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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
February 26, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Some people are harder to be comfortable with than others. How do we deal kindly with people who are difficult?

Call to Worship
– Albert Schweitzer

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

Reading
– Rabindranath Tagore

“When the heart is hard and parched up, come upon me with a shower of mercy.

When grace is lost from life, come with a burst of song.

When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest.

When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner, break open the door, my king, and come with the ceremony of a king.

When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O thou holy one, thou wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder.”

Skit by the Healthy Relations team

Two actors face one another with coffee mugs.

Penelope: talking on and on

Dorothy: nodding, eye contact. She says something that is encouraging, like “Oh, my,” or “Is that so?”

Narrator claps to freeze the action: Penelope and Dorothy are talking at coffee hour. Penelope is what we call “A Talker!” Right now, Dorothy is giving listening cues. She’s making eye contact and nodding.

Claps to start action again

Penelope: resumes talking on and on

Dorothy tries to respond a couple of times to no avail, then deflates.

Narrator claps to freeze action:

After a couple of failed attempts to engage, Dorothy realizes that this is going to be more of a monologue than a dialogue. Notice how her enthusiasm for this encounter fizzles.

Claps to start action again.

Penelope keeps talking.

Dorothy looks at her watch. She drops her eyes, looks at the floor, looks around.

Narrator claps to freeze the action: Dorothy looks at her watch. She ends eye contact. These are cues that should let Penelope know that listening is coming to an end.

Now, Penelope is going to keep talking. Look, she’s closed her eyes so she can keep talking without seeing the cues Dorothy is trying to give. But Dorothy has some skills for just this situation. What would you do?

Claps to start action again

Dorothy looks up, puts her arm on Penelope’s arm, (Penelope is still talking) and says, over Penelope’s talking “You’ll have to excuse me, I have to go ask my husband something.” Smiling, she walks away.

Narrator: Many of us have been taught not to interrupt, but in situations like this, it’s actually okay. Have you met a Penelope? Have you been a Penelope? What might you do differently next time?

Sermon

People, huh? Some of us have been in this situation as the listener, some as the talker, and some of us have been on both sides. To paraphrase the Quakers, “Everyone’s a little difficult except me and Thee, and even thee’s a little difficult.” I’m talk about how to deal with difficult people this morning, and I want you to know that, like a Freshman Psychology major, I find myself a little bit in each example of difficult people.

The over talker is difficult, especially for people who are wired more toward wanting to consider their own words before talking. By the time there is a break in the conversation, if there ever is, the time for them to say what they wanted to contribute to the dialogue has passed. There are people who control a situation by filling up the space with their own thoughts. They are out of balance. Most people who are difficult for us are difficult for everyone, and usually it’s because they are out of balance internally, or they were raised in an environment which was out of balance, and they had to adapt to that in order to survive.

If over talking happens in a meeting or at work we might wait for the person who is the facilitator to say something to them, like “thank you. Let’s hear from someone who hasn’t spoken yet.” If you are with them and feeling taken advantage of, you might do as Dorothy did, make the social signals that you are ready to be done, and if those don’t work, tough the person’s arm and say you need to go. If that feels rude, consider that, by holding you against your will, they were being rude first. The Buddhist teaching to do no harm comes into play here. Do no harm to others, or to yourself. If someone is taking more of your time or your energy than you are willing to give, they are doing you harm, and you do them harm by allowing them to do wrong.

We make those cultural signals, but some people are difficult because they don’t share your culture’s signals. When I was the Chaplain at a women’s college in SC, at least once or twice every September I’d have a nice young women in tears in my office. “My roommate hates me!” she’d say. I would ask for examples. “She doesn’t smile at me, she’s rude, she talks mean to me, and she doesn’t help me when I ask her to.”

In Southern culture, girls smile. When you see each other, you say hey. You have little chats about nothing much, to establish connection. When someone says “my this is heavy,” you recognize that as a request for help. When you have something to say about someone, you don’t say it directly, you find some slantwise way to say it that feels gentler to you.

Her roommate wasn’t doing any of that. Finally I learned to ask “Where is your roommate from?”

“B-B-B-Boston…” Different culture.

Some difficulties are caused by us not reading one another’s cultural signals. The cure for this is talking about it, and most therapist type people will recommend and “I statement” format. “When you do ______ I feel _______” “When you don’t look up at me and smile when I come into the room, I feel like you wish I weren’t there.”

What are some other techniques people use for being difficult? They don’t listen, or if they hear your words, they don’t seem to comprehend them. Some folks are out of balance in a way that makes their inner mind very noisy, and they can barely hear you over all the lists, resentments, fears, plans, obsessions, and worries inside their own minds. Sometimes it can be effective to stop the conversation periodically and ask the other person to repeat back to you their understanding of what you said. Then you repeat to them your understanding and memory of what they said, and when you’re on solid ground together then you go on. I used to trust this method more than I do now, having had experiences with a couple of folks long ago and far away where they repeated what I said and they told me I was understanding them correctly, and a couple of days after the conversation that understanding seemed to have evaporated. It still is useful, even if it’s not infallible. I did have a friend who said he and his wife had stopped fighting because all the rules their marriage counselor gave them about communicating just made it too much trouble.

Some people are difficult because their head is full of assumptions about you. Some folks truly believe that lesbians hate men, and that could skew their perceptions of me. Those of us who are people of color have had many experiences with assumptions and stereotypes. So your mama says you have to be twice as good as white people, you must be exceptional. And we make movies about exceptional People of Color, but we won’t be in a just world until a mediocre person of color can get as far as a mediocre white person.

Some people are difficult for me because they are chaos people. Their plans are always done at the last minute, their hair is always on fire, they only know the answers to the questions about what’s happening, where things are, how it will go, , so every part of the event has to go through them personally. Or they want to decide everything on a case by case basis rather than going by the book, so things feel unfair and subjective, and the whole operation rests on their shoulders alone. They don’t delegate and they don’t communicate, so people around them get exhausted and burned out trying to be part of their show. It might work well for them, but not as well for people who are on their crew. I try not to be on projects with this kind of person. If I am, I try to be the boss of the project so I can lay out guidelines and deadlines.

Some people’s technique for being difficult is what writer Julia Cameron calls the “wet-blanket matadors.” You have nice forward motion, you and the rest of the crew are going places, and this person slows it all down. “Let’s think about this some more, let’s ask three more agencies’ thoughts on the matter, we tried this before and it didn’t work twenty years ago in 1996.”

Some trainers recommend that you just avoid these folks who are difficult for you if you can avoid them. “Fly like an eagle,” one advises, rise above the fray. That can work. If the person is your boss you can try to transfer or find another job. Many of you have changed jobs for that reason. Sometimes you just can’t avoid the person. They are your parent or your child, your sister or your spouse. Michelle Obama couldn’t avoid all the people who made cruel and racist comments about her. “When they go low, we go high,” she said. Sometimes we can rise above, but sometimes it feels impossible.

Many people are difficult because they are out of balance, and others are difficult because they just don’t share the values we hold dear. They want us to do things we feel uncomfortable with, or things we think are wrong. We can’t change them, usually. We only have ourselves to work with. Sometimes we can change the environment, leak their secrets to the press or let the boss’s boss know what’s going on. There are risks involved with trying to change the status quo.

Most teachers will tell us that people who are difficult for us are our best teachers in life. How would we know what we need to work on next in ourselves if it weren’t for that boss driving us crazy or that sister who makes us paralyzed with resentment?

One of my teachers, a woman named Byron Katie, has a series of questions she asks you to ask yourself as you investigate a resentful thought you have. She offers a “Judge Your Neighbor” worksheet that you fill out, letting yourself say the truest most judgmental things possible. I found a video this week of her working with a young woman. Sweetie, she said, “Thought appears, what’s your thought?” The woman read from the sheet. “My mother is manipulative, controlling and deceitful. She won’t let me be who I am, and she’s trying to make me exactly like her.” Katie asked for an example. The woman looked blank for a minute. “Well, she thinks I’m wrong about everything.”

“That controls you how?” Young woman looks blank. “So your mom wants to control you, is that true?”

Yes, the woman says. “Are you sure that’s true?” The woman looks a little uncertain, then thinks of another example.

“I made a scrap book of my values, and showed it to her. She said she thought all my values were wrong.” Katie nodded.

“You asked her what she thought and she told you. How does that control or manipulate you?” “How do you act when you think that thought, that your mother is trying to control and manipulate you?” The woman said she acted angry, and withheld conversation and company from her mother. She just wanted her mom to love and respect her for who she was.

Let’s turn this thought around, Katie suggested. The famous turn-around. I’m controlling and manipulative?” The woman tried. K nodded. Yes, sweetie, you’re trying everything you can to make your mother respect your values. Who should respect you and your values?

Me? K nodded. “You make a book of your values and asked her what she thought. She was honest with you but you don’t respect and love her for who she is. You want her to change. Her values are her values and your values are your values. If you respect yours and you love her without trying to manipulate and control her, she won’t be able to hurt you.

So your mother is manipulating and tries to control you. “Who would you be without that thought?” Katie asked. The young woman thought she’d be much happier without thinking her mother was deceitful and controlling. She’d be able to have a nice life and be around her mom.

The fourth question: “Can you think of a non-stressful reason to hold onto that thought? I’m not asking you to let it go, I’m just asking if there is a sane reason to hold on to it.” The woman shook her head.

She calls this form of inquiry “The Work,” and you can get everything free on her web site. Her techniques are not infallible or universally applicable, but they can be very helpful.

So how to deal with difficult people? Avoid if you can. “Take your sails out of their wind,” the 12 step people say. What might that mean in your situation? Ask yourself what would it mean for me to take my sails out of their wind? I bet some kind of answer will come to you. Sometimes you change your environment and sometimes you change yourself. Talk to them directly, with love, if you can. Make your position clear. Be clear and loving in what you ask them to do instead of what they’re doing. “I will be able to stay in the conversation with you much better if you speak to me respectfully and with kindness.” “We will be able to have a much more productive work life if you tell me the truth/don’t lay claim to my ideas/etc.

