Liberty, Healing, Good News

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

May 22, 2011

 

Reading

UNICORN

I saw a unicorn coming at me on I-85. That’s what it looked like at first glance, anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a sensible person. I know there aren’t such things in the world, but there it was, this enormous gray ridged horn coming fast toward me southbound, and it was angled forward and up, as if pointing to the Blue Ridge Mountains and, after that, the sky. As it blew by me I saw that it was a church steeple on a flatbed truck, being shipped to its new church building.

The odd sight stuck with me. I started thinking about the church group that was getting that steeple. I wondered how much it cost, and I thought about all the things it symbolized. Most basically, the steeple symbolizes the church pointing to God. We all know that God is not literally “up there;” a lot of us Unitarian Universalists think of God as everywhere, and that’s just the beginning of all of our various thoughts on the nature of the One.

I asked myself what would be a better symbol of pointing to God. What direction(s) would it point? It might look like one of those Moravian stars with almost as many points as a chrysanthemum.

I wonder why people wanted to build one more church when there are already so many. Sometimes the reason is a growing population of people who need you, and no church of your kind is near them, so you build one. Sometimes the reason is a split in an existing church, and one unhappy, hurt, and angry group is making a new church where they can become the community they want to be. “All it takes,” someone once told me, “is a grievance and a coffee pot.”

I thought about how much hope it takes to build a church. “This time,” they might be thinking, “this time we will get it right. We will be good people and we will really point folks toward God and there won’t be politics or infighting or cliques and we won’t ever disappoint each other, and we won’t do things in a slap-dash manner, and this, finally, will be the church we have all been dreaming about. We won’t fight about silly things like carpet or moving the piano or the banners. We’ll be kind and respectful of one another, challenging one another lovingly, cleaning up our own hearts before we start trying to clean up other people’s hearts, and it will be like it’s supposed to be.”

I thought about how, from my perspective, a church like the one they may be hoping for is as mythic and elusive a creature as the unicorn. Churches cause lots of joy, but they also cause pain as they strive to improve people, as they strive to instruct people on the right and wrong ways of being a person in this world. Some say: “Don’t ever drink, but you may wear jewelry and makeup.” Some say: “Absolutely no vanity or fancy dress, but you may drink beer, as it’s one of God’s gifts.”

Some churches talk lots about hell and others don’t mention it, even though it’s there, undergirding everything. People try to be kind but often, when we feel passionately about something, it is hard to keep in mind that the other people are more important than correctness of behavior or purity of doctrine. A conviction that the loving God they worship will punish mistakes with eternal hellfire can make some people feel an urgency that comes across as meanness. Some churches are kind but ineffectual, and some are kind and powerful and they do lots of good and they function in marvelous ways.

Churches are like families. Present are the relatives who drive you nuts, the misunderstandings that hurt, and all the destructive behavior that families can have. At church you also get the warmth, growth, shared history, support and love you can find in a family. People act like people no matter where we are. We know we are supposed to be kind and loving and not jump down each other’s throats for not getting the right kind of free-trade coffee. We know we’re not supposed to fight bitterly about the best ways to work for peace. I heard a poem on the radio the other day, part of which was a prayer: “God make the bad people good and the good people nice.” Honey, we’re trying.

 

Sermon

HOW WE DO CHURCH

Last Sunday I talked a little bit about myself as a minister. I believe it’s good to get oriented at the beginning of an exploration by figuring out who you are, where you’ve been, and where you want to go. I told you about coming from a long family tradition of professional ministry, that I usually wear a teacher’s robe rather than a priestly robe, that I like leading in a collaborative way, thinking together with people about the joys and challenges of congregational life, and putting my energies, experience and training toward helping a congregation grow toward its vision of itself. I talked about me as a minister because that’s what I imagined you all would want to hear about, as I sat and thought about what I’d want to hear sitting in the pew, being curious. On the second Sunday I would want to hear about how the minister thinks about church. The kind of church we’re interested in is Unitarian Universalist church, so let me talk about that one in particular. Where did it come from?

