Prayer: 

Mystery of many names, and mystery beyond all naming, this morning we wish to think about and discuss the possibility that we are whole and complete right now, right this moment. This morning we wish to let go of the burden of self-improvement, realizing that all that self-help minutia is but an attempt for authority to tell us once again, that we’re not right, we’ve never been right, and we’d better get with the program to get right. Hogwash! There isn’t a thing we need that we don’t have right now. Thinking that we lack something is simply the ability of our own minds to imagine that there’s something out there that will be better than whatever it is inside here. The grass is always greener is in fact propaganda of the advertising moguls. The truth is the grass is always grass. Our lives look different to us because we are into judgment and we see in others the chance that their lives are not tangled skeins, but the truth is if we were able to walk in their shoes and really be them, we would be looking back at ourselves thinking how together we seem now that we’re the other.

          The problem is we’re looking to be served when in truth we need to be looking for opportunities to serve. Monty Newton traveled to

Nicaragua this past week as a birthday present to himself. No, he did not travel to a remote resort where he sat in wicker rockers with tall drinks garnished with umbrellas. No, Monty traveled to a small village where with a group of other spiritually minded people they dug a well for a village. And the emails that he sent back to Nell, Lulu and Henry although garbled by the non-familiarity of the Spanish keyboards were, none the less, filled with a renewal of spirit that is taking place in Monty because he knows what Gandhi knew to serve is to rule.    Forgive us, Great Spirit, as we seem to spend the majority of our time worried about who’s going to give us our next jolly. Forgive us for stopping at the traffic light and NOT giving that dollar to that homeless person – “Oh, they’re just going to spend it on alcohol,” we think, but what we’re really saying is that if we were homeless we’d take the opportunity to lose ourselves in booze.          Now lift us up Great Spirit and help us realize that the majority of problems in our lives are self-created and can be self-cured. In truth the self that we hope to improve is non-existent. We are all simply witnesses of this life, and all the trauma and drama of our lives, is nothing more than adult temper tantrums that we’re not being pleased, not being fed what we think we need. Wake up! We’ve got it all and always have.We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.Amen.

Sermon: 

On the rough wet grass of the backyard my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there. First we were sitting up, then one of us lay down, and then we all lay down, on our stomachs, or on our sides, or on our backs, and they have kept on talking. They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than me, quiet, with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds … By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of night. May god bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.          After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me to her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am. (James Agee, A Death in the Family)Introduction: I have been married a total of three times. I jokingly say that my first marriage was a started marriage, but the truth is there is a part of me that still loves, very dearly, the mother of my only son, Ian.The first marriage lasted 5 years, and the second one lasted 12 – six drunken and six sober. The sober ones were great. I have been married a third, and hopefully final time for twenty years so far.           There is a sense in which I have wanted the women I lived with to tell me who I am – but (they) will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but (they) will not ever tell me who I am.           The notion of romantic love that suffuses this culture and many other cultures, clouds our vision when it comes to what love is, what it can be, and who exactly it is that is playing this love game. We are encouraged to imagine that we will find a partner in this life who is a soul mate, someone who will be the other half of us, someone who will complete us in some mystical manner.           I see this in the faces of the young couples who come to talk to me about getting married. I hear this in the vows they write each other, and again I hear it repeated openly to relatives and friends at the ceremony. Yet, I don’t have the heart to even attempt to tell them something that rightfully they can only learn by living it.           Romantic love is not an aberration, it is merely the species guaranteed way to get us to reproduce and keep the species going. Romantic love is part of growing up, and those who don’t get past it, often fall victim to its seductive lure, it’s ability to make us think that the right man, the right woman is right around the next corner, and that we can’t give up on the chance that we will be fulfilled.          Between my second and third marriages I was actually single for a whole two years – hey it beats the two weeks I was single between the first and second marriages! I had moved from Tallahassee, Florida to Dallas, Texas when my plays started being done at Theatre Three in

Dallas. I spent the first year in Dallas taking the Greyhound bus back and forth between Dallas and

Tallahassee a total of seven times. During the first summer of our divorce I went back to

