Forgiveness Happens

“Recently I am emphasizing that due to the modern economy, and also due to information and education, the world is now heavily interdependent, interconnected. Under such circumstances, the concept of ‘we’ and ‘they’ is gone: harming your neighbor is actually harming yourself. If you do negative things towards your neighbor, that is actually creating your own suffering. And helping them, showing concern about others’ welfare – actually these are the major factors of your own happiness. If you want a community full of joy, full of friendship, you should create that possibility. If you remain negative, and meantime want more smiles and friendship from your neighbors, that’s illogical. If you want a more friendly neighbor, you must create the atmosphere. Then they will respond.”

PRAYER

Please join me in meditation.

Watch your thoughts, for they become words.

Watch your words, for they become actions.

Watch your actions, for they become habits.

Watch your habits, for they become character.

Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

We join together in meditation and prayer this morning seeking to realize that the fabric of our lives is woven by our own hands, every thought, every word, every action is a thread in the social tapestry. So as we weave let us always be mindful that each and every thread is a contribution, our contribution, to the whole. Amen.

SERMON: Means, Ends, and Karma

In Aldous Huxley’s 1937 work Ends and Means, he says:

“…far from being irrelevant, our metaphysical beliefs are the finally determining factor in our actions.”

Far from being irrelevant, our beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality are the foundation of our choices about how we live, about how we act, about what means and ends we choose.

Far from being irrelevant, our beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality frame our perspective on how we can and do act to create, sustain, and change the physical, social, and spiritual world of which we are all a part.

Karma is the concept of “action” – understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect.

Karma is not about the reincarnation or rebirth of the individual.

Karma is not a cosmic scorecard of good and evil deeds.

Karma is not a justification or a rationalization for the good or bad things that happen to people.

Karma is the concept of “action” – understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect.

There is a story in the Avatamsaka Sutra that tells of a wonderful net which stretches to infinity in every direction and has, suspended in each eye, a single glittering jewel, and in each of these infinite jewels is reflected the light of every other jewel.

UU’s often tell this story as an exemplar of the seventh principle: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

But I think that the story’s central metaphor is commonly misunderstood with the glittering gems in the net representing individual people. People reflecting each other, relating to each other, connecting to each other. This could not be farther from the truest meaning of the metaphor, the self is an illusion, the self is not the gem. This is possibly the most difficult and most often ignored teaching of Buddhism, but it is also the most fundamental and important. The self is an illusion. Let me see if these words from the Dalai Lama can help elucidate this point:

“All events and incidents in life are so intimately linked with the fate of others that a single person on his or her own cannot even begin to act. Many ordinary human activities, both positive and negative, cannot even be conceived of apart from the existence of other people. Even the committing of harmful actions depends on the existence of others. Because of others, we have the opportunity to earn money if that is what we desire in life. Similarly, in reliance upon the existence of others it becomes possible for the media to create fame or disrepute for someone. On your own you cannot create any fame or disrepute no matter how loud you might shout. The closest you can get is to create an echo of your own voice.”

The glittering gem in the net is action, the unit of karma is action, the basis of interdependence and the cause of the entire cycle of cause and effect is action. The chain of causality, or more accurately, the interconnected web of causality, is not made only of the actions of people, or only of the action of animate beings, it is made up of the actions of all existence. It does not stop for time, it does not stop at your comfort zone, or at the boundary of your skin, or at the edge of your thoughts. Each gem in the net is an action and in each and every action is reflected every other action that has happened, is happening and will happen.

To continue in the words of the Dalai Lama:

“Thus interdependence is a fundamental law of nature. Not only higher forms of life but also many of the smallest insects are social beings who, without any religion, law, or education, survive by mutual cooperation based on an innate recognition of their interconnectedness. The most subtle level of material phenomena is also governed by interdependence. All phenomena, from the planet we inhabit to the oceans, clouds, forests, and flowers that surround us, arise in dependence upon subtle patterns of energy. Without their proper interaction, they dissolve and decay.”

This is the religious root of karma, understanding the proper interaction of things, understanding the proper interactions of action, and more specifically, understanding the proper interactions of human action. There are the four laws of karma:

The first law is that results are similar to the cause. Karma and its results are certain and unfailing. Positive actions of body, speech, and mind will always bring the positive result of some form of happiness and benefit. Negative actions of body, speech, and mind will always bring the negative result of some form of suffering. Karma and its results are exactly like a seed and its fruit.

This first rule is often compared with Galatians chapter 6 verses 7 and 8:

“Don’t be fooled. You can’t outsmart God. A man gathers a crop from what he plants. Some people plant to please their sinful nature. From that nature they will harvest death. Others plant to please the Holy Spirit. From the Spirit they will harvest eternal life. (New International Reader’s Version)

There is a famous photograph from the 60’s with a woman holding a protest sign that says, “Bombing for Peace is like Fornicating for Virginity.” OK, the sign doesn’t say fornicating – But the idea is the same, the same as the first law of karma, the same as that expressed in Galatians, the same as core ideas found in every major religion – you will reap what you sow. You will reap only what you sow. You will reap exactly what you sow.

The second law of karma is that there are no results without a cause. Actions not carried out, will not bring results. Things do not just appear out of nothing. If the cause has not been created, the effect will not be experienced. Nothing is self-manifesting, nothing is exempt from the web of cause and effect.

The third law of karma is: once an action is done, the result is never lost. Once the stone has been dropped in the lake, once it sinks to the bottom, once the ripples spread, the lake can never be the same again. Once we have weaved a thread into the tapestry, it cannot be removed. Once the gem is reflected in the net, it’s image shall never be erased.

The fourth law of karma is this: Karma expands. Karma is organic, it is related to the nature of life. As in our prayer today, one way in which Karma expands is that actions lead to the formation of habits. So within one’s own life, each action sets a precedent for future action:

An old Cherokee was teaching his young grandson one of life’s most important lessons. He told the young boy the following parable:

“There is a fight going on inside each of us. It is a terrible fight between two wolves,” he said.

“One wolf is evil. He is anger, rage, envy, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

“The second wolf is good. He is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, empathy, truth, compassion, and faith.”

The grandson thought about this for a moment. Then he asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win this fight?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

This is the fourth law of karma, each action in your life feeds one of the wolves, your ignorance about which wolf is getting fed does not change it, your illusions about which wolf is getting fed does not change it. Like muscle memory, the act of feeding one wolf more often then the other becomes habit. Do you think that your life is kept more interesting by tossing the bad wolf the occasional bone? Do you think that every bone has to be intentional? As we grow older, we throw more and more bones out of habit. Yet the results of these actions stand.

There are good reasons that we form habits, there is a cognitive need for us to simplify the routines of our lives into repeated and comfortable habits. And I don’t think that habits are bad things to have, but we must recognize that the bulk of our contributions to the world, the bulk of the threads that we each contribute to the social tapestry are woven out of habit. One of the common religious prescriptions for this problem is to cultivate mindfulness.

I don’t think that mindfulness means not developing habits, it doesn’t mean that we develop some sort of hyper-vigilance. What it means is that we reflect upon, own, and take responsibility for all of our actions and especially all of our habits. It means that we apply ourselves to the difficult religious task of continuing to tear down the veils of ignorance and illusion that separate us from the true nature of reality. It means that we recognize that while part of karma relates to our intentions, our intention to do good or our intention to do evil, the fact of karma, the fact of causality is not altered. We can do evil and believe that we are doing good if we are not in right and honest relationship with the universe and with each other. We can feed the evil wolf over and over again, shoveling food into his mouth at an ever more fevered pitch because we believe that we are acting rightly and we cannot comprehend why our righteous action continues to bear evil fruit.

You can choose to be right, or you can choose to be peaceful, you cannot choose both simultaneously, you cannot feed the evil wolf and the good wolf the same morsel. You cannot weave the dark thread and the light thread with the same motion of the loom.

We have spoken a lot about karma this morning, but it is time for us to consider what it means to us when we are making decisions, making plans, and choosing courses of action in our lives.

When we talk about means and ends. Our means are simply our actions. They are the strategically selected thoughts, words, actions, and habits that we carry out in our pursuit of some ends. The means that we choose will create the ends which are their natural, logical, and karmic conclusion.

What about ends? You may choose any ends. But you must realize that ends only become realized by walking the path that leads to them, and that path is made up of the stepping stones of each and every means that is employed in their achievement.

Far from being irrelevant, laws of cause and effect are in operation.

Far from being irrelevant, these laws apply standards of good and evil to the actions of humanity.

Far from being irrelevant, these laws of karma govern our capacity to use means to realize ends.

No, you cannot bomb your way to peace, or fornicate your way to virginity.

You cannot reap that which you did not sow.

You cannot make a reality out of wishful thinking.

But you can create heaven on earth by learning and acting on the truth.

You can change the world with your love.

You can create the life that you want, one action at a time.

Opinion Industries and the Community of Faith

January 25, 2009 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Rev. Eliza Galaher

Minister of Wildflower UU Church

January 25th, 2009

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Good morning everyone. As one of your Unitarian Universalist neighbors from a stone’s throw across the Colorado River, I want to thank you for allowing me to speak here today, and I’d like to extend good wishes from the people of Wildflower Church, in south Austin. We all are well aware of the struggles you have been through in the past weeks, and hope for your community that good healing and reconciliation is happening among you as you begin to move through the wilderness of having let go of your minister, willingly or not, or from a place somewhere in between.

I also hope that at least something of what I have to say this morning will contribute to that healing. For while it’s true that several years ago, you all very generously and freely sacrificed some of your membership when Wildflower originally was born out from your congregation, and while it’s true that some others of your community have since wandered down our way or elsewhere for one reason or another, the most important thing I believe I can do this morning as the minister of Wildflower Church is to encourage you to work and stay together, to nourish this community of faith back into compassion, joy, love, and mutual respect.

Of course, that’s not to say those things do not already exist here. Obviously, I haven’t lived and worked and prayed and conversed here as you have, and I don’t want you to think that I think I know better than you how things have been in your hearts and souls and relationships. I simply hope to add something more of the good by being here this morning and sharing this time of worship with you.

Now, in my mentioning worship, if your congregation is like some other Unitarian Universalist congregations, the very word worship may raise a few sets of hackles here. And if so, that’s OK. I remember a new membership class I once attended, where the question was asked of prospective church members, “What do you seek in a worship service?” Well, many people couldn’t answer, because they couldn’t get beyond the language of the question; they were stuck on the very notion of worship, especially as it implies worshipping – bowing down to – the authority of someone or something that’s in a position of greater power. So if that’s brewing in your minds, I’d like you to take with me a short – very short – etymological journey, because, in my understanding, looking at the break down of the word, worship – worth + scipe or ship – simply means, “To hold as worthy.”

And we all, for better or worse, hold something, many things, as worthy. Among us, we hold as worthy, or we worship, for instance, democracy, money, peace and quiet, our cell phones, clean water, a double espresso, and so on and so forth.

Whatever it is we worship, it’s true, as our religious ancestor Ralph Waldo Emerson states, that “a person will worship something – have no doubt about that.” Sometimes, we can very proudly proclaim that we worship all that is good – love, compassion, equity, justice. And sometimes we need to own up that we are worshipping much that is a bit more ambiguous in its goodness – the perfect body (ours we wish for; someone else’s we long for), the nicest car, the need to be right. That’s why Emerson warns, “that which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and character.” That’s why he warns, “it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”

With this Emersonian word of caution in our minds as we worship here together, let me ask then, what is it that we as Unitarian Universalists worship? What is it that we hold as worthy? We have no creed to tell us from on high. We don’t have any Unitarian Universalist equivalents of Popes or Bishops, Presbyteries or Deacons to lay it all out for us. What we have is each other: we can talk to one another, and listen to one another, and struggle together. And, sufficient enough, poetic enough, demanding enough or not, we also have our seven religious principles.

It’s three of those principles I would like to bring forward now, to help us further explore the question, “What do we as Unitarian Universalists worship?” Actually, that question itself invites us to enter into one of the principles I want to hold up; it invites us into the fourth principle, the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. But, as I said to members of my own congregation last Saturday as we began a day of shared leadership training, that juxtaposition of free and responsible is crucial to highlight here. For while the free search speaks largely to the first principle, the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and while the responsible search speaks to our seventh principle, respect for the interdependent web of all existence, it is the and of “the free and responsible search” that brings the two together, and it is that free-and-responsible search for truth and meaning that I believe we need to hold as worthy as if it were the very fulcrum of our faith. For freedom without responsibility is a kind of tyranny and responsibility without freedom is a kind of slavery. Only a collaborative, collective struggle for freedom and responsibility can lead us to a truly free and responsible community of faith.

Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams, in his 1953 essay we heard Margaret read from, referred to such a community as the “free Christian Church,” and, harkening back to earlier days, as “the radical left wing of the Reformation,” and back even further, as the “primitive Christian Church.” As we are descendents of all of these manifestations of the liberal, or free church, and as we are exploring what it is we worship, we would do well to heed Adams’ words when he says, “In our day [whether that be 1953 or 2009], we confront the impersonal forces of a mass society…” According to Adams, those impersonal forces, generated by what he calls “opinion industries,” and disseminated with increasing rapidity with our ever multiplying technological advances, create only a pseudo community – one which, in Adams’ words, serves as “an instrument manipulated and exploited by central power groups.”

Community as an instrument manipulated and exploited by central power groups: Go back for a moment to Emerson’s warning: “That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, our character.” And so think for a moment of what our society – our national community, so to speak – so often calls us to worship, to hold as worthy, and look at where it has led us: failed banks, scandals on Wall Street, home foreclosures, roller coastering gas prices, global warming, rising unemployment, and on and on and on. Think of Adams’ statement that such so-called “communities,” generated by “opinion industries” are there primarily for “support of special interests – nationalism, racism, and business as usual.” I would add to Adams’ list, global corporatism, media conglomerationism, and reckless individualism But that’s just me.

Now, I’m believing, with the inauguration of our first African American president this past week, and with such civil rights leaders as Georgia congressman John Lewis and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery there to witness, I’m believing that a shift from “business as usual” is among us.

But not only is it a shift into our future. Such a historical event and the words stated by the newly inaugurated president himself – words like hope, virtue, responsibility, unity of purpose, and mutual respect – such a moment and such words reflect back to us our own historical efforts as a religious people to confront those who would call or demand of us, to worship the false community – they reflect back to us our own efforts to confront those powers, as Adams says, “in the name of a more intimate, personal community dependent on individual dignity and responsibility.”

In our free and responsible search for truth and meaning, might that not be what we are striving for, what we wish to worship? “A more intimate, personal community dependent on individual dignity and responsibility”? If so, how do we work together toward that aim? How do we leave behind the “opinion industry” mode of being that’s so easy to get caught up in, for a more relational, more inclusive community of faith?

In his essay, Adams makes the central argument that, quote, “the free Christian’s [read our ancestors’] sense of responsibility in society issues from concern for something more reliable than the desire for personal success. It issues,” he continues, “from the experience of and demand for community. [such] responsibility is a response to the Deed that was ‘in the beginning,’ to the Deed of Agape It is the response to that divine, self-giving sacrificial love that creates and continually transforms a community of persons.”

Agape, love; what Adams himself calls “the love that will not let us go.” This must be the means by which we strive to create the community of faith we long for, and it is the end to which we will arrive, again and again, should we choose to act from a place of love – not that conditional kind of love that “opinion industries” like to sell and promote – that say you’ve got to be this way or think that way or look this way or associate only with these kinds of people. No, the love of Agape is the love of beloved community. It is the love of listening, it is the love of speaking, it is the love of caring. It is the love of reaching out, and it is the love of reaching inward, and asking ourselves, freely and responsibly, “What have I been worshipping? How is it determining my life, my character? What shall I worship, what shall I hold as worthy, to deepen my part in this community of faith?”

My hope for all of you, as you move through this time of unknowing, is that you can ask yourselves these questions not as a means of indicting yourselves or anyone else, but as a means of working and staying together, as a means of remembering our faith’s historical efforts always to freely and responsibly search for truth and meaning.

The task of the religious community is not an easy one, under any circumstances. Yours is and will continue to be for some time a particularly trying one. But try you will, and so will you journey to and reach the other side of this particular wilderness. May it be that you do so in the spirit of compassion, joy, love, and mutual respect. And speaking of love, may it be that all along the way you experience, and hold as worthy, that love will not let you go. For it is love, guiding you on your free and responsible search for truth and meaning, that will see you through.

