Want IDEAS for something VEGAN  to serve at your holiday meal? 

The Veganistas of First UU Austin invite you to  A VEGAN PRE-THANKSGIVING POTLUCK DINNER AND RECIPE SWAP

Saturday, November 9th, 6:30 PM in Howson Hall

Bring something festive, or a veganized version of a holiday classic, or your best unique specialty. 

Submit YOUR vegan holiday recipe or find ideas at Veganistas.org.

Bring a VEGAN dish that serves 8. Couples may bring two dishes or one large dish. 

ALL DISHES NEED TO BE VEGAN, meaning no animal products at all. (No meat, fish, eggs, or dairy products including no milk, cheese, yogurt or butter, no animal broth, gelatin, or honey. Please check the ingredients of everything used in your dish.)  This makes it so everyone in our group, vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores can eat anything at the potluck. It is helpful to bring a list of ingredients or even copies of your recipe! As a courtesy, be prepared to give information about allergens. 

For more information, to sign up for the potluck, or to ask questions about veganism visit Veganistas.org

Contact us at info@veganistas.org Letting us know that you plan to attend gives a good head count. But if you forget to sign up, COME ANYWAY!

Sponsored by the Veganistas of First UU Austin and the Austin Vegan and Vegetarian Association 

VEGAN FOR THE ANIMALS, FOR YOUR HEALTH, FOR OUR PLANET

VEGAN FOR THE INTERDEPENDENT WEB OF LIFE, OF WHICH WE ARE ALL A PART. 

Join us on Saturday, October 19th at First UU Austin from 8 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. for TXUUJM’s Empowered Safety Training.

Lunch will be provided. Childcare available upon request. Teens are also welcome to attend this workshop with a parent.

From democracy work to campus protests to Sunday mornings in worship, we face questions of how — and what it means — to keep ourselves and our communities safe. Join the Texas Unitarian Universalist Justice Ministry as we deepen our practical and spiritual tools for safety in our congregations, communities, and justice work. In this unique training grounded in UU principles but open to all, you will learn from local and national safety experts about how to respond in a crisis:

• What is an equitable and just definition of community safety, aligned with our values?
• What is needed from UUs, according to community members who face the most risk?
• When faced with creating a critical incident response, based on years of research, in the first few minutes before law enforcement is present, how do we empower ourselves to keep our communities safe?
• Most importantly: how do we make decisions about safety based on our values, and not out of fear?

The training will include a one-day in-person training, as well as two-hour Zoom workshops before the training and after the training, to provide collective grounding and reflection. UUs, partners, and friends are warmly invited, and you are encouraged to register with a group from your congregation or organization, so you may be thought partners in sharing your learning with your wider community after the training.

NOTE: This was a very popular and successful training with our Arizona UU justice network, and we are excited to bring it to Texas with the same facilitators, funded by grants from UU College of Social Justice and the New York State Convention of Universalists.

While Unitarian Universalism comes out of Christianity, many of us have–at best–mixed experiences with the Christian bible. Whether you are bible-curious or concerned about what’s in there, this workshop is for you.

Join UU seminary student AJ Juraska online, Sunday, December 29th from 1 – 3 p.m. to learn tools for understanding the bible from an academic/historical perspective, rather than a “literal” one. We’ll focus on what the bible does–and does not–say about being gay and how to research what bible verses “really” say. A Zoom link will be provided once you register on Church Center.

First UU’s Mission is Building the Beloved Community. By sharing 60 minutes of your time, you can invite First UU’s members and friends to build a world of justice, compassion, and love. Sixty minutes of your time in the comfort of your own home is a great way to demonstrate your spiritual values. We have opportunities to sign up for writing thank you cards and participating in virtual text banks. 

Please share your time with the stewardship team by signing up here.

Building the Beloved Community

With love and joy, we invite you to join the 2025 First UU Stewardship Campaign. Commitment Sunday is coming on Sunday, October 13. This is the day that we will ask all members and friends to make their annual pledge to First UU. What is a pledge?  Making a pledge simply means declaring how much you expect to contribute to First UU during 2025. 

This year, we are striving to make pledging joyful by encouraging positive reasons to give, easy ways to make your pledge, and a churchwide celebration recognizing our congregation’s accomplishments and having some fun.

Join the hundreds of Austin families committed to the spiritual practice of supporting our progressive faith community by pledging on October 13. If you already pledge, we encourage you to increase your support of First UU in 2025. We will then celebrate our commitment to First UU with a party on October 27 from 12:15 – 2. Learn more about pledging and the 2025 Pledge Drive on the Stewardship Webpage.

