First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin

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© Hannah Wells
15 February 2004
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:
Noelle Davis

In the fall of 2000, I moved to Texas to make a fresh start. A few months later I began attending this church, returning to my Unitarian roots. One of the first Sundays I attended the public forum and the topic was drug policy reform. I had never heard of drug policy reform. I sat on edge while the speaker answered questions I had never thought to ask. As soon as he stopped speaking I went to volunteer. I was so excited that there were other people, in Austin, who wanted to change the drug laws. People who understood the laws and could help me understand how I could help change them.

I had never understood why alcohol is legal and marijuana isn’t. I’ve watched alcohol destroy several of my friend’s lives while the people I know who occasionally smoke marijuana recreationally don’t suffer any adverse affects. In fact, most of the pot smokers I know are well educated professionally employed contributing members of society with no criminal record.

I started reading books and researching on the Internet about the history of the war on drugs. I learned that just as the prohibition of alcohol was being repealed, because it hadn’t worked, the prohibition and demonization of other drugs, and certain classes of people, was just beginning. I learned that Nixon officially declared the war on drugs in the early 70′s with the goal of eradicating all illegal drugs from our society and the planet. Conveniently he neglected to mention how this was going to happen and by when. I studied surveys of junior high and high school students compiled over the last 30 years since the war began and noticed no significant change in the rate of student drug use. I read my pocket constitution and realized that current drug laws were blatantly unconstitutional by the time I finished reading the preamble. And the best part of this journey was when I discovered that there were thousands of people from all over the world working to spread the message that drug use should be addressed as a public health problem, not a criminal justice issue. I decided it was, and still is, my moral obligation to join them in calling for compassionate harm-reducing policies – no matter how long it takes till we are heard.

I began to volunteer with local drug reform groups, helping to organize rallies and tabling at events and conferences. In July of 2001 I helped to organize and promote the Tulia Freedom Ride. We raised money in order to take two busloads of Austin area and national activists up to the panhandle town of Tulia, to participate in the Never Again Rally, which marked the two-year anniversary of the now infamous drug sting. For those who are not familiar with what happened, in the summer of 1999, police arrested 43 people, 12 percent of Tulia’s Black population, on charges of distributing small amounts of cocaine. The arrests were based solely on the testimony of a white undercover deputy who worked unsupervised on the streets and had no photos, sound recordings or witnesses to back up his allegations. Only five of the accused had a previous criminal record but the juries handed down sentences ranging from 20 to 300 years. Thankfully, this past summer Governor Perry finally pardoned the sting victims.

The Never Again Rally turned out to be a great success. I had never felt so empowered, so connected to the world. I was proud of my work and began trying to figure out how I could get a job that fulfilling.

Well here I am, two and a half years later, happy to say I figured it out. Last fall my partners and I wrote a grant with the goal of starting a new organization whose mission it would be to guarantee that seriously ill patients have safe and legal access to medical marijuana under their doctors supervision. We plotted a strategy that would enable us to identify, educate and inspire Texans to embrace this mission and influence their elected officials to vote for medical marijuana legislation. We received the grant, so I am now the director of Texans for Medical Marijuana.

I decided to focus my energy on educating people about the need for safe and legal access to medical marijuana because for many this medicine is the difference between life and death. And while some patients can advocate for themselves, others are to sick. And many people I have spoken with are afraid to come forward because of our zero tolerance policies. There is no mercy in the war on drugs, a war on people. There is no room for compassion, only prosecution, and that just doesn’t sit well with my heart.

I have been blessed with a healthy body and a persistent mind. I choose to advocate for others because it is my way of giving back, of saying thank you for my gifts. I dream that people will learn about our campaign and contact us so they can participate. I don’t expect anyone to feel the passion for this issue that I do. We are all called to support different issues. But I do dream that during this next year people will care enough to sign our petition, write a letter of support or make a phone call to their elected officials, and let others know about our mission. Sometimes it only takes a little time to be the change you wish to see in the world.

PRAYER

Did we get enough love yesterday, on a day designated to express love? Does everyone we love, know how much we love them?

May we see that every day is a day to freely express our love, for all we have is today.

If you are lonely, if your heart suffers, remember you are never alone. The creative force of the universe never stops moving, never stops loving you. You are held in love.

If you are afraid, if your spirit suffers, remember the reserve of courage deep in the pit of you is waiting to be tapped. May you hear this call of your own courage, which tells you that fear is the invitation to change and rebirth.

And if you are in pain, if your body suffers, remember you do not have to be strong. You may do what you must to relieve your pain, you may surrender to your body’s natural instincts, which crave health and healing, and an end to pain.

May our minds listen closely to the call of our hearts, and may our hearts listen closely to the call of the spirit, or that which is so mysterious to us. May we remember that often things are so not what they seem.

We are not separate from each other; that is an illusion. Our minds, our bodies, and our spirits are all connected. Your suffering is another’s suffering, and the pain of another is also your pain.

May the truth of our connectedness sit firmly in the front of our minds, so that the stirrings of our hearts may be confirmed. May we ensure that the right thoughts can precede the right actions of compassion.

May compassion blossom from thought to action.

Amen.

SERMON:
The Case For Medical Marijuana: A Human Rights Issue

Just a few weeks ago, I met Vanessa in Oakland, CA. Vanessa is an executive administrative social worker, about 40 years old. She has Lupus, several herniated disks in her lower back, and rheumatoid arthritis. A few years ago, she had to get around in a wheel chair, and was ready to end her life because she said her life wasn’t worth living. “I was serious about checking out,” she told me. She had looked into what her family would receive from her life insurance policy, and she figured out the right combination of pills to take for a lethal dose. She had a lot of pills to choose from.