So: avoid, take your sails out of their wind, talk directly to them. Other ideas: Pema Chodron, a renowned Buddhist teacher, says “Take the target off your back.” She means by this that we can get caught up in the fire of aggression, and that if we have an inner quiet, if we are strong inside, we can refuse to respond to aggression with aggression, and its fires will die out, or find some other target to hit. Rabbi Jesus said that too “Don’t return evil for evil, but return good for evil.” It’s a way to drive your enemies crazy, he said.

I have seen good luck and bad luck with this. For two years after a friend divorced her husband, he was so angry when they talked on the phone, it felt abusive. She was a good Buddhist and kept her aggression low, speaking kindly and with respect. It got worse and worse. She wrote him that he had lost his privilege of talking to her on the phone, and that they would communicate about the children by email only from then on. The emails were so terrible, they were hard to read. She wrote back kindly and with respect, but they got worse and worse. Finally she asked her friend Charlie at work to read them for her, pick out the information she needed, where he would pick up the children, etc. and delete the rest. They kept being terrible until the day she wrote “the person who reads your emails for me said you were going to pick the boys up at 5, and that’s fine with me.” I call that technique letting the sun shine on reality. I don’t know why, but some people who want to treat you badly count on you for some reason to protect them and their reputation. Why is that?

I could go on for an hour describing various different ways to be a difficult person, and suggesting strategies for dealing with each different way, and that’s fun, but the main way to deal with irritating, annoying people (not the evil ones or the ones who are out to destroy you) is by changing yourself. There is the metta prayer, where you pray for them everything you want for yourself. I’ve spoken to you about this before. The 12 step folks call it the Resentment Prayer.

There is doing a little research to see if you can get to an understanding of why they are the way they are, and then your stance toward them will be as it is toward a broken person, with somewhat more compassion.

There is research into their culture to see if you can read their actions differently, in the context of their own ways.

There is asking yourself whether they are really trying to drive you crazy by being so awful. Is it true? How do you feel when you think that thought? Can you think of a sane reason to keep that thought? What happens if you turn your complaint about them around? Is there truth in it when the finger is pointing your way?

The Chinese book of wisdom, the I Ching, says you have to build your own good character. You have to be soft on the outside and hard on the inside. Most people are the opposite. Soft on the outside and hard on the inside means you have begun and continue to shape your good character. The point of doing that is to be able to see more and more clearly what is the next right thing to do.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
February 12, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In discussing this element of the Buddhist Eightfold Path, we look at what is an effective way to try to do things. How do we focus our efforts toward justice?

Call to Worship
By Octavia E. Butler

All that you touch — You Change.

All that you Change — Changes you.

The only lasting truth — is Change.

God is Change.

Reading:
by Kamand Kojouri

The guilt you felt
when you were smiling
and others were suffering,
the guilt you felt
when you were petty with friends
and impatient with your parents,
when you were rude to your teachers
and didn’t stand up for strangers,
that guilt
is marvellous.
It proves that you are human,
that you want to be better.
Thank this guilt for teaching you,
for making you aware.
And now endeavour to better yourself.
It is a lifelong work to become
the person we want to be.

We’re in the midst of a series on the Buddhist 8 fold path. This morning’s element of the path is “Right Effort.” You try, you try with your heart and mind and spirit, but not too much. The Middle Way was where the Buddha recommended we live, having been an indulged prince, then a starving holy man. He taught that both indulgence and asceticism made you spend too much attention on yourself. Try, but not in a way that wastes energy, persist, rest, don’t give up. I had an indelible lesson in this concept on the New River one summer. We were learning to paddle canoes. The summer had been droughty, and the water was low. The teacher beckoned me to paddle to where she was. I paddled. Faster, faster, but there was no water to catch my paddle. She cocked an eyebrow at me and said “Why don’t you just get out and walk it over here?” She had the grace not to laugh. So I was trying hard and not getting anywhere.

Teacher Eric Kolvig says you can sum up this aspect of the path by saying “Try to do your practice, but don’t try too hard, and never give up.” Try, don’t try too hard, and don’t give up.

Now this might sound like I’m veering off the path, but I’ll bring it back around.

There were many great moments in the movie Hidden Figures. The Atlas Rocket was part of the launching system for the first manned space rockets. NASA, in the early 60’s, had human computers, men and women who would spend their days doing mathematical calculations. The movie follows three Black women who work as human computers at NASA. One of the most striking moments in the movie is a quiet one, but it’s a turning point. Katherine Johnson was promoted to work directly with the men who were trying to engineer the rocket to go up, and then to come down again in a way that would keep its pilot alive. She worked in the building with the white male engineers, but the only “Colored” bathroom was half a mile away, on the other side of the campus. Every time she needed to relieve herself, she took an armful of papers and trotted half a mile there and then half a mile back. Finally the man in charge of the program, needing to ask her a question and unable to find her, snapped at her about her long 40 minute breaks. Just what in the world was she doing for that length of time in the middle of the day?

Embarrassed, she has to confess that she’s going to the bathroom, and that her bathroom is half a mile away. One of the movies best moments was seeing the face of this man as he realized what she’d been up against, and then, a second later, realized he’d never even thought about it, never wondered, that it really couldn’t have occurred to him. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t – couldn’t think about it. As a man, he had more than likely drawn a velvet curtain over any thoughts of lady bathroom activities. You know how you just don’t think about certain things… you don’t even know you’re not thinking of them. In a blog post called “If America Were a Game of Monopoly,” the writer postulates four playing pieces, colored white, yellow, black and red. Using 2008 statistics on population, family income, and net worth, they describe the rules.

“If America were a game of Monopoly the rules would be a bit different. The following example considers race only to keep it simple. Adding class would be interesting too, but for now I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

RULES:

1. There are four players: one white, one red, one black and one yellow.

2. The white player is the banker.

3. Starting amounts: Before play begins give each player the following amounts to start with:

• $1500 white
• $1085 yellow
• $105 black
• $75 red

(Based on median household net worth in 2000.)

4. When passing Go: Each player will get the following amounts when passing Go:

• $200 white
• $170 yellow
• $140 black
• $120 red

(Based on median personal income for 2000.)

5. Settling disputes: If there is a dispute between players, it is put to a vote. (See Voting below).

6. Changing rules: If a player asks for a rule change, it is put to a vote (See Voting below).

7. Voting: To win a vote a motion must get at least 5.1 votes. Each player gets the following number of votes:

• 8.2 white
• 1.3 black
• 0.4 yellow
• 0.1 red

(Based on those reporting one race on the 2000 census.)

8. Speaking: The white player can speak at any time. Other players speak only when spoken to. They are allowed to raise their hand to try to get the attention of the white player to ask a question.
(Based on media ownership.)

9. Jail:
Going to jail: Red and black players go to jail if they land on any corner square except for the Just Visiting Jail square.
(Blacks are three times more likely to be stopped by the police and have their car searched. Both blacks and Native Americans are way more likely to wind up in prison than whites.)

Getting out of jail: To get out of a jail you must pay $1000 or wait five turns.
(Prison is way more damaging than in Monopoly. Also, it is way easier for the rich to avoid prison altogether.)

10. The red player: Decisions to build or sell houses must be approved by the white player. The white player can build on any of the red player’s squares and keep all income for himself.
(Based on the government’s management of remaining Native lands.)

11. All other rules are the same.

Advice to white players:
If the other players complain that the rules are unfair, say “Get over it!” Point out that the game is fair and democratic: they can always ask for a rule change and put it to a vote. Also point out that the white player does not always win, so if they lose it is their own fault.

Personal observations:
Most white players act as if the same rules and conditions apply to everyone, as if everyone starts with $1500 and gets $200 for passing Go, etc. If anything, they think yellow players get more for passing Go, that black players get more turns and that red players are too noble to care about winning.”

So, we are in a political situation where a white nationalist is the President’s main strategist and advisor. Their policies seem to be to make sure the Monopoly rules stay as they are, or advantage the white piece just a bit more. As people of justice, while we may not be able to fix everything, we have a responsibility to see the system the way it is. We have a responsibility to wrestle with our blind spots. Those among us who are white are not wrong for being white. But it makes for some big blind spots. Those among us who are men are not wrong for being men, It makes for some blind spots. Those among us who are able bodied are not wrong for being able. It makes for some big blind spots.

Most of us are trying to stand for UU values of justice and democracy. We are trying to learn where our power lies and how to influence those who can change and enforce laws. Justice is a practice for many among us. We stand with our Muslim neighbors. We want to protect our undocumented neighbors from the aggressive enforcement tactics ICE is using in Travis County in the past few days. How do we do that? We learn what our rights are as citizens and what our rights are as undocumented residents. We learn what ICE’s powers are. We learn how to interrupt unjust interactions so that we can live to interrupt another day. We try, we persist, we rest, we don’t waste energy, and we don’t give up.

I’m the head of a department at NASA. I want to do the right thing. I want to be a good person. I’ve got my disadvantages I’m dealing with. I’m trying to build a rocket here, I can’t be thinking about what happens when someone I work with needs to go to the bathroom. I can’t be thinking about what citizen schoolchildren fear about their undocumented parents. When my mom was late picking me up from school I worried that she’d forgotten me, not that she was handcuffed in a van on her way to a detention center.

I can’t be thinking about what it’s like to be preparing my black daughter to drive across Texas to her new job, worrying her along through every mile, knowing she’s got a mouth on her and that she’s not scared enough. I can’t see all the things I can’t see.

If I am a UU in 2017, I’m called to open my imagination. I can try to put myself in someone else’s shoes, as a spiritual exercise, someone who is fighting cancer or someone who is parenting a child with special needs, to put myself in the shoes of someone who walks around in this world every day playing the game of life at a much higher degree of difficulty than I am, what are their mornings like, their afternoons, their evenings? What is it like for them to find a doctor, to find friends, to deal with plumbing problems, with legal problems? What is it like for them to get an apartment, a home loan, to pick a school, join the service, to find a job?

If you have the privilege of being a citizen, find out what you can do with that privilege. If you have the privilege of being light skinned, ask yourself what you can do with that skin color. Asking to see the manager, by the way, is one of my powerful privileges.

