganges, at least equivalent to the sacred Mt. Fujisan and more than our own Statue of Liberty]

The depth of spirituality in India coexists with an earthiness that middle class Westerners seldom witness. In India, spirituality competes with greed; beauty competes with squalor; generosity competes with corruption; elders, children, and homeless people of all ages compete for scraps of welfare. In the U.S. those of us in the middle class or above seldom have to see this level of complexity, but it’s here. Mostly it’s hidden on the other side of the tracks or the other side of Interstate 35; sometimes it creeps onto our street corners in the form of panhandlers-our kind of beggars. In India there’s just a lot more of it in plain sight-not just one panhandler, but a crowd of them at every turn.

My colleague the Rev. Leonora Montgomery once said that everyone ought to travel to India at least once. I now pass that advice on to you IF you are comfortable with the unexpected. How many of you have been there?

Even without a trip to India you may have seen India in the movies in recent years, including the widely known Slumdog Millionaire in 2008 and Best Exotic Marigold Hotel this year. Actor Dev Patel stars in both of them. He welcomes a group of British retirees to his dilapidated potential of a hotel. In trying to make a go of the family business he thought he could attract elders to India. He tells his mother, “other countries don’t like old people either.” He figures he can “outsource old age” by bringing old people, unwanted in their own country, to live in India. He’ll start with the English and expand from there.

His promotion worked, though perhaps a “little bit” before the hotel was quite ready. When someone complained he told her, “We have a saying in India: “Everything will be all right in the end. So if it is not all right, it is not yet the end.” There’s nothing like a sense of optimism when things go wrong.

Each of the tourists had a different set of expectations and as a result, very different experiences. One man who was enthralled with India tried to explain his attraction to his complaining wife. He loved “the light, the color, the smiles.” A trip to India is about what you bring to it and yet, it is best if you leave all expectations behind. In the movie, of course, Sonny the hotel manager was right: Everything was all right in the end.

Four years ago, actor Dev Patel had already played the lead in Slumdog Millionaire. Time and again he explains an unexpected outcome with another saying: “It is written.” We can’t be sure that everything will be all right in the end, and we can’t stop trying, but “It is written” conveys to me a sense of fatalism rather than optimism.

We learned over and over that it was inevitable that his character Jamal would eventually rescue and marry the character Latika, played by Freida Pinto. Each of them was also portrayed by a child actor, because it begins in the slum in which they live. Jamal was winning a televised competition in an Indian equivalent of “Who wants to be a millionaire?” He was suspected of cheating, and between games he was tortured to make him talk. However, Jamal’s life experiences had given him most of the answers. Everyone except the show’s sponsors were thrilled with his winnings of $100 million rupees. It was written. By God, by Allah, by Fate? Take your pick!

But why stop with a predictable trinity? Was it written by Moira, Yaweh, Wotan? Phan Ku, Ra, or Zeus? The list surely goes on and on.

Jamal’s back story touches on many of the rougher aspects of India, starting with homeless orphans who live in the landfills. Unscrupulous scavengers of children entice or kidnap dozens of these street kids to give them a place to stay then turn them into beggars or slaves, prostitutes or classical dancers. One source estimated the number at 300,000 child beggars in a population of 1.2 billion people overall. In the begging industry, the children do not get the money, but have to turn it over to the gangsters or maybe their own parents if they have them.

I wanted to know more than Bollywood could tell me, so I turned to Shashi Tharoor, an Indian-American who writes with wit and depth with a critical eye through a prism of love for India and pride in his heritage.

Tharoor observes that India is not a welfare state. The government does not provide much help to the teeming multitudes who live in poverty. But India is a welfare society based primarily on family units. People help each other out-a place to live until they find a job-based on family ties, affiliation to informal castes, or connection to the village or neighborhood. Outside those circles little attention is paid.

Therefore, you will see nice apartments inside buildings that are dirty and unkempt. Tharoor remembers that his mother asked her servant-sweeper to sweep the apartment stairs for extra pay and the woman was incredulous. “Why, Madam, when they are not your stairs?” she replied. The attitude helps explain why you will see beautifully kept homes that are accessible only through filthy public spaces. Personal hygiene exists alongside indifference for public sanitation; sewage systems reek and overflow; and pollution generates staggering levels of respiratory illness.

Even in isolated areas that are environmentally conscious, regulations are routinely ignored. After all, unemployment is a greater political liability than lung cancer. Do you see some irony here? That basic argument-job creation vs. health care–will constitute our own political discourse even beyond the next election. The rationale is different but the effect is similar. In Austin, we have social services, but the recipients are mostly out of sight.

Let me hasten to say that the Indian government is trying to meet the needs; activists and charities are trying to fill the gaps; but sheer numbers overwhelm every system. India has the world’s second largest population, after China. Population growth over the past 25 years has increased more than the entire U.S. population today. Deforestation has degraded land and reduced its agricultural capacity. How, then, might anyone provide enough food, clean water and air, health care, and education, not to mention housing?

No wonder beggars swarm the streets. One billion dollars is spent every year on population control. The most popular form is sterilization. But by the time this option is chosen, people are in their 30s and have already produced more children than is good for them or the country. Kids who survive to grow up are not only a source of labor for the family, but also provide social security for their elders.

Hundreds of charities and activist organizations, both Indian and foreign, labor to save the children and the sick. One local example is The Miracle Foundation that was founded on Mother’s Day just 12 years ago by Austinite Caroline Boudreaux. She couldn’t stand the poverty she had witnessed among Indian orphans and came home to launch The Miracle Foundation, which is headquartered down on 6th Street near West Lynn.

The website says, “The Miracle Foundation is a vibrant and trusted non-profit organization that empowers orphans to reach their full potential-one child at a time.” They support five orphanages in rural areas across India and have transformed the lives of hundreds of children. Safety, nutritious food, and education work the miracles.

Of course they also take donations. “$75 is the cost to cover one child’s medical needs for a year, including all necessary vaccinations, annual medical check-ups, de-worming, and pharmaceutical sundries.” [I was a little put off by the reference to “de-worming,” but I do seem to remember that time one of my sons got pinworms and one brought home head lice. Not so foreign, after all.] Some Miracle volunteers go as Ambassadors to work in India for a week and their hearts melt.

In addition to social services, the Indian government is also trying to address population growth and health concerns through literacy and further education. As some of you might remember from my previous sermon here, millions of children have no school. A high school graduate began a school that we visited in the waste dump. She teaches Hindi, English, the local language, math, and writing to about 70 children 12 and under while her husband advocates for worker rights. The children are beautiful and smart. When the teacher calls on them they will stand up to sing or recite the response. Children did not wear shoes, but outside their huts, adult shoes were lined up beside the door or up on the low roofs. Take off your shoes before you go into your dirt hut.

If you go, be prepared for transformation. Not that you can just order up transformation on some menu, but everything under the sun is right there and in your space. “The light, the colors, the smiles . . .” The spirit of a fiercely spiritual people who live close to the earth. . . .

Yesterday I went to the Miracle Foundation to meet its founder Caroline Boudreaux. Over a cup of coffee I asked about her personal journey. A dozen years ago she and a friend took a trip around the world. One of their stops was in India to meet the friend’s sponsored child for whom she sent monthly support. Despite Caroline’s skepticism, the boy was not just a photograph sent to dozens of people in exchange for money. He was real and he lived in an orphanage.

It happened to be Mother’s Day in the U.S. and Caroline had called her mother to acknowledge their loving connection. At the orphanage she picked up a baby girl, who clung to her like Velcro and buried herself in her chest like babies will do. Caroline sang her a lullaby. She sang her to sleep on Mother’s Day, then went to the dorm to lay her in bed. The beds were all made of wood-no mattresses, no stuffed animals, just wood and easy to clean. Caroline could feel the bones of this baby meet the bones of the wood and was transformed. She knew her calling was to make a difference in these young lives. That’s the birth story of The Miracle Foundation.

Caroline reflected on Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. You know the pyramid, built on a broad base of safety, water, food, clothing, and shelter-the things everyone needs. At the top of the pyramid are justice and ethics and self-actualization. But she said the top of the pyramid has to bend down to touch the bottom. Not just touch, but reach down and lift. . . .

Are we not all children of God? The ones who can make a difference to one another? Here in this space, week after week, you remind yourselves to “nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice.” I invite you to consider the broadest interpretation: nourish souls, but also bodies and minds; transform lives-your own AND someone else’s; do justice-at home AND somewhere that tugs at your heart. Then your life will overflow.

Namaste

Amen

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

The Courage to Trust

July 15, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Jim Checkley, Sermons

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Jim Checkley

July 8, 2012

According to polls, “trust” is at an all time low within our country. Government, lawyers, the media, politicians, and others are setting all time low marks for trust. They say that when trust is broken in a relationship, it is very difficult to repair and it is usually time to move on. But how do you move on from yourself? Moreover, trust is not just an external phenomenon; it is in fact important to our own inner well being, and somewhat like forgiveness, often says more about us than about them. Checkley first attended the Church in 1977 and has been conducting services since 1987. He looks forward to taking the pulpit for the 28th time.

Sermon: The Courage to Trust

Author’s note: I have revised this from the talk given at the Church. The big change is to the discussion of meetings by avatar, which were prompted by a post-service discussion with an IBM employee. The vast majority of the rest are the usual changes to go from an oral presentation to a written document, including details and back-up not included in the sermon as delivered.

