Powerful Moments

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
February 18 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

We have experiences in life that we remember long afterwards and that often were moments that changed us. Are there common characteristics that create such moments? If so, can we create more such experiences in our lives?

Call to Worship
In This Moment – by Chris Jimmerson

In this moment, we gather together, in this our beloved community.

In this moment, we gather to know the power and beauty of ritual, music and the blending together the loving presence we each have to offer.

In this moment, we gather to glimpse that which is greater than us but of which we are part.

In this moment, we gather to worship together.

Reading
Moments – by Chris Jimmerson

The instances that capture us, hold us in stillness, rootedness, timelessness:
A glimpse of an eagle soaring high above,
The gentle touch and soothing words of a loved one just when we need them,
Sunsets, rainbows, waterfalls, mountain vistas, peaceful shorelines,
The surprise visit, the surprise act of kindness, the unearned blessing, the offering of a blessing to another.
These and so many more are the powerful moments that are waiting for us to recognize them and immerse ourselves within them.
And beyond these, are the momentous moments we have yet to co-create together.

Sermon

Chris Hurn was trying to console his young son. The boy was distraught and could not go to sleep because he had accidentally left behind his best friend and constant companion, a giant, stuffed giraffe named Joshie when leaving a family vacation at the Ritz Carlton on Amelia Island Florida.

Like many a desperate parent before him, Mr. Hurn considered all of his options and decided on the best one available to him.

He lied.

“Joshie is fine,” he told his distraught little boy, “He’s just taking an extra-long vacation at the resort.”

His son seemed to buy it and eventually drifted off to sleep.

Later that night, Hurn spoke over the phone with an employee at the Ritz Carlton and to his great relief learned that Joshie the Giraffe had been found. Hurn fessed up to the white lie he had told his son and asked if the folks at the Ritz Carlton could do him a favor and send a picture of Joshie vacationing at the hotel when they returned him.

The next day, Joshie returned home resting comfortably on a plush Ritz Carlton towel in his overnight delivery package surrounded by a Ritz Carlton frisbee and nurf football, along with a binder full of pictures.

Joshie the Giraffe lounging by the hotel pool.

Joshie driving a golf cart.

Another picture was of Joshie hanging out with the hotel parrot, and yet another featured Joshie in the spa, complete with cucumber slices over his eyes. There was even one of Joshie monitoring the security cameras in the hotel’s control room.

Needless to say Chris Hurn and his wife were thrilled and their young son was ecstatic.

Employees at the Ritz Carleton had created a wonderful experience for the Hurns and most likely for themselves also in the process.

Now, you might think our story would end here, but no, there is a part two.

A couple of years later, Joshie the Giraffe had gone missing once again, after attending a soccer tournament with the family. Once again, the Hurn’s son was distraught over the loss and having trouble going to sleep at night.

During this time the family happened have planned another vacation at the same Ritz Carlton.

One morning they mentioned how wonderfully the hotel had treated them when Joshie the Giraffee had been left behind and were surprised to learn that every employee at the hotel seemed to know the story of Joshie. The hotel employees were saddened to learn that Joshie had recently disappeared again.

Later that afternoon someone knocked on the door of their room and handed the Hurn’s son a bag with his name on it. The bag contained another stuffed giraffe with a small note attached introducing him as “Jeffie,” a long-lost cousin of Joshie’s. The note said that Joshie had gone off on a worldwide adventure, and Jeffie would be honored to be the Hurn’s son’s new companion. It also said that Jeffie liked warm hugs.

Once again, the staff at the hotel had created an amazing moment for the Hurn family.

The Hurn’s story is a really fun example of what Chip and Dan Heath call defining or powerful moments in their book, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact.

We all have such powerful moments in our lives – meaningful experiences that stand out in our memories and that sometimes can change the direction of our lives.

What I love about their use of the Hurn’s story as one example of a powerful moment is that it demonstrates that such moments don’t necessarily have to occur during one of life’s major events or involve some spiritual/religious transcendent experience, though these of course are also often defining moments.

They can also be smaller moments, like when the employees of that hotel made extra efforts to create two wonderful experiences for the Hurn family.