If I’m the engineer in charge of a section of NASA, I can’t fix the whole system of white supremacy. I’m in the game. How it’s set up is not my fault, but once I notice how it’s set up, once I notice the obstacles in the way of my coworker that were invisible to me, I have to decide what to do. Can I do one thing? Do I dedicate my life to fixing the bathroom situation all over? I have a rocket to build. I had obstacles, but people helped set it up so that it would be easy for me to be an engineer and work on rockets. No one told me “boys don’t do that kind of job, honey.” I can go to the bathroom in a white or a colored bathroom. I can’t change laws, but if I wanted an appointment with senator, he would see me. Try, but don’t try too hard, rest, persist, don’t give up.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 29, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We bring our well-behaved animals to church to bless them and to recognize the blessing they are to our lives.

This is an exercise that you would go through if you were being taught to be an animal trainer. You get to play the dog, and another trainer plays the — well, the trainer. You are in a room together. No words are exchanged. You know there is something the trainer wants you to do. The trainer has something in mind, like he wants you to put your left leg up on a chair. That’s the secret training goal, and you all will work together until you figure it out . How does he get you to do it? He praises you for doing something close to it. You move your left foot, you get some praise. You move toward the chair, you get some praise. You move away from the chair, you are ignored. Nothing. Hmmmm.. What does he want me to do? You have to put it together, what do you get praised for? When you put your leg on the chair, you are praised extravagantly. Who doesn’t care about praise? Well, cats, but there you go. I have more often had cats than dogs, and, while I have loved horses, I have never had one, or a bird. I did a lot of reading this week, and I got fascinated with dogs, so I will probably end up talking more about them. And I need to say that I am no expert on anything about animals.

That training exercise shows some of what it’s like for animals living in inter-species households. They don’t know our language, and, at least at the start, they don’t know what we want, although as those who have less power, they are more aware of our language and our requirements than we are of theirs.

We sometimes act like they communicate the same way we do. We smile at the animal to say hello. I hope they understand that. For animals, baring teeth is a threat. We would be in trouble if we said “look, that cute dog is smiling at me,” when we saw a dog baring its teeth. We feel close to animals, so we attribute to them the same emotions we would have in a certain situation. If a dog comes to you with ears lowered, chin down, you may think they are sad or being pitiful. That is their non-threatening friendly look. Their excited “Hey! Let’s go!” look is easier to read. Scientists who observe animals say they do have emotions. They get excited, humiliated, threatened and confused by some things we donÔt normally think of. Some things we have in common though. We want to be touched, loved, we want food shelter, attention, territory, a purpose, loyalty, belonging, exercise and fun.

Some things that are important to them, we don’t understand. Most animals, in a group, want to know who is in charge. Is it you? Is it someone else in the family? If you aren’t in charge, then they are. That can be what some animals want. It can produce anxiety in others. I had a greyhound living with me for a while, and I took her with me to a start-up weekend for a new ministry in this district. After a few hours with the members of this church, she walked to the center of a circle we were talking in, turned to face the man who was in charge, and bowed deeply. Was he the President of the congregation? No. Was he the new minister? No. Was he talking the most? No. He was simply one of the founding members, and one of those members who, by virtue of who they are and who they have been, are chieftains in the group. She instinctively knew who was the top dog in that group, and she bowed.

This Sunday we are celebrating a Blessing of the Animals. Why would be bless animals? Because they bless us so often. We don’t talk about them very often, but animals as companions have touched almost all of us, and it is good to acknowledge that. . As children we may have fallen asleep with the purring weight of a cat on our chest. Or on our head. We watched TV in the company of the family dog. We went exploring in the woods and our parents would feel safer knowing that the dog was along with us. They comforted us when we cried, they made us laugh, they were a personality in the midst of the family. For most of us, they still do those things. Here is what people say about animal companions: they give unconditional love. They forgive you anything. They think you are the be all and end all of the universe. They are sensitive to your feelings. They don’t care what you look like, what your sexual preference is, what your skin color or your car model or your job is. They just love you because you belong to them.

Animals have been in relationship with humans for thousands of years. Often in a mutually beneficial way. Often hurting one another. Humans were traveling with jackals, helping each other hunt. The dogs hung around the campfires and ate scraps, sounded the alarm for intruders. Enjoyed some protection from the humans, and gave them protection in turn.

In ancient Egypt, they worshipped cats and dogs. By that time, people had dogs as pets. We know because they were buried, sometimes, with their favorite dogs. The god of cats was named Bast. Egypt was the first country we know of that had laws against harming dogs.

In our country we have laws against cruelty to animals, but in animal farming and animal experimentation, we still perpetrate cruelties that are devastating to face. Some among us prefer not to eat any animal meat, others just want to work for lessening unnecessary suffering in the animals that are raised for food. That is not the purview of this sermon, though, as we are talking about animals that act as human companions. Feelings are strong enough about the animals that live in our homes. I do want to get into talking more about animal rights, just not this morning.

Animals as companions can do so much for us. A study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society in May, 1999 demonstrated that older people who have pets tend to have better physical and mental well being than those who don’t. A 1997 study showed that elderly pet owners had significantly lower blood pressure overall than their contemporaries without pets. There is an experimental residential home for the elderly called the Eden Alternative, which is filled with over 100 birds, dogs, and cats and has an outside environment with rabbits and chickens, has experienced a 15 percent lower mortality rate than traditional nursing homes over a span of five years.

Animal Assisted Therapy has been beneficial for kids recovering from abuse or other trauma. There are a few therapeutic homes for kids that use animals to calm agitated kids, to connect with autistic kids, to heal wounded kids. Mending a bird’s wings, caring for sheep and cows, sitting with cats on your lap, relating to dogs, seems to be healing for children. Helping another life through the caring of disabled or unwanted animals teaches nurturing and lets the children see beings who are surviving and relearning trust, just as they must do..

Even for ordinary families in ordinary time, there is a strong psychological and emotional attachment between people and their pets. Studies have revealed that most pet owners view their pets as both improving the quality of family life by lessening tension between family members and waking up their owner’s compassion for living things (Barker, 1993; Pet Theories, 1984; Voith, 1985).Using a projective technique to investigate owners’ closeness to their pet dogs, one study (Barker and Barker (1988, 1990) found that dog owners were as emotionally close to their dogs as to their closest family member. They reported that more than one-third of the dog owners in their study were actually closer to their dogs than to any human family member. I read a book called The Social Lives of Dogs by a classically trained anthropologist who began observing dogs instead of far off tribes. She and her husband had a dog who the husband described as “the keeper of my soul.” He and the dog were inseparable. She asked him idly one day if he had to choose, would it be her on the dog. He was quiet for a moment. “Don’t ask me that,” he answered.

Companionship helps us be healthy and happy. It is part of the art of living.

Economist John Maynard Keynes, saw the purpose of human history as our species learning to “cultivate the arts of life.”

It was in a publication called “Yoga World” that I saw a wonderful description of how to be a good companion. Sometimes an animal can be this to a human, sometimes a human can be this to an animal. Sometimes we can find this with another human. To be a good companion, it says, “You will need to be caring and concerned about his or her happiness. As a friend, you will want to share his or her concerns and labors. Naturally, you will want to make his, her, life more pleasant. You will have to know life and yourself well enough to become trustworthy, capable of keeping your agreements. To be a friend, your word must be true. A true friend, you will hold good will in your heart even when you misunderstand or distrust your gracious companion. You will refuse to indulge bad moods brought on by your inadequacies. It is not easy to be a true friend. ” May we all find a being like this is our lives. May we sometimes be able to be a friend like this ourselves, to another being. Our job here on earth is to learn how to love and be loved. As our animal companions teach us those things, we are grateful to them.

We have our animal blessing at Brigid rather than in October on St. Francis Day. We celebrate our earth-based connections by celebrating in the Spring, in the time when the earth is waking back up from its winter dormancy.

Our theology:: we are all priests and priestesses, and can channel the energy of blessing from the mystery. This is why I invite you to bless your own and one another’s animals. We can ask God to bless our animals or we can bless them just asking the Divine Spark to flow through us and grant our animals blessing We bless by wishing good things for the animals in our families, and by promising them we will love them to the best of our capacity, that we will learn from them, respect them, and that, when it’s time to let them go, we will let them go with honor.

Bless you for depending on me, for trusting me with your well being. Thankn you for all you give me in return. Companionship. Attention, your warm furry body next to me on the sofa, your tail wagging in joy at my return. Your delicious eggs for my breakfast.

You have a safe warm place in my heart and, if you leave this life before I do, I will carry your memory with me. You opened my heart. You taught me compassion and connection.

“We Give Thanks For The Animals”
by Gary Kowalski

We give thanks for the animals
Who live close to nature,
Who remind us of the sanctities of birth and death,
Who do not trouble their lives with foreboding or grief,
Who let go each moment as it passes,
And accept each new one as it comes
With serenity and grace.
Enable us to walk in beauty as they do
At one with the turning seasons,
Welcoming the sunrise and at peace with sunset.
And as we hallow the memory of good friends now departed,
Who loved abundantly and in their time were loved,
Who freely gave us their affection and loyalty,
Let us not be anxious for tomorrow
But ask only that kindness and gratitude fill our hearts,
Day by day, into the passing years.

Blessing for All”
by L. Annie Foerster (adapted)

My furry, feathered and scaled friends, I greet you. You come from the same life force of creation that I do and I greet you as a sister (brother). May your days be filled with love and whatever else you may desire. May your tummy always be full and may you always have a place to rest. May you have many days of love with your human friends. May you play together and work together in gentleness and respect for one another… My furry, feathered and scaled friends, I say farewell. I am happy to have met you. May your life be blessed.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 15, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

One of our UU principles is “the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.”

Sermon

E. B. WHITE: Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT: In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.

HOWARD WINTERS: Civilization is the process in which one gradually increases the number of people included in the term ‘we’ or ‘us’ and at the same time decreases those labeled ‘you’ or ‘them’ until that category has no one left in it.

Our seven principles are at the center of Unitarian Universalism. Of course, given this movement, there is a bit of controversy. They are not to be read as a creed, giving us a line to toe as we articulate what we believe. They are a “sense of the group,” to use a Quaker phrase.

The fifth principle says that we covenant together to affirm and promote “The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and In society at large.” Our congregations are run with a combination of representative democracy and an old fashioned Vermont town meeting.