There is an old joke that goes: What’s the opposite of progress? The answer? Congress.

Congress has been the butt of jokes for years, but last October, trust in Congress to do the right thing fell to an all-time low. Only 9 percent of respondents to a New York Times poll said they “approved” of how Congress was conducting its business. And, American’s trust in their government overall reached a new low – even below Watergate levels – with just 10 percent of those polled believing government will do what is right “all” or “most of the time.”

This isn’t much of a surprise is it? What may be somewhat more surprising is the fact that Congress and the government have plenty of company. According to the polls, the trust Americans have in just about everything is at an all-time low.

In late June of this year, a Gallup poll showed that trust in the public education system had fallen again, with only 29 percent of respondents having “a great deal of confidence” in education. This is down from 58 percent in 1958, when Gallup first began conducting the poll. Banks have been hit hard, down 24 percentage points since 2002 to where only 22 percent of respondents in a 2011 Gallup poll said they had confidence in the banking system. And of some interest to us today, trust in organized religious institutions, despite the United States being one of the most religious countries on the planet, is also at an all-time low. Even trust in the future is at an all-time low, with a majority of Americans believing for the first time in recorded history that the next generation will not be as well off as they are.

To give you some more flavor of how pervasive lack of trust is in America, let me provide you just a few more numbers. These percentages represent the people who in a 2010 Harris Poll said they had a high level of confidence in the institution in question: TV news at 17 percent, major corporations at 15 percent, the press at 13 percent, law firms at 13 percent, and Wall Street dead last at 8 percent.

And by all-time low, I really mean it. Here’s some interesting context for these numbers: according to the Associated Press, 34 percent of Americans believe in ghosts, which is higher than any of the numbers I quoted above. This means that more Americans think that their homes could be haunted than believe that they will get a fair shake at their banks, that major corporations will do the right thing, or that the press tells the truth.

So are there any institutions that are doing well? A couple. In the referenced 2010 Harris Poll, people gave only two institutions ratings at or over 50 percent in terms of having great confidence that they would do the right thing. What were they? The military at 59 percent and small business at exactly 50 percent. The next highest was colleges and universities at only 35 percent. And among the professions, we still trust health workers like doctors and nurses, although the numbers have fallen, while firefighters, teachers, and pharmacists round out the top four.

There’s one point of special interest to me given my background in science. And that is the fact that trust in science is also at an all-time low. That is, the number of conservatives who say they have a “great deal” of trust in science has fallen to 35 percent, down 28 points from the mid-1970s, according to a recent academic paper by Gordon Gauchet published in the American Sociological Review. According to the paper, the trust that “moderates” and “liberals” have in science has remained steady since the 70s, while that of conservatives has plummeted.

Bear with me, because I want to talk about this just a little bit. What’s disturbing about this is that we are not talking about uneducated conservatives. Nope. We are talking about educated conservatives, those with college degrees and graduate degrees. According to Gauchet, conservatives with college degrees decreased in trust faster over the time period studied than those with only a high school diploma. He finds this result profound because, “it implies that conservative discontent with science was not attributed to the uneducated, but to rising distrust among educated conservatives.”

But this fact is itself quite disturbing to me because it implies that this lack of trust is political and ideological and has little to do with science itself having been shown to be untrustworthy, even considering the politicization of global climate change. Gauchet says: “It kind of began with the loss of Barry Goldwater and the construction of Fox News and all these [conservative] think tanks. The perception among conservatives is that they’re at a disadvantage, a minority. It’s not surprising that the conservative subculture would challenge what’s viewed as the dominant knowledge production groups in society-science and the media.”

I would suggest to you that this polarization between the right and the left has in fact impacted every single aspect of America and the people’s trust in government, institutions, communities, and even themselves. Take, for example, the recent Supreme Court decision on health care. You would think that of all the institutions of government, the Supreme Court would be viewed as providing an objective decision based on law. But as the prognostication over health care and other important cases has shown, that is not the case. We see the Court as ideologically split and when Chief Justice Roberts upheld the health care law under the tax and spend authority, conservatives felt betrayed and liberals were stunned. The way Fox News reported it, you’d think that Roberts had just sold the country down the river-and I suppose that’s how conservatives felt. But that’s not how it’s supposed to be. We are so used to an ideological, if not cynical, view of the Court that we can’t remember well the days when there was at least an outwardly expressed belief that the Court would do what was right under the Constitution.

Now, I’m sure that a lot of this isn’t news to you. You live it every day just as I do. So you may be thinking, “Yes, Jim, things are bad. We know that. People can’t be trusted, institutions can’t be trusted, government can’t be trusted, seems like nothing can be trusted. What’s a person supposed to do?” My answer to you today is as simple as it is difficult: Trust anyway. That’s the lesson I want to bring to you today. Yes, it’s bad out there and we have been betrayed at every level, but it is important, imperative even, that we regain our sense of trust.

I know. Sometimes it is silly to trust. That’s one of the lessons of the Scorpion and the Frog. Sometimes it is silly, dangerous, and foolish to trust. And I get that and I’m not suggesting that we act foolishly. There is, however, a big difference in having an attitude of trust and being a dimwit and trusting when trust is a silly thing to do.

You know, the thing about the Scorpion and the Frog is that the lesson is that scorpions, and by extension, people, cannot help themselves, even if it means their death. Scorpions sting. And people, well, people betray our trust. We have plenty of examples of that right? Think of all the politicians who ruined their careers having affairs. I’m not going to name them, you know who they are. In fact, history is riddled with men and women who just couldn’t help themselves and in the process hurt others and ultimately ruined themselves and their careers.

But from a religious point of view, the story of the Scorpion and the Frog goes even further. Catholics and Fundamentalists believe in the doctrine of Original Sin. Original Sin says that all humans are born sinners, corrupted, as it were, by the sin of Adam and Eve, and from the moment of birth until death are nothing but sin machines. I found a wonderful expression of this belief online, where a fundamentalist minister claimed: “Have you ever heard about busy people who ‘hit the ground running’? In the delivery room we hit the obstetrician’s catcher’s mitt sinning. We’re born as sinners.”

But we don’t believe this, do we, we Unitarian Universalists? Do we believe that people are born sinners, corrupted by Original Sin? I don’t think so. We may be a creedless church, but we do have the Seven Principles, and I don’t think that believing that all people hit the obstetrician’s catcher’s mitt sinning is consistent with them. In fact, such a belief is wholly inconsistent with the very first principle: that we avow the inherent worth and dignity of every person. This seems to put us on the opposite end from the Catholics and the Fundamentalists, who believe that all babies are born corrupted. Not much inherent worth and dignity there.

Even so, we UUs are not naive and recognize that people will betray trust, behave badly, and even commit atrocious acts. But our first principle, our opening position, is to affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Said another way, we begin with an attitude of trust, and go from there. This reminds me that I want to say a few words about the saying that I put on the cover of the order of service: “In God we trust, all others pay cash.” You’ve heard it before, right? In Islam there is a similar saying: “Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel.” I kind of like that one. Even had it made into a t-shirt back in the 70s. And the sentiment expressed by these sayings reminds me of Ronald Regan famously saying about a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union: “Trust, but verify.”

These sayings all make sense to us on a gut level. But, are they really talking about trusting? Where is the trust if you are going to verify anyway? Might as well just say: “We’ll agree, but only if we can verify because we don’t trust you.” And I don’t know about you, but I don’t think God is going to be ordering coffee and donuts any time soon, so the expression really reduces to: “Pay up now, because we actually don’t trust you to pay later.” And finally, I can’t claim to know much about camels, but I suspect that they, like horses, don’t stay put unless they are hitched to a rail. So the expression should be, “Tie up your camel, because if it runs away, it’s your fault, not Allah’s, who doesn’t seem to care what happens to anybody’s camel.”

Now, I’m making light of this, but there is a very profound question here. That question is: can we trust, I mean truly trust, in a world where we know the only things we can trust 100 percent of the time are death, taxes, and, at least since 1908, the Chicago Cubs not winning the World Series? I’ve made a little joke here, but this is actually a very profound question because in an uncertain world, it turns out that trust is essential for all human relationships to work well and for us to be happy. And I’d say that makes trust pretty important. I want to be very clear what I am talking about. There are two kinds of trust that I am talking about. First, there is the common, ordinary trust, which I will call transactional or relational trust. This is where you say, “I’ll be back at seven tonight to pick you up” and lo and behold, there you are at seven that evening. This kind of trust is founded on reciprocity, fairness, and mutual respect and affection. John Gottman, perhaps the most famous marriage counselor in this country, says that we trust in this sense when we believe that the person we trust has our best interest at heart, or, said another way, has our backs and will act accordingly. This then, is the ordinary trust in human relations, and it extends to trusting that institutions, from this church to the government to the banks to the media, all have our backs and will do right by us.

This kind of transactional or relational trust is precious and hard to come by. It’s what we Americans lack in relation to our institutions and leaders, but it also seems to be increasingly lacking in personal relationships. I may be out there on this, but here’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: people don’t seem to be getting together to do things like they used to. Everybody wants to do his or her own thing and has a personal music player, personal smart phone, and even when they hang out together, they are alone with their music and their social media. Am I the only one bothered by the proliferation of screens and people’s obsession with them? Is it really the case that having 500 friends on Facebook means you have 500 friends? I believe you can’t know if somebody is truly your friend until he or she has inconvenienced himself or herself for you. Are all those Facebook friends ready to inconvenience themselves for you? And how would you know?