Each day her doctors had her take an arsenal of pharmaceutical painkillers: 2400 milligrams of Neurontin – a drug designed to block nerve pain. “2400 milligrams is the highest dose you can give someone without killing them” she told me. 40 milligrams of Oxycontin on slow time release; another 40 milligrams of Oxycodone to wait for the Oxycontin to take effect. Oxycontin is the drug Rush Limbaugh became addicted to. 50 milligrams of Methodon – another highly addictive drug which brittles the bones; 80 milligrams of Paxil, an anti-depressant drug which also serves as a pain blocker, 40 milligrams of Valium, and Deladid as needed, the pharmaceutical equivalent of heroin. All this, each and every day, in addition to fibroid medication.

“I can cut all this in half,” she said, “and sometimes by two thirds if I have medical marijuana.” Vanessa came to the Bulldog coffee shop in downtown Oakland in December of 2002. The Bulldog coffee shop is one of the better known medical marijuana dispenseries in Oakland, in the heart of what is fondly known as Oaksterdam, a spin off of the famous European city Amsterdam, where drugs of all kinds have been legalized for many years. From the street, Bulldog looks like any other stylish urban coffee shop, and anyone can order a hot tea or double cappuccino once they’re inside. If you were a tourist, you actually wouldn’t know that it’s anything other than a coffee shop. But if you have an ID that says you have permission to obtain medical marijuana, you can go in back through a door to a small room that has a booth where sandwich bags of marijuana are sold to patients. You can only get a medical marijuana ID if a doctor has recommended marijuana as a treatment.

Vanessa doesn’t need a wheel chair anymore. She can get around on her own two feet, and she was able to return to work within a few months of smoking marijuana on a daily basis. “There was no way I could work on all those pharmaceutical drugs,” she said. “They turned me into a zombie.”

Not only did all those painkillers render her unable to work, she told me they didn’t even work that well for what they were supposed to do. They are supposed to relieve pain. But as Vanessa pointed out, the side effects of these drugs added too many other kinds of pain to her life – mental, emotional and spiritual pain.

This sermon is about smoking marijuana. Weed. Pot. Grass. Ganja. Wacky tobacky. For those of you who have never smoked pot, you may think this sermon is for the people who are younger at heart sitting in the sanctuary today. But it’s not. This is a sermon for those people, of fewer years or many years, who have become older at heart because of illnesses and conditions that make severe physical pain a daily part of their lives. Chronic pain ages us quicker. I’ll never forget what my best friend Blake told me after he broke his spinal chord and became confined to a wheel chair for the rest of his life. He said, “I feel like I’ve lost my youth. I’m only 25 and suddenly I’m an old man.” This is a sermon for the survivors who fight cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, paralysis, and any condition that causes chronic pain. It’s also a sermon for the people who love them.

Last week Davidson talked about compassion. Compassion, which means “to suffer with.” He made the honest point that it’s not so hard to suffer with the people we are closest to, the people we love and who have been a part of our lives for many years – our closest friends and family. It’s harder to suffer with people we don’t know, like the homeless, or like the people starving in the countless corners of the world, the people dying of AIDS every day in Africa.

It’s true that compassion comes more readily to us if it’s for people we know and love who are suffering.

But let’s look at the nature of this compassion for our loved ones who are in chronic pain. Yes, it comes easier to us. But how long can we sustain it? How long can we watch a loved one suffer without our compassion wearing out? No matter how much we love someone, watching a person we love suffer is exhausting.

Vanessa explained to me, “I was ready to end my life because the pain had turned me into something bitter. I was mad at God, I was mad at everybody. And I also knew that my family was wearing out. Sure, they have always been there, but family members burn out after too long. My pain was starting to kill them, too.”

Pain is a very powerful force in the realm of human suffering. It can destroy the spirit. It can turn the most caring and hopeful people into people who are enraged, into people whose loved ones can hardly recognize them anymore.

Have you ever had to go through this with a loved one? Have you ever had to watch someone you love suffer day after day? How did it make you feel? How did it change your relationship with that person? What if there was something that could help, that could provide effective relief? A drug that did relieve a significant amount of pain, without the side effects? Without the risk of narcotic addiction? Wouldn’t you want your loved one – or yourself – to have legal access to this drug?

I don’t think I need to convince many people here today that medical marijuana works – it’s proven effective for the majority of people who try it for medicinal purposes. For AIDS and cancer patients, it helps them to eat. The treatments for these illnesses can cause unimaginable nausea and vomiting. Even if the treatments are working well against the tumors or the virus, if a person can’t eat, they won’t last long regardless. Being able to eat helps the body’s natural resources to heal itself. Even if you’ve just been ill enough to not be able to eat for a whole day, you know how weak this can make your body. Imagine not being able to eat for long stretches of days and weeks.

You may ask, what about the pill form of marijuana, called Marinol. The main problem with a pharmaceutical version of marijuana is that a pill doesn’t do any good if you can’t keep it down. No, the quickest and most effective administration of marijuana is to inhale it. Marinol may be suitable in many cases, but not all cases. The vast majority of medical marijuana users prefer to inhale it. They can control the dose themselves this way, and it’s the quickest. Nowadays there are devices called vaporizers which allow the patient to inhale a much less harmful vapor into the lungs, rather than the smoke.

With 27 states that have some version of approved medical marijuana use in their laws, I don’t need to convince you that the beginning stages of fighting for this human rights issue have already been won. In most polls, usually at least three quarters of the votes approve the legality of medical marijuana use. The battle to win hearts and minds on this issue has already made great headway. What you may not know is the diversity of uses this drug offers, and just how long our species has employed its use.