Tallahassee and spent time with my daughter, Isabelle. I was staying with her mother and her girlfriend sleeping on the couch of a very big homemade home at the Tallahassee Land Coop. The founder of Mad Dog Builders had built the home and it was a wood frame that had three stories and a large screen-in porch on the front. Out in the woods west of town, it was serene and beautiful with the Spanish moss hanging from the Live Oaks and small dirt roads that wound around the beginning of the Hippie Culture as it began to acquire money.           One night sleeping on that couch I dreamed that I met my Anima. I’d been reading a lot of Carl Justav Jung and was intrigued by the idea that we each have the male and female parts of the psyche; it’s just that most of us never realize it. I don’t remember what she looked like, but her name was Amanda.           In the morning I found one of those baby-naming books and looked up Amanda. “Worthy of Love,” it said, so that’s what Amanda meant – “worthy of love.”          I thought it was interesting that in a house dominated by women – my second wife’s girlfriend had three daughters and then there was my own daughter Isabelle. I was the only male there in a house of juveniles and lesbians. I imagined on some level that it had been some sort of defense to actually have identified and met my feminine side in such an unbalanced situation. I thought that she had come to the surface of my consciousness to introduce herself, then simply to slip back below into the waters of oblivion.  How very mistaken I was.           An irresistible force is a force that impinges upon us without us even being aware of it. Such was the case with Amanda. She had surfaced and she wasn’t going away.           It wasn’t that I changed immediately, that would have brought my attention to her presence, it was more like she insinuated herself into the place where Jack had stood, and now there were two of us, Amanda and Jack – both comfortable in the same body, both with their own agendas, and only so many hours in the day.           Jung said, “The discussion of the sexual problem is the somewhat crude beginning of a far deeper question, namely, that of the psyche of human relationships between the sexes.” It just might be that the relationship between the sexes is something that happens right inside of us.           In Chinese philosophy and especially the I-Ching we have the possibility of representing this relationship between the sexes with the yin/yang principle. Within the Yin/yang design the large part of the yang is supported by the thinner yin element, and the larger part of the yin is being intruded upon by the thin probing line of the yang. Each blending into the other so that the greatest strength of one is actually the beginning of the next. Go too far in the yang direction and you end up in yin territory, too far yin and you’re right back into the yang.           In Jung’s Foreword to the Richard Wilhelm translation of the I-Ching he reminds us that “The Chinese mind … seems to be exclusively preoccupied with the chance aspects of events. What we call coincidence seems to be the chief concern of this peculiar mind, and what we worship as causality passes almost unnoticed.  We must admit that there is something to be said for the immense importance of chance. An incalculable amount of human effort is directed to combating and restricting the nuisance or danger represented by chance.                   In a dream I chanced upon a meeting with a hypothetical part of myself known in Jungian terms as the Anima.To sleep, per chance to dream – aye, there lies the rub.          In Italian “anima” means ’soul’, in musical notation it appears in the phrase ‘con anima,’ meaning that the music should be played ‘with soul.’           It’s a chance occurrence that I should find the meaning of this Italian word, but it would seem to suggest that a man who lives without acknowledging his “anima” or feminine side would, in fact, be a man who was without a soul and what would a life sans anima be, but a life played without soul.          It’s possible that the whole romantic love thing is really the acting out in public of a drama that should be happening on the inside. Men and women are looking for their other halves out there, in the world the very place where their other half only exists in projections of the inner other halves.          In the song, Both Sides Now, Joni Mitchell sings, “I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now, from up and down and still somehow its clouds illusions I recall, I really don’t know clouds at all.”          I’m thinking now of the James Agee piece that I read at the beginning of this sermon. I see the family lying on their backs with the summer clouds billowing overhead. Anyone who’s ever done this knows that the next step is seeing the configurations of the clouds as they resemble different animals, objects and shapes. But the shapes are in motion, moving, roiling up there at 30,000 feet and as fast as we can name them they morph into another shape, and yet another.           Believing in romantic love is like having a picture of a cloud that at one point in time assumed a shape that we named “soul mate.” The picture will always resemble the shape we named because within the picture we have stopped the process of the clouds changing, we have frozen time and decided that this is what love always looks like.           In her book, Everyday Zen,

Charlotte Joko Beck writes the nonsense of emotion-thought dominates our lives. Particularly in romantic love, emotion-thought gets really out of hand. I expect of my partner that he should fulfill my idealized picture of myself. And when he ceases to do that (as he will before long) then I say, ‘The honeymoon’s over. What’s wrong with him” He’s doing all the things I can’t stand.” And I wonder why I am so miserable. My partner no longer suits me, he doesn’t reflect my dream picture of myself, he doesn’t promote my comfort and pleasure. None of that emotional demand has anything to do with love. As the pictures break down – and they always will in a close relationship – such ‘love’ turns into hostility and arguments. So if we’re in a close relationship, from time to time we’re going to be in pain, because no relationship will ever suit us completely. There’s no one we will ever live with who will please us in all the ways we want to be pleased. So how can we deal with this disappointment? Always we must practice getting close to experiencing our pain, our disappointment, our shattered hopes, our broken pictures. We must observe the thought content until it is neutral enough that we can enter the direct and nonverbal experience of disappointment and suffering. When we experience suffering directly, the melting of the false emotion can begin, and true compassion can emerge.          The way to true love and compassion is through endurance and suffering. We can long for that soul mate, or grieve their passing, but staying stuck in that loop in which we’re sure if we keep looking then we can have all those hyped up feelings that love is supposed to be all about just keeps us in a neurotic cycle. Jung again, Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.          “I’ve looked at love from both sides now, from up and down and still somehow its love illusions I recall, I really don’t know love at all.”          LOVE IS PATIENT, LOVE IS KIND. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Loves does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.           If that doesn’t sound like the love we’ve been dealing with, then maybe we’ve taken a picture of what we thought love should be, maybe we’re involved in idol worship, maybe, just maybe, we don’t know what the hell love is.           When I was a child, I talked like a child; I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man/ woman I put childish ways behind me.           Perhaps now is the time to begin wooing your real soul mate that half of you that you’ve refused to cultivate.           Shadow selves are called shadow selves not because they are evil or bad and lurk in the dark, but because we have kept them in the shadows and refused to acknowledge them.          “Tear and fears and feeling proud to say I love you right out loud.”          Perhaps the “I love yous” need to be said to the other half of our psyches?          Sigmund Freud stood on the shoulders of the Hasidic Jews when he suggested that to become whole we must rescue from the darkness that spark of divinity, which lies buried within us.          Sometimes to become whole we must dig a hole and unearth what we find, resurrect that part of us that we have been projecting into the world.          Amanda, my dear, I want to say right out loud that I love you and that together Jack and Amanda are truly worthy of love.          Thank you, Amanda, for helping me to stop projecting onto those females about me the mantles of Madonna and whore. Thank you for helping me see that to become whole I must not only be strong, but also supportive and nurturing, that I must not always be aggressive, but that there is time for retreat and regrouping. But mostly thank you for helping me see that the true birth of anything takes a period of gestation … a period in which that which is incumbent and unformed must grow inside me till the moment of its birth and once birthed I must let go and let grow the seeds and plans that I have left behind.          And now I will sit down from this pulpit a last time.  From the bottom of both of our hearts which happens to be the same heart Amanda and I thank you for a journey well spent, we give thanks for your gifts of compassion and love and pray that in the years to come this congregation will continue to grow as it has in the past into a loving and nurturing body wherein those so covenanted find solace and grace. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be –congregation without end … Amen.