And here’s something for you in the hanging out and getting to know people department. Did you know that IBM at one time conducted meetings by avatar and that in 2009 that company rolled out a service called Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime, where users set up and use virtual meeting spaces? It’s true. People who attend the meeting manipulate a two dimensional version of themselves on the screen and shake hands, sit around a table, and talk to each other through the cartoon image. I saw a report on PBS that said that IBM found that when people meet this way, their affinity for each other goes up and they are more cooperative and get more done. In fact, in commenting on the release of Virtual Collaboration, the Information Officer at Northcentral Technical College in Wisconsin was quoted as saying: “College students love to learn and meet in virtual worlds.” So I guess in the not too distant future many of us will be saying, “I may not trust John, since I never met him, but I really like his avatar.” Welcome to the brave new (virtual) world.

And transactional or relational trust, of course, is a two way street. This kind of trust is a reciprocal phenomenon that requires that we ourselves be trustworthy. And how do we become trustworthy? For starters, be honest. Keep your word. Researchers say that by doing the little things right and well, we create an aura of trust.

Keep confidences. Share personal information. If we divulge something of ourselves, we appear to be more trustworthy than when we hold things close to the vest. Of course, discretion is important here-don’t want to scare anybody off.

Do things that are in the best interest of the other person. That is the very definition of trust. Spend time together. In this era of texting and Facebook, nothing beats actually being together, except at IBM, I suppose. Finally, be real. Apologize when you make a mistake. We are all human and will all make mistakes. How we handle our mistakes is important. For example, studies show that doctors who apologize to their patients when they goof up are far less likely to be sued. And remember, most people want to trust. We just have to give them good reasons.

But there is a second kind of trust I want to talk about that is not reciprocal or transactional. This kind of trust is more of a spiritual or innate attitude about life and the world. It’s the trust that comes from an inner strength that provides us with confidence that however the world turns out this day, we will deal with it and be OK. You could call it faith, but I like to think of it more as a trust-a trust that the world is a knowable, understandable place, that I am an integral part of it, just like our UU principles declare, and that each one of us has the ability to create a quality environment for ourselves and others. It’s the ability to approach life with a trusting attitude, one that, like our first principle, allows us to view the world, our institutions, and each other with an opening position of trust that we can change the things we can control and have the wherewithal and ability to deal with those we cannot. I’m not saying it’s easy. But I am saying it is important.

But before I talk about that, I want to suggest that things are not as bad as we may imagine. With our 24/7 cable news outlets trying their best to outdo each other, every single bad thing that happens is burned into our consciousness with laser-like power. You’ve heard the expression, “no news is good news?” Well, I think the media act on the presumption that “good news is no news.” And why not? We seem to be drawn to tragedy, heartache, and loss like the proverbial moth to the flame. So in thinking about having and maintaining an attitude of trust, it is important to consider the media blitz of negative news and take it with a grain of salt.

Having an attitude of trust is important because trust is an essential element of life. Study after study tells us that without trust things break down, whether it’s at a cosmic level, a government level, an institutional level, or a personal level. Here’s your bumper sticker moment: Trust is the lubricant of human interactions. Trust helps us navigate the world in a way that minimizes stress, fear, and worry. When trust is absent, we are under stress, we become first vigilant and then hypervigilant about betrayal, real and imagined, we build walls both figurative and actual, we require confirmation of everything, verification of everything. It gets difficult to do business. It gets difficult to coordinate activities that require cooperation and planning and execution over an extended period of time. Sometimes it gets to be impossible to get anything done. Sounds like Congress, right?

And when we get to that point, when trust is truly ruined, psychologists will tell us that some relationships just can’t be saved. It’s sort of like trying to unburn a burnt pie. It can’t be done. Just have to throw it away and start over. I confess I feel like this with respect to our politics: that it’s broken beyond repair. And there are some studies that would support this conclusion. But then again, what choice do we have but to go forward and try to reconcile enough to at least get along?

Trust is also important because there is powerful evidence that having a trusting attitude leads to happiness. I quoted at the beginning of the service from the book The Geography of Bliss, in which the author explains the connection he found between trust and happiness. That connection is, in a nutshell, that the people who had the most trusting attitude about the world, institutions, and each other, were the happiest people. This makes sense to me given how negative life can be if we have little or no trust in it or ourselves. This also is consistent with studies about happiness in Europe. We Americans might think that the people who live along the Mediterranean would have the greatest overall level of happiness. But this isn’t the case. It turns out that the Danes, the Norwegians, the Swiss, and the Swedes, were the happiest, despite living mostly in the cold and the dark. And not coincidentally, these people also had the strongest attitude of trust.

One more example: a Canadian researcher who looked at the connection between trust at the office and happiness found that just moving up one point on a 10-point scale of trust in the management of the business has the life satisfaction equivalence of something like a one-third increase in income. A little bit of trust equaled a lot of money. Trust and happiness. They go together.

Finally, having a trusting attitude is good for our souls. By this I mean that having a trusting attitude inures to our spiritual benefit much more than it matters to those who we trust. In this respect, I see bringing a trusting attitude to life and its components, be they institutions or people, a little like I see forgiveness. When we forgive, we really need to do it for ourselves, not the other person. Forgiveness takes a load off of our hearts and souls, and lets us be free of the negativity and stress and anger and pain that go with carrying a grudge and being hateful and unforgiving. The act of trusting works in much the same manner. Trusting, even if the face of betrayal, allows us to heal, gets rid of the stress and negativity, and provides a positive psychological environment. Trusting allows us to view the world through lightly tinted rose colored glasses, as it were, and provides a faith in the unfolding of events and our lives that lets us approach life with a better attitude and a better opportunity for happiness.

Again I will emphasize that I am not saying we should act foolishly or naively-far from it. We need to be sensible and take precautions and enter into our transactional and relational trusts deliberately and with eyes wide open. But the courage to trust from a spiritual or innate point of view is more of a perspective, a way we choose to look at the world as we live our lives. For you see, courage is not about ignoring reality or denying anxiety. It is instead the will to act in spite of reality and anxiety.

The courage to trust is choosing to empower yourself and your choices rather than sinking into cynicism and negativity. And here is my last tidbit of the day for you: psychologists tell us that the marriages and friendships and relationships that last the longest and are the happiest are those where the participants view each other through lightly tinted rose colored glasses. As it is with love and friendship, so I suggest it is with life in all its myriad aspects.

Let me conclude by saying this: There are reasons why trust is at an all-time low in virtually every aspect of life we can think of. It would be easy to decide not to trust and instead protect oneself with emotional, psychological, and real walls. But if we want to make things better, both for ourselves and others, then don’t we have to take the first step and even in the face of betrayal, cultivate an attitude of trust? Somebody has to make the first move, and if we want others to trust us, shouldn’t we develop and project an attitude of trust ourselves? That will take courage and will mean being strong inside. It will also mean having the faith and confidence that come what may, be it betrayal or hardship or natural disaster, we can deal with it. And amazingly enough, all evidence says that if we can do this, the payoff for each of us will be a happier more satisfying life.

And trust me, I can live with that.

Presented July 8, 2012 First UU Church Austin, Texas Revised for Print

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What is Patriotism?

July 1, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Mark Skrabacz, Sermons

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Rev. Mark Skrabacz

July, 1, 2012

On the Sunday before the Independence Day holiday, let’s examine the idea of patriotism and its varying degrees, interpretations and practices. We like to think we are patriotic. How do we define patriotism? What does it mean?

One of your members recently sent these words that describe something of patriotism. I believe they are what many of us feel and think. Let me share them. “As July 4th approaches, I imagine most of you, like myself, will at some point pause to again honor and revere the courage and wisdom of our founding fathers. As I grew up, I developed a basic faith in the goodness of my country. And a deep, reverent loyalty to our country’s symbols, celebrations and institutions. And a trusting faith that our government would honor and enshrine in its actions the greatness of the universal principles embodied in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. This I essentially once took for granted. Over the years I’ve come to finally fully appreciate that our Constitutional Republic does indeed need a fully informed public to survive.” I’d like to add “and fully involved.” While the writer continues with concerns about the transparency of our government and our own willingness as a self-governing people to question our administration, let’s continue our inquiry into patriotismwith the symbol of our flag.

Have you noticed how much the Stars and Stripes are ever-present in political campaigns? Apparently to remind us of the candidates’ patriotism. The more flags showing the better: whole rows of flags, everyone in the camera’s view waving a hand-held flag. And heaven help the candidate who fails to wear the American Flag Pin on his or her lapel. Never mind that that pin was in all likelihood fabricated in an overseas sweatshop, along with the various decal ribbons proclaiming support for our troops. I guess the theory is that without the symbol, one can’t be sure the candidate, or anyone for that matter, is truly a patriot. This conjures personal memories for me of the Vietnam era “America…Love it or leave it” bumper stickers. Seems like some of those are still on cars in Texas towns.

The notion that patriotism consists of paying homage to symbols isn’t new. Governments have made this type of appeal throughout history. The Nazi movement in 1930’s Germany was fueled by symbolism. Stirring music, massive displays of uniformed men and military hardware…impressive and a trigger for mob mentality.

