Onwards

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Jami Yandle and Rev. Michelle LaGrave
November 10, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

This is the time to lean into our faith and one another. Sunday we will have some time to talk about our collective grief, anger, desperation, and just be with one another.

Chalice Lighting

We light this flame
To ignite the sacred power of justice.
We light this flame
So that it may be a beacon of hope
In moments of uncertainty, fear, anxiety, and the unknown.
We light this flame, and are emboldened by its blaze,
Knowing our strength as a prophetic and powerful people Is rooted in the diverse ways we answer the call to love.

Call to Worship

by Rev. Rebekah Savage

Welcome beloveds, welcome!
We come to spiritual community this morning with many hopes in our hearts:
The hope for inspiration, the hope for comfort, the hope for renewal.

In this time and space, may inspiration water our thirsty souls. In this time and space, may comfort blossom in the gardens of our hearts, and bring us sweet relief.

In this time and space, may renewal course through us,
as electric as a surge of energy,
as serene as a nourishing meal,
as contagious as joy,
and bring us vitality and rejuvenation.

May our time together honor all the hopes we hold within;
May our time together bless us with the gifts of inspiration, comfort and renewal.
Let us Worship together.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Words of Solice and Lament

NOTE: This is an edited ai generated transcript.
Please forgive any omissions or errors.
Chris Jimmerson
Good morning. I’m Reverend Chris Jimmerson co-lead settled minister here at the church and I am technically out on sabbatical. How’s that for bad timing?

I wanted to come in this morning after the events of this week and be with my people. I know that so many of us have been feeling things like despair, disbelief, anger, anxiety, fear, disgust. I’ve been feeling all of that and so much more.

Right now, I’m pretty squarely centered in the anger-defiant stage of my reaction. So, it says I’m supposed to offer words of solace and lament. I’m not sure if it’s the right time for that, or maybe it’s exactly the right time for that. I don’t know.

I can offer you a few things that have been helping me. The first is that I know those emotions I mentioned can can be something that we experience as painful. I think though that they are like when we feel physical pain, they’re telling us we need to pay attention to something, something that will bring us harm unless we make change. And so if we try to not pay attention to those emotions, try to move through them too quickly, we can sort of latch on to a kind of false hope that doesn’t bring change that won’t sustain us as we go forward. By moving through them, we learn what we have to do, where we need to go next, how we find a true hope in our world.

The other thing I just read from Dr. Brene Brown was that she said that while hope is the antidote to despair, hope is not actually an emotion. It is a cognitive behavioral aspect of our life. It is the way that we think and do and be in the world. So to find that hope again we have to move through these emotions.

Here’s what I know. I know we need this religious community of love and support more than ever before.

And I know that there are a lot of people who have joined us this morning and will continue to join us this morning because they want to be part of a theology of love, joy and justice up against an ideology of hate and division, we have to be there to welcome you. And so I welcome you all this morning whether you’re here in person or online.

And finally, I know that that theology centered in love, justice, and joy is needed now more out in our community, in our state, in our nation, in our world than ever and that we have to be there. We have to show up because our world needs us to live that mission more than ever where we show up to nourish souls, transform lives, we show up to do justice, we join with others in solidarity and we build the beloved community because it is the beloved community that will move us through this ideology of hate and division back to a place of joy, of justice, of love.

Those forces want us to feel that we have no power as long as we center ourselves in love and relationship we have all the power we need.

That is the way forward.

I love you.

Reading

HOW IS IT WITH YOUR SOUL?
by Ashley Horan
How is it with your soul? This is the question that John Wesley, Anglican priest and the founder of Methodism, was known to ask of participants in small reflection groups. I ask you because, for me, this has been a hard week. So, beloveds, how is it with your souls?

If your response to that question is anything like mine, I want to invite you to pause as you read this. Take a deep breath, say a prayer, sing a song, light your chalice, feel the force of gravity pulling us all toward the same center-whatever helps you feel more rooted and less alone.

Now do it again. And again, and again.

And, once you feel that rootedness and connection, hear this:

You are loved beyond belief. You are enough, you are precious, your work and your life matter, and you are not alone. You are part of a “we,” a great cloud of witnesses living and dead who have insisted that this beautiful, broken world of ours is a blessing worthy of both deep gratitude and fierce protection.

Our ancestors and our descendants are beckoning us, compelling us onward toward greater connection, greater compassion, greater commitment to one another and to the earth. Together, we are resilient and resourceful enough to say “yes” to that call, to make it our life’s work in a thousand different ways, knowing that we can do no other than bind ourselves more tightly together, and throw ourselves into the holy work of showing up, again and again, to be part of building that world of which we dream but which we have not yet seen.

Centering and Medition

Now let us take a few moments to center ourselves in silence with these words from Harold Babcock.