Amen.

Disembodied Dreams

January 18, 2009 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Ron Phares, Sermons

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January 18, 2009

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Reading 1

I Have a Dream (excerpt)

Martin Luther King Jr.

I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

Reading 2

Untitled Poem

Carl Wenell Himes, Jr.

Now that he is safely dead

Let us praise him

Build monuments to his glory

Sing hosannas to his name.

Dead men make

Such convenient heroes: They cannot rise

To challenge the images

We would fashion from their lives.

And besides,

It is easier to build monuments

Than to make a better world.

So, now that he is safely dead

We with eased consciences

Will teach our children

That he was a great man … knowing

That the cause for which he lived

Is still a cause

And the dream for which he died is still a dream,

A dead man’s dream.

Reading 3

Creation Spell

Ed Bullins

Into your palm I place the ashes

Into your palm are the ashes of your brothers

burnt in the Alabama night

Into your palm that holds your babies

into your palm that feeds your children

into your palm that holds the work tools

place the ashes of your father

here are the ashes of your husbands

Take the ashes of your nation

and create the cement to build again

Create the spirits to move again

Take this soul dust and begin again

Reading 4

Barak Obama

From a speech following the New Hampshire Primary

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. They will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks and months to come. We’ve been asked to pause for a reality check; we’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we’ve been told we’re not ready, or that we shouldn’t try, or that we can’t, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people.

Yes we can. Yes we can. Yes we can.

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation. Yes we can. It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights. Yes we can. It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness. Yes we can.

It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballot; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.

Yes we can to justice and equality. Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can.

Homily & Sermon:

Disembodied Dreams

First Movement

Let me take you back to Thursday, April 4, 1968 on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. The late Dr. King’s body has been taken away. But for his close colleagues returning from the hospital, there is a grim reminder of his having been here: a pool of blood on the balcony floor. Jesse Jackson approaches and sinks to his knees before the puddle. He places both of his hands, palms downward, into the blood of his friend. He then stands and wipes the front of his turtleneck shirt with his hands, taking the blood of Martin onto himself.

Dr. King was murdered as he was about to join the efforts of striking garbage workers in Memphis. It was a somewhat unplanned initial step on what was to be the most ambitious endeavor of King’s career; the Poor People’s Campaign. This effort was envisioned to culminate in a multiracial army of the poor descending on Washington D.C. until Congress enacted a Poor People’s Bill of Rights, which would include a massive government jobs program.

Having learned a little bit about the levers of power in our nation while he fought for desegregation and equal rights, and then while he spoke out against the war in Viet Nam, Dr. King was determined to hit at the root of exploitation in the Poor People’s Campaign. This carried him well beyond the field of race politics and into the much more dangerous field of economics. In Selma and Washington D.C., King was trying to change the way people in and out of power thought about race. What he was about to do was change the way people in and out of power thought about power.

His inner circle thought this too diffuse and a departure from the work they had all been doing up until then. They began to fracture and he was loosing patience with them. And when the invitation came for him to go to Memphis, King was counseled that it was too paltry an affair in addition to being part of a venture his associates weren’t entirely on board with. But it was neither insignificant to King, nor was it anything less than exactly the kind of systematic sin he was hoping to root out of America. And so he went.

The day before his assassination he assured an audience that has subsequently grown to include the whole world that he had been to the mountaintop, that he had seen the promised land. “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!î

I think King was wrong. If there is a place to get to, I think he will get there with us. He was murdered. But he was not ended. His action lives on in his disciples and in the trajectory upon which he set this nation. And what are we if not our action?

There is no end there. Just more means to further means, action birthing action, character in mitosis.

You see, when Reverend Jackson knelt down and dipped his palms in King’s blood, he was physically enacting a kind of resurrection. After all, the great work hadn’t got done. So Jackson was, in a sense, taking onto himself the properties of his friend. But he wasn’t just taking them onto himself alone. Because we see it ñ we’ve seen pictures in the past or we see it in our mind’s eye today ñ because we see it and understand it’s history and significance, we know that the properties of Martin, in transferring to Jesse, have also been transferred to us. For while Jackson remained focused primarily on racial questions, there were other people and organizations that took up the post-racial agenda that King had begun. Nonetheless, on that night in Memphis, it was Jackson who embodied a transference that unwittingly would take root in many of us and pave the winding way to this Tuesday’s inauguration.

It turns out, evidentally, that blood is both medically and poetically a rampant vehicle for the transference of properties from one person to another. And because were using the poetic sense here, properties means the character of or the meaning of that blood. What Jesse did was only what mankind has been doing for millennia. It’s either hard wired into our DNA or the vestige of humanity’s hero myths, but there seems to be a repeated practice among our species of taking on some properties of a beloved martyr through the martyr’s blood. An obvious example of this is the Christian Eucharist, wherein the blood of Christ is swallowed.

While we understand the Eucharistic blood of Christ is symbolic, in Jesse’s case, the blood was both symbolic and all too physical. When he dipped his hands into that blood, he took part in an impromptu ritual that ratcheted him, and ourselves as well, to the continuing action of Dr. King. So, Jesse still has blood on his hands. Barak Obama has blood on his hands. And the blood is still on our hands. It reminds us of the guilt in which our history implicates us. But that historical indictment is only worthwhile if it also reminds us that we continue ñ all of us, regardless of our heritage, skin color or economic status – to participate, to varying degrees, in a vast system of repression and exploitation that pollutes our character by a lack of awareness and a lack of intentionality. The good news is there are things we can do about that. Yes we can.

So, on one hand the purpose of the blood is to remind us of our transgressions. And on the other hand, is the transferred properties, a reminder of hope, and heroism, of faith in humankind, a reminder of fallibility, forgiveness and true power, and the life and work of Martin Luthor King Jr. That blood has become ours. It is our heritage. If we don’t want it, that blood becomes only an indictment.

And yet, if we accept it, if we take it in, if you let it seep into our imagination and into our heart, that blood becomes, not only an indictment but it also becomes a force in our own veins, a meaning in our own life. For that is the blood in which the murdered prophet still lives. And we are worthy of it. And we are guilty of it. As worthy and as guilty as the prophet himself. So, if we accept it, if we accept that blood, if we accept this story, then we can hold up our own bloody hands and see death (hold up left hand) and life (hold up right hand), guilt and hope, and change these disparities from a posture of the convicted, to a posture of conviction (clasp hands in prayer).

Let us pray.

We come hear today to be nurtured by one another,

with hopes of hearing a healing word, of singing a song that helps us, of celebrating, of walking back into beauty.

Our lives are fraught with trouble, and actions that miss the mark and cause damage to ourselves or to others.

But our being here confesses our awareness of our imperfection and hopes that such an awareness must necessarily understand and thus forgive the failings of others as well as of ourselves.

Just as our joy is a beacon, so to can our sorrow be a guide.

Let this awareness be the seed of empathy then, and this fellowship be the soil to nurture that empathy, so that its fruit can feed many.

Amen.

Disembodied Dreams

Second Movement

I saw a bumper sticker the other day. It displayed an image of Obama in red, white and blue, above the words, “Yes, we did.î Now, I know this person was just slapping a celebratory flag on their car. I know they were just feeling proud, feeling good. And they should. Yet, I confess that I was somewhat troubled by that bumper sticker. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the layers of significance that an Obama presidency promises. I most certainly do. I have high hopes and deep gratitude.

It’s just that, “Yes, we did,î suggests that the work is over when, really, the work is just beginning. The phraseÖ is, “Yes we can,î not “Yes, we did.î And therein is a message of both political and spiritual consequence. The work is not yesterday. The work, the joy, the pain is always and ever arising. If I can hearken back to King for a moment the view from the mountaintop of equal rights is of the mountain of unscrupulous warfare. The view from the mountaintop of unscrupulous warfare is of the mountain of economic exploitation. The mountains get bigger. The work is never over.

The difficulty is that once you start down the path of justice, it is easy to be overwhelmed by where that path leads you. You start in a soup kitchen and you wind up waving a defiant ladle at the World Bank. It seems like an impossible task. But then we also know, as our soon-to-be President has reminded us, that, “nothing can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change.î And what do you know? It works. At least its working to shift the face of the power structure in Washington. But the real work, as we know all too well ñ as we witness Palestine unraveling, as Pakistan and Mexico stand on the brink of collapse, as our own economy teeters on the precipice of national terror and a crisis of character ñ the real work has only just begun.

So, not, “Yes we did.î “Yes we can.î And maybe that implies, “Yes we are,î right now, right here. If the work the joy and pain is ever arising, then it is arising now, right here, as you sit.

After all, being here is an action. And what are we if not our action? Being here has an effect; on you, on the people next to you, on the world you encounter away from here. Being here is an action. But the question we must ask ourselves, as participants in this corporate body ñ sitting here, are we active enough? What does being here do? More to the point, what are we doing here?

So, when I go to church I know that most of the time I’m there I’m sitting and listening. Right? You’re listening, aren’t you? Okay. That’s a start. I know that my listening is reinforced by my standing to sing and by my singing (apologies to those within earshot). So, that’s also a step. I watch candles be kindled and light some of my own. That’s good. But in a religion that has no central text, in a religion whose cosmology, ontology, theology is intentionally vague, in a religion that is essentially new ñ despite the braided histories we claim ñ and lacks a rich tradition – is listening enough? Are these actions enough to embody our purpose? Or do they leave us entirely without “a tradition, an ontology and a rich understanding of the human condition, its malaise and its cure,î as has been suggested.

The way I see it, the problem is not that we do not have an ontology and a rich understanding of the human condition, its malaise and its cure. The problem is that our understanding comes from such a broad spectrum of sources that it is all too easy to miss the forest of consensus for the trees of our variety. Maybe because of that, our understanding has not been taken into our bodies in any kind of communal, central ritual. And so it is that our religion has been damned to a mere haunting, all too often remaining in the realm of ideas, a dream without a body to be in.

In short, we’re a religion without any religious experience because we are a religion of disembodied dreams. T.S. Eliot comes to mind.

“We are the hollow men.

Our dried voices,

when We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass”

“Shape without form,

shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion.”

I don’t think Eliot was talking about us, but he sure could have been. Emerson, however, was definitely talking about us when he called Unitarianism “corpse cold.î But we can change that. We can live into the dream of our forebears and we can and must do this together. Oh, yes we can. In fact, we will.

Some of you may know, I am currently studying for the ministry at Austin Seminary. This past semester, a small group of my colleagues began meeting once a week to create some sacred space in our lives. We would gather, splash our hands and faces with water (a practice borrowed from Islam), do some physical action which we often drew from yoga. We would then sing ñ to clear away the ego. And finally, we would relax in silence for a half an hour, ala a Quaker meeting. This was followed by the sharing of snacks and some discussion. I can assure you, our theologies all varied radically from one another. And yet we could create that space together. It was a deeply enriching experience each and every week.

Now I could have, and have, done something like this on my own, alone. But the fellowship was important. The fellowship elevated the experience. Fellowship taps into love and that’s why we’re here this morning, right?

So ritual embodiment creates space. It also articulates faith. After all, what is Islam without Mecca-facing prayers in prostration? What is Christianity without the Eucharist? What is Buddhism without meditation? What is Unitarian Universalism without… umÖ We claim these traditions as sources. There is wisdom in the fact that they ALL ritualize their bodies in order to reinforce and articulate interpretations of the world.

The Buddhist author Jack Kornfield writes, “Spiritual transformation Ö doesn’t happen by accident. We need a repeated discipline, a genuine training, in order to let go of our old habits of mind and to find and sustain a new way of seeing.î In other words, we have to practice cosmology. We have to practice ontology and theology. We will neither grow, nor be effective, nor, in my opinion, even survive as a religion without also thriving as a religious practice.

Now, I’m not just going to whine at you. I want to try and find a solution. So what kind of ritual embodies our values and beliefs and theological liberality? How shall we practice? The Buddhist teacher Achaan Chah described the commitment to practice as “taking the one seat.” He said, “Just go into a room and put one chair in the centerÖ open the doors and the windows, sit in the chair, and see who comes to visit. You will witness all kinds of scenes and actors, all kinds of temptations and stories, everything imaginable. Your only job is to stay in your seat. You will see it all arise and pass, and out of this, wisdom and understanding will come.”

So we will take our cue here, with a few minor changes. I’m actually going to ask you to move a bit. Indulge me. Let’s see how this goes. So, as you are able, shift in your pews toward the center aisles, so that you are seated close to each other, right next to each other. Thank you.

SoÖ we are going to do a ritual, a ritual that embodies our theological and ontological openness, our social vision, our scientific grounding and our spiritual aspirations.

Now if you would, hold out both of your hands, palm up. This is a gesture of openness, of asking and receiving. If this next gesture makes you uncomfortable, it’s okay. Ritual, principles and honest religion often, in integrity, take us out of our comfort zone. So, see if you can come in to this next step. If you would, keep your left hand open. But with your right hand, place two or more fingers on the wrist of the neighbor to your right. Try to find a pulse, over here on the side a little and under the thumb. If you’re unable to find a pulse, it is enough to know that it is there. If you are on an aisle or sitting by yourself, place your free fingers on your own neck.

You may close your eyes or not. However you are comfortable. Now I’ll ask you to breath in and exhale slowly, as if you were meditating. And keeping that breath intentional, consider how this gesture recalls our principles, how touch affirms the inherent worth and dignity of every person and compassion in human relations.

Consider how touch embodies acceptance of one another and is a first step towards the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.

Consider that through your fingerprints, you can feel the pulse of your neighbor, through your singularity, you touch the life force.

Consider how this reveals our fragility, just as it reveals the miracle of the human machine.

Finally, take a few breath cycles on your own, increasing your sensitivity to your neighbors life force. See if you can syncopate your breathing with the rhythm of their heart and let that syncopation expand in your imagination to include the rhythms of everyone here and then onward so that your thoughts turn at last to the interdependent web of all existence and the sum that is greater than all these parts. Listen now to breath and blood and life. At one time, be grounded, be here, transcend.

Amen.

I hope that gave you an idea of what I am talking about. Actually doing it hopefully made the idea more clear than if we had just left it at talk. And that is precisely the point. I hope it is an idea we can build on. It doesn’t need to be the ritual we performed today, but I would encourage some kind of exercise that embodies our faith to become a regular part of our service, our related board and committee functions and your personal practice. I’ll submit it to the worship committee for some deliberation. Consider today the first line of a conversation. But it must not only be a conversation.

Allowing our thoughts only to be in our mind and allowing our minds to be only in our brains does each component, as well as their sum ñnamely our lives and the gods in which we live them ñ a great penalty. Meanwhile, using our bodies to express our consciousness in ritual will lead to using our bodies to express our consciousness to each other and to the larger world. This can help in troubled times. And as a church and as a nation, these are troubled times. We can start healing without a word. We can take that wisdom and apply it to ourselves and our world. We can live this dream of Unitarian Universalism. We can heal this nation. We can repair this world. Yes we can.

Amen.

The seven deadly UU sins

January 11, 2009 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Rev. Bret Lortie

Minister of the First UU Church of San Antonio

January 11, 2009

The text of this sermon is unavailable but you can listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Is Hope Enough?

January 4, 2009 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Minister of Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church

January 4, 2009

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

Readings

Excerpt adapted from Disturbing the Peace

by Vaclav Havel, translated by Paul Wilson

The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul; it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.

Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. Hope is… the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Hope

by Emily Dickenson

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune – without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

Origami Emotion

by Elizabeth Barrette

Hope is

folding paper cranes

even when your hands get cramped

and your eyes tired,

working past blisters and

paper cuts,

simply because something in you

insists on

opening its wings.

Prayer

O Spirit, fill our lives this morning.

Let love enter our hearts as we think of our beloved family members, trusted friends, and mentors. We know that some of our loved ones have been wounded or fallen ill. We pray for their health and wholeness. We are filled with compassion even for strangers: the homeless, hungry, and hopeless. Let this compassion serve to open our hearts even more.

May we feel the full range of emotions – the inspirational beauty of nature; the surprising joy of unexpected generosity; even the depth of sorrow that washes over us as members of the human race.