“There was a time in the United States when extracts of cannabis were almost as commonly used for medicinal purposes as is aspirin today.” So began a 1971 book entitled Uses of Marijuana. In fact, according to Robert Randall, this country’s first legal user of medical marijuana for the treatment of his glaucoma (which saved him from becoming blind), the history of marijuana’s medical use predates the written word.

“Every civilization since the dawn of man has employed the unique therapeutic properties of this plant.” The Chinese were medically using cannabis 28 centuries before the birth of Jesus, recommending it for a variety of disorders including rheumatic pain and constipation. In cultures widely separated by geography and time there are consistent reports of marijuana’s medical benefits in easing digestive upsets, enhancing appetites, relieving muscle spasms, and reducing melancholia.

British physician William O’Shaughnessy is credited with reintroducing cannabis to Western medicine in 1839 with a forty page article called “On the Preparation of the Indian Hemp or Gunja.” O’Shaughnessy was traveling in India and noted the use of cannabis there for treatment of convulsive disorders, as an analgesic, and as a muscle relaxant. It was this latter quality that led to one of the most famous therapeutic applications of cannibis: the use by Queen Victoria to treat menstrual cramps.

How did such a helpful natural remedy become so demonized? This is where the political aspects of this issue become relevant. Again, we are brought closer to home when we talk about our ability to trust our own government. Not only does the war in Iraq serve the administration’s ulterior motives to secure the control of oil reserves and the lucrative contracts of Dick Cheyney’s post-war rebuilding company, it also very conveniently serves the purpose of moving our attention away from domestic issues here at home. It’s been easy to lose our trust in the government where foreign policy is concerned. But at home, uncovering the truth about the Drug War has made it even easier.

Most of us know about this already. We spend millions of tax dollars each year to arrest drug dealers and users. Meanwhile, as Noelle pointed out, there are no noticeable drops in abusive drug use. The prisons are swelled to the brim with non-violent drug offenders.

Some of these prisoners are sick people who have been arrested for growing or possessing marijuana for their own medical use. Police raids in full SWAT gear barge into people’s homes, search for and seize their pot, and haul them off to jail.

It’s true that marijuana can be abused as a recreational drug. It can serve the need of an addict’s mind to ‘escape,’ much like alcohol can. I would know, I used to be a pot-head. For a long time, it was my drug of choice, but I had to give it up because I liked it a little too much. Marijuana can become the focus of one’s life to a point that is a problem. However, marijuana is not physically addicting, but rather psychologically addicting. The side-effects of withdrawal are quite benign.

This is why it is such an important alternative to the highly addicting pharmaceutical painkillers. Becoming addicted to painkillers harms the spirit and the heart of a person to the point that life may not be worth living. As Vanessa pointed out, being sick is bad enough. There’s already the underlying shame and stigma associated with feeling less than whole. But then to make it impossible to work, to be a contributing member of society, just serves to isolate and depress a person further. “My experience,” Vanessa told me, “is that the vast majority of the medical community just want to give you drugs that you become dependent on. But I don’t want to go on disability, I don’t want to be dependent on drugs or monthly government checks to get by in life. I want to be independent, I want to keep working. Medical marijuana allows me to keep participating in the world.”

There is another reason why medical marijuana is a religious issue outside of the obvious issue of compassion. A big part of the War on Drugs has been lots of government issued propaganda, as is the case in any big war. The buzz word we so often hear is “evil.” The terrorists are ‘evil,’ drug use is ‘evil.’ The word ‘evil’ is a religious term. For centuries it has been closely related to the word ‘sin.’ Millions of people have bought the story that so much of government and right-wing religion have sold them – that drugs are evil and people who use them are sinners.

In October of 1989, a man named Steve was dying of AIDS in a hospital in San Antonio, Texas. He had been arrested for marijuana possession, and in the course of his trial he had won the legal right to use medical marijuana. But the DEA delayed his first legal shipments of marijuana for weeks and Steve ended up back in the hospital. The delays made no sense until the very end of December, DEA administrator John Lawn formally rejected the judge’s recommendation that marijuana be rescheduled for medical use. In Lawn’s view, marijuana had no accepted medical use in the United States. He said, “ending the medical prohibition would unleash sin upon the land and send the wrong message.”

Such sentiments have been repeated in similar circumstances ad nauseum. I assume when they say ‘sending the wrong message’ they are talking primarily about sending the wrong message to our youth. Again, the assumption must be that pot is evil, those who smoke pot are sinners, and clearly to legalize it in any form would send the wrong message to our youth.

But in liberal religion, the wrong message is that which delivers false information, that which is not true. Youth are VERY smart – this morning Davidson is working with some of the brightest 8th graders I’ve ever met for the Coming of Age program. They can handle the truth, which isn’t that scary after all. They need to know the truth so they can make the best decisions for themselves – because kids know when they are being lied to and they will find out for themselves what the truth is. Let’s send these kids the RIGHT message by telling them what is closest to the truth.

What’s closest to the truth is that any drug has the potential to be abused. But the people who become addicts are not sinners, they are not evil – they have a disease. Addiction is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit – it attacks all three of these things. And it doesn’t make sense to call drugs evil, as so many of them are derived from plants that grow naturally on the earth. Most drugs are designed to be medicines. And for some people who are very ill, the marijuana plant is a medicine.

The truth is that marijuana is a God-send for thousands of suffering people and their families. For so many illnesses, the only meds that can be prescribed are pain meds – there is no cure. And there are so many sick people who believe the propaganda, who fear the social stigma – even liberal folks – that they won’t give medical marijuana a try. And why should they if it’s illegal? Vanessa herself said, “I don’t do things that are illegal.” Most of us don’t want to break the laws of this land. So quite simply, it’s time for the laws to change.