To orient us in that way, I’m going to tell you about the Unitarians and the Universalists, that fascinating tradition of which this congregation is a part. I’m going to go through it very briefly, so trust that if there’s more you want to hear about, you might be able to hear about it more in upcoming years.

Our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors are the liberal Christians and heretics of the Reformation, which happened in the mid-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 (no mistakes, 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 still good news around these parts, where for most people Hell is not metaphorical. The Universalist strengths of community, spiritual inclusiveness and love made a good balance for the Unitarian strengths of reason, rationality, individuality and democratic process. That’s where we came from, and I believe we are called to honor our ancestors and to stay in touch with where we came from.

In pews and chairs in UU congregations across this continent we have Christians, Jews, Pagans, Humanists, Buddhists, people who do Buddhist meditation along with practicing Christian ethics, people who honor their Jewish heritage but embrace the transcendentalist feeling for God in everything, spiritual humanists, humanists who are uncomfortable with the word “spiritual.” Astronomy professors sit next to Astrology teachers here because Unitarian Universalism has room for all of us. We worship God as we understand God, or we worship the Spirit of Life, the Spirit of Love, or we worship that amazing connection that can happen between and among humans who are focused on the same task, or who are singing together trying to be one voice, or we worship the transformation of life and the nourishment of souls that can happen when people of good will and lively mind come together and call themselves a church, even if they don’t agree on some things.

Our common ground is vast. We want transformation. We are hungry souls who want to be fed, and we see hungry souls around us and we want to create a place where they can be fed. We see a world staggering under the weight of unjust systems and we want to make that right. We want to see justice roll down like waters and like a mighty stream, and we are caught up in the glory of hoping we can be part of making that happen.

We want to be the church where gifts are given: courage, attention, affection, challenge surprise, experience strength and hope to one another. That is who we are now. We are the people who tell their children the stories of Jacob and Rebecca, Abraham and Isaac, Rachel and Deborah. We also help their children paint the face of Krishna a beautiful blue and talk about him playing the flute and partying with the cow girls.

We come to church because we are stronger together. One of you could teach your children that reason is a treasure, and that you should not believe something that injures your spirit, but with all of us teaching the children that, our light shines farther.

One of you could proclaim that it was wrong to believe in a god who did not believe in you. You would get some strange looks, but here we are enough to make that proclamation into a message folks can listen to.

We come to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We join together because many minds are often more wise and creative than one can be.

This congregations have the power to change people for the better, to send them out into the world with good news and a healing hand.

For that, we sit on committees. We clean and teach and write checks and we deal with people who are never pleased, people who voice only complaints and never satisfactions. For that we wrestle with one another over what programs are basic and which ones can be cut, we talk about money because it takes money to make it all happen.

We come together to be a part of things, to make the world a better place. To keep our kids strong against hellfire and despair, we do the small work of washing dishes and working the phones. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like lighting up the world. Sometimes it does.

Somewhere between the loftiest work and the lowliest work is the beloved community. Where we hold one another in love as we go through the chances and changes of life. We visit the sick, we light a candle. We are the hands and we are the hearts, and we work here to nourish souls, transfor lives and do justice. And the question is: What would it take to heal every one?

 

 

Where I come from is like this

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse

May 15, 2011

 

Well, here we are!

I’m so aware of the beginning held in this moment. I’m curious about you and you’re curious about me. When I imagined myself sitting where you are, when I thought about what I would want to know if I were you, I decided to talk a little bit about being a minister and what that means to me.

First let me talk about this robe. It’s called a Geneva gown, and it’s a hardworking symbol. It’s a teacher’s black gown, not a priest’s garb. A priest can speak for God; a priest is presumed to have some special connection to the Divine, even to be able to do miraculous things. I don’t think anybody can speak for God. I do think I can sometimes do miraculous things. I think you do to. Dancing, feeding people, doing art, making music, speaking lovingly, listening deeply, those are often miraculous activities we can all do.