Let us extend our compassion to the people of the world, thinking especially of the Israelis and the Palestinians who have not yet found their way to peace; thinking of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and our own citizens who labor to achieve stability; thinking of the people of Darfur to whom our youth decorated and sent a large tent to house a classroom; thinking of people across our own land of plenty who lack basic necessities.

We are blessed to have one another. We are astonished to witness an historic inauguration in this new year. We are filled with hope that we, together, can do the work that needs to be done – here and throughout the world. Let us enter the Silence…

SERMON: Is Hope Enough? What Else, Then?

“Playing for Change” is a video circulating on YouTube and, of course, on its own website, playingforchange.com. It was the brainchild of Mark Johnson, who lives in Santa Monica. He got the idea ten years ago in a New York subway where he saw a huge crowd that surrounded two Buddhist monks in robes who were singing in a language probably no one understood. Yet two hundred people stood there listening, missing their trains, and even tearing up. Instead of rushing to work as isolated individuals, they were held in a rare sense of community. Mark could see with his own eyes what he already knew: Music brings people together. Music touches something within us that goes beyond words.

Mark Johnson said, “I traveled around the world and discovered that music opens the door to a place where we can come together as a human race. It is my belief that we can celebrate our differences and still connect our hearts. One Love.”

His first video is in production now. It took three years of traveling in four continents to record over one hundred musicians and edit the results into a unified product. You’ll see a choir in South Africa backing up a New Orleans guitarist and a Russian cellist, with a saxaphone riff from Italy. In an interview, Bill Moyers asked him if people ever told him he was being naive. Mark said, “Well, naive is thinking we have any other choice… Let’s make a difference together.”

When Mark was recording musicians in South Africa, he asked what they needed in return. They wanted a place to teach music to young people and give them a chance to perform and learn the technology Mark was using. He started raising money and will soon be selling CDs and videos to support Playing for Change. They built the concrete block Ntonga Music School in Guguletu, South Africa: a place of poverty, HIV and AIDS just outside of Capetown. Guguletu is a place in dire need of assistance, inspiration, and hope for its youth and young adults. The school will be equipped with cameras and recording equipment as well as computers so young people can share their music with the world and receive inspiration in return.

Playing for Change is also working to rebuild and enhance the Tibetan refugee centers in India and Nepal, and to support a writing school in Johannesburg, South Africa. It may be naive, but these musicians and their fans are making a difference in this world of ours.

Such positive change makes me forget the country’s problems for a little while: a long-term recession with a rising level of unemployment, bankruptcies, and foreclosures; two long-term wars that will go on for many months to come; global warming and environmental destruction; spiritual malaise. We can’t just go shopping anymore to resolve all this, and we don’t have the extra money! And though we have elected the presidential candidate who ran on Hope, we can’t expect him to save us by himself.

There has been a great shift from the patriotic fervor after the 9/11 attacks when American flags began flying everywhere. At a border crossing from Canada into the United States there was a billboard of an American flag with the image of shopping bag handles at the top. We were to thwart terrorism through shopping. This year we were horrified after Thanksgiving to learn that a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death in the rush to shop for bargains. Customers continued to shop even after employees tried to close the store out of respect for a hideous event. The guy who died probably made minimum wage as a temporary, seasonal worker. Our wallets feel thin; tips are down for waitstaff; bargains prices just make us wait for even deeper discounts; and some of us have lost jobs, lost our sense of security.

“Do we really need more stuff?” Leonard Pitts asked in a recent column. We’re learning that we probably have enough stuff. It’s time to save our spirits through understanding that there is enough to go around. Enough material goods, enough money, enough food, enough love. It’s time to change the dream and change the world by using hope as inspiration for action.

In exploring the idea of hope, I dipped into Barack Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope ; the words and wisdom of Cornel West’s Hope on a Tightrope ; and Paul Loeb’s collection of essays he entitled The Impossible Will Take a Little While: a citizen’s guide to hope in a time of fear.

I, for one, hope that my faith and values can make a positive difference, yet it seems they often clash with opposing values. Obama writes, “We think of faith as a source of comfort and understanding but find our expressions of faith sowing division; we believe ourselves to be a tolerant people even as racial, religious, and cultural tensions roil the landscape. And instead of resolving these tensions or mediating these conflicts, our politics fans them, exploits them, and drives us further apart” (p. 29).

Later he points out that in the 60s, the status quo was overturned. Along with civil rights for citizens of African descent, other groups came streaming through the gates: “feminists, Latinos, hippies, Panthers, welfare moms, gays,” all of whom wanted a place at the table of democracy (p. 34).

Unitarian Universalists have worked to hold the gates open among the early adopters of this kind of diversity. Along with a diversity of politics came a diversity of spirituality that has strongly influenced society at large: Buddhists show us the benefits of mindfulness; Muslims inspire us by their prayer life; Earth centered religions celebrate the cycles of life; Jews emphasize forgiveness and atonement; Christians teach love of God and love of neighbor; and all of us try to put the best of these into our own lives. Austin Area Interreligious Ministries works to bridge gaps among faith groups. This very congregation is a microcosm of diversity in spirituality.

On the other hand, we are sometimes less willing to appreciate political views that differ from our own. Obama met tolerant evangelicals, spiritual humanists, rich people who want poor people to succeed, and poor people who hold high standards for themselves (p. 63). Obama suggests that liberals should acknowledge that hunters feel about guns the same way that liberals feel about library books; conservatives should recognize that most women feel as protective of reproductive freedom as evangelicals feel about their right to worship (p. 70).

All of us have values that are worthy of respect. Values move us to action. Shared values should shape politics, not the other way around. Standing up for your beliefs is a way to plant seeds of the possible. More difficult, but still possible is to understand other points of view so that multiple sides can be satisfied with a win/win. Getting down to the level of common values makes a huge difference in resolving incompatible opinions or strategies.

I remember working in a shelter for battered women. Our core value – our hope – was that all people deserve to live in safety – physical, emotional, and spiritual. Shelter residents needed skills for assuring safety at home for themselves and their children. They needed parenting skills like effective discipline without hitting. Sometimes the women would go back to their abusers, believing their promises or seeing no other options. Even when that happened, we knew that the women had seen a different way to live and they did have new skills. They knew where to find shelter for themselves and their children. We had planted seeds of hope for a better day. Sometimes they did have to come back for shelter, but they seemed stronger and more self-confident.

We don’t have to be famous like Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa to make a difference. One anonymous protester held a placard opposing nuclear weapons. He stood day after day outside the entrance to the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, about 50 miles east of San Francisco. One senior official there told of the impact of passing that solitary individual on a daily basis. That lone protester played a significant role in the official’s eventual decision to resign his job even though the two of them had never met.

Cornel West says it’s the ordinary people just like us who can change the world. Tavis Smiley asked him, “Who you gonna call? Ghost Busters?” They laughed, then Dr. West said,

“You’re going to call on the people, you’re going to call on everyday people, you’re going to call on ordinary people. They must shatter their sleepwalking; they must become awake, they must shake the complacency and the conformity and the cowardice and become maladjusted to injustice, give up being well adjusted to injustice, cut against the grain, and stand tall, organize, mobilize, for public interests and common good. In a democracy if you can’t call on the people, then the people lose the democracy and in the end, the democracy, so fragile, so precious, is lost, and the people find themselves run by tyrants.”

Sonya Vetra Tinsley is an African American singer, songwriter, and activist in Atlanta. She knows there are plenty of reasons to give in to cynicism and defeat. She also sees another group of people who work for change even if they don’t know how things will turn out – people like Martin Luther King, Alice Walker, Howard Zinn. And she says,

“There are times when both teams seem right [the cynics and the change agents]. Both have evidence. We’ll never know who’s really going to prevail. So I just have to decide which team seems happier, which side I’d rather be on. And for me that means choosing on the side of faith. Because on the side of cynicism, even if they’re right, who wants to win that argument anyway. If I’m going to stick with somebody, I’d rather stick with people who have a sense of possibility and hope. I just know that’s the side I want to be on.”

I want to stand on that side, too. Hope grows when we take even a small step, a solitary stand, a community affirmation based on rightness, value, and truth to heal our world or to heal and strengthen a congregation. Though I don’t know all of your names, I know you have dozens of members who are making great efforts to carry out the mission and vision of this great congregation. You have faithful witnesses who invite others to join them but continue to do the work with or without additional help. There is no doubt in my mind that there is plenty of work to go around! Even a thank you once in a while keeps the wheels turning.

I’ll leave you with story that’s been passed down from one minister’s sermon to another. One route was from Art Severance to Bruce Southworth to Anita Farber-Robinson to me. No doubt it has taken on a life of its own in multiple other directions. It’s a story about New College, at Oxford University in England. It is, as far as we know, a true story, told by the late Gregory Bateson, a renowned anthropologist and husband of Margaret Mead.

New College was founded in the late 16th century, when its physical structure was built. The College was designed according to the style of the times with a great dining hall that had huge carved oak beams across the ceiling. Apparently a survey was done of the condition of the property and it was discovered that these great, carved beams were infested with carpenter beetles, so seriously compromised that the building itself was in danger.

The report was transmitted to the College Council whose members were very much dismayed. Where could they ever get oak of that caliber today to replace those great old beams? One of the Junior Fellows took the risk of making a suggestions- there might be some oak growing on the college lands of which there was considerable acreage which had accrued through years of bequests.

The Council called the College Forester in from his work in the country and asked him about the oak. “He pulled off his cap and scratched his head and said, “Well sirs, we were wondering when you’d be asking.”

Upon further inquiry it was discovered that when the college was founded, a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the great hall when they became beetle-y in the end. This contingency plan, he told them, has been passed on from Chief Forester to Chief Forester, generation to generation, for over four hundred years.

That’s the end of the story, but not the end of the lesson. To plant even one tree is an act of faith and hope. You as a congregation will be planting trees and seeds of hope for your future. Thanks to previous generations, your roots run deep and your branches reach out across the City of Austin. Some of you will prepare the soil for new trees; others will plant; still others will water. Generations will come after you to enjoy the shade and the fruits of your labors, but there will be still other trees for them to plant. Countless individuals whom you do not yet know are seeking what you have to offer – hope in a hurting world. Let there be more love, hope, peace, and joy among you as you move into this new year.

So plant trees or take a stand or dream a new dream – and turn challenge into opportunity. Tell me, what else should we do other than bring hope to life?

Amen

2009 Sermon Index

January 1, 2009 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Indexes

Sermon Topic	Author	Date
Bryan and the Social Darwinists	Gary Bennett	12-27-09
A Dickens of a Christmas	Rev. Janet Newman	12-20-09
What do you say once they know you’re a UU?	Rev. Janet Newman	12-13-09
How the holidays sing their message	Rev. Janet Newman	12-06-09
What are you waiting for?	Rev. Janet Newman	11-29-09
A Festival of Thanksgiving	Rev. Janet Newman& Lay Members	11-22-09
A Missional Church	Rev. David Jones	11-15-09
Remembrance	Rev. Janet Newman	11-08-09
Martyrs of Liberal Religion	Rev. Janet Newman	11-01-09
Dia de los Muertos	Rev. Janet Newman	10-25-09
…As fire exists by burning	Rev. Janet Newman	10-18-09
Unmentionables	Rev. Janet Newman	10-11-09
Heroes of Our Heart	Rev. Janet Newman	10-04-09
Transition, Transformation, and the ministry at the heart of Thacker Mountain Radio	Eunice Benton	09-27-09
We are the promises we make and keep	Rev. Janet Newman	09-20-09
Hospitality as Radical Practice	Rev. Janet Newman	09-13-09
Ministry: An Endeavor for Life-Long Learners	Rev. Janet Newmanand Ron Phares	09-06-09
American Roots of Unitarian Universalism	Luther Elmore	08-30-09
Honest Religion – part 2	Tom Spencer	08-23-09
Holy Vision	Ron Phares	08-16-09
Deeds not Creeds, Walking together in covenent	Barbara Coeyman	08-09-09
Honest Religion	Tom Spencer	08-02-09
The Miracle of Metaphor	Ron Phares	07-26-09
Human Rights vs Human Duties	Rev. Jack Harris-Bonham	07-19-09
Taking a Bet on the Truth	David Throop	07-12-09
Listening	Ron Phares	07-05-09
The Psychology of Hope and Virtue	Dr. Wendy Domjan	06-28-09
The Psychology of Religion	Dr. Wendy Domjan	06-21-09
When you sit, when you walk, when you lie down, when you rise	Rev. Chuck Freeman Mary K. Isaacs	06-14-09
Bridges and Boundaries	Rev. Kathleen Ellis	06-07-09
Values and Choices	Jim Checkley	05-31-09
The Gospel according to Monty Python	Rev. Jim Rigby	05-24-09
In search of Freedom	Gary Bennett	05-17-09
Youth Service – Leaving the nest	The Youth of FUUCA	05-10-09
Turn the tables, or turn the other cheek	Rev. Chuck Freeman	05-03-09
Is the Work of God “God’s Work”?	Michael Benedikt	04-26-09
Paying Attention: The essential Spiritual Practice	Tom Spencer	04-19-09
Sacred Palimpsest: The Rites of Spring	Ron Phares	04-12-09
Journey to UUism	Michael LeBurkien	04-05-09
To such as these	Rev. Jack Harris-Bonham	03-29-09
Birth, Love, & Death	Gerry King, Renee Kingsland, Sara Barker & Kathy Murphy	03-22-09
The Oneness of Everything	Jim Scott	03-15-09
The Death and Life of Free Will	Ron Phares	03-08-09
Finding our faith	Rev. Nancy McCrainie	03-01-09
What defines greatness?	Jim Checkley	02-22-09
Real Hope	Tom Spencer	02-15-09
Forgiveness Happens	Jimmy Stanley	02-08-09
Means, Ends, & Karma	Eric Hepburn	02-01-09
Opinion Industries & the Community of Faith	Rev. Eliza Galaher	01-25-09
Disembodied Dreams	Ron Phares	01-18-09
The seven deadly UU sins	Rev. Bret Lortie	01-11-09
Is Hope enough?	Rev. Kathleen Ellis	01-04-09

Time to Change again

December 28, 2008 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Brian Ferguson, Former Ministers, Sermons

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Brian Ferguson

December 28, 2008

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

Reading

Impassioned Clay

by Ralph N. Helverson

Deep in ourselves resides the religious impulse.

Out of the passions of our clay it rises.

We have religion when we stop deluding ourselves that we are self-sufficient,

self-sustaining or self-derived.

We have religion when we hold some hope beyond the present,

some self-respect beyond our failures.

We have religion when our hearts are capable of leaping up

at beauty,

when our nerves are edged by some dream in our heart.

We have religion when we have an abiding gratitude for all

that we have received.

We have religion when we look upon people with all their

failings and still find in them good;

when we look beyond people to the grandeur in nature and to the purpose in our

our own heart.

We have religion when we have done all that we can,

and then in confidence entrust ourselves to the life that is

larger than ourselves.

Prayer

As we take this time, may we become in touch with the deepest desires of our hearts and memories of our minds. We are creatures with knowledge of our past and hopes for the future.

In recalling our past may we find the humility to learn from both our failures and success. In anticipating our future may we find the strength and courage to challenge ourselves to become more of what we desire to be.

As the adversities of our life remind us of our illusions of control and delusions of independence, may they also remind us of those who can help us and our interdependence with others.

In times of our greatest vulnerability and uncertainty, may we remember the moments of our highest resolve. And in doing so may our life be the embodiment of our highest ideals and an inspiration to all around us.

Amen.

Sermon: Time to Change – again!

As we approach the end of the calendar year, I find myself thinking about that difficult subject of time. The year 2009 is almost upon us and I am one of those people who hasn’t quite got their mind around being in the 21st century and soon we will be in the second decade of it. But when I talk about the difficulty of time I do not just mean the speed with which it goes by or the seeming shortage of time.

I have that constant struggle I have to live in the present. My mind constantly planning ahead to the short term task ahead, like eating lunch, or longer term out to next year, “where am I going to get a job?” When not thinking about the future then I think about my decisions of the past the good ones, a year ago I really didn’t think I’d be living in Texas, or regrets, why did I think this would be a good sermon topic? My mind seems to make only fleeting visits to the present before concerning itself with thoughts for the future and memories of the past.