The atmosphere at the Bulldog cafe in Oakland, California is one that has been profoundly influenced by new laws that make better sense. There was an energy of hope and healing in that room. Vanessa told me that in addition to the marijuana, it was the community she found at the Bulldog cafe that also helped her to heal spiritually and emotionally. “They know us all by name here, and that is very nurturing and reassuring.” It is changing the laws so this kind of wholistic healing can take place that is so important. It’s time that we stopped segregating conventional medicine and alternative healing methods into separate categories. Nothing in life is so simple, or so binary. We’ve reached a point where we can take advantage of the best of both worlds – we can make use of modern western treatments as well as homeopathics and natural remedies. Legalizing the medical use of marijuana is also an excellent example of how we could begin to regain trust in our federal government.

“Since I’ve started coming to Bulldog, the quality of my life has improved 1001%” Vanessa said. Before I ended the interview, I asked Vanessa what she would want to say to the congregation who was going to hear this sermon. She looked me straight in the eye and said,

“The people who come here are disabled. Even if it’s not visible, they have a disability of some kind. And essentially, as we get older, we get more disabled. So if you still have judgement or disdain for the use of medical marijuana, research it. You too might be in the position some day where you don’t want to take narcotics that leave you slobbering, that leave you spiritually bankrupt. You too might want legal access to an herbal remedy that allows you to continue to have a life.”

So is marijuana a God-forbidden thing, or a God-send? Is it sin or is it grace? For many people in pain it’s salvation, it’s comfort and it’s rest. But it’s not enough to agree here, to say we have compassion. It’s not enough to just “suffer with” people. Finally, we need to act. If our religion is one of love and compassion for all people, especially for those who suffer, for those whose souls are drugged and numbed, and for those who can be freed from their unnecessary suffering when our citizens are freed from the ignorance that is an accomplice to this suffering, then we should ask what our faith demands of us.

Paul Tillich, a great 20th century theologian, once described “justice” as “love from a distance.” All human rights battles have been won through the realization of justice, through enough people loving enough from a distance. This is no different. Let your voices be heard – talk to your friends and family about the importance of legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes.

You can tell them that your faith demands it.

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© Hannah Wells
4 January 2004
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

As a new year begins,

let us reflect – gently, but with conviction, with courage.

We have so many selves, and we must consider:

Which one lived the most last year? Which part of our selves was given the most permission, the most air time, the most control?

Are we living our lives the way our best self would choose?

Though it is fearsome, let us listen to the nagging voices in our minds that ask us to consider new ways of living, to consider changing habits, to consider changing how we think about ourselves.

Do we know who we are? Do we really have a sense of our place in the whole extended family of humanity? Can we see how much we share with each other and how we are different? Are we comfortable with the story that is unique to us? Can we see how our story is in fact, not unique?

Let us love our selves in the story we find ourselves in. We each have a story, and may we see that our mistakes are as important as our victories, because we can learn from them. May we forgive ourselves and with calm intention may we let our hard lessons become blessings.

May we let the voice of our better self be heard. Where there is regret, where there is fear, and where there is shame, may we acknowledge it and discover ways of integrating these difficult emotions that make us so human. May we see that it is wise to not ignore the darker parts of who we are, but to listen to them, to let them guide us toward change.

May we see that we are never alone, and may we see that the greatest resolution we could make is simply, with ourselves, to be honest.

Amen.

SERMON

You might be expecting to laugh a lot during this sermon – but the pressure to make that happen was too great for me so I’m going to try to make you cry instead. Of course, trying to get you to cry is a lot of pressure too. But that will be the joke. You are expecting to hear something light hearted and funny, but instead I’m going to talk about the sad truth. And that is the main point of this sermon – let’s just get that out of the way. I don’t want anyone to think too hard this morning, including myself. What’s funny in life and what’s sad in life can be very closely related to each other, closer than we realize. Laughing and crying are two sides of the same coin – that coin we spend as the currency of healing.

When I went on the net to research the phrase, Spirituality of Humor, I found myself in an ocean of information – of jokes, of musings, of profound philosophies and theories of the interfaces between spirituality and humor. Even so, there was evidence that this is a field that is just beginning to come into its own. There’s a site called integrativespirituality.org, and the subject link titled “Spirituality of Humor” reads that it is “under construction.” Serious interest and attention to this topic is only beginning. I believe that the spirituality of humor will actually be a key player in our human evolution. Humor will help us to discover the means to world peace because there is such a tremendous need for the world to heal.

But I really don’t want to get too esoteric with this topic – remember we are trying to not think too hard today. It’s too early in the morning, it’s too early in the year. We’re going to keep it simple.

Besides, our hope of future world peace isn’t very interesting. We’re more interested in the here and now. There are many takes on the spirituality of humor that I could present to you today, but I want to focus on how humor is healing.

Although crying and laughing are two sides of the same coin they are not interchangeable. It’s more like they each make the other one possible. We all need to grieve from time to time. But if we repress our grief to an extent that is dangerous for our souls, our laughter becomes in-genuine. It is not so much of a healthy release as it can be an expression of bitterness. If grief doesn’t come out in tears, it finds other ways to come out – through anger, through a nameless discontent. As the Buddhists point out, life is about suffering – suffering caused by losses, by frustrations, by life’s inevitable changes. “The only thing that stays the same is change.” But just as the good periods in life don’t stick around, neither do the bad. We’re familiar with the saying, ‘this too shall pass.’ We also know the saying, ‘some day you’ll be able to look back on this and laugh.’

And it’s here that I want to make a disclaimer, to make something abundantly clear: there are some losses and tragedies in life that we will never be able to laugh about. There’s nothing funny about them and there never will be. These losses are like scars – they will always hurt when we touch them. There are many tragedies and losses in which the only means to healing is lots and lots of crying. In a sermon about humor, this is the most important point: WE HAVE TO CRY. There’s a lot of things none of us get enough of, and one of them is giving ourselves permission to weep. It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman, adult or child, the tears we shed over losses are specific to the need to heal.