I think of myself as a teacher, then, in a teacher’s robe. I’ve gone to school for this, I’ve studied and stacked up years of experience and poured myself into the life of a student of church life, of people, of theology, of how to lead a congregation, how to speak of things that are hard to speak of. The robe is like the one my mother’s uncles wore in their pulpits in the Carolinas and Tennessee, and this robe reminds me that I am standing in the broad stream of history and family tradition. They preached the best way they knew how, just as I do. My mother’s grandfather, James Hearst Pressly, was the minister of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in Statesville, North Carolina for 54 years. He rode his horse to church from the home he shared with his thirteen children, his wife Mabel and one very mean rooster. Dinner time was somewhat chaotic, as they ate the food people had dropped off from their gardens or cellars, with guests who sometimes wandered in off the streets, people of various colors and socio-economic backgrounds who were always welcome without question. Everyone had to say a Bible verse before eating. That may have kept some of the riff-raff away. One evening the second-to-youngest boy Walter, who was called “Sad-Eye,” or “Sad,” for short, was being punished. He had to eat in a corner by himself. The children all said their verses. “Jesus wept,” said the youngest, David, for the fourth time that week. Sad, in the corner, piped up, saying “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” Two of those children became ministers like their daddy. The rest of the boys became doctors, no doubt having gained experience binding up the wounds inflicted by that mean rooster, who would hide and jump out at the kids and slash at their legs. My great-grandfather retired from preaching in this way: the Sunday after he turned eighty, he preached the sermon, then said “I do not think a man should preach when he is eighty. Today I’m retiring. Brother Matthews, would you have the prayer?” The surprised brother Matthews stood and asked everyone to bow their heads. While he was stumbling through the prayer, my great-grandfather walked down the aisle and went home. Me? I like parties, so that would not be the way I would do it.

The robe is like the one my father and his father didn’t wear when they preached. My grandfather Barnhouse was a famous evangelist on the radio in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. His sermons are still on the radio in some places in the country. He spoke around the world. People named their children after him, they bought his books and still do. He preached in striped trousers and a cutaway coat with tails. My father doesn’t like wearing a robe when he preaches because he worries that people will think he’s wearing it to be superior in some religious way. “I don’t want them to think that I think I’m better than they are because of some stupid robe,” he says. I say, “yeah, you want them to think you’re better than they are because you’re just better.” “Yeah.” It’s a joke. I wear the robe to signify that I went to school to learn this work. I wear it to remind myself of my link to the preachers in my mother’s family, who were journeymen preachers, and to the preachers in my father’s family, who struggled with being rock star preachers, who chafed under the idea that they were part of a larger denomination which laid demands upon them in terms of credentialing, ethics, behavior and connection. I will be part of this congregation and what it’s trying to do and be in the world. Part of something larger than myself. I always want to remind myself and my congregation of that.

“Preaching,” Mark Twain is said to have said, “is the ecstasy of presumption.” It is kind of an odd job. You’re paid to think about things, then to talk about the things you think about. In a UU congregation you are talking and thinking with people who are usually very good at both talking and thinking. You reflect on your life and the life of your congregation, you connect the congregation to the life of the community. You are called to be intellectually as well as emotionally intelligent and put both forward in perfect balance in your weekly sermons. Oh, and also in your daily life. You are called to help the people run their congregation by continuing to hold up the vision they are funding with their energy, good will, their minds and their means. You are friendly with everyone, even though you can’t be anyone’s special friend, because as soon as the minister is their special friend, they no longer really have a minister. Your job involves a lot of social interaction. I have people say “Come on, this is a party, you’re not our minister here!” Wherever church people are, I’m the minister. It’s just my luck that parties count as work! I love interruptions and stories and getting to know folks. I crave meaningful discussions and intense interactions and peaceful hanging out. I like filling a role that is larger than I am. Let me close by reading another of my stories, “Brick by Brick”

 

 

When we pray

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Nell Newton

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Nell Newton

March 13, 2011

You can listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

“Laughter is also a form of prayer.” Kierkegaard

Sermon: When We Pray

I am here to report back to you all that prayer has been discovered to exist among Unitarian Universalists! Back at the end of November I was up here and mused a bit on what prayer might look like for us. After dispensing with the juvenile aspects of prayer (oh lord, won’t you buy me a mercedez benz?) I asked you all to consider the possible uses of prayer, and to tell me about your experiences with prayer. Many of you kindly responded with wonderful stories. And yes, despite your stern and sensible exteriors, many of you have private rituals and words that, if looked at out of the corner of the eye, would bear strong resemblance to prayer.