Midnight on Wednesday as the calendar flips to another year there will be that mixture of poignancy for the past along with hope and perhaps some anxiety for the time ahead. For some of us we will be happy to see the back of 2008 for the hardship and losses we endured. For others we will reflect on a year well-lived and enter the New Year filled with anticipation and optimism. Many of us enter the New Year with externally imposed changes which we had little control over.

As I consider my own situation as intern minister here I am in the middle of my year internship while simultaneously ending it here at First Austin and about to begin a new stage at the Liveoak church. I now understand Jean Luc Godard’s phrase “A story should have a beginning, middle, and an end but not necessarily in that order.” My current situation is simultaneously a beginning, middle and an end. Time is a tricky concept.

The end of a calendar year also imposes on our lives transition points, often artificially, as work contracts and projects end or deadlines imposed by the Christmas season itself. The busyness of the Christmas season can also become such a focus for many of us that it becomes difficult to plan for the time after until we get through Christmas. At this time between Christmas and New Year is when we have the time and energy to take measure of the past and look towards the future.

The month of January is a somewhat arbitrary beginning for a new year since it does not correspond to the beginning of an agricultural season or astronomical cycle. The month of January is named after the Roman God Janus, who had two faces which allowed him to simultaneously look forward to the future and backwards to the past. The tradition of New Year resolutions is also traced to the God Janus and when taken seriously New Year resolutions are about looking at our behaviors of the past and envisioning how we could do better in the future.

As individuals many of us in small ways or perhaps even in significant ways undertake the tradition of New Year resolutions. The most common resolutions are: losing weight, getting fit, eating better, quitting smoking, drinking less alcohol, paying off debt, spending more time with the family, volunteering to help others more, and just being less grumpy. Some of these might be useful goals for many of us. And probably very similar goals to last year, and the year before and the year before that. Or perhaps that is just me. I actually thought that I might take up smoking just so that I could give it up thus fulfilling at least one resolution this year.

Of course the joke of so much of New Year resolutions is how little time it takes to fail in keeping them and how we desire the same changes each year. There is a whole industry around this such as gym membership which sky-rockets in January as the next cycle of resolutions for weight loss and greater fitness begin. While the idea of New Year resolutions can be shrugged off as just another silly example of human nature and the large disconnect between our spoken desires and our actual behavior, I do think the idea touches on a real desire for many of us to live better than we have done and the great difficulty we have in doing so.

Our Unitarian tradition of the 19th and 20th Century has focused on the self-improvement of the person and has been summarized as “Salvation by Character”.

Salvation in our Unitarian tradition was about individuals improving themselves and working towards their own and others moral improvement. We moved the emphasis from a faith in and obedience to a God to an emphasis on improving ourselves to become better, more ethical people, and this improvement was often expressed as becoming more God-like. The 19th Century Unitarian Minister William Ellery Channing said “To honor God, is to approach God as an inexhaustible Fountain of light, power, and purity. It is to feel the quickening and transforming energy of his perfections. It is to thirst for the growth and invigoration of the divine principle within us, and to seek the very spirit of God which proposes as its great end the perfection of the human soul.”

Now I think it is fair to say that most people do not think of their New Year resolutions as the perfecting of the human soul. Yet in their own way, New Year resolutions are about becoming a better person – physically, emotionally or even spiritually – tomorrow than you were yesterday. I wonder if the reason we do not take our resolutions or other desires to change seriously is that we do not aim high enough with our demands on ourselves? The desire for human improvement in our Unitarian tradition led to a great emphasis on the education of people. This belief is still strong in our movement with our strong support and belief in public education for all people.

For example, our split the plate donation today is going towards the American-Nepali Student and Women’s Educational Relief organization. This group, which we will support with half of our offering from today’s service, supports 12-15 years of education for children from the lower castes in Nepal. Our tradition of human improvement and belief in education has taken on a global perspective today, showing a growing focus for our social justice work that is in keeping with our religious tradition. As someone who was the first generation of my family to attend college I know of the transformative effects and opportunities that an education provides.

Religion for many of us is about the transformation of the individual and our society for the better. Transformation for individuals comes generally as a result of an interaction of external circumstances and our internal motivations. Many people come into our religious community desiring change in their lives perhaps by seeking a community where they can pursue spiritual questions, engage in social justice work, or find meaning for the changes their lives. All these can be acts of transformation.

The struggle many of us have in enacting transformations within ourselves is how we go from often vague desires for change into more firm beliefs until we engrain these beliefs as habits. I learned something about this struggle during my chaplaincy training last year where I was working with military veterans who had mental health concerns and addictions. By the time I was working with them many had reached a crisis in their life due to their addiction and were desperate for help.

There was a common pattern where there was a tendency for them to either blame everyone else or blame themselves for all of their problems. Much of the work I did was to explore where the blame should belong then encourage them to take the appropriate responsibility for their actions. Through the 12-step program of alcoholics anonymous there was a strong group support for the patient and the encouraging of humility in admitting the need of help from a higher power.

For many of the people I worked with they had admitted they were powerless to resist alcohol and chose to replace their addiction with a healthier, higher power which often gave them strength to address their addiction.

The major lesson I learned from these veterans was how they struggled with their addiction everyday. As one of them said to me “The difficulty is not to stop drinking but to stay sober every day. Stopping drinking isn’t hard. Not starting again is.” The discipline of choosing everyday not to drink alcohol for them was a huge act of self-control and I believe it to be a spiritual discipline.

In our Liberal Religious tradition much of our religion is to guide us in how we should act and how we should make decisions.

I see a commonality between how our religion guides us to enact changes in our own lives and how those in 12-Step programs were attempting to help people address their addictions. To take a vague desire of how I wish to be different and change it into a belief that I will act on a daily requires a commitment from me and the support of my community which holds me accountable. Enacting these beliefs in my words and actions is a daily spiritual discipline I engage in and often fail at.

As I fail at living up to my beliefs I am fortunate that the consequences are not as severe as those with addictions who I served as a chaplain to. I deal with my disappointment, reflect on why I failed to live to my expectations then begin the cycle again.

By letting go of any attachment towards any need of perfection and just focus on improvement allows me to show compassion to myself and stay engaged in changing my beliefs and habits. This model of action, reflection, and action with consistent emphasis on improvement not perfection is a simple yet significant approach for me to enact change in my life. For many Unitarian Universalists it can be hard for us to settle for simple improvement and not obsess about perfection. It is said that, “The pursuit of excellence is gratifying and healthy. The pursuit of perfection is frustrating, neurotic, and a terrible waste of time.” In this vein I want to share with you a resolution I arrived at that guides much of my life.

There is a lot of talk, at least among seminarians with too much spare time, that we really need to find some guiding principles to help us in daily life. Of course, I undertook up this project with serious intellectual rigor hoping to arrive at some weighty, profound ethical principal. In truth, the outcome for me was on the surface a disappointment. My guiding principle is that I only want to make brand new mistakes.

The satisfaction of making the same mistake as others is a shallow, frustrating consolation and I don’t want to make the same mistakes as others by reinventing another broken wheel. By not wanting to the mistakes of the past then I learn from history and by accepting that I am going to make mistakes, albeit new ones, allows me to move forward into unknown areas and overcome the fear of failure. I have actually found this seemingly superficial guiding principle of only making new mistakes quite liberating.

This thinking may also be beneficial for organizations such as a religious community. Organizations seem to settle into a common behavioral pattern which prevents change and seems to condition any new person to conform to the expected behavior of the organization. Yet if the goal of religion is individual and community growth then we want an organizational structure that encourages change of individuals and renewal of the organization itself not stifle transformations.

A community that learns from the past and takes risks moving forward will make brand new mistakes by pushing boundaries. Hesitancy and resistance to change are understandable but limiting. If we wish to make brand new mistakes then we have to overcome our resistance to change as individuals and as a religious community. What is so bad about a mistake – especially one that no-one has made before?

As adults we become very conscious of what others think of us and we often do not wish to appear less than competent. Ask a group of Kindergarden children if they can sing or can dance then almost all of them would raise their hand enthusiastically and they would be very keen to show you. As we get older, our inhibitions seem to set in and our desire to try new activities or approaches diminishes. We encourage children to make mistakes and to learn. We develop for them compassionate boundaries for them to push against and we support them in their struggles and failures.

As adults we lose the ability to appear vulnerable or fallible. I feel we limit ourselves by not allowing ourselves to make mistakes. As the poem Suzy read earlier said “We have religion when we stop deluding ourselves that we are self-sufficient, self-sustaining or self-derived. We have religion when we hold some hope beyond the present, some self-respect beyond our failures.”

There is a myth of competency we wish to project. Yet I think most of us have learned more from our mistakes than our successes. Those times we pushed ourselves into unknown areas, further than we intended beyond our comfort zone. By doing so we grow as people as we break down those barriers we have raised for ourselves or others attempted to impose on us.

Mistakes are almost a prerequisite for growth and success. Michael Jordan, the great basketball player, said “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

I would venture to say that perhaps the only real failure is to not attempt something that you really wish to do. When we think about our own life then we rarely regret what we did do, – now I’m only talking about legal activities here – our major regrets are those times where we did not do something when we had opportunity. Even when our efforts do not work out then we generally learn something, even if the lesson was to never to do that again. When we choose not to even attempt something for fear of failure then our learning opportunity is missed.

Of course to accept the possibility of our making a mistake involves us being willing to take a risk. The following words from the poem “To Risk” capture much of our struggles concerning our aversion to risk.

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.

To reach out for another is to risk exposing our true self.

To place our ideas – our dreams – before the crowd is to risk loss.

To love is to risk not being loved in return.

To hope is to risk despair.

To try is to risk failure.

To live is to risk dying.

I would say that all of these actions – to laugh, weep, reach out, dream, to love, to hope, to try – are acts of coming alive and truly living. They all involve a risk but a risk of what – appearing foolish or sentimental, not being loved, exposing our true feelings. These may be sources of discomfort but are not character flaws. By growing from and beyond our failures and mistakes, we are coming alive to all of life’s possibilities. With knowledge of the past and imagination for the future we can make our whole life be a spiritual practice -breaking down the artificial barriers between the secular and the sacred, between ourselves and others. In doing this we awaken our soul to the excitement and nourishment of the complete spiritual life.

——————-

Cassara, Ernest Biography of Hosea Ballou http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/hoseaballou.html Last accessed on December 27, 2008

Channing, William Ellery, Likeness to God: William Ellery Channing Selected Writing Robinson, David ed., (New York: Paulist Press, 1985) p.156

Hansel, Tim, Eating Problems for Breakfast (Word Publishing, 1988) p.39 quote from Edwin Bliss

Anonymous. To Risk Singing the Living Tradition (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1993) #658

Can Christmas have any meaning for us?

December 21, 2008 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Brian Ferguson, Former Ministers, Sermons

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Brian Ferguson

December 21, 2008

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

Reading –

For So The Children Come

by Sophia Lyon Fahs

For so the children come

And so they have been coming.

Always in the same way they come

born of the seed of man and woman.

No angels herald their beginnings.

No prophets predict their future courses.

No wisemen see a star to show

where to find the babe that will save humankind.

Yet each night a child is born is a holy night

Fathers and mothers–

sitting beside their children’s cribs

feel glory in the sight of a new life beginning.

They ask, ‘Where and how will this new life end?

Or will it ever end?’

Each night a child is born is a holy night–

A time for singing,

A time for wondering,

A time for worshipping.

Prayer

These are the words of Eusebius, the 3rd Century Christian Bishop

May I be no one’s enemy and may I be the friend of that which is eternal and abides.

May I wish for every person’s happiness and envy none.

May I never rejoice in the ill fortune of one who has wronged me.

May I, to the extent of my power, give needful help to all who are in want.

May I never fail a friend.

May I respect myself.

May I always keep tame that which rages within me.

May I accustom myself to be gentle and never be angry with others because of circumstances.

May I know good people and follow in their footsteps.

Amen

Reading

“Christ Climbed Down”

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Christ climbed down

from His bare Tree

this year

and ran away to where

there were no rootless Christmas trees

hung with candy canes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down

from His bare Tree

this year

and ran away to where

there were no gilded Christmas trees

and no tinsel Christmas trees

and no tinfoil Christmas trees

and no pink plastic Christmas trees

and no gold Christmas trees

and no powderblue Christmas trees

hung with electric candles

and encircled by tin electric trains

and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down

from His bare Tree

this year

and ran away to where

no intrepid Bible salesmen

covered the territory

in two-tone cadillacs

and where no Sears Roebuck crches

complete with plastic babe in manger

arrived by parcel post

the babe by special delivery

and where no televised Wise Men

praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down

from His bare Tree

this year

and ran away to where

no fat handshaking stranger

in a red flannel suit

and a fake white beard

went around passing himself off

as some sort of North Pole saint

crossing the desert to Bethlehem

Pennsylvania

in a Volkswagen sled

drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer

with German names

and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts

from Saks Fifth Avenue

for everybody’s imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down

from His bare Tree

this year

and ran away to where

no Bing Crosby carollers

groaned of a tight Christmas

and where no Radio City angels

iceskated wingless

through a winter wonderland

into a jinglebell heaven

daily at 8:30 with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down

from His bare Tree

this year

and softly stole away into

some anonymous Mary’s womb again

where in the darkest night

of everybody’s anonymous soul

He awaits again

an unimaginable

and impossibly

Immaculate Reconception

the very craziest

of Second Comings

Sermon – Brian Ferguson

Here we are four days before Christmas and we are in the aftermath of a divisive church conflict regarding the dismissal of our minister. Everyone seems to be hurting.

I know I am moving between emotions of sadness, anger, and confusion. It is not a good place to be. The future looks uncertain, many are disillusioned about our church community, and most of us are still trying to make sense of what just happened over the last month. Christmas time is where the dominant religious culture and dominant secular culture are telling us is a time of joy and celebration. I am not feeling much joy and celebration right now.

Christmas is often a time when we Unitarian Universalists turn to our Christian roots. There is a certain irony to this since for most Christians, Easter has a far greater religious significance than Christmas. Easter is about the resurrection of Jesus which demonstrates the divinity of Jesus. Christmas on the hand is very much a story about the humanity of Jesus since it is a celebration of his birth and the hope his birth symbolizes. I am feeling all too human right now and the powerlessness that involves. Hope is something which would be helpful at this time.

The religious message of hope often gets lost amidst the secular aspects of Christmas that the poem I read earlier somewhat cynically described – “the tinsel Christmas trees, the plastic babe in a manger, and the North Pole saint in a red flannel suit with a fake white beard.” Not much sign of hope there. These images of Christmas are so familiar to us from television, shopping malls, and the front yard of our neighbors – or perhaps if we are honest even our own front yards – yes confession time in the UU church. I warned you we would be going back to our Christian roots.

Despite the rampant commercialization of Christmas there is an important religious message to some Christians and it is perhaps the most important aspect of our Christian heritage that we Unitarian Universalists continue to embrace. That is the idea of the incarnation. The divine embodied in flesh is the literal meaning. Incarnation is the idea of the divine being active in the material world in human form. In Christianity this figure was Jesus Christ who came to communicate a message of salvation to people therefore took human form.

Our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors embraced the idea of incarnation very seriously and reached some radical conclusions. Incarnation to them meant our highest ideals are embodied into our human form and become an active presence in our world through our own actions. The 19th Century Unitarian William Ellery Channing says “Jesus came, not only to teach with his lips, but to be a living manifestation of his religion – to be, in an important sense, the religion itself. Christianity is a living, embodied religion. It is example and action” This is a call to us to live out our values actively in our lives – to be the incarnation of our values in our world.

Thinking of Jesus in these terms helps me understand the Christian idea of the Church as the Body of Christ. This term can be confusing but I find it helpful in thinking about our religious community being infused and guided by high ideals and moral values. The mission statement of our church reads: “As an inclusive religious and spiritual community, we support each individual’s search for meaning and purpose, and join together to help create a world filled with compassion and love.” Just as some believe that spiritual energy brings alive the material body of a person, our religious community is brought alive by the high spiritual ideas and morals of our mission. Without such ideas we are just a physical building and social group not a church.