Here is another example of such a moment.

Several years ago, my spouse Wayne and I were vacationing in Switzerland. We had rented a car and decided to make a drive over a mountain pass in the Swiss Alps. We had reached almost as high as the road went, when we entered one last small valley before the mountain rose sharply to its peak. There was a small village in the valley. The houses and buildings looked exactly as one might imagine for Switzerland Ñ wooded exterior walls with plant boxes full of greenery and flowers hanging below each window.

There was a large heard of cattle in the village, and the cows were unfenced, roaming freely around the little town. Each cow was wearing a large bell.

And suddenly, it began to snow.

The snow settled in like a fog, limiting how far we could see, wrapping us tightly into the village. It began covering everything around us in a stunningly beautiful crystalline white blanket.

I pulled our car over to the side of the road.

We could still see light glowing from some of the windows of the houses, when through the quiet of the snowfall, the cows began shaking their heads and ringing their bells. We opened our car windows slightly to hear them better, and sat, enshrouded by the little Swiss village at the top of the mountain, listening to the bells ringing and watching the snow fall.

It was like suddenly finding ourselves in the front cover of a Hallmark card.

That’s the thing about our powerful moments. Sometimes they can seem absolutely magical!

Of course, being good, reason and science based Unitarians, we know that there is not really any magic involved.

Although, looking back on that experience, my Universalist side really wants to believe that there might have been at least a little magic going on.

Don’t tell anyone.

We actually had another much less positive moment when we realized we had to drive down the other side of the mountain in what had become quiet a snowstorm. Wayne’s oh so helpful comment was, “If you kill us by driving off the side of this mountain, I am going to be very mad at you.”

Now, let me tie this back to the Heath’s research, in which they found that powerful moments are created from one or more of the following elements:

Elevation: “Defining moments rise above the everyday. They provoke not just transient happiness, like laughing at a friend’s joke, but memorable delight”. For example:

Opening the overnight package to find not only Joshie the Giraffe but extra gifts and a photo book full of Joshie enjoying all the pleasures of a resort hotel;

The mesmerizing sensory experience of bells ringing amidst an entrancing snow fall in a beautiful village nestled in a valley near the top of a mountain.

Insight: “Defining moments can rewire our understanding of ourselves or the world”.

The Hurn’s faith in the potential goodness of other people was no doubt enhanced by their experience with the employees of that Ritz Carlton, and I’ll bet they instantly developed a brand loyalty too!

Experiences like the one Wayne and I shared in that snowfall remind us that there is great beauty to be found in our world, and it surprises us sometimes if we take care to fully notice it.

Connection: “Defining moments are social: weddings, graduations, baptisms, vacations, work triumphs, bar and bar mitzvahs, speeches, sporting events”. In addition to these life passages and large group events, smaller moments that we share with others and that more deeply connect us can be quite powerful also.

The Hurn’s suddenly felt connected to a group of hotel employees they did not even know, as well as a strengthening of their own family bonds.

When Wayne and I experienced such beauty high up in that mountain valley it deepened and enriched our connection with each other.

Pride: “Powerful moments capture us at our best – moments of achievement, moments of courage”.

It is easy to imagine the pride the employees of that hotel must have felt because of going the extra mile to make a distraught young boy happy again.

I drove all the way down the side of that mountain without once killing us by driving off the edge of it.

The striking image on the cover of your order of service is of Leshia Evans, a 35 year old nurse and mother of a five year old child, who courageously stood her ground on behalf of her and other people’s right to peacefully protest police brutality against African Americans. Even when confronted with being arrested by two Baton Rouge police officers clad in paramilitary gear, she remained calm and peaceful, and this image of her became iconic of the peaceful movement in which she was participating – a powerful moment for us all.

Leshia Evan’s story brings up another aspect of our defining, memorable moments. Though we have been concentrating on positive powerful moments, it is important to acknowledge that sometimes our defining moments can be those we experience as negative or even painful at the time.

Leshia Evans must have experienced great fear even as she exhibited such pride and courage.