Are you wanting to deepen or expand your spiritual practice? Would you like more opportunities to worship with your family?

Starting in October, FUUCA will be offering evening Vespers services on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of every month at 6:30 PM. The 2nd Tuesday will be a meditative service and will be held in the sanctuary. The 4th Tuesday will be a family friendly service in Howson Hall with dinner provided (all ages are welcome).

This month the services will be Tuesday, October 8th and October 22nd. Please reach out to Nancy Mohn Barnard with any questions: okrasalad@gmail.com or 512-914-2917. 

In 2013, co-founders Frances Schenkkan and Dr. Juno Woods expanded on the 2007 organization, Students for Gun-Free Schools in Texas, to create Texas Gun Sense, with a broader focus on public safety. The mission of Texas Gun Sense is “. . . to prevent gun violence and other gun tragedies in Texas through education, partnerships, and policy change. We achieve this mission through a multi-faceted approach centering around education, collaboration, and advocacy.”

Texas uses a common-sense approach to political action and, in doing so, has achieved some careful, measured success in Texas. The 2015 launch of The Texas Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence, an alliance of organizations and experts working on gun violence prevention, is one such success, as is the Texas Invest in Us Coalition, designed to secure investment for violence intervention. TGS works politically to prevent dangerous laws from being passed as well as supporting and advocating for new laws. And it
works educationally, an example being its webinar series, “Education to End Gun Violence.” Go to txgunsense.org for more information.

In 2023, during the 88th session of the Texas Legislature, TGS was successful in working with a lawmaker to add a measure to the school safety legislation (HB 3) that requires school districts to educate every child’s parent or caregiver about safe gun storage. The work goes on!

On Sunday, October 13th the collection will promote Texas Gun Sense.

Sign Up for the Green Sanctuary Committee, a Different 1st UU Social Action Pillar, the Sierra Club,
Citizens Climate Lobby – or All of Them

The Green Sanctuary Committee will try a new process. You can sign up as a Green Sanctuary Activist. You will receive a weekly communication about how you can help fight for the climate at local, state, and national levels. You are not expected to take all of these actions. If you are one of the many folks at 1st UU who is too busy with other causes, with work, and/or with family, we encourage you to sign up as a Green Sanctuary Supporter (not money support, action support). We’ll inform you of at least one action a month that will take as little as five minutes yet that, joining hundreds or thousands of others, can exert powerful pressure on our leaders to take action. We’ll also notify you of several meetings each month where you can learn and act with a major climate organization even without joining it.

We’ll also have sign up sheets for the other committees that make up the six social action pillars of 1st UU: LGBT Rights, Anti-Racism, Immigration, Reproductive Justice, and UU the Vote/Democracy.

We’ll also have a sign-up table for Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL). CCL focuses effectively on trying to get the most important climate legislation passes at the national level. They are unique in recognizing that most climate legislation will need bipartisan support to pass, and looking for and supporting legislation that both parties can support. CCL provides superb volunteer training and has a strong Austin chapter.

We’ll have a sign-up table for the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club is the largest grass-roots environmental organization in the country and has strong advocacy programs at the local, state, and national levels. Fighting for the climate and for climate justice is a top priority. They have excellent speakers on climate and the environment at many local meetings. They also provide many volunteer opportunities. They lead excellent hikes in the local area.

Heat claims more climate crisis deaths than anything else. 645 people died from heat in Phoenix in 2023
alone. 47,000 people died in Europe. As heat waves become longer and more intense, even more will
die. Deaths from heat is also a top climate justice. It’s important that we realize that real people are
behind cold statistics about deaths.

We will watch the film Cooked – Survival by Zip Code, the story of a Chicago heat wave. We’ll discuss the
reactions of different people in the U.S. to this tragedy. We’ll of course have popcorn. Children will
watch a different movie at the same time, Seuss’s Lorax. Please join us.

Building the Beloved Community

With love and joy, we invite you to join the 2025 First UU Stewardship Campaign. Commitment Sunday is coming on Sunday, October 13th. This is the day that we will ask all members and friends to make their annual pledge to First UU. Making a pledge simply means declaring how much you expect to contribute to First UU during 2025.  

This year, we are striving to make pledging joyful by encouraging positive reasons to give, easy ways to make your pledge, and a church-wide celebration recognizing our congregation’s accomplishments and having some fun.

Join the hundreds of Austin families committed to the spiritual practice of supporting our progressive faith community by pledging on Sunday, October 13th. If you already pledge, we encourage you to increase your support of First UU in 2025. We will then celebrate our commitment to First UU with a party on Sunday, October 27 from 12 – 2 p.m. Learn more about pledging and the 2025 Pledge Drive on the Stewardship webpage.