Prayer:Heavenly Father, Mother God, this morning we name you and hope that those listening are entertained by the metaphor and not caught by it.Language is an odd thing; it seems the more education that someone has the more often they are snagged by the very words that would serve them. Saying precisely what we mean has its place in science and architecture, but the vagueness of metaphor may allow us to journey places that would not be journeyed to if, in fact, we were drawing plans or writing formulae. The Mystery to which I usually pray is not served by preciseness. The mystery of metaphor is the same as the mystery of story. Suspending disbelief is the crux of journeying into the story of the divine. As we suspend disbelief – and who of us does not have some disbelief – we are then able to engage the right side of our brains and enter into relationship with the character of our imaginations. This morning we imagine a world that does not operate by greed, we imagine a world in which those with power and money search for those in need, this morning we imagine a world in which honor is spread among all peoples, a world in which the hungry are only so because they have not been discovered by those who have more to eat than necessary.          Yes, this is fanciful, and dream-like, but remember now that everything that we see that is made by humans and human culture was at first an intention and an idea. We speak of the naturalness of nature while deriding those things made by humans, but how different is the wasp nest from the home. Both are containers in which those living there find meaning.           If the human species is to continue upon this earth, then the human species must begin to dream dreams that do not include gluttony of greed. The human species must begin to dream dreams that recoil in revulsion at the idea that we would kill one of our own because they had killed. We must begin to dream dreams that spark in us the better angels of our natures, as those better angels turn from the horror, the horror of the world that we now live in.          In 500 million years the sun will go out. In this sense all is for naught. In 500 millions years earth will be like Venus varying in temperature from equator to poles by only 7 degrees and the mean temperature hovering around 690 degrees Fahrenheit. At that point the greatest of what we have created, Shakespearian drama, modern medicine, acupuncture, philosophy, theology, the beauties and wonders of this planet Earth will be gone and forgotten. But is this any more reason for despair than the simple fact that whatever we do personally for our significant others and those children that we raise together, all those things are for naught in the light of our eventual demise?          Death does not erase the love that we share, any more than the red giant of our sun will erase what has transpired on this thin layer of life, our beloved earth, our mother and sustainer. We would and do recoil in horror when we see that there are those who would give their mothers up for a profit, yet we allow the soulless corporations of this our beloved planet to treat our mother as if she were a whore. There will come a time when the heads of major corporations will stand trial as greed criminals, as murderers of our mother. My pray today is that these proceedings will occur before mother lies on her deathbed and before we have let our own greed and culpability run rampant just in order for us to get a final slice of the greed pie. We must realize now that any money siphoned from the soulless corporations that now rape the earth is blood money. Help us to see, Divine Spirit that the money that is made from this blood is money that is made from the blood of our own children. In ravaging the earth we are, in essence incesting our own children and their futures.  We pray this in the name of everything that is holy and sometimes this goes by the name of Jesus, sometimes Buddha, sometimes Allah, sometimes the Great Spirit, sometimes Pan, sometimes I AM THAT I AM, but always the name of everything that is holy is, precisely, everything. Amen 

 Sermon:

Boomers and Stickers–       the sustainability of life on planet earth – Wallace Stegner knew, both from his personal experience and from his long study of his region, that the two cultures of the American West are not those of the sciences and arts, but rather those of the two human kinds that he called “boomers” and “stickers,” the boomers being “those who pillage and run,” and the stickers “”those who settle, and love the life they have made and the place they have made it in” (where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, p. xxii). This applies to our country as a whole, and maybe to all of Western civilization in modern times. The first boomers were the oceanic navigators of the European Renaissance. They were gold seekers. All boomers have been gold seekers. They are would-be Midases who want to turn all things into gold: plants and animals, trees, food and drink, soil and water and air, life itself, even the future.           The sticker theme has so far managed to survive, and to preserve in memory and even in practice the ancient human gifts of reverence, fidelity, neighborliness, and stewardship. But unquestionably the dominant theme of modern history has been that of the boomer. It is no surprise that the predominant arts and sciences of the modern era have been boomer arts and boomer sciences.           The collaboration of boomer science with the boomer mentality of the industrial corporations has imposed upon us a state of virtually total economy in which it is the destiny of every creature (humans not excluded) to have a price and to be sold. In a total economy, all materialism creatures, and ideas become commodities interchangeable and disposable. People become commodities along with everything else. Only such an economy could seek to impose upon the world’s abounding geographic and creaturely diversity the tyranny of technological and genetic monoculture. Only in such an economy could “life forms” be patented, or the renewability of nature and culture be destroyed. Monsanto’s aptly named “terminator gene” – which implanted in seed sold by Monsanto, would cause the next generation of seed to be sterile – is as grave an indicator of totalitarian purpose as a concentration camp.          The second reading is from Henry N. Weiman’s book,  The Source of Human Good.