I think a person’s interpretation of the word “patriotism” tells much about that person’s views and era. Note that: Pro slavery was once patriotic; pro labor union was un-American. The latter sentiment is arising again along with a number of issues many of us thought long gone. Some in the media, public office, and other sources, tell us that one’s degree of patriotism is governed by the degree to which they believe our country is the only repository of good in this world. Many of these people harken to the good old days when America was the world’s beacon for liberty and success, and it just isn’t any more. How do we feel about that? If your religion is Nationalism, you’ll probably be very upset.

“Patriotism” wears many disguises in America. Some equate patriotism with religion. They have a goal of shaping every aspect of our culture in accordance with Biblical laws, especially politics. We have seen plenty of pressure from the religious right. Who would’ve thought that contraception would become an issue in 2012? Today, being for marriage equality is looked upon by some as, “godless, barbaric and unpatriotic.” Marginalizing people who hold minority or no religious views, is “patriotic.” The list continues.

So, how do we UUs define patriotism? The simple “my country right or wrong” brand is easy as are all simplistic answers. We UUs have a long history of Civil Disobedience as a more complex form of patriotism. How many laws did Thoreau or Dr. King break to further the cause of justice? Who made the full text of the Pentagon Papers available for scholars and libraries by publishing them in book form? When excerpts from the papers were leaked to newspapers, President Nixon used every tactic, legal and illegal, to suppress publication, forming the infamous team of “plumbers” to track down the leak. Such tactics eventually triggered the Watergate scandal that drove Nixon out of office. Patriotic UUs had a major role in that.

UUs find respecting unpopular points of view is patriotic, and threatening those views is not. Would wearing a flag pin make me a patriot?…or is patriotism believing in what that flag was meant to represent? So many who use that flag pin as a litmus test seem to feel that when I voice opposition to policies I believe are wrong I am unpatriotic. What would Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Thomas Paine do? Well. We KNOW what they did when they tired of paying homage to an unresponsive government.

I think most would agree that Jefferson was an American Patriot. Yet Jefferson opined that it was the right…no….the RESPONSIBILITY, of the citizenry to monitor the actions of our government, and when necessary, remove that government. I think we know that today there are whole media outlets with the mission of criticizing and removing our present government. Does that make them patriotic?

It might be nice to be considered “patriotic.” If only I could believe that my country ALWAYS did the right thing. If only I trusted our leaders or our Supreme Court to uphold constitutional rights. If I could believe that the lack of concern shown while New Orleans was drowning had nothing to do with a disregard for poor and powerless people. And if I could believe our leaders only went to war as a last resort, I might be considered patriotic. But I can’t do those things; if I did, it wouldn’t be patriotic. It would be an insult to the founding principles of America, and paying homage to the SYMBOLS of America, while trashing the idealism upon which it was founded. And that would be dishonest.

There are those who seem to assert a strong influence in politics now who now call themselves “social conservatives.” People like the American Family Association spokesperson Brian Fischer who has a favorite theme that homosexual behavior has always been a matter of choice. He quotes a scientific study that shows concordance of homosexuality between identical twins to be only 6%. He says: “If one of them is gay and it’s genetically caused, the other one ought to be gay 100% of the time.” Fischer is not only an extremist. He also ignores contrary statistics. For instance in 2003, psychologists at the University of London performed a meta-analysis of 6 studies involving concordance of identical twins and reported a range of 30-65%, far greater than the average occurrence of homosexuality in the population at large. They concluded their evidence strongly suggests a heritable component. Many UUs would resonate with this information. That’s why we are “standing on the side of love,” as a political action.

That’s a part of how we are patriotic. I don’t know too many UUs who take the position that blind obedience and displaying of symbols represent patriotism. Waving the flag doesn’t take much thought…just some muscle. Maybe that’s the difference between those who long for a country steeped in economic and military power as patriotic, as opposed to those who feel that it is the patriotic DUTY of each of us to examine and evaluate…and to oppose power when appropriate. We wonder about the difficulty of UU’s to proselytize. I think our lack of absolutes hinders us in that, as well as an inability to fit today’s definition of patriotism. Free thought and no dogma. That’s our mission. So be it.

Listen to those who promote “my country right or wrong”, and they’ll accuse anyone who questions our country’s stance on human rights as being un-American. And part of their view is the effort to merge religion with the government. They ask, why can’t we just have a national religion? To many it’s an integral component of patriotism. If you aren’t a Christian, can you be patriotic? Can an atheist be patriotic? Not according to Fox News. Simply inferring that a candidate is Muslim is enough of a smear. Remember John Kennedy’s Catholic faith 50 years ago. I wonder how much the presumptive Republican candidate’s Mormon faith will affect his campaign? Could our founders, who specifically stated that this country was NEVER to have a religious test for public office abide this? But then, the talk of repealing portions of the Constitution seems very patriotic. Could a UU pass the Presidential candidacy test today? I don’t think so. And while this country was clearly built on a secular foundation, reactionary voices now spout out the term “secular humanist” or “non-believer” as a curse. Most religions are based on some really wonderful suppositions. (Often called ‘facts’ or ‘truth.’) Each attempts to tell what is good and what is evil. How I should live and what I must reject. So many memorize these rules, while forgetting the central tenet shared by every religion. It starts like this ‘Do unto others….’

But as some polititions have perverted democracy, so have some clergy perverted religion. Rather than exercise the Golden Rule, they spend time judging others, and segregating them by whatever is at the time convenient: sexual orientation, political philosophy, and whatever self-serving interpretation of scripture is. Gays sex is an abomination…Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. will all burn in hell. It is my sacred duty to compel you to believe as I do. And if I fail to convince you, then I have to kill you. (of course, I do so for your own good.) In the name of God, they pervert religion. I think that philosophy makes religion a sham. Hindus and Buddhists preach universal love without judgment of others…which is more humane. But most of us haven’t evolved to the point where we can practice that.

Patriotism is probably a good thing. But maybe a sharper definition would help. Here are a few thoughts in closing. I’m certain you can add your own.

Believing my country can lead the world towards PEACE is more patriotic than knowing we can vanquish anyone in war: I think the many thousands of citizens who took to the streets prior to the invasion of Iraq were patriots in the true spirit of our founders. It is patriotic to recognize and HONOR the separation of religious belief from the governing of our country. Keeping in mind how many came to America to escape regimes where the line between government and religion was blurred, or simply ignored. The rights of the minority must never be compromised by the will of the majority…to do otherwise is un-patriotic and anathema to the constitution. I believe torture is un-American, as is the de facto repeal of the right of Habeas Corpus, and that this Nation was founded on the premise that it be ruled by laws and not by men. George Washington was offered the position of king. His wise refusal was a lesson: we do not benefit by mimicking that which we despise. And yet we hear constantly that “Well, they do it, so why shouldn’t we?” A true patriot would say that by mimicking that with which we disagree is surrendering. We do not spread democracy by ignoring democratic ideals. When we become what we purport to fight against, we are committing treason. And that treason is no less so when our leaders do it. And when we send our children off to fight and die in wars of choice, it may be hubris, or empire building, or result in material gain… but it is NOT patriotism.

Will history judge those who speak out against war as traitors or patriots? What of those in support the right of every loving couple to be married. Barbaric? And, is there any doubt upon which side of those issues many UUs stand? Is it patriotic, as many have in the past few years, to continually call for the failure of a President during his office? Blocking his appointments and stifling his ideas? That is antithetical to both democracy AND religion. I cannot believe in that.

So I’m acknowledging this symbol (pointing to the flag). I’m unwilling to cede this flag to those who subvert its ideals. It’s my flag, and I’ll honor it because of the principles it was meant to represent. When we decide that this nation must be a force for good, we deserve the title patriot. In the family of nations we will act as any good family member. Treating others with understanding when we have differences is patriotic. And I hope that those who would call themselves patriots will recognize that the kind of patriotism this flag was meant to represent is: respect and love, not swagger and torture. Airplanes dropping food and water and medicine, not bombs. A government that is committed to resolving differences thru diplomacy and discussion, not threats. I would hope that our efforts might be a beginning to show the rest of the world the America we were always meant to be. Patriotism will have prevailed. If we do this, all the world and all the world’s gods will join us in blessing America.

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The Narrow Gate

June 27, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Tom Spencer

CEO of Interfaith Action of Central Texas

June 24, 2012

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

The Narrow Gate: Passageways to the Ordinarily Sacred

A reflection on the transformative power of paying attention to the everyday occurrences of our lives.

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Bee Yard Etiquette

June 17, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

June 17, 2012

In Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, the beekeeper tells her apprentice “the world is really one big bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places: Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and long pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting.” Here’s how we’re going to keep making honey over the summer…

In an article in Paste magazine by Kay Gibbons, one of my favorite Southern writers, she said this: Being a white Southern writer “is a hazardous inheritance that too often reassures us that the world is listening with intent and need for our messages, when it should be our reminder that we’re generally hollering entertainment from the bottom of a well, and getting it right requires sending up water, some force of living that people can use to treat one another better.” I’m going to try to send up some water today that people can use to treat one another better. (Feb/March 2006, Paste : Signs of life in music, film and culture p. 74) My text is from another Southern writer, Sue Monk Kidd, from her book “The Secret Life of Bees.”