In order for Democracy in congregations to work well we have to trust that our input is needed in order to make things work. We have to rouse ourselves and develop an interest in the articulation of the purposes and direction of the church. That’s why we put money and time into this church. That wakes up your attention and makes you feel like you are integral to the running of the place. We have to trust our instinct and our brain and say our opinion about how things are run,

Democracy works best when we trust the process. It’s sometimes hard to do that. Winston Churchill famously said that Democracy is the worst form of government there is, except for all the others that have been tried.

Let me talk about churches first, then we’ve mention our country. In a lot of churches, that’s hard for people. Sometimes you hear that the rich people run everything. Sometimes you hear that the retired people run everything .. Mostly it’s the people who have time, energy and willingness to run things who run everything, although people also help run things here who have very little extra time or money. In a friend’s congregation, one Sunday a party of people came to him after the service, very upset, asking about what this “Core Committee” was. “Core Committee?”

“Yes,” said one of them. “I always suspected there was a committee that ran everything, and now I know because I overheard two people talking about it in the sanctuary after church.”

Turns out they were talking about the Decor Committee. Someone dear had donated a very ugly piece of art to the church and insisted that it be put up behind the pulpit. A Decor Committee was formed to keep this from happening again.

We can do pretty well with democracy in this congregation, and we want to. We have a covenant for our meetings that states that we invite opposing points of view, and that those be heard respectfully, Once in a while the covenant is broken, and whoever broke it gets a nice letter from the President reminding them of the covenant. We vote, and the votes are fairly counted. We don’t attain the ideal, but we aim for it. We can see it from here.

I sure do wish I could stop here, but our principle says we want to promote Democracy in our society at large. Leaving aside the question of whether we can trust those in power (our whole system of government is set up in the belief that you had better not trust anyone in power). Can we trust our information? Can we trust the voting process?

As I have studied about Democracy, I have read many opinions about obstacles to a smoothly running Democracy

One obstacle is that people don’t know the rules about how the governing process works. We need Civics education, and we will be exploring how to do that for ourselves and our children in this congregation.

Fairness Doctrine

One obstacle to Democracy, in some people’s view, is that in August 1987, under the Reagan administration, the FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine by a 4-0 vote. The Fairness Doctrine, as many of you remember, required radio, TV and print news to cover both sides of the issue they were covering. When the Supreme Court first declared it Constitutional, they stated that if it ever were to inhibit free speech it should be scrapped. In the mid 80’s the FCC decided that there were no longer a limited number of stations possible, what with cable (and now the Internet) and since there were not limited sources for news, each one could do as it pleased and not have to cover both sides. In the law of unintended consequences, people have “red” stations and “blue” stations now, and there seem to be “red” facts and “blue” facts. Polarization hurts Democracy. On the other hand, the re-instatement of the FD might dull uninhibited talkshow energy by forcing hosts to conform to the government’s view of balance.

Another obstacle to the clean running of government of the people, by the people, for the people, is that corporations are now treated under the law like people. Tom Stites wrote a well-researched article about this in a special issue of THE WORLD magazine that was all about corporations and politics.

The fourteenth amendment guarantees “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Corporations gained personhood through aggressive court maneuvers culminating in an 1886 Supreme Court case called Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific. Until then, only people were protected by the Bill of Rights, and the governments the people elected could regulate corporations as they wished to. But with “personhood,” corporations steadily gained ways to weaken government restraints on their behavior-and on their growth. After steady progress over the decades, they made huge strides in the 1970s through Supreme Court rulings that awarded them Fourth Amendment safeguards against warrantless regulatory searches, Fifth Amendment double jeopardy protection, and the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury. On the surface, when the big corporations and people have the same rights, they are equal, and the playing field is level. But the size and wealth of corporations tip the field toward the corporations so the field becomes too steep to play on. Just how powerful have corporations become? The biggest ones are so big that in 2001 fifty-three of the world’s hundred largest economies were corporations and only forty-seven were nations. For example, the annual sales of Wal-Mart that year exceeded the gross domestic product of Sweden. And corporations are growing: Five years earlier, only fifty-one of the planet’s biggest economies were corporations; since then corporate expansion crowded two more nations out of the Top 100.

If a nation-sized corporation with its huge treasury and squadrons of lawyers wants to exercise its free speech rights in a shouting match with a citizen who is exercising her or his free speech rights, can this be a fair fight?

The Supreme Court has ruled that corporate political speech includes the right to spend millions on lobbying in Washington and to contribute more millions to political campaigns, and corporations spend to make friends in Washington.

“The end result,” says Ward Morehouse, an activist in his 70’s who is a third generation UU, “is that they exercise greater rights than actual persons, and this is an absurd situation.” Morehouse says that in addition to the rights granted them by the Supreme Court, under the law corporations have limited liability, can live on indefinitely, and, while their employees may be tried in criminal courts, corporations themselves cannot.

Stites. UU WORLD  magazine

Corporations live forever, and they are rich, with less moral sense than individuals, with less investment in the far future over current profits, as current profits are how their shareholders measure their desirability, therefore their viability. What if there were individuals with no children, no relatives, endless funds, who would live forever and be able to pursue goals and vendettas, with the brain of ten people, with little morality and the mandate to make money at the expense of every other matter? This person would be a force with which to be reckoned.

A lawyer said : “Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” Who was that? Abe Lincoln

We need to wake up and join the protest. Our UUA President Bill Sinkford called us to action:

“There is work to be done. I’m not talking about simply affirming the importance of voting, nor of simply promising to vote ourselves. I’m talking about mobilizing to get out there and work to prevent the travesty of the last election from recurring. We want to see this nation’s promise of democracy restored, and to do what we can to ensure that everyone’s vote gets counted. “

We join Women for Good Government, or Better Together, or any of the 3000 new groups registered on the Indivisible site. We do what those congressional staffers (Lloyd Doggett’s staffers) who are now being listened to nation wide.

Mostly we do not let ourselves despair. We get trained for Sanctuary in the Streets, where we learn how to interrupt ICE officers seeking to arrest an undocumented person by asking for warrants, and making sure they are acting the way they should act with citizens watching.

My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.

Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.

In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.

We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.

What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.

Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.

The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

By Clarissa Pinkola Estes
American poet, post-trauma specialist and Jungian psychoanalyst, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 17 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 8, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Avenue, Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

This element in the Buddhist Eightfold Path asks us to experiment with examining our means of making a living. Can we make a living without harming anyone? Can we make a living without violating other people?

Call to Worship

This is a story that Buddhist teacher Eric Kolvig tells: “I was late for a meeting, and I was quite stressed. I got off the turnpike and drove up to the toll booth feeling quite stressed, and the woman in the toll booth took my money and gave me the most extraordinary smile — it was just amazing. It was like having the Dalai Lama take your money at the toll booth. It was an extraordinary experience.”

Reading

A VISION
by Wendell Berry

If we will have the wisdom to survive, to stand like slow growing trees on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it, if we will make our seasons welcome here, asking not too much of earth or heaven, then a long time after we are dead the lives our lives prepare will live here, their houses strongly placed upon the valley sides, fields and gardens rich in the windows. The river will run clear, as we will never know it, and over it, birdsong like a canopy …. Families will be singing in the fields. In their voices they will hear a music risen out of the ground. They will take nothing from the ground they will not return, whatever the grief at parting. Memory, native to this valley, will spread over it like a grove, and memory will grow into legend, legend into song, song into sacrament. The abundance of this place, the songs of its people and its birds, will be health and wisdom and indwelling light. This is no paradisal dream. Its hardship is its possibility.

Sermon

I heard a man in the hospital say “I had a wasted life.” There was such sorrow and resignation in his voice. What would make a person say that, as he lay, old and running out of road, in a hospital bed? What kind of a life can I live, I thought, so that I won’t think that when I’m lying in a hospital bed facing my end?

We are more than halfway through the sermon series on the Buddhist 8-fold path, and the element we’re going to talk about today is “Right Livelihood.” It’s about making a living at something that helps the world rather than harms it. Again, the Buddhist teachers don’t ever say you’re a bad person for working at a hedge fund selling credit default swaps and blowing up the world economy. They say if you want to have peace, if you want your soul to be free, add to the life in the world, not to the suffering.

Many people, if they had the choice, would not do most of the work they do. We do it to feed our families, to pay our rent or the mortgage, take care of our children, change the diapers, fix meals, buy socks and medicine and gasoline. You spend the coin of your life’s time and energy to receive the things you and your family need.

Work for pay is not all of it, though. Right livelihood is about how you spend your life’s coin working at home raising children or caring for elderly parents. We also work on volunteer projects, we make phone calls to our representatives and senators, we run for local office, we spend ourselves to make our community a better place to live. Our lives are slowly paid out, traded, spent. If we do it right, we will feel that we got good things in trade for our time and energy. If we see our work as the trade of our energy for security, for freedom, for family life, pleasure, rich experiences, the betterment of others, then at the end of our lives we will look back on life well spent.

Many among us spend more time in work for pay than in any other aspect of our lives, except for sleeping. We pour a lot of our vital energy into it, and so it is important what work we choose. It is important to be clear about why we do it, what values and principles guide us as we work. It becomes important to explore how to be there at work in a way that can be a spiritual path.

If we practice, we can notice how our work can transform us and others. You heard the story that Buddhist teacher Eric Kolvig tells:

“I was late for a meeting, and I was quite stressed. I got off the turnpike and drove up to the toll booth feeling quite stressed, and the woman in the toll booth took my money and gave me the most extraordinary smile — it was just amazing. It was like having the Dalai Lama take your money at the toll booth. It was an extraordinary experience. It was the highest quality contact that I had that day, or that week, with someone who was obviously a bodhisattva — someone who basically took their work and, because they transformed it, there was a very deep, human connection, even though it only lasted for seconds.”

Most of us have to work for money. An important question to ask ourselves is “How much money do we need?” What is enough? Most Americans feel that everything would be great if they could make just 20 percent more than what they do. Whether you make 34,000 or 349,000, you feel things would be their best if you made just 20 percent more. Right Livelihood means making time for our families, our health, our community.

Most American work places do not give much room for time off, for play, for volunteering. We look in amazement at the 30 hour workweek of some European countries, at the several 6 week vacations people take, at the laws that employees don’t have to respond to the boss’ emails outside of work hours.

