Creating Creative Welcoming

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson and Kelly Stokes
May 21, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

One of our church ends (goals) states, “We embody the principals of Unitarian Universalism and invite people of goodwill to find a spiritual home with us.” Our church is growing in both numbers and multiculturally. This both provides all of us greater creative potential and requires greater creative efforts and openness from each of us.

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.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Anthem

DREAM ON
Steven Tyler

Every time that I look in the mirror
All these lines on my face getting clearer
The past is gone
Oh, it went by like dusk to dawn
Isn’t that the way?

Everybody’s got their dues in life to pay, oh, oh, oh
I know nobody knows
Where it comes and where it goes
I know it’s everybody’s sin
You got to lose to know how to win

Half my life’s in books’ written pages
Storing facts learned from fools and from sages
You view the earth

Oh, sing with me, this mournful dub
Sing with me, sing for a year
Sing for the laughter, and sing for the tear
Sing with me, if it’s just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away

Dream on
Dream on
I dream on
Dream a little, I’ll dream on
Dream on
I dream on
I dream on

Dream a little, I’ll dream on
Dream on
Dream on
Dream on
I’ll dream on
Dream on
Dream on
I dream on

Oh, sing with me, sing for the year
Sing for the laughter, and sing for the tear
Sing it with me, if it’s just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away

Reading

THIS GRACE THAT SCORCHES US
Jan Richardson.

Here’s one thing you must understand about this blessing:

it is not for you alone.
It is stubborn about this.

Do not even try to lay hold of it if you are by yourself, thinking you can carry it on your own.

To bear this blessing, you must first take yourself to a place where everyone does not look like you or think like you,

a place where they do not believe precisely as you believe, where their thoughts and ideas and gestures are not exact echoes of your own.

Bring your sorrow.
Bring your grief.
Bring your fear.
Bring your weariness, your pain,

your disgust at how broken the world is, how fractured,
how fragmented by its fighting,
its wars,
its hungers,
its penchant for power,

its ceaseless repetition of the history it refuses to rise above.

I will not tell you this blessing will fix all that.

But in this place where you have gathered,

wait.
Watch.
Listen.

Lay aside your inability to be surprised,
your resistance to what you do not understand.

See then whether this blessing turns to flame on your tongue,
sets you to speaking what you cannot fathom

or opens your ear to a language beyond your imagining that comes as a knowing in your bones,

a clarity in your heart
that tells you this is the reason we were made:

for this ache that finally opens us,

for this struggle, this grace that scorches us toward one another and into the blazing day.

Sermon

– Kelly Stokes’ homily may be heard on the audio but the text is not available.

– Chris Jimmerson

OK, let’s have a moment of communal releasing of guilt or shame if we were sitting here thinking, “Geez, I have some of those scripts Kelly just described”.

We all do.

These scripts come out of our life experiences; The culture in which we grew up; The culture in which exist now; The very societal waters in which we swim.

We take them on without even realizing it.

Sometimes though, they are unhelpful or just plain wrong.

Sometimes they can harm others, even when that is not at all our intent.

Left unchecked, these scripts can arise out of what social scientists call, “implicit bias” – when we hold attitudes or stereotypes towards people without our conscious knowledge.

Importantly, we don’t have to hold any explicit prejudice for implicit bias to be lurking about outside our awareness.

So conveniently, you can uncover them by taking an implicit bias test online at projectimplicit.net.

And, there is good reason to do so, because research shows that unearthing such biases can be a first step toward changing these unconscious scripts.

Now, a few warnings:

First, It can be disconcerting or even upsetting to get a test result that says, “I’m biased”.

Second, our level of implicit bias can change depending on our social environment.

Here’s an example.

I was in a seminary class on racial justice in Chicago. The class was very diverse, so our discussions were rich and included perspectives from folks of a variety of different races and ethnicities.

During the class, we each took the implicit bias test on race. I was all proud of myself because my test showed no racial bias whatsoever.

And then three weeks after I got back to Austin, I took it again, and it showed a slight bias. I was pretty upset with myself.

And then, I got to thinking, “What was I was a seeing when I watched television? Who were most often the bad guys? How often did all the protagonists look just like me?”

That’s when I stopped watching network TV.

Though I will admit to streaming Ted Lasso religiously these days. Anyway, after a few weeks of cutting out network television, the implicit bias began to disappear again.

Finally, because of the potential for internalized oppression, when folks from historically marginalized groups take the test, it can sometimes show that we have a negative bias toward, well, ourselves. Not fun!

So, while I encourage you to explore these implicit biases and tests, please also know that I am available to you if you find yourself troubled by the results.

And exploring them is important, because implicit biases too often get expressed in behaviors that unintentionally marginalize other people.

These are often called “micro-aggressions”.

Please be aware though, that term can be problematic because the impact of such behaviors is often anything but “micro” for those on the receiving end of them.

Better descriptions include “exclusionary behaviors” or “unaware othering”.

For now though, if you want to delve into this more, you will still need to search the term “microaggressions”, as it is what has been used in most of the research.

And I am going to send you to a website – microaggressions.com where people have submitted their own experiences of these, exclusionary behaviors, because these experiences provide such a powerful way to truly grasp the impact of them.

And exclusionary behaviors can happen here at our church, as Kelly noted, even when our intent is to welcome and create connections with one another.

Let me give you just a couple more examples.

One exclusionary question can be asking, “What do you do?” For many other cultures, ones work is not as central to personal identity as it can be among white professionals.

In fact, I grew up in a blue-collar culture, where career and self- identity are far less bound together, so when I was younger and got asked this question, I was often confused by it.

“I hike? Go to movies? Read? Breathe? I dunno!”

Another example of potentially “unaware othering” is to assume someone was not born in the U.S. because of how they look or sound to us and then ask, “So, where are you from?”

A friend of mine, who was born in the U.S. to parents who had lmmigrated from Korea, told me she always wants to answer that question with, “Beaumont, TX. What’s your God-forsaken place of birth”.

Apologies to Beaumont and my family who still live in the area. So, let’s uproot implicit bias.

Let’s work hard to become more aware of our scripts and get creative about ways we might engage one another to avoid this unaware othering and instead create welcoming, connection, Beloved Community.

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