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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 24, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
Some people use the metaphor of darkness to mean wrongness or evil, but darkness is as sacred as light. It is in the darkness that roots grow, and it is in a time of uncertainty that people can reflect and transform the way they are going to go forward. As we say goodbye to the darkness of winter, let us pause to appreciate it a bit.
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
In the dark I rest,
unready for the light which dawns
day after day, eager to be shared.
Black silk, shelter me.
I need
more of the night before I open
eyes and heart
to illumination. I must still
grow in the dark like a root
not ready, not ready at all.– Denise Levertov
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Learn more about Beloved Community at this link. – The King Center
Meditation Reading
Contemplation is essentially a listening in silence, an expectancy. And yet in a certain sense, we must truly begin to hear God when we have ceased to listen. What is the explanation of this paradox? Perhaps only that there is a higher kind of listening, which is not an attentiveness to some special wave length, a receptivity to a certain kind of message, but a general emptiness that waits to realize the fullness of the message of God within its own apparent void.
In other words, the true contemplative is not the one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect or anticipate the word that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence, and when he is “answered,” it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God.
– Thomas Merton
Sermon
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