Many workplaces are toxic with disharmony, with all kinds of politics and struggles over power, and sometimes we can make a difference in that by refraining from participating in the toxicity, by being a centered and compassionate presence there. Most jobs encourage overwork, which is one of the main harms that our jobs do. Thomas Merton, a Trappist Monk and a writer, says:

The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone and everything, is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes her work for peace. It destroys his inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of her own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

Over-activity is a form of violence that actually does harm our beings and to our families, and we live in the most hyperactive society in the history of the world. I think most of us are challenged by that. How do we find balance in our activities? How do we remind ourselves to take a Sabbath, a day of rest?

If I’m too busy, then there might be no time for the children, for a partner or spouse. It’s really important to ask, “How much do I need? How much activity do I need to do to stay balanced? How much income do I need in order to live a balanced life? Can I live with less, and work less?” Thoreau says, “How much of my life will I give to possess this thing?”

Right Livelihood asks us to love our world through our work, to be “slow-growing trees in a ruined place,” to quote our reading from Wendell Berry, “asking not too much of earth or heaven” (or ourselves and our families) to think of the lives our lives prepare. Work provides a daily opportunity to put our beliefs into action, to bring an intention to work together in a friendly way, treat people fairly and pleasantly, bring out the best in our co-workers, rein in our egos, and see what freedom and harmony can come our way. It’s a challenge to do our activist work, as well, in a way that mirrors the word we dream about: kindly, not frenzied, grounded, in for the long haul, understanding that this is a marathon and not a sprint. Resistance rooted in spirit is grounded, longer lasting. Let’s take care of each other out there.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 11, 2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our principles talk of a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. How do we seek the truth? Can we be like wise magi, bringing our gifts to the newborn Light?

Call to Worship
by Denise Levertov

Marvelous Truth, confront us at every turn, in every guise, iron ball, egg, dark horse, shadow, cloud of breath on the air,

Dwell in our crowded hearts, our steaming bathrooms, kitchens full of things to be done, the ordinary streets.

Thrust close your smile that we know you, terrible joy.

Reading
by Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro

Bless Adonai
who spins day into dusk

With wisdom watch the dawn gates open;
With understanding let
time and seasons
come and go;

With awe perceive
the stars in lawful orbit.

Morning dawns,
evening darkens;

Darkness and light yielding
one to the other,

Yet each distinguished
and unique.

Marvel at Life!
Strive to know its ways!

Seek Wisdom and Truth,
the gateways
to Life’s mysteries!

Wondrous indeed
is the evening twilight.

Sermon

Here we are at the season of holy days, when most religions originating in the northern hemisphere celebrate the return of the light. Hanukkah is the Jewish celebration of the light that burned in the temple longer than it could naturally have burned, a miracle of light in the darkness. Hinduism celebrates Diwali, the Pagans celebrate the Winter Solstice and Christianity celebrates the birth of the son at the same time that its Roman rulers were celebrating the birth of the sun. No one knows the historical truth of these stories, but we feel in our hearts that they have a different kind of truth, an inner truth that can teach us about ourselves, about how to live well, how to get along with the way the Universe seems to work, a truth of the spirit. We usually call these faith stories, and we contrast faith stories with historical truth. There is sometimes overlap, but that overlap is unimportant to the faithful.

I quake to speak about the truth today. I have been casual in my thinking. I assumed that the truth is something that agrees with facts, something most people agree on together and that people feel it’s important in news and conversation. I have spoken confidently about the thing called “the ring of truth,” saying that most of us can recognize it when we hear it. We say we affirm a free search for truth and meaning. You can’t have meaning without truth. A pile of lies can have no meaning other than someone feels contempt enough for the world that they blatherate a pile of lies and leave it there in the road for the rest of us to step in. To be asked to find meaning in a pile of lies is cynical and abusive.

We can have a free search for truth, but we have seen a shift. It used to be that we expected some spin in advertising, but there were truth in advertising rules that were enforced. It used to be that we expected some spin from politicians, even outright lying, but we remember when Paul Ryan shaved over an hour off his marathon time and the media chewed on that lie for weeks. It used to be that people hung their heads when they were caught lying. There was some sense of shame. We have had experience with people of no shame before. Rumsfeld, Cheney. We have had loads of experience with lying politicians, but there is a shift now to a politician who lies and acts as if you are stupid for expecting him to have told the truth. Now a PPP poll shows that 60% of Trump voters believe “millions of people voted illegally,” with no evidence and strong denials from Republican election officials. 67% of them believe that unemployment is up, even though the fact is that it has gone from 7.8 in 2009 to 4.6. 40% of Trump voters believe that he won the popular vote.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” You can say ” Facts show that millions of people did not vote illegally.” Those citizens say the so-called facts are being reported by biased sources. They don’t believe the New York Times or the Washington Post. They say Snopes.com is only accurate 50% of the time, even though Factcheck.org says it’s accurate most of the time. Factcheck is a program of the Annenburg Foundation. These citizens would say they don’t respect the Annenburg Foundation’s facts. They are compartmentalizing their faith from their intellect. Many of their preachers have trained them in not applying their minds to their strongly held faith. The stories they believe are faith stories, not historical facts, and they’re ok with that.

They have faith in Donald Trump. We’ve all seen the interview with one woman, who, shown that Trump had lied, said “I believe what he said because he said it. If he says it, it’s true.” I do not think Trump voters are stupid. I think they are treating their belief in him as they would a religious belief.

Epistemology is the study of how we know things. When you ask yourself “How can I know what is true?” You are asking about epistemology. You can dig one level deeper and ask “how do we know anything?” You discuss that different colors of light have different wavelengths, which are measurable. Data. But we interpret that data inside our minds, so we don’t know that the way I see that wavelength is the way you see it. I say “trees are green,” and you nod and agree, but there isn’t a way to know whether we are both seeing the same color. Science has its way of seeking truth which has to do with whether a certain result is able to be reproduced, whether a certain way of getting to your results is respectable. Peer review is a way of getting to truth. Can you get consensus? Do a certain number of scientists agree on this thing, which we might now call a “fact.” Philosophy has its way of talking about truth. Some philosophers say you can’t say anything is Truth with a capital T, but there are certain assertions we all believe, which we agree to act upon. We agree to act as if certain things are true. Some even assert that there is no way to know that you even exist. What if you are a puppy in Peru, dreaming that you are a human sitting in this sanctuary? Descartes says “I think, therefore I am,” but another philosopher is only willing to say “there is a thought.”

I don’t have the patience, these days, though, for relaxed discussions about the nature of truth. When you say “millions of people voted illegally,” that is either true or it is not. If it’s not true, it’s a mistake or a lie. (or you are “isolated in your own reality,” which is a way of talking about some forms of mental illness. This is not a fact about which the data sets can be interpreted many ways. It’s true or it’s not. The sense of alarm many of us feel is that we meet so many people who are isolated from reality. As a group. I imagine many of them feel that same alarm about liberals who believe the New York Times and Factcheck.org.

Our principle says we search, (in freedom and responsibility) for truth. We are at a strange point where it’s the preacher has to talk about defending, not a divine truth, but defending facts. I think those are things we can all agree happen in the actual world. Perceptions differ, true. Interpretations of data differ. But there are things we all agree to act upon as true. When millions of people agree to operate as though wholly different things are true from the ones we are acting on, a kind of vertigo results. It becomes difficult to find common ground.

I would have said, in more innocent times, that we all mostly agree that the New York Times aims to be truthful. When they are not, they apologize. They feel shame. We all would mostly agree that the Washington Post publishes the truth. If they find they are inaccurate, they apologize, they feel shame. I think they are still trying to live in that reality.

Now from the President-elect, the lies come fast and loud, and there is absolutely no shame in being found out. People in Macedonia make up fake news stories, and no one knows how to tell the difference. Some of us are learning to
1. Check the source. Is it a satire site? A fantasy news site? Is there a button you can push to make them show the actual news story highlighted in yellow?
2. What is the date on the story? Is it from yesterday or from 2011?
3. Does it sound too strange to be true? Does it fit with the facts as you know them?
4. Why would people do what the story says they did? Does it make sense?

We are in a morass of lies, and as of now it’s up to us to discern what’s true. In Europe there are laws about social media content, so the fake news is damped down a bit. Here, we are just starting to see that. Don’t be part of thoughtlessly repeating things that are deliciously shocking but possibly less than true.

What is truth? Is an ancient question. When Rabbi Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate for judgment, Pilate asked You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me. “What is truth?” retorted Pilate.

The Christian scriptures which talk about Rabbi Jesus as if he were a special part of the Divine call him the Word. The Greek in the New Testament translated this way is the Greek word logos. Logos is a concept whose many layers of meaning include not only “word,” but more on the order of “reason,” “structure,” “organizing principle.” Scholars think the author of this part of the scripture was educated in the Greek manner but was born a Jew. In the Jewish scriptures, the word is a creative force, especially the word of God. It’s how they described the creation of the skies, the oceans and the earth. In this religion, the creation wasn’t a birth from a great mother or a star, it was done by words. So when the gospel writer says “in the beginning was the word,” and implies that Rabbi Jesus and that word are the same, he is trying to communicate that he wants people to worship the reason of God, the Creative power of God, the underlying principles by which everything in the Universe is laid out. In this same gospel, the spirit of God is called the “Spirit of Truth.”

In my opinion, when we talk about truth, “capital T Truth,” we are talking about something that has this kind of generative power. We find truth and it changes things. It’s not just something to which we assent by nodding our heads sagely or clapping our hands and rejoicing that we have another bit of knowledge to add to our cocktail party conversation or our discussions with friends. In the view of these scriptures, love, light, reason, and the truth of things are ways of describing the divine.

Truth changes things. It’s moving or funny or challenging. When two people are talking authentically to one another, when they are connecting in truth and in love, they are having a nourishing, transformative experience. When someone lies, especially when they don’t care to pretend they’re not lying, the ground beneath our feet shifts, and we lose our balance. Something inside struggles to refute, struggles to understand, to derive meaning. The person who lies claims they are speaking impressionistically, speaking in “euphanism,” and that you are stupid for not realizing that. You quote them to themselves and they say “I never said that.” When you show them the video, they say “you were taking it out of context.” Unless you surrender to their worldview, your choices are to be stupid, to be confused, to be wrong, to be mocked, or to be an enemy.