Let us be quiet without and within.
Let the stillness be in us.
Let the silence hold us.
May we find the deep places of the soul and begin to let go of the distractions
which plague us.
May we let go of irritation, calm the confusion which inhibits us,
let go of fear.
The quiet is within us,
The stillness is in us,
the silence will hold us.
There are deep places in the soul.
Here, may we find peace as we enter into the silence together.

Amen, and blessed be.

Sermon

NOTE: This is an edited ai generated transcript.
Please forgive any omissions or errors.

Rev. Jami Yandle

Unbeknownst to me, Reverend Chris said everything I was going to say and then some, but we’ll move on with my plan anyway and see how the spirit moves.

So instead of me blabbing on up here, I want to take a few minutes and hear from you. Turn to your neighbor and answer this question. Where are you feeling the events of this last week in your body?

I have felt tension in my shoulders, I found out just now Reverend Michelle has felt it in their gut. Where have you felt it? Gut. Jaws. Heart. Head. All over. Left foot. Left foot. wrist.

The reason I had you do that exercise is because generally some, some you use, particularly some white you use, are super great at two things. One, intellectualizing their feelings and two, trying to find the first actionable thing they can do to distract themselves from feeling their feelings.

Also if you are new here and you like spiritual questions and don’t respond to hypocritical fire and brimstone faith, don’t worry, you’re in the right place too. So how quickly you were able to discern what is going on in your body and or you were able to answer the question, might be different based on the color of your skin and some other key factors like how much society has intentionally silenced and oppressed you. But I’m gonna back up and explain a few things so you have some context for where we’re going with all of this.

I spent this past week, no doubt, like Many of you, feeling a bit lost, gobsmacked, sad, despair, and mostly angry. The gamut of emotions ran throughout my body and the concern I have for so many vulnerable communities. I can feel that concern seeping into my bones. It’s settling, and I don’t like that feeling, and it feels like pain all over. That concern that has become pain is full of questions, not only about my own trans community, but for our black and brown beloveds, migration, education, bodily autonomy. My kids go to public school in Texas. Maybe you are worried about that too. Is it time to move? Can I afford homeschool? What is going to happen? So many questions I have swirling in my mind.

My partner Natalie, who is also UU and a person of color, tried to bite her tongue and not say, I told you so. She was so much more relaxed this week to an almost alarming degree.

From the beginning, she watched everything go down and said, “This is not possible yet. This election will not produce the results that reflect our UU values yet.” It isn’t possible because her body knows something mine does not. As a woman, and especially as a woman of color, she knows all too well how far the hate goes. Generations worth of PTSD does not course through my veins as it does hers, reminding her how far systematic oppression goes. Something I have read about quite a bit and experienced and witnessed some, but it will never be to the same degree.

So I had more hope than she did. And for the record, I don’t feel foolish for hoping and dreaming. I refuse to stop, because everyone from Martin Luther King, Jr., to Victor Frankl, to Sylvia, Rivera, to Harvey Milk, and so many more of my personal heroes carried that same message.

So if any of you among us have a spark of hope left for God’s sake protect it with all you’ve got So you can reignite the flame in your neighbor, but I kept wondering What was Natalie’s deal? Why was I a frantic stress ball and she was so calm Unwavering she remained the anchor of the household. Meanwhile, I, like so many of my white peers, turned to documentaries, memes, poems, a John Stuart segment even. Anything to fix this. I was desperate. That was how I spent part of my Tuesday and Wednesday. Natalie watched all this quietly and on Thursday Natalie said to me, Stop it Stop trying to fix this you cannot fix it with your white anxiety Until you feel it more than that and you just need to feel it right now all of it

She took my hand and said just sit in it with me Be here with me My hand on her heart, hers on mine, a tender moment between two humans, the weight not the same in my body as hers, but nevertheless pushed to a newer place I opened up for more capacity for my feelings, instead of trying to rationalize and mobilize, we sat there. She said to me, This, too, is how we will dismantle systematic oppression. When you are with me, truly seeing and understanding me, this is when you will start to riot in the streets. The only way out is through. So we sit here until you understand how bad it actually all is.

Then, With you next to me we will go through this together But it can’t be a fad this time. It cannot be safety pins or blue bracelets performing allyship Risking nothing It has to be long lasting and daily to the point you will do anything to make the suffering stop For as long as it takes

So right now, this is what we’re gonna do Collectively we are going to sit we are going to feel this The elders and the ancestors providing a shield for us and with us we will sing songs and We will go through the rest of the service but intentionally Here with one another Be reminded about the power of humanity and the connections between and around us recharge your battery before making the next long road trip.

There will be time to physically move and to take action. And when it is time, you will know that because your deep knowing well will tell you so. Right now though, just be. Soul, connecting with soul, moving onwards by sitting still.

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

A LITANY FOR SURVIVAL
By Audre Lorde

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us

For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full
we are afraid of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty
we are afraid we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone
we are afraid love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak remembering
we were never meant to survive

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