Jesus engaged in intercommunication with a little group of disciples with such depth and potency that the organization of their several personalities was broken down and they were remade. They became new men, and the thought and feeling of each got across to the others. It was not merely the thought and feeling of Jesus that got across. That was not the most important thing. The important thing was that the thought and feeling of the least and lowliest got across to the others and the others to him. Not something handed down to them from Jesus but something rising up out of their midst in creative power was the important thing. It was not something Jesus did. It was something that happened when he was present like a catalytic agent. It was as if he was a neutron that started a chain reaction of creative transformation. Something about this man Jesus broke the atomic exclusiveness of those individuals so that they were deeply and freely receptive and responsive each to the other. He split the atom of human egoism, not by psychological tricks, not by intelligent understanding, but simply by being the kind of person he was … Thus there arose in this group of disciples a miraculous mutual awareness and responsiveness toward the needs and interests of one another.

          But this was not all; Something else followed from it. The thought and feeling, let us say the meanings, thus derived by each from the other, were integrated with what each had previously acquired. Thus each was transformed, lifted to a higher level of human fulfillment. Each became more of a mind and a person, with more capacity to understand to appreciate, to act with power and insight; for this is the way human personality is generated and magnified and life rendered more nobly human.           Introduction: Perhaps you think that this sort of being lifted to a higher level of human fulfillment by Jesus was something that might have been possible if you lived in the time of Jesus and had been one of his disciples. Well, let me take you back to October the 2^nd of 2006, a Monday to the town of Nickel Mines,

Pennsylvania.           At 9:51AM Eastern Standard Time

Charles Carl Roberts IV, entered the

West Nickel Mines School, a one-room Amish schoolhouse in

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Roberts ordered the teacher and three female friends and their children out of the classroom. Then he ordered the male students out. Nine-year-old Emma Fisher, who had just started to learn English hadn’t understood the gunman’s orders and she followed her brother out when he left. He tied the girls up with flexible plastic ties and shot all ten girls – five of them died, and five lived.          All of this we know and are accustomed to, in a sense, in this society of senseless violence, but what we were not prepared for, and what points to the fact that the transformation that Henry N. Weiman speaks about in his book, The Source of Human Good, is still with us is what happened next.           When the Amish made their way in one of their funeral processions past the home of the family of

Charles Carl Roberts IV, they waved friendly like to the relatives and family of the man that had killed their children.           And then the food started coming. The Amish were taking food to the family, the wife and three children of the man who had killed members of their community. How can this be explained?

An Amish midwife who had delivered several of the girls who had been murdered and who had taken food  herself to the family of the murderer put it this way; “This is possible if you have Christ in your heart.”

          In his book, Sustainability and Spirituality, Dr. John Carroll argues that sustainability of necessity is a conversion experience. It can’t be something as simple as recycling; it would have to change not only how we do things, but also why we do things.          In order to find models of how this might be accomplished we must look, Dr. Carroll says, “to places, locations, people who put their faith in places other than within the dominant value system.” The Amish in this instance seem to be a perfect example.           This past Wednesday at Noon I was invited to be on KOOP Radio. Along with Host, David Kobierowski, (Ko-Beer- Owski)I was on with Diane Miller Of Envision Central Texas, Rosie Salinas of the Austin  Police Department and our own

First Church member and civil rights lawyer, Tim Mahoney. The topic of discussion was how do you get community out of their air-conditioned homes, away from their computers, televisions and I-pods and into the streets to either protest or celebrate.          For an issue to force of out of ourselves into the public arena it mean that, that issue must touch us vitally. One of the reasons protests against the war in

Iraq haven’t been as effective as they were during the Vietnam War is there is no draft. Most of the people of this country haven’t been affected at all by this war. After all we have a President who after 9/11 advised the nation to do what – go shopping!           I’m about to celebrate 28 years of sobriety. I wouldn’t have quit drinking if I hadn’t finally got to on a cellular level that my life was in the balance.           And what was the most startling portion of the experience of getting sober? Seeing that I wasn’t alone in my suffering. Seeing that there was a community of others who suffered just as I did. Alcohol brought me to my knees, but it was the community of sober – once drunk alcoholic sisters and brothers – that lifted me back up to my feet again.          It is my opinion that modern technology, ipods, iphones, the Internet, 150 cable channels these all help to atomize society driving us into our own private world from which we text message and email other islands of existence. Technology in this worldview is supportive of ego and ego is suspicious of community.                    In John Carroll’s book, Spirituality and Sustainability he says that any talk of sustainability is merely superficial when our society and that of every major industrialized nation in the world is based upon fossil fuels. To become sustainable a conversion experience is needed.           The kind of conversion experience we’re talking about here – basically to change the way the world is run – any and all efforts in such a revolutionary conversion would mean that everything we did, thought, wrote about and planned would, of necessity, be counter-cultural. Find out where the culture is headed and go ye therefore in the opposite direction.           Jesus was a revolutionary catalyst. It wasn’t what Jesus did that was amazing, it’s how he affected the small band of disciples that surrounded him. He listened to them, he heard them with his heart and the least of these got just as much attention as the greatest. From the doubts of Thomas to the rock of Peter they had all been heard. And then an odd thing happened. They started listening to one another. They grew from a band of separate atomized individuals to the Disciple of Jesus. And amazingly their concern for the twelve turned out onto the world. Jesus sent them out into the world to announce the coming of the Kingdom. The Kingdom is here, now, and the vehicle for realizing this is love. The answer to where is the

Kingdom of

God is in loving, caring and reaching past yourself to those around you. Not waiting for your life to begin, but beginning the life you’ve already been given.          We’ll get back out onto the streets with our joys and concerns when we realize that as the ad once admonished us “to reach out and touch someone” we must, in fact, be standing beside them.          There are a lot of “right” opinions in this church.  Many people are on, in my opinion the correct side of many issues. Much talk is done about issues and everyone –well, nearly everyone in Austin knows, that if there’s something radical that’s to be discussed in

