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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

December 9, 2012

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

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

December 2, 2012

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

Reading: Last night as I was sleeping

by Antonio Machado

Last night while I was sleeping,

I dreamt – blessed illusion! –

that a fountain flowed

within my heart.

I said, “By what hidden canal,

water, are you coming to me,

wellspring of new life

where I have not ever drunk?”

Last night while I was sleeping

I dreamt – blessed illusion! –

that I had a beehive

within my heart

and the golden bees

were going about inside it

concocting white wax and sweet honey

out of old failures.

Last night while I was sleeping

I dreamt – blessed illusion!

that a burning sun shone

inside my heart.

It was burning because it

flashed embers of a red hearth,

and it was sun because it gave light

and because it made one cry.

Sermon: Sweet Honey From Old Failures

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another possible translation is “old bitterness.”

the golden bees

were going about inside it

concocting white wax and sweet honey

out of old bitterness.

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

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

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

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

Last night while I was sleeping,

I dreamt – blessed illusion! –

that a fountain flowed

within my heart.

I said, “By what hidden canal,

water, are you coming to me,

wellspring of new life

where I have not ever drunk?”

Last night while I was sleeping

I dreamt – blessed illusion! –

that I had a beehive

within my heart

and the golden bees

were going about inside it

concocting white wax and sweet honey

out of old failures.

Last night while I was sleeping

I dreamt – blessed illusion!

that a burning sun shone

inside my heart.

It was burning because it

flashed embers of a red hearth,

and it was sun because it gave light

and because it made one cry.

Last night while I was sleeping

I dreamt – blessed illusion!

that what I had within my heart

was God.

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

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

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

November 18, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her entry for July 3, 1942, reads:

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

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

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

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

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

All will be well

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

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

November 11, 2012

Equilibrium with Elegance: Jazz and UU Theology

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

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

October 14, 2012

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

Sermon: A Safe Place

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stewardship Moment 

Marisol Caballero

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

October 7, 2012

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

Crazy, but that’s how it goes

THIS TRAIN

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

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

Is that something you feel like being part of?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is the something you would like to be part of?

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

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

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

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

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

Compassion – To treat ourselves and others with love

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

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

Our Mission

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

nourish souls

transform lives

and do justice.

Ends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

September 23, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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