It’s 1964 in the South. A sixteen year old white girl named Lily runs away from her abusive father accompanied by Rosaleen, a black woman who helped Lily’s father raise her from the age of four after Lily’s mother was shot — maybe by Lily, maybe by the father. One of the only things Lily has of her mother’s is a piece of paper with a picture of a black Madonna on it. The words “Tiburon, South Carolina” are printed on the paper, so Lily and Rosaleen head for Tiburon. There they find out that the picture is a label from a jar of honey made by a beekeeper named August, who lives in a pink house with her sisters, May and June. The sisters take in the runaways.

Lily is talking:

“I hadn’t been out to the hives before, so to start off [August] gave me a lesson in what she called ‘bee yard etiquette.’ She reminded me that the world was really one big bee yard, and the same rules worked fine in both places: Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and long pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates, while whistling melts a bee’s temper. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.” [p. 92]

I think of the church as a hive sometimes. We have all kinds of work to do to make the honey of spiritual growth, intellectual exploration and right relationship. Compassion, love, challenge, clarity. Those things are so sweet, and they take so much effort. In a hive of bees, everyone has a job. Wax making, honey production, the gathering of nectar which pollinates our crops and flowers, the queen who lays all the eggs. There are even nurse bees who feed the babies.

There is a beekeeping project in inner city Chicago. One visitor wrote this: “I stood just a few feet from the hives as the young men jiggled the bees from the supers and extracted the honey. The air around me sizzled. I stood as still as I could, willing myself not to flinch….

Terror and awe were one as I stood in the eye of the swarm, perfectly still. The term “ecstasy” makes some uneasy because of hallucinogenic and sexual connotations. But its root word exstasis means to stand out of yourself. When the air sizzled, it was easy to forget myself, to slip out of my own worries and to realize that I was a small, vulnerable part of something much larger than myself.

It was relief, if only for a few moments. It was like remembering to inhale deeply after a series of shallow breaths. After being so focused on the bees, I could see everything else more clearly. Is this part of the gift the bees give to their keepers Ñ an opportunity to come out of themselves, to turn away from what they’ve done and to remember what they could be? To be, if nothing else, ecstatic.

As I watched the beekeepers work, they would periodically break off small bits of honeycomb that grew along the rims of the supers. After checking for bees, they’d suck they honey from the comb. ‘We do this for energy,’ Micheal Thompson said, ‘But we also do it to remember why we are here.’ I’d read in The Secret Life of Bees that I should continually send love toward the bees and exorcise their own fears. I tried to do these things, but still, I got stung. …

…When I was sitting on the concrete jotting down notes, a bee landed on my knee and dug in.

‘It hurts,’ I said, cringing, as a beekeeper gently brushed the dying bee off of my leg. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘We try to avoid it.’ ” Jenny Schroedel “Eye of the Swarm “Boundless “Webzine

No one can be in community for long without doing the work, tasting the sweetness, and feeling the sting. I used to be scared of bees. I almost jumped out of a moving car when I was a child because of a bee on the window. I still remember a black buzzing splotch on the window, feeling the terror rise, grabbing the door handle in a panic, just wanting to get away from that buzzing threat. How a sting could have been worse than hitting the pavement at 60 mph, I don’t know. That’s not how panic thinks.

The dread of being stung and outrage at having been stung can make us flail around in community when flailing around is the worst choice we could make. August the beekeeper said “: Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and long pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates, while whistling melts a bee’s temper. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.”

Don’t be afraid. Most people don’t want to sting you. Some do sting, because they weren’t thinking, or because they were moving too fast, or because they were in pain, or scared. Still, don’t be an idiot. Know that people will sometimes sting, so protect yourself reasonably. If someone is always getting on your last nerve, perhaps it’s because you are wearing your last nerve a little too close to the surface. Wear long sleeves and long pants. Wear a hat. Don’t swat.

Here’s what I take “don’t swat” to mean. If you are in a situation where things are getting scary, try to stand still. Imagine that everyone involved thinks they are doing the right thing, that they have good intentions, or that they soon will. Don’t strike out at one another.

On a web site called “What everyone needs to know about bee stings,” I read: “Bee stings are a normal part of life in the country and a normal part of working with bees. Many people enjoy bees and consider the occasional sting to be the price we pay for the pleasure of their company, for having them pollinate our food crops and for providing us with honey.” This is true about community too. In one that is a good fit for us, the occasional sting is the price we pay for the pleasure of one another’s company.

“Removing the stinger as quickly as possible reduces the amount of the venom injected and reduces the effects.” Yes. When we hold onto the stinger, when we re play the incident in our mind, it gives it more time to inject venom into your system. I can’t think of one healthy reason to let that happen. “Stay calm. Most of the ill effects from normal stinging incidents come from panic in the person being stung and bystanders. Panic and anxiety multiplies the pain, and can result in serious secondary accidents. Panic by the person stung or those around him/her can produce a systemic reaction in itself.” Yes again. Most ill effects of someone saying something hurtful to us or leaving us out of something or ignoring us come from the thoughts we have about what happened. If we can stay calm and interpret what happened in its best possible light, less harm will be done to everyone involved.

This church has been through a lot of change in the past three years. There was pain and sorrow, anger, nobility, difficult conversations, change, joy, renewal…. You all are an amazing group of people, not only surviving but now thriving and moving into the future with hope and peace. That takes intention and hard work, and it demands a lot from everyone. I know you are proud of this congregation. I hope you will keep your heads as you move into the next chapter of your story. It is becoming a good story to tell already, and I imagine it will continue to be. Your job is to stay hospitable to all of the people who want to come be part of what this group is all about. If you feel angry, whistle. And send out love, because every little thing wants to be loved.

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The Real Ten Commandments

June 10, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

June 10, 2012

It is often said that our nation’s ethics derive from the Ten Commandments of Moses. If you look closely at them, though, they don’t reflect American values very well at all. Solon the Athenian was born around 638 B.C.E. In 594 B.C.E he was elected to create a constitution for Athens, in the process becoming the founder of Western democracy and an early proponent of equal rights for all citizens.

Call to worship:

Spirit of life, be present with us this hour. Join us today as we gather in a wider search for truth and purpose. In this quest, may we greet one another with open hearts and minds; may we inspire each other to consider new questions and seek deeper meaning; and may we cultivate wisdom and compassion. Let all who enter this sanctuary see a welcome face, hear a kind word, and find comfort in this community. And may all that is done and said here today be in service to love and justice.

Source: 1997 UUMA Worship Materials Collection

Reading:

Morning Poem

by Mary Oliver

Every morning

the world

is created.

Under the orange

sticks of the sun

the heaped

ashes of the night

turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches —

and the ponds appear

like black cloth

on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.

If it is your nature

to be happy

you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination

alighting everywhere.

And if your spirit

carries within it

the thorn

that is heavier than lead —

if it’s all you can do

to keep on trudging —

there is still

somewhere deep within you

a beast shouting that the earth

is exactly what it wanted —

each pond with its blazing lilies

is a prayer heard and answered

lavishly,

every morning,

whether or not

you have ever dared to be happy,

whether or not

you have ever dared to pray.

Sermon

With the election coming up, I know the Christian Right is going to be more in our faces than it is normally, talking about this being a Christian nation, telling us that the framers of the Constitution built it on the morality of the Ten Commandments. I thought you should have some good information about the Ten Commandments. I’ve noticed that we have a big granite monument to the Ten Commandments on the Capitol grounds, and I read about the Supreme Court’s decision in 2005 that this was not unconstitutional. I wonder if the people who fought so hard for that decision could in fact recite all ten.

On his pseudo news show “The Colbert Report,” Steven Colbert, who is from SC, interviewed congressman Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, who was fighting hard for a display in the House and in the Senate.

“You co-sponsored a bill requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Why was that important to you?” “Well, the Ten Commandments is -is not a bad thing , uh, for people to understand and respect.”

“I’m with you,” Colbert responds as the congressman goes on, “Where better place would you have something like that than a judicial building or courthouse?”

“That’s a good question, Colbert says. Can you think of any better building to have the Ten Commandments in than in a public building?”

“No. I think if we were totally without them we may lose a sense of our direction.”

“What are the ten commandments?”

“What are all of them?”

“Yes.”

“You want me to name them?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“Let’s see, don’t murder. Don’t lie, don’t steal-uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh– I can’t name them all.”

In the faith story of the Jews, Christians and Muslims, the Ten Commandments were given to Moses in the Sinai desert; In the Hebrew they are called Aseret ha-Dvar”m, best translated: “the ten statements.” The story is found in both Deuteronomy (5:6-21) and Exodus (20:3-16) The Hebrew people followed Moses out of Egypt and they traveled through the Sinai Peninsula to the land of Canaan, which was promised to them by God. After about three months they came to Mount Horeb, also called Mount Sinai. God told Moses to come up the mountain alone, that he would speak with Moses in a voice the people could hear so they would always trust Moses to lead them. The people were told to wash their clothes, to have a consecration ceremony, to abstain from sex, and they were not allowed to go up the mountain. Moses went up the mountain to talk to God. Smoke came on the mountain, like the smoke from a furnace, because Adonai (one of the Hebrew ways of naming God) descended on the mountain in fire, and there was the sound like a trumpet that grew louder and louder. On the mountain, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, and many more commandments the people were to follow. According to the Talmud, there are 613 laws the Jews must follow. When public reciting of the ten was giving them more weight with the Jewish people than the other 593 commandments, the recitation was discontinued.