Austin, the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin might just be the place to hold such a meeting. That’s great!          What I don’t see in this church is the church as a body of believers, worshippers, people of faith moving together to do things as a community in this community. I’m sorry if this sounds nebulous, but community acting together builds community. The motto of this church is one church many beliefs. The stress seems to be on the many beliefs, and again, great, but community gets enacted when those who believe many different things work together toward a common goal or goals.            Fellowship isn’t something that can be conjured up on Sunday mornings, and neither is spirituality. Fellowship is something that grows from working together on common goals.          What’s wrong with this church may be exactly what’s wrong with the UUA itself. Ralph Waldo Emerson traded the miracles of the Bible for the miracles of green pastures and falling rain. But subsequent generations of Unitarians and Universalist stepped away completely from any sacred scriptures – be they Hebrew, Pagan or Christian. That stepping away from a center – rather, that center that was stepped away from has not been replaced.           Political agendas can’t replace it; social action can’t replace it, voting for the most liberal candidate can’t replace it.           Dr. Davidson Loehr has been addressing this lack of spiritual center in his efforts to take religion back even further than our Judeo-Christian underpinnings, and I think his efforts to think mythically – as it says on the door to his office – are commendable and laudatory. His derision concerning the seven principles can and must be seen in this light. Prophets decry the present situation in hopes of pointing to something that might be more worthwhile. Davidson Loehr is pointing in the right direction. First, he’s showing all of us that there is no religious center in the UUA and secondly he’s offering more ancient substitutes. His idea of paideia – the Greek idea that what we do we do with the idea that the ancients are watching. As they watch the better angels of our natures will be more inclined to act so that when we are dead and gone we can be the ancients who look on the present with the hope that the behaviors that are happening in the present would both please us and make admirable those living in the present.          I think this church is strong, and I don’t mean Davidson, or Lara or anyone else who works for this church – I mean the members of this church and the feelings I get when I think of them individually or as a corporate body. This church has a lot to offer

Austin, Texas.          Without Spirituality can there be sustainability? Around what do you rally people when you want to talk of how to treat this earth, what to buy, what not to buy, where to shop, where not to shop, how important is recycling – all of these questions and more are difficult in and of themselves, but when they are divorced from a religious/spiritual center they are almost impossible to answer as a community. Once again, if there is no religious/spiritual center to this community it might explain the failure on the part of this community to step up to the plate and make a definitive difference in the city of

Austin.          I go back now to a meeting I had when I first got to

Austin. Dr. Loehr and I attended a meeting of all churches in the

Austin area to deal with the survivors of hurricane Katrina. The

Christian Churches in the area were ready and willing to take people into their homes, fed them, clothe them and treat them like family that very night. Dr. Loehr was amazed at this, but I felt differently. I knew the Scripture. I had had a Christian upbringing, and I remembered this passage in Matthew. “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?” The King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did for me.”Of course the King is Jesus – so naturally the Christians had made room for the “least of these” because they KNEW that when they helped those people they were helping Jesus. You don’t have to believe in any of this to see the power and empowerment that this kind of Holy Scripture gives those who follow such teachings. And it follows quite naturally that the Unitarian Universalist had not prepared a room for Him or anyone else.           I don’t pretend to know how to circle the wagons in the UUA, but I do know that if they are not circled we will be studying them like to study the Shakers. “An interesting group, we will say, so why didn’t they grow and thrive?” The answer for the Shakers is obvious; they forsook carnal relations and quite naturally died out. The answer for the UUA is yet to be written, but it may be something as simple as they forsook relationship with something greater than themselves.          But it’s not too late! It’s never too late!          Rabbi Shoni Labowitz in her book, Miraculous Living says:“Each time you stray from the path, you have t he flexibility and courage to return. Return, known in Hebrew as teshuvah, was built into the foundational structure of the universe. The ability to return, to turn around and turn about, existed before you were created and is programmed into your being. It is available for you to choose when it is needed and you so desire. The teshuvah also implies a response: as you select to return or turn about, you need to know what it is you are returning to. You need to respond to the inner call with an intention and focus. As you let go of mistakes, you return to your divine nature, to the uniqueness of who you are, and above all, to reunion with an unconditionally loving God. In returning, you access memory of the void from which you emanated, with a clearer sense of freedom in moving toward the destiny you were born to fulfill.”          The point is this, if someone came into this church and killed a bunch of our members and then killed themselves, would we be willing to take food to the home of that murderer? Would we be willing to feed their family? And if we were able to do that, what would be in our hearts that would allow us to do so? When you find the answer to that question, then you’ll find a religious and spiritual center that is worthy of having the wagons circled about it.