This might be unexpected to those who don’t know us well. We do not have a fixed liturgy of prayer in our denomination. The rituals and words we have here at this church are not necessarily shared in other UU churches. You cannot walk into any UU church on a given Sunday and hear the same words spoken in the same way at the same time in the service. Our congregational roots give us the freedom to construct our worship as we see fit. Sometimes we include prayer and sometimes we don’t. While we treasure this freedom, some have pointed out that we might actually have a hollow space, a place otherwise filled by a shared and powerful practice of prayer. We have no common words to carry us through the rough parts of the journey — no call and response that wraps everyone together. Honestly, it is my guess that we would not trust any attempt at a one-size-fits all common prayer. But, while Unitarian Universalists are expected to build our own theologies, we often are not given the tools or formal instruction in how to build any prayers. In some ways, this is an underdeveloped part of our denominational psyche. We’re all over social action and the more cerebral bits of spirituality, but too often we don’t do the basics of grief and loss very well. And when we hit these terrifying transitions in life, we have no vocabulary to help us see ourselves as part of something larger, and we feel uncomfortable with our human need to ask for assurance in the face of self doubt or crisis.

Some have identified this as a “shadow” issue for Unitarian Universalists. “Shadow” because prayer was often rejected when we migrated out of mainstream churches. It was left behind or pushed away as a superstitious vehicle of dogma. But so often, that which we reject is exactly that which we need to be whole. And just as we are slowly reclaiming god-talk and other aspects of spirituality, the necessary re-examination of prayer will provoke anxiety until we learn to put prayer into a UU framework.

The good news is that when we do pray, we are inclusive and expansive. And, as a lifelong UU I see this empty spot as open and beckoning, a blank book that each of us is expected to fill in. But how do we begin?

Many of us started with prayers from our source traditions and, like careful seamstresses, let out places that were too tight and added in ease with amended words. Several people shared fresh translations of the Christian Lord’s Prayer which they use to serve as a grounding point in their days. Try this version and see if it fits better:

Great Spirit of all the universe, father and mother to us all We stand here in gratitude for all that is given to us. Please guide us to an awareness of the profound peace, wholeness, growth, and bounty that is possible. Teach us to recognize grace and forgiveness and to practice this in our lives. Bring us what we need each day and guide us to the contributions we can make that give our lives meaning. Thank you! Amen. Blessed Be.

Others among us left our home traditions and struck out into wilder woods. We learned to pray or meditate from other teachers, foreign and domestic. And even though we eventually made our way into this sanctuary, we brought along some interesting souvenirs from our experiences. Handy bits of Buddhism or calming affirmations — struck and stuck with us, and are touchstones we reach for in moments of crisis or joy.

And there are also the homemade prayers – made from durable materials we find laying about, or custom cast. Here are some tips to guide you in this process:

  • Remember that “God” is not god’s name! How you address your prayer must only make sense to you.
  • Whether you choose to focus on the holy outside or to connect more closely with the divine residing inside your own skin is again, your choice.
  • Prayer need not have anything to do with the supernatural! It can be a humanistic, naturalistic, or an ecstatic grounding of the self in the moment.

Retired UU minister Annie Foerster has pointed out that the traditional prayers were once new. And that the Psalms in the Hebrew bible were created by poets and lovers. She instructs us to think like poets and lovers as we set out to create our own prayers.

When I sit in prayer here at church, I close myself in to more closely feel the warmth and pulse of my palms pressed together. I feel my own breath close by. I find my center, where my universe spins, and I breathe. I find my bones and my blood and I breathe. I find my skin and my nerves and I breathe. Then I still myself just enough to become aware of the Everpresent. And that is when the tears of astonishment begin.