In thinking of our church here in Austin as a body it is fair to say our particular body right now is feeling battered, bruised, and broken. It is difficult to find the infusion of high spiritual ideals as we assess where we are as a community. In our Unitarian Universalist tradition, the local congregation has the power to call and dismiss a minister. There is no hierarchical power structure that imposes ministers on congregations as in some religions. The right of a congregation to call any minister of their choosing is a great strength of our movement and has allowed us to be the first religion to call women, gay, and transgender ministers. This is an aspect of our history that we are rightly very proud of. The shadow side of this congregational power is the conflict and divisiveness that can occur within a congregation around the dismissal of a minister. Sadly, this latter case has been so clearly demonstrated to us in the last few weeks.

We are in a time of great pain, uncertainty, and confusion as a religious community. We have voted to dismiss our senior minister, and our future is uncertain. There is pain about the loss of our minister, pain about the process leading up to the vote, and pain about the divisions in our community. I personally have a pain that is beyond the disappointment of losing a colleague and supervisor. I have a pain that is an injury of the soul. My spiritual wound is due to our religious community losing touch with the core elements of our mission such as compassion and love in the turmoil of the last few weeks. I look around our community and see great hurt amongst people on all sides of the vote. I am also pained as valued members of our community leave wounded by the events of recent weeks.

I heard and read statements about the senior minister and members of the board of trustees that I found offensive and disrespectful, and believe such statements should have had no place in any community let alone a religious one. This pained me deeply. We have a right to free speech and to disagreement, in fact they are at the core of our Liberal Religious movement, but we also have a responsibility to exercise those rights respectfully and for the greater good of our community. The value of the inherent worth and dignity of every person is not a value that is turned on at our convenience. Such values are principles we are called to follow and may be most important when we engage with those who we are in disagreement with.

Some people who supported dismissal told me that they feel they now have their church back. Others who wished to retain the minister say they feel they have lost their church and plan to leave our community. I would remind both groups an important yet often unrecognized aspect of our Liberal Religious Tradition – You only lose this church if you choose to leave it. The church as a community is still here and hopefully always will be. We do not exclude people because of how they voted, what they believe, or have creeds you must conform to before you can join.

For those who have come back because they feel they have their church back I caution them that is a different church today than the one they recall from their past. Churches like physical bodies are organic institutions which change over time as new people come in, bringing their energy and vitality forever changing our community. This is a very good thing. For those who feel they have recently lost their church, it is true the church they experienced before the conflict is no longer with us. It is said that forgiveness is the giving up of any hope of a better past. I would suggest that the church of the past for all of us is gone. We cannot unring the bell.

We must attempt to heal our present wounds and begin envisioning what church we want to be in the future. To begin healing we must understand the mistakes we made in the past and why recent events have caused so much hurt in our community. I sympathize with the frustration and sadness that leads people to want to leave a church. We have high expectations of people in our religious community, be they our minister, board members, committee chairs, office staff, other members, or even our ministerial intern. We are all human and often fail to live up to the values as we would wish to.

When wounded in our lives, many of us turn to our religious community for healing. When a part of our religious community is the cause of our wounds then we struggle to believe our church can be a part of our healing. I believe a spiritual injury needs spiritual healing. Perhaps the healing can happen in another religious community but I would suggest the healing might be more whole, more complete if it occurs within the religious community that caused the injury?

The great 16th Century Unitarian Francis David said “We do not need to think alike to love alike.” We hear these words so often in our Unitarian Universalist churches that the profoundness of them can become lost.

These words are so much easier said than acted upon. In the recent turmoil in our church, these words occurred to me often but sadly too often in the violation rather than the observance of the sentiment. We claim that we wish a diversity of opinions and then when we disagree on a major issue we seem to quickly fall out of right relationship with each other. Perhaps the problem is many of us join our movement because “we want to be around people who think like we do.” When a point of disagreement comes up in our community then our relationship with each other can quickly sour and we are at a loss about how to repair it.

As most of us know from our most intimate relationships, a relationship based on love is no guarantee of agreement on all things and avoidance of conflict. Apologies to any new lovers out there! A relationship based on love is a commitment to stay in relationship and work out the difficulties in a mutually beneficial way if possible.

Both our religious connection to our church and our intimate relationships can grow stronger as we work through our differences and conflicts. Being around people who have the same opinions as us is certainly comfortable and supportive but only limited growth can occur. I believe we grow more when we are in community with people who challenge us and are willing to stay in relationship with us as we differ in our thoughts. We can all grow spiritually through this challenge.

One of our duties as members of this religious community is to hold each other accountable for our actions, values and opinions by calling us to embody these values in our actions. I believe Davidson attempted to hold us accountable to these high ideals through his sermons. I believe the board thought they were acting to hold ministerial leadership accountable to our higher values. Many members of our congregation attempted to hold our leadership accountable to values of fairness and openness in recent weeks. These were all good aspects of what happened in the last few weeks.

I believe the failure of our community in the last few weeks is where we fell out of love, respect, and compassion with those we disagree with or were in conflict with. We stopped living our mission by failing to act with compassion and love towards those we disagreed with. Reasonable people can disagree on issues, and disagreeing respectfully is possible. A chasm developed between groups within us where listening stopped as the voices became louder.

There was a dehumanizing of people on all sides of this issue that was heartbreaking for me to witness. I also feel complicit in this since I did too little to stop it. I regret my failure not to do enough to address the dehumanizing words and actions I witnessed on all sides. For example I was talking to a ministerial colleague from another church yesterday who was disgusted by us having many of the documents available through our public website. I too was troubled by this but did not address it Damage was done not only to our church but our movement.

We all probably can think of areas we should have address or things we did differently. Our views became entrenched which limited our imagination to see a greater range of possibilities for the process and how our actions impacted others. I think much of our pain is that we know in our hearts we could have done so much better.

To return to the earlier analogy of the Church as a body: prior to the board’s request for Davidson’s dismissal, a large portion of this community saw our church body as healthy, vibrant, and happy. The request for dismissal and build-up to the congregational meeting showed that much of the body of religious community was injured and in pain. There was a disappointment for many of us that we were unaware of the true feelings of our friends and fellow members of our own religious community. This painful realization that what we thought was a community of health was really a community of brokenness and this was a shock to many.

In looking at how we heal and move forward, I am trying to find sources of hope. One hope I find is that we were not failed by our values but our failure to live up to our values. We often failed to stay in relationship with those we disagree with – to love those that did not think like us.

I have had people on all sides of the issues talk to me trying to find meaning in what happened and seeking to understand their own pain and the pain of others. An honest seeking to understand the pain of others is a sign of hope. The need to be in fellowship with those who share our view is understandable and may be needed in providing emotional support.

The beginning of healing in our community I believe begins with each of us getting together with those having differing opinions and listening to them. Not trying to argue our point or find reasons to dismiss what they are saying, but listening to them to understand why others have the feelings they do. Hopefully if we listen to them they may reciprocate by listening to us. We will hear why people with similar information as us believed, acted, and reached conclusions very different from our own.

Perhaps we may understand most of us were acting in what we believed to be the common good for our religious community. Out of this may grow that seed of respect and though this is not quite the same as loving those who think differently from us, it has the potential to grow there. And at least we will be back in right relationship with others and moving forward. I wish us all well on this difficult journey and hope that we can all be a part of the important work we need to do. As we move towards the Christmas holiday and look forward to our future together may the following words of Howard Thurman hold all of us with love:

When the song of angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:

to find the lost,

to heal the broken,

to feed the hungry,

to release the prisoner,

to rebuild the nations,

to bring peace among the family,

to make music in the heart.

May we all find the music we need for our hearts at this time and through our actions may we be the incarnation of our highest values of love and compassion in this world. And in doing so let us do the healing, rebuilding, and bringing of peace that our community and our world desperately needs.

———————

Channing, William Ellery, The Imitablness of Christ’s Character: The Works of William Ellery Channing Vol.IV (Boston, MA: American Unitarian Association, 1903) p.135

Now what?- Rev. Susan Smith, SWUU District Executive

December 14, 2008 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Reading – Brian Ferguson

Today’s reading is from “My Grandfather’s Blessing: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging” by Rachel Naomi Remen.

Sometimes the very things that threaten our life may strengthen the life in us. David was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes two weeks after his seventeenth birthday. He responded to it with the rage of a trapped animal. Like an animal in a cage he flung himself against the limitations of his disease, refusing to hold to a diet, forgetting to take his insulin, using his diabetes to hurt himself, over and over.

He had been in therapy for almost six months without making much progress when he had a dream. In his dream, he found himself sitting in an empty room without a ceiling, facing a small stone statue of the Buddha. David was not a spiritual young man, but he was at least a familiar with the image of a Buddha. In his dream he was surprised to feel a kinship toward the Buddha, perhaps because this Buddha was a young man, not much older than himself. The statue seemed to have an odd effect on him. Alone in the room with it, he had felt more and more at peace when, without warning, a dagger was thrown from somewhere behind him. It buried itself deep in the Buddha’s heart.

David was profoundly shocked. He felt betrayed, overwhelmed with feelings of despair and anguish. From the depth of these feelings had emerged a single question: “Why is life like this?” And then the statue began to grow, so slowly that at first he was not sure it was really happening. But so it was, and suddenly he knew beyond doubt that this was the Buddha’s response to the knife.

The statue continued to grow, its face as peaceful as before. The knife did not change either. Gradually, it became a tiny black speck on the breast of this enormous smiling Buddha. Watching this, David felt something release him and found he could breathe deeply for the first time in a long time. He awoke with tears in his eyes.

As David told the author his dream, he recognized the feelings he had when he first saw the dagger. The despair and anguish, and even the question “Why is life like this?” were the same feelings and questions that had come up for him in his doctor’s office when he heard for the first time that he had diabetes.

As he put it, “when this disease plunged into the heart of my life”

His dream offered him the hope of wholeness and suggested that, over time, he might grow in such a way that the wound of his illness might become a smaller and smaller part of the sum total of his life.

Prayer – Brian Ferguson

As we gather today we are a community in pain. We are a community which feels divided and disconnected from each other. Our religious community last night made perhaps the most difficult decision a religious community can make – the act of dismissing a minister.

For some this may feel a vindication for their pains and wounds of the past. For others this may be a fresh wound and dashing of their hopes for the future of this community. For some it is both hopeful and painful.

For those who find hope may they have the compassion to reach out to help those hurting. For those who are hurting may they find the strength to embrace the help of others.

While each of us is acutely aware of our own pain, past or present, may we reach out to others in a spirit of compassion and empathy to remember the pain of all others.

We are at a time where all of us are asking what next, what now? What does this mean for us as an individual and our religious community?

We are a community in shock and in grief. Regardless, of what we thought should happen last night – we are here together today, at this moment and in this place – this sacred time and this sacred place.

This is an act of hope and perhaps from this small seed can emerge the first small step in an act of healing. An act of healing ourselves, our relationship with our religious community and our relationship with the sacred.

We profess our hope of healing our world. The need for healing seems very close to each of us at this time. Let us be guided in all we do by the better angels of our natures.

May we all find the capacity to grow from our wounds and not become our wounds. May we grow so our wounds become a smaller and smaller part of who we are.

And may each of us find the guidance and strength we seek to be an agent of healing for ourselves, for our community and for our world.

Amen

Sermon: Now What?

Rev. Susan Smith

The text of Rev. Susan Smith’s sermon is not available but you can listen to it or watch it by clicking on the play buttons above.

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Remen, Rachel Naomi. My Grandfather’s Blessing: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging

Is Courage Ever Enough?

December 7, 2008 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Davidson Loehr, Former Ministers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

December 7, 2008

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

(Nelson Mandela, 1994 Inaugural Speech words taken from Marianne Williamson)

HOMILY: Is Courage Ever Enough?

This is at least the third time in twenty years that I’ve written a sermon inspired by a famous line from Anais Nin. She said, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

Something about those nine words is wonderfully appealing, and seems profoundly right. You can think of times when fear made you shrink, and courage expanded you in a hundred ways:

— You were afraid to ask someone you really liked for a date, then finally got the courage to do it and now here you are.

–You were afraid to try something – trying out for a team or a play or a choir. If you never got the courage up to try, you may still wonder what you missed, how your memory of yourself might have been enlarged if you had just mustered up the courage.

— You finally applied for the school or the job you wanted, and you got it. Or even if you didn’t get it, you know you did the most you could do, and there’s comfort there: a comfort that wouldn’t be there if you’d never taken the risk.

You can multiply the list from your own life, but we can all think of times when courage absolutely seemed to expand our life, and fear shrank it.

So it’s easy to say Yes, that colorful French woman was right – life certainly does shrink and expand according to our courage.

And that word “courage” is interesting in its own right. It comes from a French word meaning “heart.” Reacting to something from the heart feels like we’re coming from a strong place, and that can expand life too, for ourselves and those whose lives we touch – because we can feel the difference.

We actually just heard a beautiful example of this a few minutes ago, in Benjamin Britten’s lovely Ceremony of Carols. There is a footnote to those carols that appears in many program notes for their performance. Besides being one of the 20th century’s great composers, Britten was also a political radical, a gay man, and a conscientious pacifist, opposed to all war. It was tougher to be those things seventy years ago. When England declared war on Germany in September 1939, Britten and his partner left England and moved to the United States. He had good success here, but two and a half years later it became a matter of principle for him to return to England. He returned home in March and April 1942, in a five-week North Atlantic crossing right in the middle of the war. Britten couldn’t have known what would happen to him on his return. He would at least be met with great hostility, and he could have been put in prison.

I can’t imagine what Britten must have felt like during the five dangerous weeks crossing the North Atlantic to return home to an England, always in danger of being sunk by German U-boats. And he wasn’t traveling in anything like first class, or any class. He was cooped up near some large machines that put out a constant roar, high temperatures, and very noxious smells. Right there is where and when he composed the Ceremony of Carols we’ve just heard. The music is so lovely and lively it sounds like it couldn’t possibly have come from that setting. But it didn’t come from the bowels of a ship; it came from his heart – his “cour,” his courage – as his decision to return home also did. Britten was finally accepted back into his country, and this composition from his heart certainly expanded his life, and the lives of thousands like us, still to come. It is a tribute to our music director Brent Baldwin’s great perspicacity that he chose that music long before I had any idea what I was going to be talking about today.

Now you can see that it would be easy to do riffs on words like “heart” and “courage” all morning. But I want to leave the surface level of those wonderful nine words and look a little deeper, because there is another level at which something is wrong with just saying that life expands in proportion to our courage. Something is wrong, something is missing, it just isn’t that simple, and I think the whole saying is backwards. Courage isn’t enough, and isn’t what really makes life expand. That’s what I want to look at this morning. In fact, I think Anais Nin missed the most important point, or just assumed a much simpler picture than life really offers.

So I want to retrace the steps that led me down this provocative path and bring you along with me.

I first started thinking about our movie superheroes, and that we really create them as people who are so strong that they don’t have to be afraid of anybody. It’s that strength that lets them always do the right thing, as we wish we could too. So we project our need for courage onto them, then identify with them as they run, fly or rocket around battling the forces of evil. We think that if only we had the strength of Superman, or the agility and the wonderful gadgets of Batman or Ironman, then the courage part would be easy. So we think OK, it’s courage plus strength. Or courage plus strength plus a lot of cool gadgets.

But that’s not right either, because what sets these superheroes apart really isn’t their strength, cleverness or courage. After all, the supervillains are always pretty well matched with them. Lex Luthor, The Joker and Ironman’s many enemies were brilliant, also had clever gadgets, and weren’t afraid of anything not even superheroes. They had all the courage and strength you could hope for. But their courage didn’t make life expand.

Then I thought, Well OK, but everybody knew the supervillains were wrong. They were just obviously evil characters, like Lone Rangers from the Dark Side: aberrations, Bad Seeds.

But when we push it farther, that simple picture doesn’t hold together either. We have read or seen videos on YouTube of the families of young men or women in Iraq or Palestine who gave their lives to their cause by strapping bombs to their chest then killing themselves and as many strangers as they could. Their families, their communities, often even their religious leaders praise them as martyrs and heroes, not villains. You can say Well, they live in this closed little world where their beliefs are like a house of mirrors, repeating back to them only their own biases, and they’ve been taken in. Their courage has been seduced, we say. But you know they’re saying the same thing about us. It’s complex. It’s about more than courage. Life shrinks and expands not just in proportion to our courage, but also in proportion to the size and inclusiveness of our vision and our heart.