Trans Hostile States/Safe States Training with
Transforming Hearts Collective and UUSC

On Sunday, September 15th from 12:30- 1:30 p.m., we will watch a Ted Talk by Katherine Hayhoe. We’ll briefly present the five barriers to thinking about the climate crisis, and how to talk about climate to breach them. We’ll present a few additional tips from Katherine Hayhoe’s latest book, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. And we’ll talk about all of this.

We’ll have a light lunch. Join us.

Those of us who appreciate how vital solving our climate crisis is must talk about the climate, and talk about the climate in the right way. Katherine Hayhoe, climate scientist and communicator, argues that this is “the most important thing you can do for the climate is talk about it.”

Yale Climate Communications surveys show that fewer than 25% of Americans hear anything about climate change once a week or more. Psychologist Per Epsen Stoknes summarizes research into five barriers the brain builds up to avoid thinking about climate change, and how to overcome them. Although most people report that they know climate change is real and needs action, it is not in the top ten priorities of most people. This allows many politicians to feel they can continue to cater to their big donors in oil and gas and do little or nothing to stop the climate crisis we’re in.

During the long fight to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, the greatest climate action bill ever passed, the climate movement generated hundreds of thousands of messages to Congress. It barely passed, but pass it did, although it was declared totally dead three times.

So folks, talk more about the climate crisis. Out descendants will thank you

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Michelle LaGrave
September 8, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

What does it mean to belong? How might we support ourselves and each other in cultivating a sense of belonging? Why is belonging important to building the beloved community?

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

A PLACE OF BELONGING AND CARING
by Kimberlee Tomczak Carlson

It is not by chance that you arrived here today.

You have been looking for something larger than yourself.
Inside of you there is a yearning, a calling, a hope for more,
A desire for a place of belonging and caring.

Through your struggles, someone nurtured you into being,
Instilling a belief in a shared purpose, a common yet precIous resource
That belongs to all of us when we share.

And so, you began seeking a beloved community:

A people that does not put fences around love.
A community that holds its arms open to possibilities of love.
A heart-home to nourish your soul and share your gifts.

Welcome home; welcome to worship.

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Reading

BELONGING
– Brené Brown

We’re wired for love. We’re hardwired for belonging. It’s in our DNA. But let me tell you what belonging is. The opposite of belonging – from the research – is “fitting in.” That’s the opposite of a lot.

Fitting-in is assessing and acclimating. “Here’s what I should say. Here’s what I shouldn’t say. Here’s what I should avoid talking about. Here’s what I should dress like, look like.” That’s fitting in.

Belonging is belonging to yourself first. Speaking your truth, telling your story and never betraying yourself for people. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are. It requires you to BE who yau are, and that’s vulnerable.

Sermon

On this day, when so many of our hearts are heavy, I offer you this invitation – to listen. Not with your ears, but with your hearts. To open your hearts to the possibility of change, the possibility of Love, the possibility of beloved community. This is an invitation to the possibility of belonging.

Belonging. Belonging to a family, a group, a community is essential to our ability as humans to thrive, to grow, to develop, to change, to transform. From the time of our birth, belonging is essential to both our physical and mental health. We belong to and with those who raise us, care for us, and teach us. Our very survival is based on interdependence with a group of humans, made up partly of family, biological or chosen, as well as a larger community of people who cooperate in growing and preparing our food, teaching us essential knowledge and skills, and caring for our health. We cannot survive as fully independent humans.

Independence is, at its core, a myth. We must belong. Somewhere, somehow, we must belong.

While belonging is essential to our basic, short-term survival as individuals, as a collective, humans aspire to more than basic survival. We are driven to grow, develop, and change. These abilities are essential to our survival as a species. And for these, too, belonging is also essential. To thrive, as a species, and as individuals, we must belong. We belong to families, groups of friends, classrooms, interest groups, congregations, neighborhoods, ethnic groups, faith traditions, towns, schools, clubs, and much more. At least, we might. The possibility, as well as the necessity, of belonging exists. If, or when, we don’t belong we feel excluded and trouble brews.

Not belonging leads to feelings of loneliness and isolation. And not much that is good comes from loneliness or isolation. These are to be avoided, if at all possible. Today, you are all here. Either in person or online. And so the possibility of belonging exists for you, right now, right here, in this moment. The possibility of belonging to a spiritual community, a faith tradition, yourself exists right now. You are invited to belong.