 

Prayer

          Mystery of many names, mystery beyond all naming, anyone can be happy when things are going right, when blue skies and broad horizons lay before them. But it takes a special kind of person, a special kind of people to stay focused and on task in spite of the storm that looms on the horizon, in spite of the threats that bear down upon them, in spite of daily reminders that their lives are scheduled to end.           I received a letter recently from Kenneth Foster, Jr. The tone of the letter was confident and upbeat. I received a letter from Kenneth Foster, Jr., a man who is scheduled to die of lethal injection on the 30^th of August. In this letter Kenneth thanked me for my concern about his case, he told me how blessed he felt that there are those on the outside of the machinery of death who care and are responding to his cause. He also explained about the bureaucracy behind the death machine to me, ten years of experience has taught him well. He blessed me in his letter not so much by the things he said but more by the tone in which they were said. Even though I am an older man than he in years, his years of being condemned have lent him a mantle of experience and age that comes from so many dark nights of the soul – one right after the other, after the other, after the other.           Kenneth and I will meet next month when the letter from our Board of Trustees of this church reaches the Warden, and I am given clearance. The meeting will be as all those meetings are between death row inmates and visitors. Kenneth will be behind glass like some specimen that has been separated from society so as not to increase the risk of infection. We will have all the visuals of people who meet, people who meet on opposite sides of thick glass, people who are forbidden to greet each other with a touch or even a holy kiss. We will meet and when we do, Kenneth says, “I hope that we can meet, so that you can hear my testimony personally – and I don’t mean legal wise. I mean me as the person I am.”           And this kind of talk just makes me think of the old time religion in which someone from the pulpit shouts, “Can I have a witness!?”          You see the death that Kenneth Foster, Jr. faces isn’t what he fears, the past ten years has been a mighty teacher – as Martin Luther wrote so many years ago a mighty fortress is our God,– no, the death that Kenneth Foster, Jr. fears is the death of recognition. He doesn’t mind going down, but he does mind going down with no one paying attention.Can I have a witness?          The bread and circuses that this country has created in its out of control consumerism – the bread and circuses that keeps us occupied, but distracted, the 150 cable channels, the I-pods, and I-phones, personal computers, the gadgetry of modernity has kept us all informed, updated, and in the grove, but ultimately hanging out with ourselves. The community of humankind has been diminished in the process of our being entertained. The community of humankind cries out for more than food and juggling. The community of humankind awaits the new awakening of the human heart, the time when as Kenneth told me in his letter; people can look each other in the eyes and see that the other is ultimately themselves. Yes, as Kenneth says this looking does weigh heavily upon the human heart, but it springs from a place of truth and as Kenneth’s Master said 2000 years ago, ye shall know the truth and that truth shall make you free.           Kenneth may be locked behind the intricacies of multiple locks, sealed hermetically behind thick glass, family and friends may not be able to physically touch him, but there are Kenneth’s eyes into which we may gaze, and entering there we come away with only one feeling. Although the state may be about to murder this man, this man knows a truth and that truth is that from within him has sprung a fountainhead – he has bread that we do not know of, he has water from the living spring, he knows the truth of the Master’s words, lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.           At the beginning of this prayer I said that it takes a special kind of person, a special kind of people to stay focused and on task in spite of the storm that looms on the horizon, in spite of the threats that bear down upon them, in spite of daily reminders that their lives are scheduled to end. I would remind us all that we, too, are under such a sentence of death – the only difference between Kenneth and ourselves is that within our deaths the method and time are unknown – the certainty, however, is still there. 

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy and that is precisely everything, Amen.

Foster Child

Jack R. Harris-Bonham15 July 2007FUUCANow at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had a notorious prisoner, called Barabbas. So when they had gathered Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you, Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ?” … And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Let him be crucified.” And he said, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified.”  So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.”
 And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!”(Matthew 27:15-17;21-26)The Hanging of the MouseAn allegorybyElizabeth Bishop          Early, early in the morning, even before five o’clock, the mouse …was led in by two enormous brown beetles in the traditional picturesque armor of an earlier day. They came onto the square through the small black door and marched between the lines of soldiers standing at attention: straight ahead, to the right, around two sides of the hollow square, to the left, and out into the middle where the gallows stood. Before each turn the beetle on the right glanced quickly at the beetle on the left; their traditional long, long antennae swerved sharply in the direction they were to turn and they did it to perfection. The mouse, of course, who had had no military training and who, at the moment, was crying so hard he could scarcely see where he was going, rather spoiled the precision and snap of the beetles. At each corner he fell slightly forward, and when he was jerked in the right direction his feet became tangled together. The beetles, however, without even looking at him, each time lifted him quickly into the air for a second until his feet were untangled.           A large praying mantis was in charge of the religious ceremonies. He hurried up on t he stage after the mouse and his escorts but once there a fit of nerves seemed to seize him. He seemed to feel ill at ease with the low characters around him: the beetles, the hangman, and the criminal mouse. At last he made a great effort to pull himself together and, approaching the mouse, said a few words in a high, incomprehensible voice. The mouse jumped from nervousness, and cried harder than ever.          A raccoon, wearing the traditional mask, was the executioner. He was very fastidious and did everything just so. One of his young sons, also wearing a black mask, waited on him with a small basin and a pitcher of water. First he washed his hands and rinsed them carefully, then he washed the rope and rinsed it. At the last minute he again washed his hands and drew on a pair of elegant black kid gloves.          With the help of some pushes and pinches from the beetles, the executioner got the mouse into position. The rope was tied exquisitely behind one of his little round ears. The mouse raised a hand and wiped his nose with it, and most of the crowd interpreted this gesture as a farewell wave and spoke of it for weeks afterwards. The hangman’s young son, at a signal from his father, sprang the trap.          “Squee-eek! Squee-eek!” went the mouse.          His whiskers rowed hopelessly round and round in the air a few times and his feet flew up and curled into little balls like young fern plants.          It was all so touching that a cat, who had brought her child in her mouth, shed several large tears. They rolled down on to the child’s back and he began to squirm and shriek, so that the mother thought that the sight of the hanging had perhaps been too much for him, but an excellent moral lesson, nevertheless. 