It took Moses so long to come down from the mountain that the people grew restless, and Aaron, Moses’ brother, was pressured to make some gods who would go with them to the Promised Land. He asked for all their gold earrings and bracelets; he melted them down and made a statue of a golden calf. The people celebrated with dancing, shouting and revelry. “Revelry’ is Bible translator language for wild partying. Moses heard the noise. The text says it sounded like war. Have you ever been to a party that sounded like a war?

He came down with the tablets, which were carved on both sides (rabbinic tradition holds that they magically had writing that went all the way through, yet read correctly on both sides. The “O” shaped letters still had the circle of stone hanging in the hole, floating there without connection to the surrounding stone.) Moses saw what the people were doing, and became angry and broke the tablets into pieces. He ground up the gold statue, spread it on their water and made the people drink it. Then he went back up the mountain and got two more tablets inscribed by God. Swedenborgian teaching says that the first tablets had the higher law on them, but when the people proved themselves less than highly evolved, the second tablets had a lower form of the law on them.

Here are the ten:

1. You shall have no other gods before me.

2. You shall make no graven image.

3. Do not take the Lord’s name in vain.

4. Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

5. Honor your father and your mother.

6. Do not kill.

7. Do not commit adultery.

8. Do not steal.

9. Do not bear false witness (do not lie).

10. Do not wish for your neighbor’s wife, nor his donkey, nor anything that is his.

These are time-honored precepts, and they encapsulate more than one ancient culture’s wisdom about how to live a good life. In fact, they borrow heavily, verbatim in parts, from the code of Hammurabi, whose tablets we have in the British Museum. I remember, in seminary, being taken aback to realize how much of Mosaic Law was taken directly from Hammurabi, which argued against it being given directly from God to Moses. Once your mind can let go of literalism, though, you can see that these laws are a good way for a new society to be structured, especially one made up of people who had been slaves, used to being told what to do for four hundred years.

Did we start putting monuments in court houses and capitol buildings in the eighteenth century? The nineteenth century? No. They were a Hollywood marketing scheme. Cecil B DeMille had a movie coming out called “The Ten Commandments.” He heard about a judge in MN who wanted to send framed copies of the Ten Commandments to courthouses all over the nation to stop the moral decline he saw. A Christian organization, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, was helping with the funding.

Eager for publicity, DeMille contacted the judge and suggested that they replace the framed certificates with bronze tablets, but the judge said no way. Moses’ tablets were in granite, so bronze wouldn’t do So, with DeMille’s backing, around 150 granite tablets were made and distributed across the country, with Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner dedicating a few of them in person. After the movie, the Order of Eagles kept giving out the monuments, the last one in 1985. Our monument is one of those made to publicize the movie.

Many courthouses in Utah have chosen to take down their displays because a religious organization called Summum wanted to erect monuments of Summum’s precepts next to the Ten Commandments. The cases were won on the grounds that Summum’s right to freedom of speech was denied and the governments had engaged in discrimination. Instead of allowing Summum to erect its monument, the local governments chose to remove their Ten Commandments.

I can’t resist telling you that Summum is a religion and a philosophy that began in 1975 as a result of a fellow named Claude “Corky” Nowell’s encounter with beings he describes as “Summa Individuals.” I will attempt to speak of this faith with respect, but it challenges my ideals. I hope to become a better person as I live on. Summum’s faith story says these beings presented Nowell with concepts regarding the nature of creation, concepts which are continually re-introduced to humankind by advanced beings who work along the pathways of creation. As a result of his experience, Nowell founded Summum in order to share what he received with others. In 1980, as a reflection of his new found path, he changed his name to Summum Bonum Amen Ra, but apparently he just goes by Corky Ra. Here is what the sign would have said: “The grand principle of creation is: ‘Nothing and possibility come in and out of bond infinite times in a finite moment.'”

Are the Ten Commandments at the foundation of our morality? Well, we teach our children not to lie, cheat, or steal, but we also teach freedom of religion, which goes against “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me,” and our whole advertizing industry is built on coveting, or wishing for, what our neighbors have. . A capitalist, consumer driven, democratic culture is antithetical to the holiness codes of the Hebrew Scriptures. This is why there is such tension between people with the values of our culture and fundamentalists of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) who want to base a culture on the Commandments. Democracy was unknown in Moses’ time. We believe in religious freedom, free speech, and the rights of the individual, disestablishment of a state religion. All of those go against the Ten Commandments, and all were insisted upon by the framers of the Constitution.

Historian Richard Carrier suggests that, if we are looking for the foundation of our democracy we look to the ethical precepts of Solon the Athenian. Solon was born, we believe, around 638 B.C.E., and lived until approximately 558. He was elected to create a constitution for Athens in 594 B.C.E. Solon is the founder of Western democracy and the first man in history to articulate ideas of equal rights for all. Solon was the first man in Western history to publicly record a civil constitution in writing Solon advocated not only the right but even the duty of every citizen to bear arms in the defense of the state, set up laws defending the principles and importance of private property, state encouragement of economic trades and crafts, and a strong middle class. Those ideals lie at the heart of American culture, but none of them is found in the Law of Moses. Do you wonder why those who follow the Bible deeply feel themselves at cross-purposes with American culture?

Diogenes listed the Ten Commandments of Solon (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 1.60):

1. Trust good character more than promises.

2. Do not speak falsely.

3. Do good things.

4. Do not be hasty in making friends, but do not abandon them once made.

5. Learn to obey before you command.

6. When giving advice, do not recommend what is most pleasing, but what is most useful.

7. Make reason your supreme commander.

8. Do not associate with people who do bad things.

9. Honor the gods.

10. Have regard for your parents.

What would your ten be? What are bottom line rules for you? Do they come from experience, from Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” from scripture, from habit? I like Solon’s, but for me, I would add “Don’t be boring.” How about you?

Gold in the Shadow

June 3, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

June 3, 2012

Carl Jung spoke of the “shadow side” of personalities and concepts. In the shadow are all of the elements we would rather not acknowledge. If we believe that pride makes us bad, our pride will be in the shadow side of our personality. If we believe that leisure is lazy, our resting self will be in the despised and hidden shadow. There is much value to be gained by being aware of one’s shadow side.

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Flower Communion Service

May 27, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Rev. George “Kim” Beach

May 27, 2012

Rev. Meg Barnhouse and Barbara Stoddard lead the Flower Communion litany. By bringing and exchanging flowers in this service, participants are part of a particularly Unitarian service created by Rev. Norbert Capek, who believed that each of us is like a flower which is beautiful in its own way. When we gather as a church, we are a festive bouquet of people.

The communion we celebrate has taken place all over the world in Unitarian and UU churches since 1923. Norbert Capek started this ritual to celebrate the worth, value and beauty of all people and celebrate the community of faith. In celebrating the worth of all shapes, sizes, families and colors, Capek saw hope for humanity. He would later die at the hands of the Nazis because this belief was so different from theirs. We remember him and his principles and dreams.

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Individualism vs the social contract

May 20, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons, Video available

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The Youth of FUUCA

Audrey Lewis, Max Wethington, Kate Windsor, Jara Stiller, Andrew Young

May 20, 2012

This year’s theme for the Annual Youth Service theme is “Individualism vs the social contract”. The service includes a bridging ceremony for youth who have just completed the 5th, 8th and 12th grades.

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

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What I learned from my Mother

May 14, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

May 13, 2012

Mama had a particular view of the world, shaped by her strong Christian faith, her love for children, her growing up as a missionary kid in India. Spiders in the house’s windows? No problem. Twelve cats? Fine. Missing a tithe payment to the church? Very Dangerous!

Reading: Joy in Ordinary Time

My Mama was a second grade teacher at the Gladwyne Elementary School in the rich suburbs of Philadelphia. She loved the children, but she was shy with the parents, who were financiers, pro ball players and attorneys, members of the Junior League, cricket clubs, fox- hunting clubs. For Christmas she would get amazing presents. One year she got a bottle of Joy perfume, then 150 dollars an ounce. I don’t know that she ever wore it. She was keeping it for a special occasion. She kept it so long that it finally evaporated.

About other things she was more openhanded. We had grandfather’s china and silver, which she often used. “That’s what they are meant for, to be used, she said. no sense in saving them. you’d never see them at all that way.”

That openhandedness didn’t extend to her own person. She wore sensible clothes, comfortable shoes, white cotton underwear. She had grown up the child of missionaries, and, whether she wanted it or not, that background was deep in her. She looked respectable and kind. She was cute and cheerful and funny.

Joy perfume didn’t fit who she seemed to be. A daughter never sees all the sides of her mother, though. It makes me smile to think that she harbored a hope that there would come an occasion where it could be her, where she might walk into a room smelling rich and sophisticated, cherished and valued, where it would be just the thing for her to wear. She let my sister and me smell it whenever we wanted to. The bottle sat like an honored but intimidating guest on her dresser. Whenever we smelled it we marveled at how much it had cost. I don’t remember it ever occurring to me to wear it.