In my earlier sermon I spoke of prayers of intercession as a more juvenile form – but I have since changed my mind. Mature prayers of petition are not self-serving wishing and whining. Truly mature prayers that ask for something beyond oneself can be powerful and healing. One man explained that he had never been taught to pray, but now that he is older, he finds himself praying frequently. After surviving cancer, heart attack, and stroke, I think he’s entitled to whatever keeps him strong. But, here’s what struck me about his prayer – its simplicity and selflessness. The prayer he utters during times of stress or suffering consists of this simple sentence: “Oh God, help this go well.” “Oh God, help this go well.” He admits that he doesn’t know what “going well” might mean, but he’s seen so many ways that things can go bad. And, note that he’s not asking for “the best”, just “well”. He’ll be grateful for that.

Now, let’s think of the children… How or even should we teach our children to pray? Must we ask that they give thanks for what they already know is their birthright? And I doubt that many of us have laid them down to sleep, their souls offered up for god to keep. But what prayers might we weave above their heads so that they might feel loved and protected throughout the night? I’ll admit, when our son was born we filled his nursery with a Korean grandma spirit face, a St. Anthony medal, a Sri Lankan tiger mask, a Turkish glass eye amulet, and a dream catcher his grandmother made to keep him safe from evil spirits. And, for the record, he’s always been a good sleeper!

After listening to my first sermon, a fellow shared one prayer memory. He remembered being a little kid out shopping with his Mom. They were at the shoe-store, and he saw one of those sit-in metal cars that usually had pedals. But this one was battery powered and was on display as the prize in a drawing. That car totally captivated him. He was filled with utter desire, became obsessed with it, and probably annoyed his parents over it. He prayed to win that car. Prayed hard. But, for some reason he gave god an out: “Let me win that car or let me forget about it.” It was twenty years before he thought of that car again. He’s still not sure why he gave god an option. And he’s still not sure why the event came back up to the surface decades later but he recognizes that it reflects Kierkegaard’s insight that “The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”

My 12 year old daughter recently reported with some bitterness that she’s done with prayer because she’s tried it and it doesn’t work. Thinking back to my own trip through the maelstrom that is the world of the 12 year old girl, I had to agree with her prayer is pretty useless here. But this is because, I suspect that if there is a god, like so many fathers, he prefers to jam his fingers in his ears and hum loudly when faced with his daughter’s demand that he referee adolescent disputes. And, I also suspect that if there is a goddess, like the wisest of mothers, she simply smiles with compassion at her daughter’s despair and says “there, there” but leaves her to learn on her own.

Nonetheless if we are to be our children’s spiritual guides, we’d better start modeling the behaviors we want them to consider normal and useful. We’d better show them how we give thanks and what prayer looks like when it’s more than just wishful thinking.

When our children were little our bedtime ritual included a soothing inversion of counting one’s blessings. Instead of praying to god to take care of folks, we would calm down by bestowing blessings. “Blessings on Grandma Gerry, blessings on Cousin Bella, blessings on the kitties, blessings on the baby chicks, blessings on our neighbor Helen…. Our lists were exhaustive – exhaustion was part of the goal here – but more importantly the ritual was one where we called for and implicitly co-created the blessings. I did not teach them that blessings were the sole labor of a god – blessings are our work as well. By spooling through our friends, family, and pets each night we closed down one day and laid out our work for the next.

And now, what about those of us for whom prayer has no use? There are many of us for whom prayer feels like a hollow chanting into emptiness. I will acknowledge that prayer is not essential to happiness. However, for those of us who do not feel a need to connect to an eternal presence, may I invite you to connect to the essential parts of the human experience that are best expressed in poetry? For, there are times in our lives when ordinary conversation will not suffice and we want the finest of words available to carry us through the moment. And this is where poetry serves and saves us. Go find a poem – long, short, old, or new. Dig it out of a dusty anthology on your bookshelf. Poets.org will send you a fresh poem every day if you like! But find a poem, and carry it around in your pocket or your head for a while. Read it in your spare moments. Find another one and hold that one for a while. Write your own. Gather a handful of poems that you can hold onto for those times when you are sick at heart, or when joy erupts and spills out as tears.

My father retains the last few lines of the poem April Inventory by his friend W.D. Snodgrass: Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives, We shall afford our costly seasons; There is a gentleness survives That will outspeak and has its reasons. There is a loveliness exists, Preserves us, not for specialists

The one line “there is a loveliness exists” is his favorite. It encompasses and affirms the grace he has found in life, and has carried those words around for some fifty years.