Introduction: In Cormac McCarthy’s novel in dramatic form, The Sunset Limited he has the black man say, You want to help people that’s in trouble, you pretty much got to go where the trouble is at. You ain’t got a lot of choice.          The trouble seems to be everywhere. Pick up the newspaper, turn on the news. If it bleeds it leads. But sometimes you don’t have to go to where the trouble is at; sometimes the trouble comes to you. Such is the case today.           Consider, if you will, Kenneth Foster, Jr. who, ten years ago at the age of 19, was driving around with his friends. They were holding up people on the street and taking their handbags and wallets. There were three others in the car with Kenneth. He knew they were robbing people, but what he didn’t know was that one Mauricio Brown would exit Kenneth’s parked car walk eighty feet to talk to a woman who was seemingly flagging them down, and within a few minutes Mauricio Brown would kill the woman’s white boyfriend in what he claimed to be self-defense.           Consider now that Mauricio Brown has already been executed by the state of Texas – something the state of

Texas has little trouble doing in these troubled times, but also, now consider that Kenneth Foster awaits a similar execution at the end of August.           Kenneth’s been prosecuted under the Law of Parties rule which means that Kenneth would have to have had prior knowledge that Mauricio Brown was about to commit Capital Murder when Mauricio Brown approached a woman standing by a car and even Mauricio Brown had no prior knowledge of that the woman’s boyfriend, one Michael LaHood, a prominent San Antonio lawyer’s only son, was even in the car.          Yes, it does seem like something from the Twilight Zone, a bizarre tale of medieval justice right here in 21^st Century

America.           But it’s not a new pilot about a condemned man that continually escapes from jail, nor is it some farfetched novel about justice gone awry.          Kenneth Foster is 29 years old. He came from parents who neglected him as they both had their own drug habits to deal with. Kenneth’s father readily admitted that he was in jail when he found out that his son had been arrested for murder. Kenneth Jr.’s grandparents raised him, but Kenneth fell in with the wrong crowd. He lived outside the law, and now he is caught in the mechanism of the law itself as it inexorably keeps time on his deathwatch.           I’m not here today to convince you that Kenneth Foster is innocent of anything. For after all like 80% of those on death row Kenneth Foster, Jr. is guilty of being black. But, I’m here today to say that I’ve picked up many a hitch hiker, and I’d hate to think that I was somehow responsible for what they’d done before they got into my car. If that same misuse of the Law of Parties that was applied to Kenneth Foster was applied to us we would be responsible for whatever anyone, hitchhiker or friend, had done before they entered our cars.          Yes, Kenneth Foster drove the car that was riding around robbing people. But when that shot was fired it was Kenneth who started to pull away, and it was Kenneth that had to be convinced by one of the other riders to stay and wait for Mauricio Brown.           The moratorium on the death penalty was instigated by the ruling of Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 decision by the Supreme Court of the

United States that ruled the practice of capital punishment was unconstitutional. Three men condemned to death by the states of Georgia and

Texas appealed their sentences, arguing that their 8th Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment had been violated. The Court voted 5–4 to invalidate their sentences, ruling that the death penalty not only violated the 8th Amendment but the 14th as well, since it was meted out unequally to the ‘poor and despised.’          But that moratorium vanished when the Supreme Court overturned its ruling in Furman and executions resumed in the state of

Florida in 1976 under Governor Bob Graham. Old Bloody Bob as we called him signed the death warrant for John Spenkelink. Spenkelink became the first person to be executed under the new statutes. There’s a bumper sticker that are the last words of John Spenkelink as he was strapped into the electric chair. “Capital Punishment – Those without the capital get the punishment.”           I was living in

Tallahassee, Florida in 1979, and my then wife and I marched in the protest march around the state capital. I remember the end of the moratorium, and was up and awake on May 25^th 1979 when they pulled the switch on Old Sparkie. That’s what they call the electric chair down

Florida way – Old Sparkie. Inmates made it of Live Oak in 1923 and it belongs back in those horse and buggy times. It’s as appropriate today as carrying extra horse shoes in the trunk of your car in case you get a flat.           Cleaning up after an execution is something that’s rarely thought about. Those being electrocuted lose whatever control they had over their bodies. After Spenkelink’s execution it was revealed that guards had stuffed wads of cotton up John Spenkelink’s rectum to keep the inevitable from happening in the presence of Old Sparkie. I mean what’s more important keeping the execution chamber clean or maintaining the dignity of a condemned man?          The truth is the varying states administer the death penalty in a racially biased manner. There are a disproportionate numbers of African Americans on death row. In fact, the race of the victim provides a statistically clear indicator of whether or not a defendant receives a sentence of death or imprisonment. Thus, although nearly 50 percent of all murder victims in the

United States are nonwhite, 80 percent of all death sentences are imposed for the murders of whites.          In Albert Camus’ book, Reflections on the Guillotine he boils Capital Punishment down to this. People murder other people - true. But how many murderers tell their victims exactly when they will murder them?  Even after the first announced date of their murder has passed and it looks like these folks have escaped their fate, they get yet another call from the murderer advising them of a new date of death. Finally, the day arrives and the murderer is escorted to the victim’s house where no one tries to stop them, and everyone watches as they take the victim to a place where they have always committed these crimes, and there in the light of day, in full knowledge of the informed public they put their victims to death. There is only one murderer who does it this way and that is the state. The same state within which we live, move and have our being.           Albert Camus was born and raised in French Algiers. His father was French and his mother was Algerian. Shortly before the First World War there was a particularly gruesome crime in