When we cry enough, we can still cry some more. I have often convinced myself that my grieving was over, when it wasn’t. I wanted it to be, but I was fooling myself. Even when you think you’ve done enough, do some more. Even if the loss happened years ago, it’s never too late to take care of the unfinished business of grieving. At some point we come to accept that this kind of grieving will continue to revisit us throughout our lives – and this is okay. There are some things we will never “get over” and we’re not supposed to. Once we accept that the scar is here to stay, it’s okay when it gets touched. This grief is particular to us – it is ours – and we can allow it to shape us in ways that strengthen our character.

It’s so important that we cry when we need to because otherwise the weight of that unexperienced sadness detracts from our ability to experience joy. I can’t share the good news with you all of laughter – unless I assertively drive home the point that you must embrace the bad news of hard truths. No, I don’t want you to think too hard today but I want you to think about feeling hard. There’s a huge difference. It’s hard and necessary work to let our minds surrender to what we are carrying in our hearts.

And this is how crying enough makes laughing possible. It’s not that eventually we can laugh about the loss. It’s that the grief makes healing possible – and being healed allows us to experience the goodness of life again. We can get our sense of humor back. We can laugh again – that genuine, full-throttle, belly-laugh. When we permit ourselves to cry enough, we also permit ourselves to return to the other side of the coin of suffering – that life is a gift and we are supposed to enjoy this gift as much as possible, despite the tragedies, despite the losses.

There are many aspects of life in which humor and healing do go hand in hand. There are many difficult situations we find ourselves in that, under a certain light, we can see the irony or humor in it. It’s a blessing when we can laugh momentarily in a serious situation. It’s of spiritual significance because it’s a saving grace – it’s a break from the solemnity that weighs on us. When we can laugh at ourselves, we surrender to our humanity and our humility because we realize we don’t need to take ourselves so seriously. It is often in situations in which we see that we are not alone. We see that our problems and weaknesses are not unique, but rather a part of the human condition.

Almost all of us have a personal issue, a personal problem that we either allow to continue and worsen, or we decide to take steps towards changing so we can have a better life. If you think you are one of the lucky ones who is issue-free, I would say, are you sure? There’s nothing you need to work on? We all have our vices, or things we do compulsively that get in the way of our health and wholeness. Or perhaps it’s what we’re NOT doing and avoiding that is causing anxiety in our lives. Or maybe we’ve just lost or ignored a little part of us that we love and we miss. Now’s a great time to do some exploring around this, as it is New Year’s Resolution time, which is rather a joke in itself as I believe the statistic is that a whopping 90% of new year’s resolutions are not followed through. So don’t think of it as a resolution, think of it as steps towards having a better life, towards “progress and not perfection,” as they say in 12-step meetings.

Up to this point, I’ve been fairly abstract in this sermon – describing emotions but not being terribly concrete. I want to be more grounded in a subject that is too esoteric, too philosophical. As I was writing I realized I needed to bring myself into this in a real way, to describe my own situation of tears and laughter, to tell you a little bit of my own story. And I realized that it had to be through alcoholism – because I am an alcoholic in recovery.

I’ve been attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for almost two years now, and I can say that I’ve never seen a better example of the ways humor and healing can intersect. You get a group of drunks together who have some years of sobriety under their belts and you will be amazed at the amount of hilarity they can produce with each other. When you first get into recovery, nothing is funny at all. You’re terrified, you’re in despair, you may have lost your job or your family, you’re disoriented, you’re suffering the effects of withdrawal. Mostly you’re just terrified because you don’t know if you can really quit drinking or not. You’re on the cusp of hope and hopelessness.

But if you’re willing, one thing that keeps you coming back to the meetings is seeing that the people who have stuck it out are able to laugh at themselves. At first, you’re kind of jealous and resentful of this – how dare they be happy when I’m so miserable. But then you think, I want what they have. It’s the fellowship and camaraderie that is so integral to the healing process. Part of what makes the laughter possible is discovering that you’re not alone – that there are thousands of people like you, and if you made a joke about your alcoholism – about how bad it used to be – they would get it. You’re one of them! The jokes are funny because you used to be in that awful condition where you didn’t have control in your life, but now you can laugh because the demon no longer has a hold on you. All the ugliness and embarrassment of it doesn’t define you anymore.

At a meeting I went to on New Year’s Eve a woman shared the story of her moment of truth that finally got her into recovery. She had been using for over 30 years, both alcohol and speed, since she was 12 years old. She ended up in jail finally, and said what a blessing that was, because she was forced to sober up. But when she got out, she was faced with the choices of her freedom. Looking back on her life of addiction, she realized she either had her head in the toilet, was in prison, or was facing death. Or, at this point in time, she could choose God and begin her recovery. She paused for a second, then she spewed out the litany of her choices in short order, “it was toilets, prison, death, or God! Toilets, prison, death, or God!” And in the first moment of clarity she ever had in her life, she said, “I chose God.” Nearly everyone in the room could see both the truth and humor in that and we all laughed. Most of us had been there ourselves.

This sense of humor in recovery – any kind of recovery, I believe – is so important because most of the time it is really hard and scary work. Even with the help of fellowship, it can still feel lonely. I know I have found for myself, that I have to go easy on myself, that right now, there’s a lot of shame and anger that I’m just beginning to learn how to work through, because for so many years I covered these things up with drinking. This is serious stuff! So when I find a moment where I can laugh at myself, when I can see the humor in the midst of the struggle of this disease, I welcome it because it’s an indicator that some healing has happened. I’m getting that much closer to accepting myself, alcoholic and all.