I want to let his lesson deep into me. Celebrate the body, the trooper of a body that carries you through life, that pleasures you and lets you dance. Celebrate your body now, before you have lost the weight, before you get your muscle definition, before you feel justified by the harsh eyes of your expectations.

Celebrate being alive, drawing breath, celebrate that you are achingly sad today and that it will pass. It is good to be able to feel feelings. Celebrate that there was a love so big and good that it hurts to lose it. That there was a time so sweet that you ache, remembering. Celebrate those things. Honor the flowering of the tomato plants, the opening of the day lilies, the lemon smell of magnolias. Honor the ache of your heart and the tears falling. Life is mostly ordinary time. Ordinary time, shot through with light and pain and love. Lavish joy on ordinary time. Hope is a wonderful thing, but not if it makes you put off splashing yourself with Joy.

Sermon: What I Learned From My Mother

Happy Mother’s Day. I want to talk to you this morning about my mother, Katherine Pressly Hamilton. She grew up in India until the age of 16. Missionary kid. Her parents were missionaries to the Hindus and Muslims who at that time lived mixed together in and around the town of Lahore, now in Pakistan. When she got to high school she hung out with the other international students, as she didn’t fit with the boys and girls who were raised in the States. When I knew her, she remembered a little Hindi, a little Urdu from those years. I heard it when we were washing dishes; she would sing hymns in Urdu. One year in seminary I invited an Ethiopian student and a Pakistani student named Sam home for Thanksgiving and he cried when she spoke to him. He said she had such a village accent it made him terribly homesick. The Ethiopian Marxist priest from Moscow we had invited converted to Capitalism while playing Monopoly, but that’s another story.

When they were children they would come from India on the boat for furlough. Grandfather would preach and the children would sing. They had a good sense of mischief, and they would change the words to: “Please pass the beer.” Their parents’ Hindi and Urdu wasn’t good enough to catch it. Mama said her aunts would always cry when the children got off the boat. It wasn’t until she was grown that one of them finally told her it was because the children all looked so pitiful in their clothes that had come from the “missionary barrel.” The kids didn’t know the clothes were ten years out of style and that not everyone wore things with some little stain or tear. Whenever something I had on had a little spot on the front or had a safety pin holding up the hem or needed ironing, she would always say “Just throw back your shoulders, smile big and no one will notice.” Mama was a believer in smiling. She preferred to stay happy. Part of how she stayed happy was to see things in the most positive possible way. “The say I had you children was the happiest of my life. Every minute of it was wonderful. Wonderful. “Willfully positive” is how I would describe the style she taught me. Even about her marriage. She and my father didn’t live together from the time I was three years old. They stayed married, though. She would say, “Your father is a difficult man. But I love him.” Then I found a survey in a Readers Digest she had left lying on the floor in her bathroom. One question asked “If you had it to do over again, would you get married?” She had checked. “No” I was shocked. He came to supper every night and stayed the evening before going home to his apartment in town. Children get used to how their family does things. If I had thought about it I wouldn’t have been shocked, I just didn’t really have to think about it because she threw her shoulders back and smiled. We all did. Smiled and didn’t think about it. She smiled big about teaching second grade. She said she loved it. Loved it.

She never complained, and she told funny stories at the dinner table about what happened with the children. She had to have a nap when she came home. I used to tease her about that until one day when I was fourteen I went with her to class and came home exhausted after a day of trying to keep up with 24 8 year olds. I had to take a BIG nap. She would tell elephant jokes and knock-knock jokes and we would groan. When we were camping she would lay out the plastic plates, which were in four bright colors, saying, “Purple, green, yellow, red.” “Ma, we know our colors, we’re not in second grade.” She took us camping for six weeks at a time and smiled. Three teenage girls in a VW camper: my sister, me and a friend. I learned adventuring from her. She would just go without a plan, without a clue as to what was going to happen. My little sister and I alternated being able to take a friend with us. We would get an NEA chartered red-eye to Europe and drive our white VW camper bus all over, finding campsites at night. We girls would set up the tent and sleep in it, and she would sleep in the camper. Whenever we got to a campsite she would look for boys for us. The way you find boys is by looking for pup tents. We would drive around until we spotted one with an empty site next door, and then we’d set up in the empty spot. She would put on a pot of spaghetti and then go next door and knock, and ask if we could run a line for laundry from our site to theirs, and by the way, would they like to join us for supper? We’d get out the guitar and sing after supper and flirt and have a wonderful time. If there weren’t any boys we’d have belching contests. Mama was a lady in so many ways, she taught me to drive with admonitions to drive gracefully, moving my hands over the steering wheel with wrists held limply, but she could win any belching contest. I’ve done my best to learn that from her too. Be a lady when you need to be, but don’t take it camping. She always paid a tithe, a tenth of her salary to the church. One summer we broke down crossing the Mohave Desert. The car cost a couple of hundred dollars to repair. “I know God was joking with me,” she said. That was exactly what my tithe was, and I held it back this month because of our trip. He was telling me not to do that.”

She was virtuous in her schedule. She woke up every morning at 5 and prayed until 6. It’s what she did instead of confronting us when she was worried. So she prayed until 6 and then practiced her violin. She wasn’t very good, but she played in the Main Line symphony in the back row. And she kept it up. She practiced. She taught me that a thing worth doing is worth doing badly if it gives you joy. She kept smiling when she got a lump in her breast. First she tried to not confront it. I’m sure she prayed. The lump didn’t go away. She waited a year to go to the doctor. He performed a mastectomy and radiation. Then another mastectomy. She was in and out of the hospital for the next five years. We kept hearing the cancer was gone and then it would come back. I learned not to hope. She always did, though. She said, “Meggie, everything that happens to me is good, because God is good.” I remember arguing with her one time about that, and then deciding that someone’s faith was more important to them in a situation like that than arguing the truth of what they believed. If believing that was comforting to her, then I needed to support her in it. It had already done its harm – kept her from going to the doctor early enough. Let her enjoy its benefits.

She also went to faith healers. They said she wasn’t healed because there was an un-confessed sin in her life. This saintly childlike woman searched her soul for what the sin might be. It infuriated me that she was loving and believing in a god who would sit up with arms crossed and say “I could heal you but I’m not going to because you have an un-confessed sin in your life and I’m not even going to tell you what that is.” That helped make me a Unitarian Universalist, because it was one of the many things that made no sense, and that wasn’t even their worst offense.

Mama was excruciatingly honest in most things. Once we drove all the way out of a drive-in movie because she had paid the under-twelve price for my sister, who had just turned twelve. I came home from school one day to find her crying at the kitchen table. She was feeling horrible because a postcard had come for me and she had read it.

Her cancer made her honest about the rest. She was in Kings Mountain with her sister and her mother, and her mother gave her some advice and she responded, disagreeing. Her mother sighed in a martyred tone, “How sharper then a serpent’s tooth is an ungrateful child.” Mama spoke sharply to her mother for the first time and said “Mother, I am NOT your child. I am forty six years old. ” When she was telling me this story she teared up and said, Meggie, I know I have treated you like a child and you’re not one, and I apologize. Well, I was about 21 and I thought I WASN’T a child at that point, so I said something gracious like “Oh, Mom, you’ve never really done that…. but she wasn’t finished. She said “If I had it all to do over again, I believe I’d say “no” to you less when you were little. We said “no, no” all the time. I remembered that when I was raising my boys.

Mama never did tell the truth, though, about dying. She was always claiming that she was really healed this time. Her faith won out over her experience and common sense. She didn’t talk about dying until right at the end. She called where I was in seminary and said “I think the Lord is taking me. ” A kind student drove me the hour and a half home and I got to sleep by her sofa through that last night. She would drift and we would call her name, and she’d say “Just a minute, I’ll be right back.” She died the next morning early. I value all the things I learned from her. I value choosing to be positive. I value music and laughter and wanting to make a difference in people’s lives. I’m glad for what I learned to do from watching her do it and what I learned NOT to do from watching her do it. My values are different from hers, but I carry her with me. I know you all carry your mothers too.

It is my hope that, on this Mothers’ Day, we can all bless our mothers for what they have given us and let go of the things they tried to give us that aren’t workable in our lives. May we forgive them their faults, if we can afford to. May we understand that we don’t have to become just like them if we think about it and live with intention.

It is my hope that those of us who are parents can remember that we have given our children many treasures, and that we also have given them things they will let go of as unworkable for them, and that is how it should be.

Does our name mean anything to us?

May 7, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Brian Ferguson, Former Ministers, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Brian Ferguson

May 6, 2012

Many of us identify as Unitarian Universalists, but do we mean the same or even similar things when we identify as such? Or is our biggest commonality our doubt about having any centralizing religious concept that pulls us to together as a religious movement? Something – or the lack of something – keeps inviting us back to be part of our religious community. This worship service explores what that central theme might be or perhaps what it could be.

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Humility: Struggle with the Two Selves

April 29, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Eric Hepburn, Guest Speakers, Sermons, Video available

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Eric Hepburn

April 29, 2012

Cutting-edge researchers in psychology and cognitive science increasingly refer to the “two selves” of our in-the-moment self and our reflecting or remembering self. We will explore this abstract dichotomy through the lens of my very personal struggle to find a meaningful relationship with humility.