There are some of us who still pull up short and feel the scarred places — for whom prayer is still linked too tightly to a previous church experience that hurt or denied our whole selves. I think of this as spiritual “Sauce-Bearnaise” syndrome. That is the term used in psychology for conditioned taste aversion to explain the quirk of our brains and palates that associates the last thing you ate right before becoming nauseated, with the illness – regardless of its actual influence. What this means, is that if you had a meal with sauce Bearnaise and shortly thereafter become ill, you are likely to find sauce Bearnaise unappealing for sometime thereafter – even if the sauce had nothing to do with your illness. This is a useful adaptation for omnivores – a good way to learn to avoid bad foods. However, too many of us who will have nothing to do with prayer because of the indigestible theologies that it was mixed with, and that left us feeling clammy and unwell. For those of us who might still be made queasy when presented with prayer, try this soothing mint tea in the form of words from the English mystic Julian of Norwich: All shall be well, And all shall be well And all manner of things shall be well.”

Now, here’s a challenge for the really bold among us – going public with our prayer! What would it be like to offer a prayer as a greeting or farewell? What if you could sincerely and unselfconsciously offer “Bless your heart” and not have it taken the wrong way? Would you take a moment before you tear into the basket of chips and salsa you are sharing with friends and be brazen enough to look them all straight on and say, “I am so glad to be here with you all” and mean it as a blessing? Would you share a ritual of parting with a dear person? Remember my pragmatic Aunt Ruth? The one who didn’t want folks praying for her? I’ll tell you something she does every time a precious friend prepares to leaves her house – she simply says “Go well”, and those of us who know and love her answer “Stay well”. It is a blessing that flows both ways, and makes the moment of parting sacred. For our taciturn Midwestern clan, that is some pretty heartfelt stuff.

What would your days be like if you were to invoke the holy into ordinary moments? Not as a superstitious warding off of evil spirits, but to call awareness to the slippery rocks we are treading upon. So many things can go wrong in a moment — what would it be like if you could simply ask “may this go well”. For, truly, it is the pure heart and pure intention that turns simple words into prayer, and simple rituals into holy time.

Ours is an empty book to fill. We are creative people, with the courage to be changed. Keep me posted.

March 12, 2011 ©

The State Budget Crisis and Education

by Posted in Audio available, Ed Brock

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Rev. Ed Brock

State Representative Donna Howard

Bee Morehead, Executive Director of Texas Impact

March 6, 2011

This sermon is available on audio. Click the play button below to listen.

Donna Howard’s comments:

Though I typically prefer speaking extemporaneously, with limited time I decided to script my comments. I’m going to try to convey what’s happening with our state’s budget in 5 minutes or less. So, let’s get started.

Texas is an overall low-tax-burden state. In fact, we’re 48th in the nation in terms of local and state taxes combined per individual. That doesn’t mean our tax bills are actually low because we are overly dependent on sales and property taxes to fund government. We’ve got some of the highest sales and property taxes in the nation. At the same time, according to a 2010 report of the Legislative Budget Board (our state’s version of the federal CBO) we are 50th in the nation in terms of expenditures per capita.

Our current biennial budget is about $182 billion, but we only have discretion over about $87 billion. Of that, about 85% goes to public and higher education, and health and human services. We have a shortfall of $27 billion. That means, in order to balance our budget-which we’re constitutionally required to do-and, in order to balance our budget using only cuts-which those in power have determined is the route we must take-we have to make serious cuts in basic education and health and human services.

You may have heard our shortfall is “only” $15 billion. Both figures are correct. To provide the same services we currently provide leaves us $15 billion short. To provide the same services we currently provide AND to include population growth and increased demand for services results in a $27 billion shortfall. To give some perspective, we grow about 80,000 new students in Texas every year-essentially a new Austin ISD every year. But our budget will not provide schools with the necessary increases in dollars to teach those students even though we require them to educate every student who comes through their doors-and to provide each and every one of them with a quality program that addresses all their needs so they can be college and career ready.