Whether we’re laughing at ourselves, or a joke someone sent us on e-mail, or even a dirty limerick, the immediacy of laughter is worth noting because it’s a part of life that we easily take for granted. I know I am living in the present when I am consumed by laughter or when I get the giggles. If you’ve never experienced the uncontainable giggles in church, you’re missing out. Maybe that sounds immature or disrespectful, but we’ve got to let the child out sometimes. We can’t always be proper, we can’t always be serious. I do believe our laughter is a link to the divine because there is such an element of spontaneity and presence to it. It’s childlike. What if we could trust the divine as easily and quickly as we are able to laugh? What if that innocent and childlike faith could be ours again?

We get closer to that when we heal, when we learn how to accept ourselves and the people we love, flaws, follies, and all.

There’s a web site I recommend called spiritslaughing.com. On the page titled “Something Serious About Humor” it says,

“What is spirituality? It is living one’s life in a personal God-orientation. What is humor? It is a slice of life that produces some level of laughter by the way it is uniquely set apart from everything around it. Spirituality equals life. Humor equals a slice of life. Each works best when operating within the same life at the same time. . . Our spirit has been given the capacity to laugh, and it can operate at full capacity only when it is enriched by the presence of humor . . . if we insist on having one without the other, we end up with neither. A spiritually dead person without a sense of humor does not need to check their bags because they are going nowhere, and no one wants to go with them.”

I have another personal testimony about humor and healing. Like so many alcoholics, I come from an alcoholic family. Yet I am the only one on the path to recovery, I am the so-called ‘interrupter’ of the family system. It’s very lonely and frustrating at times, and I’m only beginning to accept one of the cardinal conditions of recovery – that just because I will get better, that doesn’t mean anyone else will.

One thing I realized I lost at the very beginning of recovery was the ability to connect to my brother, who is a couple years older than me. We’re very different and, ever since we were teenagers, the only time we could really connect on an emotional level was when we got drunk together. We could talk about real things then – we could talk about whatever worries we had about our parents, we could talk about our fears and regrets and disappointments in life. We could talk about some of the struggles of growing up, our most embarrassing moments, our mistakes. We could even say that we loved each other.

My guess is that my sobriety now is threatening to him because he knows he’s an alcoholic too, he has admitted as much in those drunken moments of truth. So we stopped connecting at all. But last summer I decided to make an effort – I said, let’s go out one night just the two of us. We did that but it wasn’t the same. He didn’t open up and I didn’t know how to, either. So we went home and were sitting in the car in front of the house we both grew up in. I remember thinking, I have nothing in common with my brother anymore.

But then we started talking about my parents – the one thing we’ll always have in common. We started reminiscing about all the things that were funny about growing up with our mom and dad. Even the things that weren’t funny at the time seemed funny to us then. We laughed about their habits and how Dad would buy some kind of mid-life crisis sports car then sell it because Mom wouldn’t have it. That happened about three times. We realized we could document each phase of our family history by which cars were in the garage. We laughed about how our Dad’s mother used to drive our mother crazy. Then we started joking about the peculiarities of our grandparents and all the silly stories that happened when we traveled with them. We started laughing so hard, we joked that we could make a fortune if we started a brother and sister comedy act and went on tour.

My brother didn’t want us to get out of the car and go inside because we would wake up Mom and she would freak out – this was another regular occurrence for us growing up. We laughed and joked about our childhood for over an hour and finally I went inside, and he drove home to his young family. There was no recognition of how things are different now. We didn’t connect in any serious way, but we connected through our sense of humor. It was something; it was a start to a new brother and sister relationship.

Whenever we hear of abstract themes like tears and laughter, we can only make them real by attaching them to real memories from our own lives. That was the only way I knew how to make this theme real, by connecting it to my own story. But please understand, I don’t want or mean this to be about me. I want you to find the ways that you relate to the notion of healing through tears, through laughter, and how closely related these can be. All our stories are different, but we’re all in this together. It’s kind of like a dance where we take turns taking steps. I took my shoes off this morning, and maybe I’ll get my toes stepped on.

But you dance too. Think, this week, this first full week of the New Year, of something you need to grieve some more, some more healing work you need to do. What about it makes you want to cry and what makes you want to laugh. We’re all trying to learn how to be the best selves we can be – and you don’t need to think too hard about it. Just dance. Just feel.

I’ve always liked the phrase, ‘if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.’ Many of us have a sadness that runs so deep it goes beyond compensation. But if we can accept that it is particular to us, yet not unique, we can find a means to heal, to forgive, to move on to what else life has to offer us. Let a sense of humor and laughter be a part of this.

As Rumi says, your cup of joy is only as full as your cup of sorrow – so take a drink.

Take a drink.

© Hannah Wells
14 December 2003
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

PRAYER

Perhaps it is no accident that the birth of a prophet is celebrated at the coldest and darkest time of the year.

May we draw closer to the ones we love in ways that surprise us. In the midst of cold rain, the wind, and shorter days, may we find ourselves astonished by the beauty that surrounds us this season.

May we find the courage to give the gifts that only our hearts can afford. May we find ourselves making longer eye contact when we speak to each other, may our embraces linger longer, may we find more ways to speak our truth in love, and not judgement.

If you are lonely, may you find ways to reach out to what each of us needs: a closeness of human spirit that reminds us we are never alone. If you are not lonely, may you remember that you have a gift to give to so many of us who need it.

In the midst of the busy-ness, of all that goes into the creation of a sacred time, may we find a few precious moments when we see that so much of what we do are only parts of a whole. The whole is the gift of life, made up of presents we can find if we can learn to live in the present.