Algeria in which a man had killed a farmer and his entire family – even the children. Camus’ father was extremely upset by the killing of the children. He followed the trial and when the day of execution came, Albert Camus’ father got up extra early because the place of execution was across town. But when he arrived back home he said nothing to anyone about the execution, and went immediately to bed where he vomited. The thoughts of the murdered children had been displaced by the sight of the murderer’s quivering body as it was placed upon the killing board and slid into position on the guillotine.          Camus argues that if revulsion is the response of a good citizen at the execution of a notorious murderer, then how is this act of execution supposed to bring more peace and order into the fabric of a society that needs healing?          There does seem however to be an argument here for using this repulsive act of stately murder to repel future murderers from taking up the ax, the poison or the gun. Yet, executions are no longer public. They are now secret affairs in which you have to have an invitation. How is an act committed in privacy supposed to make an example if, in fact, this example cannot be seen? Yes, we get stories in the newspapers, and the 10 o’clock news might say someone is to be executed shortly, but what the people are really waiting for is the latest weather update for the weekend.          In the narratives we have about Jesus – in the four Gospels – we have the story of a man who was conscious of the fact that the way in which he lived, moved and had his being was in direct contradiction to the Roman State. Eventually, charges were brought against him. They were fabricated, but witnesses were called and enough lying was done, sufficient at least, to get him the death penalty – crucifixion – essentially death by suffocation and a common form of capital punishment between the 6th century BC and 4th century AD.           I’m thinking now about the traditional verses in Second Isaiah that Christians say are prophecies that point to the coming death of Jesus on the cross. You’ve probably heard them a thousand times, but listen now and think not of prophesy concerning Jesus, but rather think how these lines could refer to any condemned person.           He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. How many people here hold Kenneth Foster Jr. in high esteem, how many people here before this morning even knew who Kenneth Foster Jr. is?          Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did not esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. We must think now of the ancient practice of scapegoating. A tribe would take a goat and all the sins of that tribe would be placed upon the goat and that goat driven into the wilderness to die. This is the way ancient cultures cleansed their societies. But are we any different from them? Ask yourself, What is the difference between what we are doing to those on death row, and especially Kenneth Foster, Jr. when we put them to death? Are we really punishing them for the wrongs that they have done, or are we using them as scapegoats for a society that is plagued with remorse, full of regret, and simply not living up to the standards that we have set ourselves? We put other people to death so that we may keep alive the idea that we are without sin, without wrongs, without judgment ourselves. But this is the 21^st Century, and surely no one would think that a goat could take away the sins of a society, so why is it that we continue with this ancient practice of scapegoating by using human beings? How can the death of Kenneth Foster, Jr. bring peace to any one? How does a democratic society, which purports to believe in the inalienable rights of all humans, believe that killing someone can even a score, heal a wound, or bring about peace?

          My reading of Elizabeth Bishop’s allegory, The Hanging of the Mouse, might have disturbed some people. An allegory is a work in which the characters and events are to be understood as representing other things and symbolically expressing a deeper spiritual, moral, or political meaning. I think all three are there in Bishop’s allegory.Elizabeth Bishop is using mice, insects, raccoons and cats to cast the events of capital punishment in a new and startling light. The precision of the military beetles seems ludicrous when compared to the sniveling mouse and his entangled legs. The scene approaches comic absurdity at several points – the praying mantis, lost for words, and made uncomfortable by being with the condemned. Yet, the absurdity hits home when it’s the cat – the natural enemy of the mouse – who cries as the mouse is hung. Yes, it is ludicrous what the animals and insects are doing to the poor mouse, but no more ludicrous than what we are doing to Kenneth Foster, Jr.            I was told the story of a tribe in

Africa that literally puts the condemned person in the same boat as the family of the murdered person. They row out into the middle of the lake where weights are placed on the legs of the murderer. The murderer is then pushed overboard, but as he struggles to live if one of the family of the murder victim wants to jump in and save him they can, and … they often do.           Once the humanity of the murderer is witnessed thoughts of revenge are replaced with thoughts of compassion.           The following is from Justice Harry A. Blackmun’s Dissent on the death penalty. From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death … I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed … The basic question—does the system accurately and consistently determine which defendants ‘deserve’ to die?—cannot be answered in the affirmative. The problem is that the inevitability of factual, legal, and moral error gives us a system that we know must wrongly kill some defendants, a system that fails to deliver the fair, consistent, and reliable sentences of death required by the Constitution.          On the 21^st of July – this coming Saturday – at 5PM on the front steps of the Texas State Capital there will be a rally for Kenneth Foster, Jr. and his family. Perhaps this will change nothing, but when thousands upon thousands of people show up who knows what effect this will have on the heart of Governor Rick Perry?           And now on behalf of the family of Kenneth Foster Jr., I’d like to thank you for being here, for listening with open minds and open hearts, for being the good people you are. Today you witnessed the suffering of his father, Kenneth Foster, Sr., his daughter, Nydesha Foster, his grandfather, Lawrence Foster and his great uncle, Lloyd Foster. Seeing that suffering I know that you will do what you can to alleviate it. This UU tribe is in the habit of suiting up and showing up, and sometimes that’s all that’s needed. Let us along with Justice Blackmun say that From this day forward, (we) no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.          In one of today’s readings Pilate solved the problem of what to do with the condemned man, Jesus. He was a great believer in symbolism - Pilate. He had a basin of water brought out to the judgment seat and in front of the crowd he washed his hands. The executioner Raccoon likewise washed his hands.           There’s a washbasin and towel down front. Right there. What’s it doing there? That’s a question that you should be asking yourself. And rightfully, that’s a question that you should also be answering.