This is how abusers set things up in a relationship. Their reality is the only one that has any worth. If you don’t share it, you are silly or dangerous, or misguided, or crazy. You can’t ever find your balance because the rules constantly change. Reality changes, and the only one who knows where it’s going isn’t telling you. You stop trusting your own perception of reality. Is the only way to respect the leader to surrender to them completely? Is disagreement disloyalty? If you stay in the abusive situation, your reality gets overwritten so many times you begin to doubt yourself.

This season we celebrate the birth of the Spirit of Truth. Let us bring the truth our gifts of attention, responsible evaluation of what we are told, let us acknowledge its importance in keeping the ground solid under our feet. Follow the star of truth, and it will get us through these days. The star is big enough to follow. It’s there in the day time, but it’s when the darkness falls, when you can’t see your way, that the star shines the brightest to guide us on.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 4, 2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The fourth element in the Buddhist Eightfold Path is “Right Action.” What did the Buddha suggest we think about as we consider our actions? What are we doing? Why are we doing it?

Many among us have been experiencing grief and depression about the results of the election. It’s not that the candidate we voted for lost the Electoral College, it’s that we must wake up to the fact that our friends and neighbors, our family members, can shrug off coarse, bullying, mean, ignorant and racist behavior. That they believed the other candidate when he said he knew how to do the job and handed him the reins of government, that the white nationalists are in the White House now and someone who’s behavior disgusts us is representing us on the world stage. He’s blundering around, and we fear that the delicate balances among nations will shake and give way. We’re sad and worried, and it’s hard to know what to do.

In times like these, as I’ve said, we go back to basics. The 7 Principles, the 8-fold path, the Golden Rule, the precepts we follow, our core values. First of all, it’s okay not to know what to do. It’s okay to be sad.

Buddhist teachers say, as I often remind myself, “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” We tell ourselves stories about what is happening, and we suffer from our stories. Then what happens is something we didn’t even think to worry about! One of the opportunities to do something is happening in the snow in ND. So many of us are going to Standing Rock. It seems like the next right thing to do. Take your body there. Be a protector if you are a vet. Be a chaplain if you are a minister. Be a healer if you are in one of the healing professions. Attend the Women’s March on January 21, either in DC or here in Austin in the local version of the protest. Find out how to go with us to the detention centers to visit with the women and their children being held there. We are galvanized, ready to be called into action. The Second Saturday volunteering group starts next Saturday – just show up at the church with or without the kids, and choose which service opportunity will do the most good.

Don’t waste your outrage, focus it. Pick two things to be working on, worried about. There are so many that if we try to spend passion and energy on them all, we burn out and grind to a halt. Find out what’s real and what’s made up. I was outraged about the list of liberal academics being put together. Look a little deeper, and it’s a college kid asking other college kids which professors are too liberal for them, a rate-your-professor kind of thing. It could grow, it could be used by those in authority, but that’s not what it is, yet.

How do we find the balance of being alert but not fearful. “Fear is the mind-killer,” those of us who are Frank Herbert fans will remember. Fear makes us want to howl, to hide under our beds, to obsess about how to make it stop. Alert, aware that there is a struggle to come, but it has been there for many already. Awake, understanding that, for half the country, racism is not any kind of a deal breaker. Alert, awake, and active. James Luther Adams, a Unitarian theologian, wrote extensively about his concern about American Facism. One of the most effective ways to stand against it is to be active in voluntary organizations, to band together with people of like values (the way we are doing this morning) and to be active in grass-roots lobbying (which we are doing on Feb 15?) knocking on doors, helping good candidates run for local offices.

How do we have the strength to move away from our fear? Spiritual practice. Building a sturdy spirit. We are talking today about the 8- fold path of Buddhism. It teaches how to be a person who does the right thing.

Right action is the name of this element, one of the three that talks about ethical behavior. Last month we talked about right speech, this month is right action, and next month will be right livelihood.

The reason to act rightly is not to avoid some hell in the afterlife, but to have a good happy life while you’re here.

Buddhist teacher Eric Kolvig says “Basically, we do our spiritual practice (meditation and ethical behavior) in all of its aspects to achieve two things: to achieve a clear mind-that is, to achieve wisdom; and to achieve an open heart-that is, to achieve love and compassion.”

The Buddha gave five precepts with which to experiment. If you live according to the five precepts of right action, you will be giving a gift to yourself and to the world, as you add good to the world. These are not commandments; they are trainings for setting the heart free from suffering and pain. Buddhists say “please don’t believe what I say. Try it for yourself and see what happens.”

We do the right thing in order to be joyful and free. We do it as a gift to the world, and so that we will be safe for people to be around. So many people in this world will steal, lie, rape, hit, babble, yell, hurt. If we are non-harming in our lives, we create a space of safety. If each one of us in this room held open a space of safety, think how much better this world would be. We all can be non-harming when we are well rested, well fed, with gas in the tank and money in the bank. It’s when life takes a spin that we get mean. Practice, spiritual practice, is to strengthen us so that no matter what happens we can find joy and peace.

So we take the right action. If we don’t know what that is in the large sense, we do the next right thing.

How do you know what the right thing to do is? You listen to the wisdom inside you. What does that little voice say? You ask how would you feel if someone did it to you. You ask is it fair, is it harmful to me or to others? How will you feel about yourself and about the world later if you do it?

We soulful Unitarian Universalists pay attention to our actions, asking two simple questions: “What am I doing?” “Why am I doing it?” If you give away some things or some money, I hope it sets you free and makes you happy, if you make amends to someone you have hurt, or let resentments go toward someone who has hurt you, I hope that sets you free and makes you happy. May you be blessed. May you be forgiven, may you be joyful. May it be so.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 13, 2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our third UU principle says we will affirm and promote acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations. Are there some ways to encourage one another that don’t sound like judgment or advice?

Sermon

There was a big election upset. “Upset” is how many of us feel. Sad, sick, shaken. Angry. Blaming people who didn’t vote, regretting not working harder, for believing pollsters and pundits. Many of us broke up with the news for a while, broke up with social media, cynical about anyone’s explanations of why and how this happened. They didn’t know squat before the election. Why listen to them now. Upset.

And here come the holidays, family time. Some stay with chosen family during those times (we’re having Thanksgiving dinner here at 2:30 on the day, but others go to the family they were born or adopted into. For most of us, there are people we will see who would say they love us, but who voted for someone whose policies and promises threaten us and our beloveds.

Do we beg off this season? Do we say we just have too much going on or do we tell the truth, that we have not yet figured out how to sit at a table and eat with people who actively participated in bringing about a situation in which we or our beloveds are suddenly endangered, vulnerable? Did they just want change so badly that they were willing to shrug off our fears as unfounded? Would they shrug off stories of bullying’s escalation, of hate crimes increasing? Would they shake their heads and say “not all Trump supporters?” They would never beat up someone. If they saw a person of color thrown to the ground by a white man, would they interfere? If it were a police officer would they start filming? If they went into their kids’ school and saw a kid with brown skin crying because someone just told her to go back to Mexico, or because her best uncle just got deported, would they shrug and say well, you don’t have a country if you don’t have borders? They have shrugged off a cascade of racist statements and stances, the discovery of a confession of sexual assault (yes, grabbing a woman’s private places is a sexual assault,) they have shrugged off or explained away mysterious finances, possible ties to an enemy power, made it clear that we queer folks, brown and black folks, women and children don’t deserve protection as much as they deserve— what? Survival is how some Trump voters see it. They need jobs and they feel forgotten (because they have been) and they feel endangered. In most rural parts of the country, there is no liberal news channel. Maybe they’ll get CNN, but mostly they get Fox. Fox facts are the only facts they hear. They want to feel safer, and they made a choice to dismiss and shrug away the dangers staring the rest of us in the face. That’s hard to understand and forgive. Also, I could be wrong. They may not want to feel safer. They may also not want to change their picture of what an American looks like. Or they may just want someone in charge who is a Big Daddy, and will tell them he’s got this, don’t worry any more.

Some white folks are claiming to be so surprised, shocked at the glimpse of the America they’ve just seen. They had NO IDEA it was this bad. No person of color is shocked or stunned. It was part of a sleepy and thoughtless privilege to remain unaware of the racism and the deep-rooted sexism in our culture. Now they’ll say “Oh, it’s not that bad.” And it won’t be bad for a lot of us. It will continue to be bad and worse for women, who are already hearing coarse men “joking” about grabbing their private places. What we have learned is that people who say they love us are willing to shrug, to excuse, to blame it on God or their preacher, to minimize our fear and wave away our concerns. The Mike Pence headshake with downcast eyes and dismissive chuckle is going to become the gesture of art in conversation.

How do we talk to those we love, those who claim to love us, when they have chosen to vote for “change,” (the kindest word I can find for this conflagration of American Constitutional values)

What we know is that it’s going to be really difficult. Awkward at its very best. I’ll tell you what I know today, and that’s the best I can do.

We go BACK TO BASICS when things get bad. That’s what we do. Our UU basics are our principles. The third one, the one I was scheduled to talk about today, turns out to be perfect for this problem. We covenant together to affirm and promote acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations. You all know that I like to say “in our homes and congregations,” so here we go.

Acceptance of one another means acceptance of the people who have different ideas from ours. Acceptance of the people does not mean or even imply acceptance of all of their ideas, because some ideas are destructive, and lead to injustice. We accept the people, though. I accept that you are who you are, and I trust that you will be you. I may need to protect myself or others from you. I may need to limit what I talk to you about, but I accept that you are who you are. That’s being a Unitarian Universalist. What is this “encouragement to spiritual growth” part, though? Well, spiritual growth is where you get clear about your values, and you live those values, so your spirit’s water runs clear and doesn’t hurt anyone downstream. Do we encourage spiritual growth through argument? I imagine there are some people who have grown through being harangued or shamed, but not many. People grow spiritually when we feel a dissonance between our values and our actions, and when we can deal with that dissonance in an atmosphere of curiosity and respect. Not safety, necessarily. Change is hard. No comfort, but curiosity and respect.