It isn’t courage that makes life expand. It’s courage in the service of high and noble ideals that makes life expand; courage in the service of coming alive, seeking truth, and healing the world.

Courage is the ability to take action. But whether that action expands or shrinks life depends on whether the spirits we serve are good or bad: whether we’re serving the angels of our better nature, or the angels of our worst nature. And how are we to know?

There is no foolproof way, but there’s a famous formula from a third-century theologian I’ve always loved as one of the best guides for people of good heart (Origen, c. 185-254). Our course of action, he said, must always meet two criteria. It must both be useful to us, and at the same time worthy of God. Because life also shrinks and expands in proportion to the size of the god we are serving.

(As a kind of scholastic footnote, Origen used this two-part test to determine whether you were interpreting Scripture rightly, though I think using it to determine whether you’re interpreting life rightly is a fair extension of his intent.)

Now you might want to argue that the families of those human bomb people would say the murder of their enemies was worthy of God. But the most revered thinkers in any religion, including Islam, don’t say that. Only the religious hacks praise murder; the more mature and nuanced say that unless our actions are guided by love and compassion, they are not worthy of God, period. When tactics are brutal or dehumanizing, we have already lost the ability to claim that they were good.

Many of you read a perfect example of this in the national news just two days ago, in a closing chapter to the O.J. Simpson saga that has been going on for fourteen years. On Friday, Las Vegas Judge Jackie Glass sentenced Simpson to a minimum of nine years in prison. Simpson tried to argue that he never meant to hurt anybody, he just wanted to recover his personal things, including his slain wife’s wedding ring. In other words, he was saying that what he did was not only useful to him, but also decent and noble, the sort of thing God would like. The judge pointed out that when he took a gun and accomplices, when he kidnapped and threatened people, his actions put the lie to his words. Once he adopted those tactics, he lost all claim to good intent. If we have a conscience at all, we know the difference. It’s one of the things about us that we have to be able to count on for a legal system to work, for juries to work, for anything to work. We know the difference.

It’s never as simple as saying that life expands in proportion to our courage. In every case – from superheroes and supervillains to suicidal bombers or the latest installment in the O.J. Simpson saga, it’s a similar lesson. Life expands in proportion to our courageous service of healthy and life-giving ideals, nothing less. It’s like another metaphor I’ve used here before, about the two wolves. A boy went to his grandfather for advice, saying he was often torn between wanting to do whatever he thought he could get away with, and what he knew was really right. Yes, the grandfather admitted, he had always had those same two voices in him. He thought of them as two wolves, each fighting to define his soul. One urged him to use his strength, courage and cleverness to get away with whatever he could, and the other would accept only fair and caring actions. All his life, the grandfather said, these two wolves have been fighting to own him, to steer his soul. When the boy asked which wolf wins, the old man said, “The one that I feed, my son – the one that I feed.”

Whether we think of these competing spirits as two wolves or as the angels of our better and worse natures, it matters tremendously which one we choose to feed, because only one of them – only one of them — has the power to expand life.

Religion and Economics

November 30, 2008 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Brian Ferguson, Former Ministers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

November 30, 2008

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Reading:

excerpt from Sin, Evil, and Economics

by contemporary Christian Theologian Sallie McFague.

Thanks to technologies of communication, transportation, and commerce, the world of the twenty-first century is more deeply interconnected than ever before, and it is increasingly clear that the unifying logic or discourse is the language of capitalism. Not everyone chooses to recognize the primacy of that language, and some speak defiantly in other tongues, but there can be little argument that it has become the global discourse with which all others must contend. It is the defining myth of our time.

While we each have choices to make about the degree to which we will “buy into” the myth, practically no one on earth has the freedom to opt out altogether. It is that pervasive and that powerful. And at the heart of capitalism, I have argued, is the exact dynamic of freedom and bondage as described by the famous Christian theologian Augustine’s theory of evil. Capitalism assumes that we are creatures of desire, and it stokes our desire for lesser goods to the point of addiction, finally rendering us powerless to opt out of its dynamic.

What would it mean, after all, to get “outside” of capitalism in today’s world? Even those who want nothing to do with it, who view it as the pinnacle of Western corruption or imperialism, or whose minds and bodies bear the scars of its excesses and exclusions, are nevertheless pulled into its captivating influence.

Strangely, while market capitalism began with a classic Christian view of humanity based on selfish greed—the basis for the allocation of scarce resources and the eventual “trickle down” of prosperity for all in the twenty-first century—it has eventuated in a näive, optimistic, narrow, and undifferentiated view of sin and evil. Classical economic theory claims that the very core of who we are—individuals motivated by insatiable desire for more and more goods—is the basis from which to build the good life for all. From the selfish desires of billions of human beings turning the earth’s resources into goods for sale, prosperity for all will presumably come eventually.

This vision of the good life, however, neglects two huge facts: the just distribution of the earth’s resources as well as the limits of these resources. We now know that these matters are not mysteriously taken care of by the “invisible hand” of economics; on the contrary, the insatiable greed of billions of human beings causes horrendous injustice to other creatures, human and nonhuman, as well as undermining the sustainability of the planet itself.

But market capitalism does not deal with the tragic dimensions of sin and evil; its view of sin is narrow and viewed only as a sin against God, even though the implication of unregulated greed results in sin against neighbor and nature. By bracketing sin within the limits of the violation of God’s will, it eliminates from view the massive evil that our individual choices have created for others on planet Earth.

Prayer

The following are the words of the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

Let us be at peace with our bodies and our minds.

Let us return to ourselves and become wholly ourselves.

Let us be aware of the source of being, common to us all and to all living things.

Evoking the presence of the Great Compassion, let us fill our hearts with our own compassion – towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

Let us pray that we ourselves cease to be the cause of suffering to each other.

With humility, with awareness of the existence of life, nd of the sufferings that are going on around us, let us practice the establishment of peace in our hearts and on earth.

Amen

Sermon – Religion and Economics

With the Thanksgiving holiday just past, there is now the seasonal tumble into the Christmas holidays. This past Friday apparently marks the beginning of the Christmas season, a beginning marked by shopping rather than any religious significance or perhaps shopping is religion for some people.

The media attempts to whip up excitement about the beginning of the Christmas shopping season as if it is some sort of race or competition. The mantra seems to be “they who buy the most present wins.” We are told about the must-have goods this season and the so-called bargains to be had. Those of us with children have already been barraged for a few weeks about the gifts our children want. A list that seems ever-changing – or perhaps I missed the point and my daughter’s new requests were additions to her list of desires and not replacements. I might have a very disappointed daughter this Christmas as she receives only one of her many requests.

Looking for someone to blame for these endless requests for presents, I blame at the media. Then I realize that my five year old daughter is too young to read and she doesn’t watch television but she has this remarkably impressive communication network which keeps her supplied with all the information about the latest hip toys. This week I read an article where a group called the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood had asked the Toy industry to cut back on its marketing to children due to the severe economics hardships which are particularly affecting families.

The Toy industry Association’s response was a firm defense of current marketing practices by asserting that children “are a vital part of the gift selection process.” It appears to me the toy industry association sees children as their most effective and certainly most persistent sales people. So begins the child on their life-long role as consumers. With little regulation of advertising to children then we leave the individual parents battling the massive forces of advertising in a David and Goliath battle where we have taken the sling slot away from David and given it to Goliath.

While the creation of desire for some product by advertising and the resulting peer pressure is most noticeable in children, I think most of us are affected by it. The philosopher and environmentalist, Max Oelschlaeger, says “In so-far as Americans have a collective identity it is as the consumer who lives amid unprecedented material choice and the worker who bends the earth to our virtually unrestrained human purpose.”

Even in difficult economic times as we are experiencing now then consumerism permeates our society in so many ways it creates values and purpose for many people. James Luther Adams, the 20th century Unitarian theologian, maintained that all people have a religion whether they realize it or not. He says “The question concerning faith is not, shall I be a person of faith? The proper question is, rather, which faith is mine? For whether a person craves prestige, wealth, security, or amusement; whether he lives for country, for science, for God or for plunder, he shows that he has faith, he shows that he puts confidence in something. Find out what he gives his deepest loyalty to and you’ve found his religion.” In listening to these words today, it appears to me that money, material possession, and our roles as consumers are defining meaning and value for many in our society therefore fulfills many of the roles of religion.

Our economic system through consumerism and advertising is a powerful perhaps dominant cultural force in our lives today. Yet as we reminded in the reading from Melita earlier, it is based on individual self-interest which unless we control it is just the contemporary reincarnation of the sin of greed. While Economics is often thought of as the study of money and financial systems, it is really a study of human decision-making for the allocation of limited resources. Economics is about how we deal with scarcity and limits with money being an important mechanism to determine the allocation of resources “efficiently”. Sometimes I find it hard to think of money as merely a tool in our lives since so often it seems like a goal in itself. We choose our jobs based on it, plan our retirements around it, and it places very real limitations on the lives of most of us.

Some people say that money makes the world go around. Another view is that money doesn’t make the world go around, but having it makes the journey much more pleasant. Regardless money is important in our society and necessary to meet many of our basic needs. But money can become an obsession for us as we desire more than necessary for their basic needs and distorting what is most important in our lives. All of the major religions caution us to beware of money becoming an idol or a false God, yet religious institutions walk that difficult line of needing money for their own survival but not wanting to be obsessed about it.

In the reading earlier, the author Sallie McFague states that in the 21st Century “the unifying logic or discourse is the language of capitalism” and asks the question of what it would mean to get outside of capitalism in today’s world? We are all so submerged in the world of commerce both as workers and consumers that it is difficult to remember that there are some institutions that do not operate on the typical model of market capitalism. Our non-profit philanthropic institutions are an example which collect donations then distribute goods and services to those in need. There is no attempt to make a profit therefore they can provide goods and services to everyone free or reduced cost.

Another institution that operates on the edge of the market capitalism system is this church. Some might say that our church operates in the hardest aspects of both the non-profit and for-profit world. Our income to support this church is through the donations of members like you – sounds like a National Public radio pledge drive – while much of our spending is in the world of market capitalism. We cannot turn around to the electrical utility company and say donations are down this month so we can’t pay you but we will as soon as donations pick up. I would love to see their faces at the suggestion.

The existence of all elements of this religious community is dependent on the donations of money and time from you the members of the congregation. You are asked to donate what you can financially to sustain and grow our community. There is no market mechanism that determines the price in competition with other churches. Could you imagine charging for people to come for our worship services – $20 to hear the senior minister, $5 for the intern minister and a refund if you don’t like the message?

Perhaps I’ll talk to stewardship about this idea. Not only is the idea crass it misses an important point about why we are here. We have our message, our culture, and our values which we wish to promote to all who are interested. We believe our religious vision has value but we also believe that it is too important, too valuable for people to be prevented hearing our vision due to lack of money. Most religious groups want to transcend the artificial limits placed on access to places and experiences based on limited money.

Those limits are placed by our economic system in an attempt to handle the scarcity of a resource and in a desire to make a profit. Religion is attempting to remove these limits by seeing our message and values as a source of abundance not a cause for scarcity. Most of us are attracted to our religious community because our lives are improved in some way by being here.

Many of us feel affirmed by being part of this community, some of us have had life changing experiences here, and I know people who feel our Liberal religious message has been life-saving to them. How do you put a dollar price on such a place? You can’t. The work is too important but such activities have a cost. Therefore as a religious community we let each of us decide for ourselves about the value of the community we have here and the contribution we wish to make to ease that cost. We are outside much of the market system since we give our service away without charge and those of us who choose, contribute our money and time as we determine is appropriate.

Our economic system is very efficient at delivering a variety of products and services to people for a low price. That is its purpose and we all live with the benefits of that. Our economics system was never developed to be the promoter of values for our society that was what religion is for. Values such as ecological sustainability and greater justice for more people are not promoted in our current economic system unless the consumers force it to. Our consuming habits are perhaps the clearest way that we express our moral choices on a daily basis yet there seems to be a strong separation between our economics and our religion.

The famous industrialist, Andrew Carnegie said that Christianity should not interfere with how money is made and only get involved in how its surplus should be dispersed in the form of charity. It seems that many religious organizations have not moved beyond such thinking therefore often fail to critique our economics system where it may be exploitive of people or abusive to our environment. If injustice in our society is caused by unethical production of goods, unsustainable consumption of resources, or deceitful advertising it not only appropriate to address the issues but I would say our religion calls us to do so.

In the reading we heard earlier, the author Sallie McFague discusses the use of the Christian doctrines of sin and evil in addressing the harm excessive and unregulated greed is harmful to our world. Her critique of market capitalism is that sustainability and justice for all inhabitants are not its central goals of the system. Now we do not talk about sin or evil much in the pulpits of our Unitarian Universalist churches perhaps that is why many of you are here and not at other churches – but I think the ideas behind the doctrines if not the terms themselves can be useful in addressing the excesses and exploitative elements of our economic system.

Now, the Liberal Religious tradition has moved away a long time ago from the doctrine of Original Sin where humanity is inherently depraved but the concept of sin itself is more ambiguous for us. I feel comfortable with McFague’s idea of sin being an excessive concern for ourselves at the expense of the needs of others or sustainability of the planet. Sin is something we are responsible for and can control through the choices we make.

McFague defines evil as the institutions, practices, and attitudes resulting from an exploitive economic system based on excessive individual self-interest, which creates suffering and deprivation in our world. For example, it may seem in my self-interest to buy a product at a low price but if the product was made by forced child labor then I think it is appropriate to call this a sinful act supporting an evil system. Strong but I feel appropriate words. We can replace sin with wrong and evil with bad, it is the meaning not the words that are important.

With these concepts of sin and evil then this sets up a great tension between our economic system and religion. Market capitalism believes that the good life is built by each of us pursuing our own enlightened self-interest. Religion cautions against excessive self-interest and reminds us that through our interdependence we are called to care for one another and our planet.

I think this is a question we deal with daily during satisfying our own needs is when does our enlightened self-interest become excessive self-interest? How do we, as religious people and consumers who desire to lead a good life, deal with this tension in our self-interest as we go about our busy lives and with the child who has just made yet another request for a Christmas present? You really want an easy answer for this one aren’t you – alas there isn’t one. We have to accept that tension between enlightened and excessive self-interest as real and difficult. Our choices as consumers can have a negative impact therefore we should be intentional and thoughtful about our purchasing choices.

The stewardship of our planet and welfare of all people is particularly important in the age of the Global Economy since the environmental impact and exploitation of people may occur far from our purchasing of a product therefore could remain invisible to us unless we are vigilant. The notion of interdependence between ourselves as consumers and the workers who produce the goods, wherever in the world they are, leads us to take responsibility for buying products that were produced without exploitation. Examples of exploitation would be child labor, coerced labor, or paying non-livable wages.

If our individual consumer decisions create an economic system that prevents those in need receiving basic necessities and those producing the goods a reasonable quality of life, then our individual decisions should be able to change this system. I, like many of you, have tried with my consumption habits to move beyond the obvious criteria of price, function, and style to consider the following factors:

Try to distinguish between my true long-term needs and my short-term often misplaced desires.

Can I borrow, barter or get used whatever I am wanting?

Consider factors other than price such as how goods were produced including working conditions, reputation of company involved, and environmental impact.

These criteria do not make shopping easier since they take effort and any desire for perfection will be very frustrating. The goal for me is greater intention and awareness in my consumer habits, which allows me to bring my religious values into my everyday life in a meaningful way. We are both beneficiaries of our market capitalism system and often sufferers in the hardships created by it.

Our economic system is good at delivering products for a low price and handling scarcity. It was not designed to and therefore does not do a good job of determining values or what is valuable.

In our consumer culture today it is too easy to confuse price and value – they are not the same thing. Just consider what is most valuable in your own life – I suspect it has nothing to do with the price you paid for them assuming they even had a price. The love of friends and family, the old photographs we have, a book of special importance to us, that great piece of music that brings us to tears, or that life-changing experience that might even have happened in this church. Those items are dealing in a currency that is far more important than money. They are dealing in the eternal values of finding what makes our life worth living and meaningful. Let the economic system determine price, we are the only ones that define for ourselves what has value and worth in our lives.