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Gaia Psalms

April 24, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Composer: Kiya Heartwood

Words: Meg Barnhouse and Kiya Heartwood

Narration: Meg Barnhouse

April 22, 2012

The Gaia Psalms are nine pieces written as part of a special Unitarian Universalist Earth Day Service. The concept of this work is to create an interactive multimedia worship experience that is both moving and simple. This work is in the Gebrauchsmusik (Utility Music) tradition. All the music is written with the beginning or amateur musician in mind. Visual artists have created four altars to the four directions and elements. The children and some youth and adults have made masks of different birds, fish and animals, and there are responsive readings in which the congregation participates. A tree planting on the grounds of the church completes the experience. The pieces were also meant to be spoken over. The minimalist, meditative quality is intended to create a spiritual connection in the listener and move the listener to both celebrate and reconnect as a member of the Earth’s community.

“Gaia” (Guy-ah) or “Gaea” most commonly refers to Gaia (of Greek mythology), the primal Greek goddess of the earth. We chose the title, “The Gaia Psalms,” because psalms are songs of praise and engaged lamentation. This work comes out of NASA scientist James Lovelock’s “Gaia Hypothesis,” which states that the Earth can be thought of as a self-preserving, living organism. The work also strives to remove the duality between science and spirituality. Christian monk Thomas Berry said, “You scientists have this stupendous story of the universe. It breaks outside all previous cosmologies. But so long as you persist in understanding it solely from a quantitative mode you fail to appreciate its significance. You fail to hear its music. That’s what the spiritual traditions can provide. Tell the story, but tell it with a feel for its music.”

More info: www.kiyaheartwood.com or www.outlawhillarts.com.

Grasshoppers in the Glittering Net

April 15, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

April 15, 2012

Our seventh principle is that we affirm and promote “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”… What does it mean to respect that web, to be a part of it?

Mary Oliver wrote:

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Since I started preaching here, I’ve been doing a series on our seven UU Principles. Today we are on the seventh and last one, which urges us to promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. There is a description of a web in the Hindu scriptures:

Far away in the heavenly abode of the Great God Indra, there is a wonderful net … stretches out indefinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel at the net’s every node, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like starts of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so the process of reflection is infinite.

Our seventh principle calls us to act as if we are all connected. We are told by all religion that what affects one affects us all. The truth expressed by mystics of every religion is that your life and mine are part of a whole, and our dogs’ and cats’ lives, and the dolphins and the birds and insects, and the life of the trees you see out these windows.

As we walk our seventh principle, we try to be aware that we are in the web, that our carbon footprint is a matter of importance to our walking in faith. For many among us, this sense that we are connected leads to recycling as much as we can, or to swearing off Styrofoam, to building greener homes and churches. For many it leads to asking questions about ethical eating: we may try to buy products from chickens who are not treated cruelly– some don’t eat meat at all. Can we get through life without killing? My friend Ben lives in California. He is a vegan, which means he eats no meat or animal products like eggs or milk. He won’t wear leather shoes. He rides his bike everywhere. He dresses in organic cotton. I would admire him more if he weren’t so self-righteous and evangelical about his lifestyle, but every movement has fundamentalists. Even Ben, though, has to live with insects being killed so the soybeans and wheat and cotton and cherry trees can grow. How do we make our peace with this? A UU entomology professor at the University of Wyoming named Jeffrey Lockwood has written a book called Grasshopper Dreaming. Because he spends time with his students studying the grasshoppers on the ranges of Wyoming in order to discern how better to control their population, i.e. kill them, he has complicated philosophical thoughts about his work. The book is subtitled “Reflections on Loving and Killing.”

Apparently many of his peers take grasshoppers to a lab, spray them with something, and if they die, that’s a successful experiment. He felt called to go to where they live, kneel on the rocky scrub and watch them with the idea that if he got to know the grasshoppers it would make him better able to do his job. He found out enough about them so that, since 1990, he has been able to control the grasshopper population on the grasslands with 90% fewer pesticides, and safer ones.

Watching the hundreds of hours of video they took of the grasshoppers over a summer, the first thing that struck him was how much time the grasshoppers spent doing nothing. Previous theories had supposed that they were in the sun heating up, or in the shade cooling off. Not really. As it turns out they were just doing nothing.

If you use a human filter to interpret their behavior, it makes no sense. They have a high mortality rate: 2 percent a day. They spend only 3 minutes of each hour eating, and are not much interested in reproduction. This is despite their high mortality rate – 2 percent daily – which in the human world might result in a desperate competition for survival.

Lockwood writes, “If we humans were short of resources, we would surely battle for our share. We’d scurry about attempting to vanquish competitors, hoard supplies, mate feverishly, and well, do much of what we seem to do in the modern world. But grasshoppers aren’t humans.” He says the idea of competition for survival is an assumption that is inherent to much ecology and evolution. Yet the grasshoppers sit around. Maybe they are praying for world peace.

When a scientist is allowed to slow down, when that scientist has a philosophical bent, he or she may come up with surprising and helpful shifts in perspective. We’re all familiar with the way the museums of natural history had to rearrange their exhibits of lions when some finally took the risk and the time to actually observe pride behavior. Because of the way American society was structured, with the male going out of the house to work to bring home the bacon, the exhibits had been arranged to show the male lion going out hunting, then bringing back the kill for his family. In real lion life, it’s the females who hunt and bring back the kill. All of the tableaus had to be rearranged. Archeologists used to look at a structure in Crete that contained a small room with an observation hole, so someone could look in, a table freestanding in the middle of the room, with runnels at the end of it as if to catch blood. It was obvious to them that this was a chamber of sacrifice. When more female architects entered the field and looked at the same room, it was obvious to them that this was a room where a mother went to give birth.

We bring our experiences to our interpretations of the things we see. We are all blind to our own blind spots, so you can’t just say “I won’t have any blind spots.” It’s difficult to learn about other people. Mostly just watching, observing, hanging out, talking to different people who think differently – those are methods for overcoming our blindness. Seeing ourselves as the center of the universe is a pretty common blind spot. Michael Pollan wrote a book subtitled “A plants-eye view of the world” (The Botany of Desire) He talks about the onset of agriculture, and how we think of ourselves, central, in charge, as having domesticated plants and animals. This, he says, “leaves the erroneous impression that we’re in charge. We automatically think of domestication as something we do to other species, but it makes just as much sense to think of it as something certain plants and animals have done to us, a clever evolutionary strategy for advancing their own interests.” So one way of describing the introduction of agriculture ten thousand years ago is that some plants “refined their basic put-the-animals-to-work (by sticking to their coats) strategy to take advantage of one particular animal that had evolved not only to move freely around the earth, but to think and trade complicated thoughts. These plants hit on a remarkably clever strategy: getting us to move and think for them. Now came edible grasses (such as wheat and corn)that incited humans to cut down vast forests and make more room for them; flowers whose beauty would transfix whole cultures; plants so compelling and useful and tasty they would inspire human beings to seed, transport, [and] extol … them…. It makes just as much sense to think of agriculture as something the grasses did to people as a way to conquer the trees.”

Lockwood is constantly living in the tension between getting to know these beings intimately and understanding that he is getting to know them in order to kill them. He says he goes away from his students in the field to pray. He talks about his four year old son not understanding pronouns yet, communicating a very spiritual and connected stance in the world by saying “My blanket who I sleep with,” and “the tree who I am looking at.” Philosopher Martin Buber talked about having an “I-Thou” relationship with everything and everyone, which would make a better world than an “I-it” relationship. My spell-check for this sermon didn’t want me to say “the predators who…” or “the chickens who.” It wanted me to say “the predators that.” So Lockwood goes to pray, having developed an “I-thou” relationship with the grasshoppers. He hopes that he can find a way for the killing to be less thoughtless, less destructive. He and his students noticed over the years how widely the grasshoppers wander within the range of their territory. They noticed that they are cannibals; they eat their dead. So he began experimenting with applying the neurotoxins in narrow stripes across the rangeland, instead of blanketing the whole area. In these stripes, the grasshoppers would die, then grasshoppers from the non-treated areas would come eat them, and die. The natural predators who helped keep the grasshopper population down would be left alive in the non-treated strips. Then he switched to less dangerous growth-inhibiting chemicals rather than neuro-toxins, applying them in the same narrow strips. They worked just as well, and more safely for the environment as a whole, including the cattle and the humans who use the rangelands. He admits that he values human lives and human purposes more than grasshopper lives and purposes. He reminds us that the interdependent web of life is predatory. Species eat other species and plants to live. It is natural for us to value our species more highly than others. All life kills in order to live. That’s the way nature is. It’s not smart to be too squeamish to be part of nature. Living is muddy, and we just have to do our best. It does not pay to feel too righteous. May we feel alive instead.

Quartet for the end of time

April 8, 2012 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Meg Barnhouse

April 8, 2012

“Quartet For the End of Time,” premiered in Stalag VIII-A in Gorlitz, Germany (currently Zgorzelec, Poland) on Jan. 15, 1941, to an audience of about four hundred fellow prisoners of war and prison guards. Composer Olivier Messiaen, an inmate of the camp, later recalled of the occasion, “Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension.” The story of this music is an inspirational example of freedom and beauty rising in the midst of death and destruction, a fitting story for Easter Sunday.

Messiaen quartet:

clarinet: Vanguel Tangarov

violin: Beth Blackerby

cello: Sara Nelson

piano: Bryan Uecker

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