How did we get here? The perfect storm, if you will, includes the recession which seriously impacted the state’s major source of revenue-sales taxes make up about 55 to 60% of our state’s budget; the use of one-time federal dollars to the tune of $12.5 billion which were used to balance our current budget and which will not be available to us in the next biennium; and the so-called structural deficit which was caused by the 2006 compression of school property taxes without sufficient state dollars to compensate. Basically, we reduced property taxes by 1/3 from $1.50 to $1.00 which equaled about $14 billion. The state swapped other taxes to make up for the reduction-an increase in cigarette taxes, used car sales taxes, and a revised franchise tax-the margin tax (which has significantly underperformed). The problem was that it was not a revenue neutral swap, and we’ve been counting on surplus dollars to cover the swap. Of course, that only works when the state has a surplus.

To make matters worse, the amount of money a school district can raise per pupil was frozen at 2006 levels. So, any property value increases since then benefited the state as it realized a windfall of anything above the frozen target revenue. The deal was supposed to be that, if property values decreased, the state would make up the difference so that schools could always count on that frozen 2006 level. However, now that the state doesn’t have the funds-to the tune of $9.8 billion-the proposed budget calls for the legislature to change the school funding formula so that-abracadabra-we no longer owe that amount. That’s why you’re seeing all the headlines about every school district in this state grappling with how to cut their budgets, increase class sizes, and lay-off teachers and staff. And, to make matters worse for them, we’ve tied their hands regarding increases in local property taxes by preventing locally-elected school boards from accessing additional revenue without an election. But, even if they did get support from their taxpayers, this is really just the state shifting that burden to the local property taxpayers at the same time that we are claiming that our budget shortfall can be solved without new taxes.

So, what can we do? Our options are to cut the budget-by the way, we already asked many in state government to cut their budgets by 7.5% meaning that further cuts will probably result in large state employee layoffs-to find new sources of revenue (probably expansion of gambling which will only provide about $1 billion per year and not substantially address our budget problem), and to tap into the rainy day fund.

We’re finally hearing from the chairman of Appropriations in the House that we must use, at least, some of the rainy day fund which is projected to have about $9.4 billion in it at the end of the next biennium. But, of course, the $4.3 billion he’s proposing will only go so far in a $15 to $27 billion shortfall. Additional accounting maneuvers are being planned, such as pushing end-of-year payments into the next year which could save about $3 billion-though, of course, that would need to be covered in the subsequent biennium. And some are looking at closing loopholes in taxing.

So, there you have it, our current budget crisis in a nutshell. The bottom line is that we have to determine-and have honest conversations-about what we expect state government to provide, how much it should cost, and how we want to pay for it. We know that it’s important to have a business-friendly environment that attracts those businesses to our state to create jobs. But we must balance that with providing the necessary revenue for infrastructure that supports those businesses and the families they bring to our state-quality public schools, investment in higher education that creates the necessary workforce, transportation that allows us to get from our homes to school and work. The future of Texas and our economic prosperity-what we’re going to pass on to our children and grandchildren-demands that we behave like grown-ups and find a rational, balanced approach to addressing our budget crisis.

Ed Brock’s Sermon

The State Budget Crisis and Education: A Moral Perspective

I see the specific issue of the state budget crisis and anticipated education budget cuts in a larger context.

This larger framework is that our government at the state and national levels is controlled by powerful financial interests whose aims do not coincide with the public good.

These interests, representing concentrations of wealth, appear to have the sole goal of increasing their wealth ad infinitum; they exert their influence through an army of lobbyists and the ultimate weapon of either extending or withdrawing the financial support which spells life and death to political careers.

There are many excellent articles and books which describe in undeniable detail this pattern of private financial interests overriding and negating a reasonable concern with public good. An article in the August 30, 2010 issue of the New Yorker, written by Jane Mayer, is an example of this. Mayer traces the influence of two extremely wealthly brothers on our national political process.

There are many other examples of such exposes. The point is that this belief that concentrations of wealth are dominating our political system is not science fiction, the product of conspiratorial minds, or an outpouring of wild speculation but is real, based on facts and can be discerned by anyone willing to take the time to connect the dots.