1. Figure out what you want for you, what you want for them, and what you want for the relationship. That’s what the Crucial Conversations people suggest. 2. Listen deeply. Listen with focus, suffused with curiosity, until you can almost see how they got there. That’s what the FBI hostage negotiators suggest when you’re trying to get someone rigid with certainty and grievance to put down their weapon and come out peacefully.

3. Give your own internal “weather report.” No one can argue with you saying “I feel afraid for my people who are black, brown, undocumented, queer, differently abled. I am sick and sad, and watchful for signs of autocracy. I love this country whether it’s right or wrong, and that means that sometimes it’s wrong. I believe it’s wrong now. And I love you, even though I’m hurt by your actions right now.”

4. Don’t despair. This may sound harsh, but that is a privileged response. Folks in marginalized communities and populations have been struggling forever. There is life and joy in the midst of struggle. Just because there is a struggle doesn’t mean you did something wrong. Not everything can be fixed. Life is struggle, and we can’t afford to give up.

5. Resist at every turn. The time to be nice and silent is not now. We don’t argue and shame individuals, but public policies, actions of the government, contempt for the press or the judiciary? We lobby. We write letters, we make noise. Those of us who are disruptors disrupt, and those who want the power of respectability, use that power for good.

6. One thing people are doing to indicate that they are protectors, safe spaces, is to wear safety pins on their clothing. We have boxes of them in the Gallery at the Social Action table. BUT. Here’s what it means when you put it on. You are willing to get next to a brown or black or Muslim person at a bus stop if you see them being harassed. It means you have looked online to see how to deescalate a potentially violent situation. We don’t want to make things worse. It means you will take the time to find out how to get that person to safety. If you have your kids with you you may want to take it off, if you don’t want them involved in such a situation. If you are feeling rushed and committed or weak and weird that day, you can take it off. People are wearing them, not to signify that they are a perfect ally, but to signify that they want to get there, and that they are actively seeking out training in order to be a good ally. We don’t wear them because all the cool kids are doing it, or because we feel guilty about the racist comments we didn’t challenge in order to keep things sweet on the surface.

7. Challenge. A good long stare is sometimes enough. A full minute of silence, count it off in your head. You haven’t said anything, you can’t be kicked out of the family or friend group, but the Dowager Countess face with a full minute of silence will go far. Let’s practice that now.

8. Engage by asking questions. Questions are powerful. Most of your ministers have preached sermons about asking good questions. “Help me understand this.” “How did you come to this view?” “What is your favorite thing about this?” “Do you have any concerns about this?” I wrote a whole sermon about asking questions that should be on our podcast somewhere. Watch Van Jones’ The Messy Truth videos. He is a Black man, a commentator on CNN, he spoke at General Assembly a few years ago. He gets in a room with a politically and racially mixed group and engages with such strength and kindness until he gets to the common values people can agree on. So we can build on strengths instead of clawing at differences.

9. We cannot afford to be squeamish here. We cannot be separatists. If you don’t have the spiritual strength to get in there and find common ground with people, that’s how it is, but if you do, you can build on people’s strengths, on their values. Van Jones as filmed some conversations of himself doing this in mixed political groups. He searches underneath the facts and talking points for someone’s vision of how things should be. Maybe we can ask people about the world they think should be. Maybe we can say “what is your vision of a fair country?”

There are loud and scary people in this country with varying points of view. Some of the loudest, scariest people who used to be dismissed as being fringe elements have just won the right to occupy the White House. If we talk to our friends and relatives who were Trump voters, if we find shared values with those regular people, we strengthen them and ourselves for times of trouble. Most of them don’t want to see hate crimes. They don’t want to see school children bullied. If we can all agree on that, that’s something. Most of us, after eighteen months of the most astonishingly vulgar and shocking campaign rhetoric, feel battered, wounded. Many of us are triggered and traumatized by having a loud verbally and sexually aggressive insecure narcissist in our peripheral vision for a long time, representing the loud aggressive bullying man in our past experience. Many among us do not have the strength yet to do anything like have a curious conversation with Trump supporters. Those among us who do, though, need to strengthen alliances. Things will go badly for the asylum seekers first, and those are our people. Then they will go badly for the undocumented men and women, boys and girls. People of color, poor people, women, gay women, gay men, then men who disagree with those in power. I hope none of that happens, but we are watching. We are watching for how the press is being treated, and it’s not starting in any kind of a reassuring way. This is not up to anyone else, my people. We must train ourselves to be the safe ones. You can wear safety pins to designate yourself as a safe person for Muslims, people of color and the undocumented. If you wear them, though, be sure to know that it means you have some knowledge of what to do in a situation where you’re needed. Whom to call, where to drive someone to, which agencies can be of help. We don’t wear safety pins because we would like to be competent allies, but because we are becoming competent allies. May that be so, more and more.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 6, 2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In the third strand of the Noble Eight-Fold Path, the Buddha recommends that we abstain from lying, divisive speech, abusive speech, and idle chatter. How might we do this?

We gather this morning on the Sunday before a Presidential campaign which has broken all recent records for vulgarity and nastiness. Well, there was the election of 1828, where Adams’ camp called Andrew Jackson a slave-trading, brawling murderer. This was ugly, but no one could much quibble, as it was all true. Jackson’s people said Adams was visiting with his wife before she was divorced, and that, as ambassador to Russia he had procured an American working girl for Alexander 1. The one that takes the prize for me was when, in 1800, the Federalists let it be known far and wide that the Republican candidate, Thomas Jefferson, was dead. That was a rank exaggeration. It’s been bad lately. I don’t mean to make light of it. The fabric of our culture is showing the wear. The Buddha said Right Speech entails “Abstaining from lying, abstaining from divisive speech, abstaining from abusive speech, abstaining from idle chatter.” Buddhist teachers as you to wonder whether something you are about to say is true, and whether it is useful.

When we lie, we damage the bond between people. If you lie people don’t know who you are. Our interactions with one another are founded on steady ground between us. It’s strongest when I know you are telling me truth as far as you can, and I’m telling you truth. Lying makes us all sick, the one who lies, and the one who is lied to. We live in a culture of speech. All around us is talking. We read emails and ads and we watch TV and we talk to one another. Almost all ads are lies; almost all TV is lies of one sort or another. To say you will do something and then not follow through is a lie. I’m guilty of that one. Doing what you say you will do makes more happiness and less suffering. To find someone who speaks the truth to us is a treasure. To be a person who speaks the truth will make you a treasure.

Let me say something here. Buddhist teacher Eric Kolvig points out that the Buddha didn’t say “if you lie, you’re a bad person.” Buddhism is not a path of morality, of good and bad. It is a path of noticing, becoming aware. Instead of “good” and “bad,” there is “harmful, increasing the suffering in the world,” and “not harmful,” increasing peace in the world.” Everyone wants to be happy. Almost everyone. The eight-fold path: right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration, is the way to freedom from suffering, to peace of mind and happiness. If you notice yourself lying, don’t beat yourself up, don’t wallow in the delicious drama of being a bad person, just notice and gently wonder “What would this situation be like if I were to speak more truthfully?” One of my teachers, Wendy Palmer, writes that Wondering is so much more effective than trying.

Abstaining from “divisive speech” is the next element of right speech. What is that? It’s anything that drives a wedge between us. If I gossip about her (over there) to you (over there) even if it’s true, then you know something about her that she doesn’t know you know, and you have to not let her know that you know it. If the connection between the two of you is like a road, it becomes difficult to travel a road with that big a boulder sitting in the middle of it. In one of the books I read this week, Rabbi Stephen Wylen says we shouldn’t say things that lower another in the estimation of one with whom you are speaking, unless you are giving a factual warning about someone to prevent harm or loss, and you do that with doubt, like “I don’t know if this person has changed, but he was abusive to his last wife, so you may want to keep your guard up for a while if you go out with him.” In our congregational behavioral covenant, we agree to “limit disagreements to the individuals or groups directly involved.” This prevents divisive talking as folks gather support in the wider community for their side of a conflict. We have seen so much divisive speech in this cycle, categorizing groups of people and painting them as criminal, lazy, stupid, weak. We look at each other and are almost repulsed “HOW could they be so…?” Anything that turns it into “us” and “them” is divisive. We wil hardly ever succeed in including everyone when we say “us,” but we can wonder what the world would be if we did that.

It could be that just talking about someone who isn’t there can be divisive. The Buddhist teachers I read all talked about becoming mindful of talking about an absent third party. Not that it’s always harmful, but it often is, so it’s an interesting exercise to become aware of doing it.

Other teachers say talking about one another builds community. We drop interesting tidbits about other people that help others see how amazing they are.

The third element in the Buddha’s teaching about right speech is that we refrain from abusive speech. It makes us sick to heap abuse on other people, and it’s likely that we talk to ourselves that same way. That makes us sick for sure. So many hear abusive speech as children, and it sticks in your heart and begins to shout at you in your own voice. When people speak to you abusively, it tells you much more about them than it does about you. They are hurting, they are poisoned, and they can’t even see you clearly, much less speak to you in a way that is about you.

Sometimes we are tempted to tell the truth in a way that is abusive — just to let someone have it. Even when what we’re saying is true, if we using the truth as a weapon against someone, it can do harm. Hard truths should be said in love. Gently. With respect. With the willingness for the hard truths about yourself to be told as well.

The last element of Right Speech, according to the Buddha’s teaching is abstaining from “”Idle chatter.” Well, like they say, “Now you’ve quit preachin’ and gone to meddlin.” I read a story about a man who decided he wouldn’t speak if it weren’t necessary, and he was silent for the next thirteen years. That made me mad. How do you decide what’s necessary? Telling your partner you love them every day at least once is necessary, in my opinion. It’s not a situation where you can say “Honey, I told you I love you when we got together and I’ll let you know if anything changes.” Asking someone how their day was is relationship strengthening. Is it necessary? Maybe that silent man wasn’t in any relationship. Maybe he didn’t even have a dog, or a friend. How do you decide what’s “idle chatter?” Humph. Well, I know it when I hear it.