May we make the present a present to ourselves and each other – but not just this time of year, not only at Christmas time. May we see the opportunities each day of the year, to forgive, to see our failings as only parts of a whole – may we see that our failings are no match for our blessings, to all that we have.

May we all become aware of how truly lucky we are.

Amen.

SERMON:
The Difference Between Loving Jesus and Rejecting Christianity

I am no Jesus scholar, no Biblical scholar, and I am of a liberal, religious faith that gives Jesus a marginal status, at best. It wasn’t always like that, but nowadays it is rare to meet UUs who say Jesus plays a central role in their lives. Many of us are here because it is a haven from the broken record we have heard about Jesus in other Protestant faiths. Some of us had to grow up with a saccharin version of Jesus shoved down our throats until the mere mention of Jesus made us queasy. We didn’t buy it then, and we don’t buy it now.

Why bring up Jesus in a liberal church? Aren’t we over it? Didn’t we conclude we were better off without the man, didn’t we deposit him into a corner of irrelevance? Didn’t we establish that the early church manipulated the Bible to make Jesus a tool of propaganda for its own motives? Didn’t we call him a phony and free ourselves of the baloney? Aren’t there more modern things to think about, to learn about?

I’m not talking about Jesus today because it’s Christmastime, though I admit it seemed like a good excuse. Talking about Jesus only at Christmastime or Easter is like bringing up Martin Luther King once a year for Black History Month. Men such as these are relevant to our lives year round. And to be honest, I bring you this topic today with some trepidation. Many of you have discarded Jesus as useless to your spiritual life, and I don’t blame you. Jesus has been manipulated by some of the most hateful fundamentalist Christian enterprises. He is perhaps the most misrepresented figure in human history. Why burden our selves with the task of saving face for Jesus?

I bring you Jesus today because I have some good news. Jesus is no longer a Christian thing. Jesus is no more Christian than God is Unitarian Universalist. Many scholars today don’t see enough concrete historical evidence that heads in the direction of any kind of conclusive picture of Jesus. There is a lot more space given to alternative interpretations.

About the only thing most of the Jesus Seminar scholars agree on, including Davidson, is that someone lived about that time who taught things that are reflected in many of the sayings that are attributed to Jesus. As Davidson has put it, “it seems to make the most sense to say that these things were either taught by Jesus, or some other guy named Jesus.”

Since what can be proven about Jesus doesn’t go far beyond this, theories about Jesus run across the board. One scholar says the man is a composite of ancient myths who never really existed, while another suggests that Jesus survived the execution, escaped to Europe, and died of old age in Rome!

So this is fertile ground for amateurs, because we can accept almost any story about the man Jesus, and find some very well-educated Biblical scholars who will back us up. Maybe you don’t think it’s worthwhile to wonder about the life of Jesus – I tend to agree, insofar that what really interests me about Jesus isn’t the fine points of how or where he died. What I find worth my time to look into are the teachings attributed to him. These teachings remain, regardless of what truth we can decipher about the teacher. I want to convince you that it is worth considering some of the teachings that either came from “Jesus or some other guy named Jesus.”

Biblical scholarship has been influenced enough by a liberal perspective that it can start to feel at home in a liberal faith such as this one. In other words, studying what goodness and value the Bible has to offer has become an intellectual and spiritual pursuit worthy of our attention. There are no obligations to believe anything in order to consider Jesus. If you are interested in cracking open the New Testament, there is no longer a pretense that you accept Christ as your personal savior, or think Jesus is the son of God, or any of those dogmatics.

But if Jesus is not an historical puzzle to be solved, what is he then? What’s the point? Think of yourself as Alice and Jesus is the rabbit hole. You can only find out once you take the plunge. It’s an issue of personal choice, a matter of free will – thou may or thou may not choose to give Jesus a chance. The tradition of this church respects your decision either way. You can say, thanks, but no thanks.

But if you say yes, I want to know more, just be forewarned that you have to be willing to wade through a swamp in order to get to the valley where the good stuff grows. Or think of Jesus as a cosmic Santa Claus who has left behind many presents. Only some of them are truly gifts. There are many presents that once unwrapped and unpacked are not worth keeping around. A disappointing present is easy to spot and there are lots of them in the Gospels. Once we clear away the clutter, what’s left?

If you’re willing to consider possible meanings in the context of story, there’s a lot left. This is key to understand when we think about Jesus. Since next to nothing is grounded in historical fact, you have to be willing to engage the art of learning from parables.

The prevailing attitude towards the parables of Jesus in Biblical scholarship is more good news. In the past, scholars were content to conclude that the parables are allegorical, which means they are example stories for how one should behave in order to please God. But now scholars don’t think it’s that simple.

The current treatment of parables is cause for more celebration for the liberal church. Why? Because we’ve moved beyond trying to solve historical puzzles of Jesus – since so little can really be proven, we’ve moved on to the far worthier task of discovering the deeper meanings held in Jesus’ parables. These discoveries can have a profound impact on the way we live our lives, and that’s what we’re interested in. Spiritually speaking, we are interested in the knowledge that helps us to live our lives with as much honesty and integrity as possible. In the midst of our freedom of belief, the liberal church seeks the highest of moral standards, and of all people, Jesus can be one of the spiritual teachers who helps us figure out what those moral standards should be. And it has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with Christianity.

Biblical scholars today think of parables as far more complex than just stories of symbolism. Parables are actually designed to challenge our most basic assumptions about what we think we know is true about life. Parables put our most dearly prized notions of justice on its head. What we thought we knew for sure, Jesus says think again. If Jesus is saying that the very foundation we live our lives on is one that is false and mistaken, I think that’s a challenge we should take on. How often do we really question our most basic assumptions about life?