Wealth is being concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people; the gap between the super-rich and everyone else is widening. Some members of the super rich class, like those described in Mayer’s article, are exerting their influence in ever more bold and sophisticated ways.

There is a gap between these interests of concentrated wealth and what the vast majority of people actually believe government should and should not be doing and this gap is showing up, again and again, in the wide divergence between what the American public wants and what our law makers nationally and locally do.

For example, according to a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll released recently, a strong majority of Americans think the United States should raise taxes on the wealthiest members of society or Cut Military spending to balance the budget.

Yet, the politicians in power in Washington want to extend tax cuts “permanently” for wealthier Americans while also demanding spending cuts to curb the $1.3 trillion deficit.

Sixty-one percent of Americans polled would rather see taxes for the wealthy increased as a first step to tackling the deficit. And the next most popular way of dealing with our country’s fiscal needs — chosen by 20 percent — was to cut defense spending.

The findings of this poll reflect a contrast which holds true across a wide number of issues. There is a clear, unambiguous divergence between what people say they want and what our leaders are doing.

At the heart of this divergence, again and again, are centers of concentrated wealth driving our political system.

It is possible to say, well, this is how it has always been. Yet that is not exactly so.

As the New Deal took hold, and as FDR prepared to run for re-election in 1936, an organization called the Liberty League launched a major effort to unseat him. Characterizing the League as a tool of what he called “selfish big business,” FDR stated that the wealthy interests behind such groups “…consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs.” He went on to say that based on the experience of the late 20s and early 30s, we “know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.”

The forces that arrayed against FDR reappeared in the late the 1970’s and from that point became ever more sophisticated in their orchestration of political forces in their favor.

The Citizens United v Federal Election Commission case in which the United States Supreme Court up held that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited under the First Amendment, represents the triumphal ascendency of the interests of concentrated wealth.

Now we are seeing, in state after state, as well as at the national level, the consequences of living in a political context in which financial interests dominate.

Consider for a moment the issue of education and the current budget crisis. Any action which leads to the decreasing of the quality of education, for a city, a state, or a nation, is profoundly destructive to the long term well-being of its people.

The role as teachers is one of the most, if not the most, important role in society.

Teachers give our young the priceless gift of learning; to learn, to acquire knowledge, is to be human; so in a sense, teachers give our children the gift of a human life. The level of civilization rises and falls with the level of education.

Teachers also play a more important role in a country’s or state’s economic development than anybody on Wall Street or Washington. The work of teachers reaches into everything, from the numbers of people able to do basic science to the capacity of the people to be informed citizens.

How could leaders seriously consider draconian cuts to education and also care about the future of the people of the state?

Under the paradigm by which our political system operates, in which the ultimate good is the infinite increase of the already vast wealth of the rich, it is inevitable that the “solution” to tight budgets is to cut funding for education.

But if we look at this issue in terms of the value and importance of education, and the good of the majority, and the well-being of people, and the future of our children, the approach becomes, “We will find the money because the value of education for our children and youth, and the well-being of society and the assurance of a better future, demands it. We will find the money even if it means thinking out of the box of how we have thought about sources of revenue.”

I have learned to ask whenever confronted by a problem or controversy, “what part do I play in this?” I have found that this is a much more productive approach than blaming or taking the position of a victim or demonizing others.

And I would say that what you and I and other ordinary people have contributed to this problem is passivity.

Our passivity is making it very easy for the persons and groups that represent the interests of concentrated money to do what they are doing. Someone has said “don’t ever waste a good crisis.”

So I ask you not to waste this crisis, but to use it by taking action. I ask you to join with others, from across the state, to join the Save Texas Schools Rally.

I ask you to call every friend, every relative, and every warm body you may know, and ask them to join you in this march.

I ask you to use every social media instrument you have at your disposal, to get the word out about this march.

Join your fellow church members as they show support for full funding of public education in Texas.

Will it help? I don’t know.

Will it make a difference? I don’t know.

But by taking action you will know that in this hour when the concentrations of wealth that rule society tried to put money before education, you stood up; you let your voice be heard. You acted. And that is all any of us can do.

Participate in the march for education; let your voice be heard.