——————

Jones, Serene and Lakeland, Paul. Editors. Constructive Theology: A Contemporary Approach to Classical Themes (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005) p.141, 148

Crary, David. Meltdown fallout: some parents rethink toy-buying http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081129/ap-on-bi-ge/toy-worries (accessed 29th November, 2008)

Oelschlaeger, Max Caring for Creation: An Ecumenical Approach to the Environmental crisis. (New Haven, Connecticut. Yale University Press, 1994) p.96

Parke, David The Epic of Unitarianism (Skinner House, Boston, 1985) p.149

Jones, Serene & Paul Lakeland Constructive Theology: A Contemporary Approach to Classical Themes (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005) p.148

Jones, Serene & Paul Lakeland Constructive Theology: A Contemporary Approach to Classical Themes (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005) p.141

Meeks, M. Douglas God the Economist: The Doctrine of God and Political Economy (Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1989) p.20

Jones, Serene & Paul Lakeland Constructive Theology: A Contemporary Approach to Classical Themes (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005) p.148

GOT TAPES OF OLD SERMONS?

November 24, 2008 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Podcasts

WE NEED YOUR HELP. We have around 400 MP3 audio files of sermons on our web site. Our goal is to post audio files of all our sermons from the present through Aug 2000, but some of our master tapes are missing. Please look through the list below and if you have any of the audio tapes on this list, contact the web team at and we will contact you with further instructions.

MISSING AUDIO SERMONS

Date Sermon Title

08-01-00 ESSAY: From Surviving to Thriving: Moving Beyond UUism

08-13-00 The Virtues of Heresy

08-27-00 In a Restaurant, Choose a Table Near a Waiter

09-24-00 Talk is Not Cheap

10-08-00 The Dark God of Capitalism

11-19-00 Choose Life

11-26-00 How To Become A Butterfly

02-25-01 Beliefs Part 2: The Religion of Science

03-11-01 Beliefs Part 3: Mysticism

03-18-01 Beliefs Part 4: Feminine Spirituality

04-15-01 New Life for Old

04-29-01 Four Faces of Jesus

05-13-01 Our War on Drugs: A Mother’s Day Sermon

05-20-01 Love Talk

05-27-01 Sacred Stories

06-10-01 Walking on Water

06-17-01 Welcome!

09-09-01 The Courage to Tell the Truth

09-23-01 More Aftermath from September 11

09-30-01 Living in Denial (Part 1 of 5)

10-14-01 Controlling Others Through Anger (Part 2 of 5)

10-21-01 Bargaining : The Deals That We Make To Avoid Change -Part 3

11-11-01 Remembering Those Who Fought For Us

11-18-01 Accepting Life’s Gifts (Part 5 of 5)

12-29-01 Religion is the Music of Believers Seeking Truth Together

09-29-02 Oil, Arrogance, and War

03-30-03 Soliloquies from the Prodigal Son : The Fatted Calf

07-23-03 The Simple Gifts of Liberal Religion – SUUSI

07-21-04 Why “Unitarian Universalism” is Dying

03-13-05 Finding Your Own Voice

04-24-05 Growing Up and Finding Ourselves: Annual youth service

12-25-05 Christmas Day Stories, 2005

Harvesting Thanksgiving 2008

November 23, 2008 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Brian Ferguson, Davidson Loehr, Former Ministers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Brian Ferguson

23 November 2008

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Prayer

Thanksgiving is part of a harvest cycle, where we plant and then hope we can be thankful for what we reap. In that spirit, I want to share a short and thankful focus from the Buddhist tradition showing us what we hope for every time we plant seeds – whether in the ground, in our lives or in our worship services:

Now we have finished. Everyone stand and we will bow to the Buddha three times to thank him. We thank him, because even if we did not have a great enlightenment, we had a small enlightenment. If we did not have a small enlightenment, at least we didn’t get sick. And if we got sick, at least we didn’t die. So let’s thank the Buddha. (Hsuan Hua)

Amen.

HOMILY: Harvesting Thanksgiving

Davidson Loehr

Since I needed my Thanksgiving reflections today to be focused on something significant but fairly distant, I want to use a metaphor to transpose some deeper dimensions of Thanksgiving into history, politics and life. This may sound like the opening to the sermon of a few weeks ago, when I said I wanted to talk about the meaning of life, honest religion, God, Jesus, the Bible, salvation, the Army, amoeba, the Holy Spirit, the Marine Corps, and playing hide-and-seek. But it’s a homily, not a full-length sermon, so it won’t be that ambitious.

Thanksgiving, as we know, is a harvest festival, in the tradition of harvest festivals going back to ancient times. They planted, then they harvested what they had planted. What did they plant?

On the literal level, they planted the usual stuff – beans, squash, other vegetables, they cultivated orchards and the rest. But deeper, it’s different. So let’s start with the first Thanksgiving in this country, which happened in 1621.

You all know much of this story. In December of 1620, 102 Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower and landed in Massachusetts.

Mother Nature wasn’t on their side, though Father Time was. They were greeted, after a harrowing trip across the Atlantic, by a brutal and deadly Massachusettes winter. One hundred and two of them arrived here; by the following summer, only 55 were left alive. Nearly half of them died.

Imagine this! 102 people leave their homes, say farewell to families and friends, say goodbye to a whole way of life, a whole world. They arrive as strangers in a strange land, and the land knows them not. It is cold, indifferent and deadly, and they spend a lonely and fearful winter freezing, starving, and dying. They bury nearly half of their number: one half of these Pilgrims buries the other half, and in the spring they plant crops and they hunt for food.

The crop is good. There is food here after all, there can be life here. It was like all of life, compressed into one year. And by late summer, when they could at last celebrate a good crop, half of those with whom they had hoped to celebrate were dead. This was the preparation for the first Thanksgiving, and there was not a yellow Happy Face in the bunch.

The first Thanksgiving lasted for three days. There was much eating, drinking, and merriment between the surviving Pilgrims and Chief Massasoit and his people. According to one source, the menu for the feast was venison stew cooked over an outdoor fire; spit-roasted wild turkeys stuffed with corn bread; oysters baked in their shells; sweet corn baked in its husks; and pumpkin baked in a bag and flavored with maple syrup. The food was served on large wooden serving platters, and everyone ate their fill.

But now let’s explore the metaphor. What did the Pilgrims really plant, that let them reap this feast? They certainly didn’t plant venison, wild turkey or oyster seeds.

What the Pilgrims really planted were two crops: hope, and empowerment. They planted hope rather than fear or despair, and empowerment rather than just rolling over and dying.

That’s an easy segue from history to politics because, to put it in a contemporary sound bite, what those Pilgrims were saying to life was “Yes, we can!”

We are just near the beginning of a new planting season in American history. And those seeds of hope and empowerment have been planted on lawns, bumper stickers and windows everywhere.

That’s a huge part of the reason this amazingly unlikely man Barack Obama will be our 44th president: because after the last round of political seeds planted and the harvest we have reaped from that, people were simply starving for hope, the power to make a difference, and the chance to make a difference. We don’t yet know how this new planting will work out, or what kind of harvest we will have.

But we should look over the last crops we’ve planted, because the harvest is damned near killing us.

Think of some of the seeds we have planted during the past three decades or so:

— We planted the seeds of what the French have called “savage capitalism”: an endorsement of high-level greed with only the barest of government restraint. We planted ideas and behaviors intentionally exalting profits over people, stock prices over the livelihoods and lives of human beings. And in the harvest was a crop of American workers forced to compete with the cheapest labor in the world, and unable to do so.

— We sowed the idea that healthcare was a market product deserved only by those who could afford it, rather than a necessary protection of all our citizens, as every other industrialized country in the world does. And we have reaped a harvest of perhaps fifty million citizens who cannot afford to be protected from accidents, disease, or astronomic medical bills that have plunged millions into bankruptcy and desperation. Also in the harvest are an estimated 18,000 deaths a year credited to their lack of adequate health care protection.

— We planted the idea that we could use our armies to invade any country with something we wanted. On one level, we’ve done this for a very long time, as have other strong countries. But in the last seventy years, the invasion, occupation and looting of Iraq was the first invasion of a sovereign nation on that scale since Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. And from this planting of violent militarism, we have harvested the deaths of over 4,200 American soldiers, and many times that number torn apart physically, mentally or both, as well as the deaths of nearly 1.3 million Iraqis, guilty of trying to defend their country from a foreign invasion, or of just being unfortunate enough to live in a country whose oil we lust after.

I could go on down the list of bad seeds we have planted and the bitter harvests we have reaped, but you all know those seeds, those crops, and those harvests of shame.

Choosing the seeds we will plant is not an isolated act. It is interconnected with everything that follows.

The wonderfully wise ancient Greeks coined a famous, short formula for how this kind of sowing and reaping works. Here’s how they put it:

Plant a thought, reap an action;

Plant an action, reap a habit;

Plant a habit, reap a character;

Plant a character, reap a destiny.

We rob ourselves if we treat Thanksgiving like a superficial happy-face festival. The harvest metaphor is too rich for that, and offers too much insight and power to ignore.

We plant, we reap, then we hope we can be thankful for the crop. But whether we can be thankful or not depends on what we planted, and our diligence in nourishing and attending to it.

No planting or crops are ever perfect. History doesn’t show us anybody who was ever that good. Even the wonderfully wise ancient Greeks had slavery, limited rights for women, allowed only about ten percent of the adult population to vote, and seemed to care about only those who excelled above the rest. The United States of America has, at its best, grown up around a very different dream, from very different kinds of seeds.

I wonder if you’ve ever read the full poem by Emma Lazarus that is engraved on a tablet within the pedestal on which our Statue of Liberty stands. She intentionally contrasts our dream with that of the Greeks, because she says we want a different kind of harvest. Her poem is titled “The New Colossus,” named in reference to the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Listen to the poem in terms of the harvest metaphor we’ve been using, and see if you don’t hear the American Dream in a new way:

The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Those are some of the most fertile seeds of hope and empowerment ever planted. That message, “Yes, we can!” is the most fundamental expression of the American Dream. Let us plant, in our nation and in our hearts, seeds of hope and empowerment. Let us tend to them, nurture them so they might flourish. Let us hope Mother Nature and Father Time will be on our side. And then let us pray that when the harvest comes, we can give thanks.

HOMILY: Brian Ferguson

Confession is not part of our Liberal religious tradition but I do have a confession to make. The Thanksgiving holiday remains a bit foreign to me. Now being Scottish I didn’t grow up with a Thanksgiving holiday but I don’t think we Scots are an ungrateful bunch. Yet again Scottish weather with its continuous rain and howling wind does not encourage a great sense of gratitude in anyone – except perhaps umbrella makers. The North American Thanksgiving holiday does not conjure family memories or traditions for me as it may for many of you. It also feels for me too close in time to Christmas – a holiday which has always been important to my family. Thanksgiving gets in the way of Christmas for me. Perhaps I’m missing the point but Thanksgiving seems to be predominantly about stressing oneself in preparation for the upcoming Christmas season. We attempt to fly or drive somewhere along with everyone else then express gratitude by eating too much. I’ve been your intern minister for three months now so I thought it was time you saw my curmudgeon side. That was it. The grinch that stole Thanksgiving.

More seriously, while not having a personal tradition of Thanksgiving I feel taking time to give thanks for our spiritual and material possessions to be a healthy practice. Meister Eckhart, the wise 13th century mystic, once said that if the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is thank you that would suffice. The idea of “thank you” as a prayer, as an earnest appreciation of something beyond our selves, resonates with me. Giving thanks when we are healthy, content, and life is going well seems easy and appropriate to do. We are probably too busy having a good time to do it but expressing gratitude would be the right thing to do when life is good. Giving thanks after we have come through hard times and recovering might even give us a heightened appreciation for the simple gifts in our life. What about giving thanks during tough times such as many of us are experiencing now? How do we adopt an attitude of gratitude when many of us are struggling with the various hardships we are experiencing as a nation, as a religious community, and as individuals? I struggle with expressing gratitude at this time. Avoidance or complaining would be so much easier.

There have been many studies conducted saying that during times of economic hardship two things increase – going to movies and alcohol consumption. Such times of uncertainty can lead us to want to escape from our present circumstance. Temporary escapes from a difficult situation can allow us some relief from stress and gain some distance from the issue at hand. Taken to excess such escapism can also lead to an avoidance of reality and an abdication of responsibility. At the other extreme of escapism is the tendency to look to blame someone or something for the difficult circumstances. Blaming others for our own misfortune can really feel good in the short term. We hear of plenty of blame for the global economic conditions – Wall Street, predatory mortgage lenders, greedy Chief Executive Officers, our President, the Republicans, Chinese imports, immigrants to this country – of which I am one. Voting for the Democrats four and eight years ago is not an immunization to our own responsibility or complicity for the current turmoil. Similarly voting for John McCain a few weeks ago is not an abdication of responsibility for what happens in the next four years.

If escapism and blame are unhelpful in tough times then how can expressing gratitude be useful? We usually express gratitude in return for something we receive such as the help of another, a gift received, or simple appreciation of our good fortune. The gifts that life presents us are not always apparent in times of hardship. We are more sensitive, perhaps overly so, to what we have lost or have fear of losing than what we have. We may have less than we had a year ago, financially many of us have a lot less than just two months ago. Do we give thanks for the contents of the half full glass or dwell on the losses of the half empty glass? In hard times the half empty glass seems the much easier option.

Another wise person, who also happened to be my manager in my first job said to me that “it doesn’t have to be a good experience to be an experience.” I have found this observation to be very useful at various times during my life. Life provides learning opportunities whether we want them or not. Perhaps in times of hardship rather than times of plenty we can find what really is most important to us as we are faced with limits, loss, and scarcity. Times of hardship force us to make difficult decisions that we would rather avoid. External events force us to give up things that seem important to us and sometimes we find those things to have been more of a burden than a treasure.

Many of us turn to religion to make sense of the hardships and losses we experience. Sometimes it can feel that religion is just a spoil sport in our life. When things are going well for us religion can be the nagging reminder that tends to dampen our happiness by making us feel guilty for our good fortune and reminding us of the suffering of others. Some religious leaders call this encouraging humility but really we just can’t stand seeing anyone having a good time. Alternatively, when things are going badly for us, then religion becomes the voice of hope or explainer of our fate – have faith then things will turn out alright or there is a reason for our hardship. The famous American Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr claimed the function of the preacher was “to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” In my less gracious moods this actually sounds like it could be fun. I think that is my curmudgeon side again.

While this view of religion as a counter-balance in people’s lives between comfort and affliction is popular amongst many I find it too simplistic and unhelpful. How can we in good faith separate people into the comfortable and the afflicted? Life is just not that simple. In our own lives most of us have that intertwining of good fortune and suffering simultaneously. Our jobs provide us both a livelihood and high level of stress. Our families can be both a source of support and a burden. Retirement is an opportunity for freedom and a source of insecurity. Even our religious community can provide us with both heartwarmth and heartache as we deal with the uncertainties of life. I think many of us have both doubt and suffering in our lives simultaneously with hope and strength. Religion at its best helps us to be grateful for the good in our life while providing comfort to the distresses of life. Good religion reminds us that we can be both the givers and the recipients of the great eternal values of gratitude, compassion and loving-kindness.

We are not individuals isolated from our surrounding community and our actions matter. Ultimately, this is what I am most thankful for since I do believe what we do and how we do it matters. While not everything we do may seem to be religious, I believe that how we do things can and should be religious. When we treat others with honesty, compassion and respect it is religious. While it can seem our small actions make little difference to the greater events around us, our actions matter greatly to those around us and most directly affected by them. I actually think our actions especially actions of gratitude, kindness and compassion are more significant in times of hardship and uncertainty. At such times people are in more need of help and support while there is less in terms of money and goodwill.

For me, the greatest gift expressing gratitude we have to give, is the gift of service to others and in troubled times it is often harder for us to give. In tough times then this gift is more needed and more appreciated, therefore our gift of service to others returns to us by making us feel more valued. The gift of service to others allows the giver to feel useful and the recipient to feel cared for. A gift that addresses the most basic human needs of being valued and being useful perhaps reflects a variation on our traditional view of Thanksgiving. Or perhaps our gift of service to others is a prayer that says thank you to the miracle that is each of our lives and maybe that is the very essence of Thanksgiving.