The Heath’s share the story of Lea Chadwell, who despite her love for the animals she helped care for as a veterinary technician, began day dreaming about opening her own baking company.

She found great joy in baking delicious dessert items for others, and eventually, she was able to open her own baking store, which she named, “A Pound of Butter”.

At first she was thrilled, but the store did not make enough for her to leave her veterinary job, so she worked constantly between the two. Additionally, she found that she did not like the organizational and financial management aspects of running a business.

The fun of baking for others was turning into stress and dismay. One day, she realized that in a rush to deliver a wedding cake to a customer, she had left the front door of her empty baking store wide open. In a lightening bolt instant, she had an insight. “I’m making self crazy, and I am not enjoying this”, she thought to herself.

Lea Chadwell closed her store and went back to doing only the job she really loved, caring for animals. Eventually, she re-found her joy in baking for loved ones also.

Sometimes, though admittedly not always, even our negative powerful moments can provide us with insights that may eventually change our lives for the better.

Elevation. Insight. Connection. Pride.

These are the characteristics that comprise our powerful moments, sometimes singularly – more often two or more of them combined together.

The Heaths go into much more detail and provide much more nuance about these in the book than I can cover today, so I’ll close with a few of the larger take aways.

Knowing these elements of our defining moments can help us be more alert for them when they come our way – to slow down and let ourselves experience them, like Wayne and I did during the snowfall.

Now let me admit that I didn’t know these elements at that time, so my pulling over to the side of the road was the likely the fortunate happenstance of not being able to see very far ahead because of the snow.

In fact, Wayne would probably tell you that I can have a bit of a manic personality style and am normally more likely to be like, “Of yeah, wow, that’s very beautiful, now let’s go” and then slam my foot down on the accelerator.

Maybe now that I know these elements, he’ll get to enjoy more beautiful scenery inspired powerful moments, even when I am the one driving.

The music, rituals, sermons, readings, candle lighting, singing together and the many other activities we engage in here at church are intended to engage these elements with the hope of creating powerful experiences that are their best may even be transcendent.

You see, knowing these elements, we do not have to wait for defining moments to randomly come our way, we can create them.

And even in our daily lives away from this, our beloved religious community, you can create them for yourself and those you love.

Like the employees of that Ritz Carlton, you may even find opportunities to create them for people you do not know very well or at all.

And the cool thing is, very often while trying to create a powerful moment for others, we end up experiencing one ourselves as we do so.

Providing extra kindness to elevate a moment or decorating your office at work during a holiday to provide a surprise elevated sensory experience for your fellow staffers.

Searching for insight and listening deeply to others to help them find it.

Opening ourselves up, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and share our stories to create greater connection. Recognizing and slowing down to experience shared moments with others that have the potential to be powerful ones.

Complementing and rewarding the admirable traits and the successes of others to arouse their sense of self pride. Doing the same for yourself, which sometimes can be even harder.

These are just a few examples of how we might engage these elements to create such moments.

Finally, the Heath’s discovered that powerful moments are always active – we gotta do when the spirit says do.

The hotel employees deciding to do something special for a young boy by staging and taking photos of Joshie the Giraffe.
Pulling over to the side of the road so that the power of a moment can fully wash over us.
Standing with courage and pride against a highly armed and highly agitated police force.
Having the insight and courage to shut down a business that was once but is no longer a dream.

Our powerful moments involve doing. They involve staying alert for the moment. The old truism is still true – We must seize these moments.

Some interesting research found that these powerful moments alter our sense of time. We perceive them as lasting much longer than they actually do and weight how we rate the whole of our experience much more heavily toward them. At their most powerful, we experience them as timeless.

This is one reason that time can seem to go by more quickly as we age. Many of our powerful moments brought on by first experiences are front-loaded into our earlier years – making our first best friend, beginning school, graduating the various levels of schooling, our first love, marriage, having children for example.

We can slow down our sense of time throughout our lives by being alert for and even actively creating defining moments.

Elevation. Insight. Connection. Pride.

These are our tools for creating moments that will allow us to experience a timeless life within the one precious, finite life that we have been given.

So, seize the moments my beloveds, seize the moments.

Amen.

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