This congregation’s mission, its purpose, is to build beloved community. Beloved community probably means many things to many different people. It was first clearly articulated by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr during the civil rights movement. Beloved community in that context is a lot about social justice, especially economic justice and so it is already a lot about belonging, about the possibility and promise for all people to not only survive but also thrive.

Building beloved community here, in this congregation, is partly about how if we can learn to do it well here, we can learn to do it well out there, in the wider world.

That doesn’t mean we aren’t actively working on doing justice out there, in the wider world, at the same time. We’re doing both. I’d like to suggest that building beloved community is also about building connection; getting and staying connected to each other. We cannot cooperate in a group endeavor to survive and thrive if we do not know each other and if we are not connected to each other. Beloved community is about being known, loved, cared for, and by, and connected to each other. Building beloved community is about working to minimize those all-too-common feelings of isolation and loneliness. And so, building beloved community requires us to show up as our authentic selves and to support and encourage each other in doing the same.

You are invited to belong. You are invited to belong to yourself. You are invited to belong to this beloved community.

So let’s pretend, for a moment, that you’ve said yes, yes to belonging. How does one go about the process of belonging? There are three key components: to show up as your authentic self, to support and encourage others to do the same, and to allow for the possibility of change, maybe even transformation.

1. That’s show up, yourself;
2. encourage others to show up, themselves;
3. and be open to change.

1. Show up as your authentic self

• Be true to yourself (don’t betray yourself in terms of who you are) Don’t try to “fit in”. Church is not a personality or a popularity contest. Neither is beloved community.
• Be vulnerable (sharing your authentic self, your thoughts and feelings, your lived experiences is how people build trust with each other.)
• If we limit the ways in which we share our authentic selves, our experience of beloved community will also be limited.

2. Support and encourage others in showing up as their authentic selves.

• Be curious about other people, be open to learning about each other, about how we experience similar life events differently. e.g. my grief might be different from yours, even though we both lost a child or a parent or a spouse; my job loss might have additional layers of trauma due to systemic oppression. This one is all about gentle, warm, open, non-judgmental curiosity.
• If we limit the ways other people show up as their authentic selves, if we pressure them to try to fit into our own boxes, our own ways, then their and our experience of beloved community will also be limited.

3. Be willing to be changed by what you learn about yourselves and each other.

• This one is not about changing who you are, or trying to fit in, but about
• knowing yourself and growing into more of who you are
• This one is about making room for possibility, for change, for transformation. It is about being open to changing the way we do things and not only accepting, but also supporting and encouraging each other in doing things differently. There is no one right way. There is no one right path.
• More about this one next week.

How? What this congregation is already doing:

• Small group ministry (Chalice Circles, Wellspring)
• First UU Cares (including new Caring Companions ministry)
• Grief group, soon to come Caregivers Group
• Religious Education for all ages – including ways to reflect on our own experiences and ways of being in the world, and to change
• Working together to create a healthier environment for people to share, to be vulnerable, through shared Healthy Relations Covenant, Healthy Relations Team, shared values, etc.
• And so many other ways…

As a Gen X’er (which you’ll hear more about next week), I have a healthy dose of cynicism and idealism. And as a minister, that is extra true. I am realistic. I know what the world is. And I believe a better world is possible. In the meantime, I live in a world that could be but is not yet.

What I’m saying is that I know, I know that building beloved community is hard work. I’m not naive. And I know that showing up as our true selves is also hard work. Being vulnerable is the most courageous thing we can do because it is a choice. Unlike other situations in which courage is so often lauded, when our bodies react to extreme situations by going into fight, flight, or freeze mode, being true to ourselves, showing up as our authentic selves is a choice. A courageous choice. Beloved Community, and all that it entails is possible. Belonging is possible. You are invited to belong. Will you join me?

Amen and Blessed Be.

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Benediction

All of you, each and every one of you, is Loved.
You are loved in all of your strengths and might and challenges, and mistakes, and imperfections, and foibles, and plain old quirks.
You are Loved, wholeheartedly and unquestionably as your real, true, authentic self.
Go forth knowing that you are loved.
Go forth knowing that you are blessed.
Amen and Blessed Be.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 24 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

The Only Guaranteed Things in Life…are death and taxes.

We are honored to have church member Liz Nielsen, Founder of Nielsen Law and estate planning attorney, share wisdom and best practices around getting one’s affairs in order in advance, so that one’s wishes may be carried out as fully as possible. She will also discuss some tax efficient charitable giving techniques.

Please join us on Sunday, November 3, from 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. in Room 13A. Register here!