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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
May 8, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
How do you handle your rage? How do you help others with theirs? How do you deal with anger when it is at someone else, or when it is at the supreme court?
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
O Spinner, Weaver, of our lives,
Your loom is love.
May we who are gathered here
be empowered by that love
to weave new patterns of Truth
and Justice into a web of life that is strong,
beautiful, and everlasting.-The Rev. Barbara Wells
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
SIDE WITH LOVE STATEMENT ABOUT REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE.
Our Unitarian Universalist faith affirms that all of our bodies are sacred and that we are each endowed with the twin gifts of agency and conscience. Each of us should have the power to decide what does and doesn’t happen to our bodies at every moment of our lives because consent and bodily atonomy are holy and when disparities in resources or freedom make it different for certain groups of people to exercise atonomy over their own bodies our faith compels us to take liberatory action.
Meditation Reading
CIRCLE OF CARE
By Lisa Bovee-KemperIn religious community, we share our joys and our triumphs, our sorrows and our broken places. In this circle of care, we make space for the complexity of life, the myriad experiences that bless and break our hearts. The truth of human experience dictates that on any given day, we each come to the table with hearts in different places. It is especially so on this day, invented to honor women who nurture.
In this circle of care, we honor the truth that mothering is not and never will be quantified in one single descriptor. Mothering can be elusive or infuriating, fulfilling or confusing, commonplace or triumphant. It exists in the every day experiences of each person. There is no human being that is not connected to or disconnected from a mother.
And so we honor the complexity of experience, writ large in flowered platitudes, but here in this space laid bare, honoring the truth in each of our hearts. There is room for all in this circle:
If you have carried a child or children, whether or not they came to be born, we see you.
If you have fervently wished to do so, and circumstances of fate made it impossible, we see you.
If you love children we cannot see, whether because of death or estrangement, we see you.
If you never wanted to be a mother, we see you.
If you are happy to mother other peopleÕs children, as an educator, an auntie, or a foster parent, we see you.
If your mother hurt you, physically or emotionally, we see you.
If you had no mother at all, we see you. If your mother is or was your best friend, we see you.
If your gender says you are not a mother, and yet you take on the role of nurturer, we see you.
If you wonder whether your mothering has been enough, we see you.
And if yours is a different truth altogether, we honor your unspoken story.
There is room for all in this circle. May it be so, today and always.
Sermon
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