Or perhaps my view of Thanksgiving is too foreign for you in which case I’ll remind you of the Buddhist prayer Davidson read earlier: Now we have finished. Everyone stand and will bow to the Buddha three times to thank him. We thank him, because if Brian’s message of giving thanks through service to others was not enlightening, then we had Davidson’s message. If Davidson’s message of a harvest of hope and empowerment was not enlightening, then we had the music. And if the music was not comforting, at least we had comfortable seats. So let’s thank the Buddha.

The Transient and the Permanent in Religion

November 16, 2008 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Audio available, Davidson Loehr, Former Ministers, Sermons

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16 November 2008

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER:

Let us find a spiritual North Star to steer by when we are torn between life’s over-rated pleasures and its under-rated treasures.

We want to feel the difference between being opportunistic and being authentic, and learn how we can better choose the one that gives us more and better life.

Let us find the determination not to do what we should not do, the courage to do what we should do, and that elusive wisdom that lets us tell the difference.

How often we chase after things we don’t need, like dogs chase cars, not knowing what good they’d do us if we caught them. Can we learn to yearn for what we need rather than what we merely want?

And as for our lives – if they can’t be as long as we would like, can they be as rich and rewarding as we wish?

These are just some of the questions we feel along life’s path on this day as on many days. We offer them up, to speak them out loud in the hope that the person who hears them will be us.

Amen

SERMON: The Transient and the Permanent in Religion

There’s something exhilarating about being present when high ideals and aspirations are discussed, even if all we do is listen. We consult experts in diet, exercise, ecology, finances and a few dozen other areas, all important, all with a few really gifted and motivated people available to pass on their inspiring visions to us, and it feels well worth the money we’ve spent. In the meantime, we stay overweight, out of shape, eating poorly, handling our finances poorly, and the rest of it. Still, it’s inspiring.

Hearing about gifted religious visionaries and prophets is like this, too. This is the third in the series of three sermons on the early 19th century thinkers who helped define Unitarianism as a separate religion in America, a religion that was derived from, but distinct from, liberal Christianity. All three men were in their 30s when they delivered the sermons that Unitarian students are still required to read. William Ellery Channing was 38 when he delivered the sermon called “Unitarian Christianity” in 1819. Ralph Waldo Emerson was 35 when he gave his address at the Harvard Divinity School – the last time he was invited to speak there for 30 years. The minister I want to talk about today was Theodore Parker, who was just 31 when he delivered a sermon called “The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity” in 1841. I have to say that Parker is my favorite of the three, and was from the first time I read their sermons nearly thirty years ago.

Parker was an almost mythic person. Born the eleventh child of a farmer, he grew up very poor. He was mostly self-educated, then wound up graduating from Harvard Divinity School. By the time he entered the ministry, he could read twenty languages. After he died, at the age of 49, it was discovered that his library was the largest personal library in America, with about 50,000 volumes. His biographer (Henry Steele Commager) said that Parker wrote notes in the margins of almost all of them. If he actually read them all, that would be almost three books a day from the day he was born.

At his peak, he preached to around 3,000 people, the largest audience in America – without a microphone. His sermons routinely lasted over an hour, were thoroughly researched and brilliantly written. Besides being the most powerful and combative voice of liberal religion in America – he was far more combative than either William Ellery Channing or Ralph Waldo Emerson – he was ferociously active on behalf of women’s rights, prison reform and especially anti-slavery causes in the 1840s and 1850s, well before that was a cause most Unitarians would touch. That was partly because many wealthy Unitarians made a lot of money from the business of slavery, and partly because it was a rude subject, not suited to high-class cocktail hours. They looked to their ministers for comfort, not challenge.

He was part of the Underground Railroad that helped slaves escape from the South. One story about him that shows both his courage and his ferocity is about the time that he performed a wedding ceremony for two escaped slaves, holding a Bible in one hand and a pistol in the other, to shoot anyone who tried to stop him.

Martin Luther King once said, “We begin to die the day we become silent about the things that matter.” As far as I can tell, Parker never had one of those days in his life. He was uninhibited in his writings against dishonest religion. The things he said in just this one sermon defined the theological debates in America for the next generation, and are still relevant and powerful.

But I want you to hear his words, because he was very good with words. So imagine, if you can, sitting in a Unitarian church on May 19, 1841, when American Christianity – including Unitarianism – was still quite supernatural and often so conservative that it would feel a bit like today’s right-wing Christianity. Imagine hearing some of these words spoken by a brilliant and fiery 31-year-old preacher. (I’ve paraphrased some of these excerpts, to transport them from early 19th to early 21st century ways of speaking.) –

While true religion is always the same thing, in each century and every land, the Christianity of the People, which is the religion that is accepted and lived out; has never been the same thing in any two centuries or lands.

Anyone, who traces the history of what is called Christianity, will see that nothing changes more from age to age than the doctrines taught as Christian, and insisted on as essential to Christianity and personal salvation. What is falsehood in one area passes for truth in another. The heresy of one age is the orthodox belief and “only infallible rule” of the next. The stream of Christianity, as men receive it, has caught a stain from every soil it has filtered through, so that now it is not the pure water from the well of Life, which is offered to our lips, but streams troubled and polluted with [a lot of] dirt.

Since our various theologies are so transient, why do we need to accept the teachings of men, as though they were the word of God?

Almost every sect, that has ever been, makes Christianity rest on the personal authority of Jesus, rather than the immutable truth of the doctrines themselves. It is hard to see why the great truths of Christianity should rest on the personal authority of Jesus, any more than the axioms of geometry rest on the personal authority of Euclid, or Archimedes. The authority of Jesus, as of all teachers, must rest on the truth of his words.

Wasn’t Jesus our brother; the son of man, as we are; the Son of God, like ourselves? His excellence, was it not human excellence? His wisdom, love, piety, — sweet and celestial as they were, — are they not what we also may attain? In him, as in a mirror, we may see the image of God. Viewed in this way, how beautiful the life of Jesus is.

God’s word will not change, for that word is Truth. From this Jesus subtracted nothing; to this he added nothing.

Christianity is a simple thing; very simple. It is absolute, pure Morality; absolute, pure Religion; the love of man; the love of God.

Real religion gives men new life.

One hundred sixty-seven years later, many of these words would still send most believers into fits of apoplexy.

For Parker, the only sanction that religion requires “is the voice of God in your heart; the perpetual presence of Him, who made us – Christ and the Father abiding within us.” This is the permanent religious core of genuine Christianity, for Parker; the rest is transient and dispensable – including the creeds, orthodoxies, rituals, costumes, and if yo think about it, even the churches and ministers. (Gary Dorrien, The Making of Liberal Theology, 1805-1900, p. p. 86).

As you can hear – though Parker seemed not to hear it – the logical implications of his insights pulverized the intellectual foundations of Christianity, theism, and all religions, reducing them to little more than ways of talking about high morals and ideals – which of course can be done without using any religious language at all.

Even if his ministerial colleagues couldn’t articulate it, they must have felt the force of this earthquake in the foundations of their comfortable faith, because they reacted by cutting him off from the privileges of ministerial fellowship. Nearly all of the Boston area ministers refused to exchange pulpits with him, and some refused to speak to him (Dorrien, p. 88).

The Unitarian ministers told Parker it was his moral duty to resign from the Unitarian Association, but he was both too bright and too shrewd to make it that easy for them. He said they would have to expel him, thereby showing they do have a creed. They backed down – my image is that they had their tails between their legs. And so, as one historian puts it, “The first Unitarian heresy trial was over (Dorrien, p. 90).”

Parker believed the time had come to sweep away all religious authorities except the authority of reason and spiritual intuition (Dorrien, p. 99).

True Christianity, he said, is not about the death or divinity of Christ, but about the death of sin and the life of holy goodness in our heart: “Each man must be his own Christ, or he is no Christian (Dorrien, p. 99).” He defined real Christianity simply as “Being Good and Doing Good” – not needing any miracles or supernaturalism or creeds – or churches or ministers. This drew complete outrage from nearly all clergy, including the Unitarians.

At first, Parker naively hoped that American Unitarianism could become America’s best religious hope, but within a few years, decided that it was so unwilling to see or to think that there was no hope for it.

It’s a little confusing that he continued to insist on calling himself a Unitarian – especially since the leading Unitarian ministers wouldn’t claim him, swap pulpits with him or speak to him, and wanted him to resign.

But Unitarianism was a complex thing in the Boston of his day. It was a religion of the upper class, associated with intelligent, educated and sophisticated people, and Parker wasn’t willing to let go of that identity, which he had worked so hard to earn. He had grown up as a very poor boy, worked hard, married a very wealthy woman. They moved in those social circles – though Parker’s anti-slavery work really ended their welcome there, too. I think that giving up the “Unitarian” label would have felt to him like losing that social and personal identity.

He wanted the rest of the Unitarians to grow into the larger and more honest understanding of religion that he had found. He said the Unitarians were “standing still, and becoming more and more narrow and bigoted from year to year-. There is little scholarship and less philosophical thinking among the Unitarians,” he wrote. “Some of them engage in the great moral movements of the day, such as the anti-slavery movement. But the sect as such is opposed to all [intellectual] reforms (Dorrien, p. 101).”

His opponents used his notorious radical social activities to label and smear him, partly so they wouldn’t have to answer his powerful critiques of their unexamined but comfortable religion.

So Theodore Parker lived the powerful contradiction of preaching to the largest crowd in America while being deeply alienated from the Unitarians, and spurned as unbearable by most respectable high-class socialites (Dorrien, p. 103). No matter how fierce he was in public, he grieved his whole adult life in private over the continual attacks and rejection from the people and the denomination to whom he believed he offered valuable but unwanted help.

In January of 1859, he was told that he was dying of tuberculosis. It did not diminish his spirit, and one of the most inspiring things he ever wrote, he wrote in his Journal after receiving this death sentence: “I am ready to die… nothing to fear. When I see the Inevitable I fall in love with her (John White Chadwick, Theodore Parker: Preacher and Reformer, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1900, p. 352).”

Since his wife had money, they could travel. He left Massachusetts to spend his last year traveling Europe, and settled in Rome. He would die in Italy in 1860. A few months before he died, he wrote another memorable line to a friend: “I have had great powers” he said, “and have only half used them (Chadwick, p. 371).”

All three of the great Unitarian preachers of the early 19th century were absolutely brilliant men who stood head-and-shoulders above almost everyone around them – though whether any of them can really be called Unitarian is a different matter.

William Ellery Channing, who named “Unitarian Christianity,” refused to join the Unitarian Association when it first began in 1825, fearing it would just dumb down religion and lure people to the lowest common denominator where they wouldn’t think for themselves, but would look for some sort of creeds (or principles) to recite. To put it in modern terms, Channing feared that the Unitarian Association would grow into a narcissistic cult, where people were taught to worship the kinds of things that their kind of people believed – that’s a working definition of narcissism. And their churches would tell them when they entered just what those things were that their kind of people needed to believe, and maybe even print them on wallet-sized cards. And that’s one element of a cult.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the most famous of the three, called Unitarianism “corpse-cold,” and was not considered a Unitarian by any of the leading ministers of his day. He thought Unitarianism had become smug, shallow and irrelevant.

And Theodore Parker, the most brilliant of them all, was blacklisted from all the Unitarian pulpits in Boston because of his liberal thinking, was told he should resign from the Unitarian Association, and told that he wasn’t a real Unitarian. One member of the church where he delivered his most famous sermon even said that he’d rather see every Unitarian church burned to the ground than to see Parker’s beliefs preached from a single pulpit.

The important truth is that these three men stood out against the background of Unitarians of their day because the overwhelming majority of Unitarian ministers of their day were not memorable, and their beliefs and actions are hard to look back on with much admiration when we hear these stories. This is true, of course, of all the great visionaries of history: they only stand out because the vast majority of people around them couldn’t see or wouldn’t pursue the vision they saw so clearly.

So these three men were prophets of a higher truth than almost any Unitarians would or could see, though they continue to inspire new Unitarian ministers who are still required to read them. The righteous words of those who opposed them are long, and deservedly, forgotten.

These three weren’t serving Unitarianism, and they were all pretty clear about it. They were serving what Parker finally labeled as the Permanent in religion: True Religion, Absolute Religion, Honest Religion. And throughout history, those voices have always been a tiny minority in all religions – Unitarians are no better or worse than the rest.

We like to think that we listen to serious religious thinkers the way orchestras listen to the concert “A” that is played before all rehearsals and concerts, for them to tune to, though that’s not really true, because we so seldom do tune to their visions in any life-changing way. We really listen to them the same way we listen to all the other experts and motivational speakers in so many other areas: diet, exercise, ecology, finance and the rest of them. We may not be motivated enough or courageous enough to follow them down the demanding path of getting into our best spiritual shape, but we’re at least serious enough to listen, and to carry home some fertile seeds in the form of ideas.

There haven’t been many thinkers in any religion who wanted to move beyond the easy comfort of fitting in with like-minded people. That’s still why we come to church, isn’t it – to enjoy the company of like-minded people? Just think of how strong that gravitational attraction is for you, and how much effort it would take to break free of that gravitational pull. That’s a measure of how unlikely it is that great prophets will ever really effect the changes they see. I think that’s why we’re actually happier with these outspoken types after they’ve died, when we can treat them reverently rather than seriously.

But if these prophets, including Theodore Parker, are right, then getting in spiritual shape is as easy and as hard as actually thinking about who we are and why we are here, about what is most worth believing and doing.

This seems to be what all the prophets have said in their many different ways: Confucius, Lao-Tzu, the Buddha, the biblical prophets, Jesus, Mohammad, all the way up to relatively minor – but still stirring – people like Channing, Emerson and Parker.

These were people at the Olympic level of spiritual development, no matter how out of shape they may have been in other ways – none of them was in very good financial shape, for instance, and I don’t think any of them lifted weights. They were both empowering and troubling people. They didn’t exist just to tell us that we’re really special just as we are, or that this business of authenticity is easy. They said, as Jesus put it, that the road was narrow and very few ever wanted to take it, even though it was open to all. They said salvation was free, but it wasn’t cheap. It’s about transformation, not blithely following along with a group of like-minded people.

Yet they are mesmerizing, aren’t they? They’re like charismatic self-help gurus, only moreso. I keep thinking of some of the words Theodore Parker wrote near the end of his life: “I have had great powers – and have only half used them (Chadwick, p. 371).”

There, at least, is where Parker was so much like the rest of us: we all have great powers that we have only half used. Isn’t that one reason we come here – to keep being exhorted to develop the other half of our great powers, and to use them to help ourselves and our world come alive? We come seeking wholeness, and so often we don’t want to admit that, if only we will, we can have it.

Date	Sermon Title
08-01-00	ESSAY: From Surviving to Thriving: Moving Beyond UUism
08-13-00	The Virtues of Heresy
08-27-00	In a Restaurant, Choose a Table Near a Waiter
09-24-00	Talk is Not Cheap
10-08-00	The Dark God of Capitalism
11-19-00	Choose Life
11-26-00	How To Become A Butterfly
02-25-01	Beliefs Part 2: The Religion of Science
03-11-01	Beliefs Part 3: Mysticism
03-18-01	Beliefs Part 4: Feminine Spirituality
04-15-01	New Life for Old
04-29-01	Four Faces of Jesus
05-13-01	Our War on Drugs: A Mother’s Day Sermon
05-20-01	Love Talk
05-27-01	Sacred Stories
06-10-01	Walking on Water
06-17-01	Welcome!
09-09-01	The Courage to Tell the Truth
09-23-01	More Aftermath from September 11
09-30-01	Living in Denial (Part 1 of 5)
10-14-01	Controlling Others Through Anger (Part 2 of 5)
10-21-01	Bargaining : The Deals That We Make To Avoid Change -Part 3
11-11-01	Remembering Those Who Fought For Us
11-18-01	Accepting Life’s Gifts (Part 5 of 5)
12-29-01	Religion is the Music of Believers Seeking Truth Together
09-29-02	Oil, Arrogance, and War
03-30-03	Soliloquies from the Prodigal Son : The Fatted Calf
07-23-03	The Simple Gifts of Liberal Religion – SUUSI

07-21-04	Why “Unitarian Universalism” is Dying
03-13-05	Finding Your Own Voice
04-24-05	Growing Up and Finding Ourselves: Annual youth service
12-25-05	Christmas Day Stories, 2005