The Talmud says God spoke to the tongue and said “all the other parts of the body I have made standing up, but you I have made lying down, and I have built walls around you.” The word is powerful. It can create and it can destroy. Choose to create. Your inner wisdom will guide you. Silence

The wise man in the teaching story said he had decided never again to utter an unnecessary word. He was silent for the next twelve years. The story didn’t say what persuaded the wise man to break his silence. I think that would have been important information. When the story was done, I felt mad. Yes, mad. I do understand the beauty and the power of silence. In conversations with clients, with my children, with parishioners, I stay silent sometimes as a way to give them space to figure things out on their own, and oftentimes they do. In my office I have a carved wooden mask of a woman’s face, and she is holding one finger up to her lips. She reminds me to say less. Sometimes that works.

Why did the teaching story make me so mad? I guess because it was teaching that you shouldn’t say unnecessary words. What makes a word necessary? I have done couples counseling for nearly twenty years now, and silence does as much damage to a relationship as hard words. Sweet words strengthen the bond between people. We need to hear that we are loved, that we look good, that we did a great job, that we are appreciated. Those are necessary words. I have known people who starved to death emotionally in relationships where their partners didn’t believe in saying unnecessary words. Some folks think the only thing talking is good for is to exchange information or to give advice. You say, “talk to me about your day,” and they say “It’s nothing you haven’t heard before. No new information.” You say “Tell me how you feel.” and they answer, “It wouldn’t do any good. It wouldn’t fix the situation.”

Stories that families tell carry history and identity. Stories friends tell to one another, on one another, create bonds and memories that can support a life when it’s sagging. I was on the phone with my sister last night. Our beloved friend Pat Jobe visited them last month in Texas; he and his seven year old son spent the day. Now, Pat’s a talker, and so is his boy, and so is my brother in law. My sisters children are now telling Pat stories, imitating his voice as they remember lines from his stories. Their family was fed by the lack of silence. They have enough to go on now for months, just from that one day. They tell his stories back to me. One day at a party he was telling a woman that he was jealous of Charles Burgin because “Charles is better looking than me, richer than me, he’s more successful than me and he’s funnier than me.” The woman said “Oh, Pat, he’s not funnier than you.” Last night on the phone my sister had to give the receiver to her eight year old daughter so she could deliver the punch line to me. Her little girl voice said, in a dead-on Forest City NC accent. “OH Pat, he’s not FUNNIER than you!”

I want to say to that silent wise man: “Mr. wise man, I hope you are not in a relationship, and I hope you don’t have any children, and I hope you don’t have any friends, because, if you are, shame on you for not thinking it necessary every day to say “I love you,” or “How are you?” or “Tell me your day.” I hope you live in a hermitage far away from folks who need you or love you, maybe with one very understanding cat and I hope you pat her.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 30, 2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

As we approach Halloween, All Saints and All Souls days, we might think about which ancestors we would choose to honor, and what actions we could take to honor them.

During the time of meditation we called out the names of those we have lost. The Celtic tradition says that the veil between the worlds of the dead and the living are thin at this time. In the Mexican/Aztec tradition, these are the days to celebrate the death of innocent babies and little children, then the next day, adults who have died. The Roman Catholic church delineates All Saints Day on Nov 1, and then All Souls Day on the 2nd.

This is a good time of year to honor those who have gone before us. Do we want to be just like them? No, we are each a unique self, and not to be the best of who we are dishonors the creative force. Do we search our ancestors to find something of ourselves? Of course.

Genealogy becomes a mania, an obsessive struggle to penetrate the past and snatch meaning from an infinity of names. At some point the search becomes futile – there is nothing left to find, no meaning to be dredged out of old receipts, newspaper articles, letters, accounts of events that seemed so important fifty or seventy years ago. All that remains is the insane urge to keep looking, insane because the searcher has no idea what he seeks. What will it be? A photograph? A will? A fragment of a letter? The only way to find out is to look at everything, because it is often when the searcher has gone far beyond the border of futility that he finds the object he never knew he was looking for.”
– Henry Wiencek, The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White

Some people use Ancestry.com, others do the mitochondrial DNA testing where you swab your cheek and send it off in the mail. Everyone has ancestors, whether they were the ones who raised you or not. They are part of you.

I’ve told you some family stories, mostly about the Southerners on my mother’s side. I want to start by telling you about my dad’s aunt Neoskaleeta this morning. She was the oldest of three children, born in Huntingdon, PA to Rev. and Mrs. Tiffany. We don’t know why, but there in the 1890’s, they named their daughters, Mary Neolskaleeta and one Ruth Winureeta Tiffany. Local Native names. Ruth Tiffany was my grandmother, and Aunt Neosk found “Mary” to be dull and always went by Neoskaleeta, or Neosk. She had an illness as a child, maybe scarlet fever, and her hair fell out. When it grew back in, it was flaming red. She was argumentative, in contrast to her sweet sister, rebellious, and willful. In high school, when she declared she wanted to be a doctor, the principal told her that was out of range for a girl, but she could become a nurse. She went away to college, then medical school, got her diploma, rode back into Huntingdon on a motorcycle, went to the high school, and smacked the diploma down on the Principal’s desk.

She moved to Bahrain to be a doctor and married a man who worked for Standard Oil. A family story says that one day, men on horseback brandishing swords came and demanded she go with them. A sheik’s favorite wife was having trouble in childbirth. He wouldn’t have a male doctor look at her, and he’d heard there was a woman doctor in that town and went to fetch her. After hours long travel, she met with the sheik. If you save my wife, and if she has a daughter, I will pay you this much. If you save her and she has a son, it will be this much more. If she dies, you can find your way home across the desert alone. She saved the woman, who had a son, and the sheik gave her a back of gold and jewels. She gave those jewels to her children and grandchildren one at a time over the years. That’s what I hear. My grandmother, Ruth, married the preacher. He was a towering figure in the US during the twenties, thirties, and forties and fifties. They still sell his books in Christian book stores, I’m glad they are all part of me, but it’s Neoskaleeta I’m going to invite to sit down at the table with my inner committee. Do you have an inner committee? Who is on it? Any ancestors?.

This morning I want to tell you about some of our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors.

Who will we want to emulate? A Universalist preacher named Hosea Ballou? 1796-1852 The “family” stories about him: “Hosea Ballou, another Universalist once found himself sharing a carriage with a minister from another denomination, someone who believed very much in hell and damnation. Midway through their ride, the fellow asked him: “Could it be that you are Hosea Ballou, the infamous Universalist preacher?” Hosea admitted with pride to being who he was, and this other minister began to question him about his beliefs.

“So you do not believe in the existence of hell?”
“No.”
“Not even for the punishment of truly heinous crimes?”
“No.”
“Not even when you imagine that you yourself could be the victim of such a crime? Can you not conceive of a space in hell for someone who harmed you personally?”
“I cannot conceive of any place in hell, friend, for it does not exist.” Finally, exasperated and upset, the man asked Hosea, “Am I to understand then that if I were a Universalist, there would be nothing to stop me from killing you and the driver and making off into the night with this carriage?” And Hosea replied, “No, sir. If you were a Universalist, the thought of doing so would not have occurred to you.”

Another time a father came to him, concerned for the eternal soul of his son, who was always in the bars, partying and making bad choices. Please talk to him, pastor! He begged.
YES, let’s go build a fire outside the bar, and we’ll drag him out of the bar and throw him in it!
The father was horrified. “Why would I do that to my son?”
Ballou nodded. Why indeed, and are you a better parent than God?

There is Theodore Parker, a Transcendentalist Unitarian minister who founded a Vigilance Committee to get in the way of the slave catchers who came to Boston to kidnap men and women who had escaped slavery and drag them back South. He was a fiery abolitionist, and had an integrated congregation. He was constant about reminding people about the Black activists and soldiers who helped with the Revolutionary War. He wrote a letter to President Millard Filmore, another Unitarian forbear, which said There hangs in my study . . . the gun my grandfather fought with at the battle of Lexington… and also the musket he captured from a British soldier on that day,” Parker wrote in his letter to President Fillmore. “If I would not peril my property, my liberty, nay my life to keep my parishioners out of slavery, then I should throw away these trophies, and should think I was the son of some coward and not a brave man’s child.” Millard Filmore thought he was doing the best thing for the Union, signing the Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed slave-catchers to come north and snatch people. The new law also required all private free citizens to assist in the capture of those who had escaped. The members of the Vigilance Committee followed the slave catchers, harassed them, got in their way in many ways. They saved the lives of the men and women on the slave catchers’ list.

Margaret Fuller is one of the most dramatic female forbears. Her life is like an opera. She was born to a Unitarian family, educated in Latin, math, writing. She was a frequent visitor to the Emerson’s home, and a conversational adversary to him. Rumor has it that he had a great crush on her, but we don’t know if there was anything between them. She became a foreign correspondent for Horace Greely’s paper, the NY Tribune, He sent her to London to cover the literary world, but she became passionate about the Italian revolution, and went to Italy to cover the revolution there. Before this, war news was written by soldiers, and involved stories of battles and strategy. She wrote about the French bombardment of Italian citizens, and her stories held the human interest that war stories hadn’t included before that. She met an Italian Count, and they had a baby. Maybe tney weren’t married. She was advised not to come back to New England with a love child and an Italian Count, but they set sail. Caught in a storm, the ship was battered by waves and began to fall apart within plain sight of shore. A sailor said “I think I can make it, hand me the baby!” He strapped the baby to himself and dived in. They both drowned immediately. She stood on the deck as people on the shore watched in horror, her white night gown and her dark hair whipping in the wind, as the ship broke apart, its wooden hull battered from within by a giant marble bust of John C Calhoun being delivered to from Italy.

We are going to be ancestors ourselves. Whose story guides us? What family traditions do we carry on, consciously or unconsciously? What stories do we want told about us by our children’s children’s children? Do we sometimes do the wrong thing for reasons which seem sensible to us, as Millard Filmore did? Did we strain our relationships for the sake of justice or authenticity? Did we flout convention or do we live within the mores of a community to build trusting relationships or did they find a way to do both?

We can get guidance from the lives of those who have gone before us. No one is without flaws. No one is superhuman. Sometimes I color part of my hair red to honor Neoskaleeta, her intelligence and courage. I preach because that’s who I am, and I hope it honors all the preachers I come from. We are grateful to be here. We are grateful to be here together.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.