Take the Good Samaritan. During the time this parable was told, Jews hated Samaritans. There was no such thing as a good Samaritan because they were considered to be untouchable. Yet in this parable it is a Samaritan who saves a beaten up Jew on the side of the road. What’s being turned on its head here are our ideas about where help can come from. We want help to come from our own people, the people we think are good and we think we can trust. But this parable says no – we don’t find what we most need in the safety of familiarity. We will receive our most precious gifts from the places we least expect, from sources we have long dismissed as unworthy of us. To find the divine we have to venture beyond our comfort zones, we have to be open to the unknown, to be open to what we don’t understand. This takes courage and a radically open heart. And again it is a matter of free will – we have to decide for ourselves whether or not to be open to foreign possibilities, to possibilities that frighten us.

A lot of us think we have right and wrong figured out. We are secure in our beliefs about justice. But again, Jesus offers teachings that can turn these beliefs inside out. One challenge that is laced throughout his parables is the notion of radical forgiveness. The notions of ‘loving your enemies’ and ‘turning the other cheek’ don’t appeal to most modern sensibilities of justice. I don’t think most of us seek revenge when opportunities present themselves, but nor do we pass up opportunities to prove that we are “right,” to say, “I told you so.”

Personal conflicts are a part of life – they come up with the people we work with, they especially come up with the people we love, with our daughters and sons, with our siblings, with our mates. And here, Jesus is worth bringing up at Christmastime. Did you know that there are more homicides on Christmas Day than any other day of the year? The big family holidays can become a hornets’ nest if people are holding tightly to resentments, to anger. Sometimes Christmas is the last straw – people may not get killed, but probably all of us can remember a Christmas ruined by a big family fight.

The parable that probably most exemplifies the notion of radical forgiveness is of course the Prodigal Son. The father in that story didn’t have to think for a split second whether or not he would forgive his son. It was a given. Let’s look at that word, ‘forgiveness.’ It’s interesting that at its root is the word ‘give.’

Last week you heard Davidson talk about what is most irritating about Christmas – all the phony baloney, the glitter, the aggressive merchant marketing that bombards us. Despite this, Christmas is still about giving presents. Underlying it all is the currency of money that affords the material items, the wrapping paper, the decorations. To think of Christmas as a largely commercial affair is indeed a cold feeling. When we give presents to our family members out of a sense of obligation it is a cold currency that underlies it all.

The other cold currency that can be present at Christmastime has nothing to do with material items. It is the resentments and anger we harbor toward family members that we have a bone to pick with. Perhaps we are disappointed by someone or unhappy with the decisions they make in their lives. Perhaps we feel wronged or hurt and we desire justice to be done to put the matter to rest. We can hold a sense of justice in very high regard in our hearts. We think it’s what we want – to prove someone is wrong, to show we are right. But this is a cold currency we exchange at Christmastime when we allow self-righteousness to creep into the festivities.

I love Christmas and believe that we can rise above all that. We can rise above it when we exchange another kind of gift – the gifts of compassion and forgiveness. It is a totally different kind of currency which transcends all that is material and insincere about Christmas. It is a warm currency that all of us need and hope for. Because there is no relief like that of being forgiven for our inevitable human failings. And there is no release like finally forgiving someone. It is this release from our anger and resentment towards another person that is actually the greatest gift we can give ourselves. These are the gifts we need to give and receive at Christmas. Because the things we remember aren’t things.

The best Christmases are the ones where animosity is put to rest in a family. Where the gift of a higher consciousness finally breaks into our hearts and we realize that we don’t have to hurt anymore – we don’t have to hurt or be hurt. To let go of our self-righteous sense of justice can be very difficult – it takes radical forgiveness.

I think we can learn about this radical forgiveness from the parables attributed to Jesus. You may not buy this version of Jesus I’m trying to sell to you this morning, either. You may not buy that the Kingdom of God is within you and among you, and that you can choose to make the Kingdom of God a part of your Christmas. Davidson is fond of saying that the bottom line of Jesus is that we bring about the Kingdom of God when we treat each other like children of God, end of story, end of religion. But how do we know we are doing this? To treat each other like children of God is to give this compassion and forgiveness to each other, like the father did in the Prodigal Son. We must offer this compassion and forgiveness to ourselves as well. It is the only means of being able to give it to the people we love. These are acts, not ideas.

There is another reason to buy this version of Jesus besides what it can do for your Christmas. There is a very ugly and destructive version of Jesus that has been on sale for centuries, the Jesus of so many of the Fundamentalist Christians. The Jesus of brittle piety and harsh judgement – the Jesus who threatens damnation and suffering at the hands of God. I don’t buy that version of Jesus, and I think it’s hard to respect the people who do. But I think it’s important for religious liberals to take it a step further.

It’s not enough to say those people are out of their minds, or crippled by their ignorance and fear. The Jesus I love begs me to take a stand. We UUs are often accused of basing our beliefs on what we are not. We are not dogmatic, we are not exclusive, we are not narrow-minded. But what ARE we? And sometimes, we childishly resort to Christian-bashing to reassure ourselves of what we are not. But this finger-pointing doesn’t amount to much more than self-righteousness. It doesn’t say anything about us or what we really believe.

To be confident of and intimate with the version of Jesus we know to be loving and compassionate is a much more powerful tool to disarm the hateful version of Jesus that so many Christian fundamentalists believe in. In other words, we denounce and reject this type of hateful Christianity by loving the Jesus who taught radical love and compassion. It is a much more solid argument to stand on than simply saying many fundamentalist Christians are wrong and stupid. Rejecting Christianity becomes irrelevant when we find a version of Jesus worthy of our reverence and love. Then we can say, no, that’s not what the Bible says – THIS is what it says. THIS is the correct interpretation of the Gospel that is worthy of Jesus – these teachings are liberating, not intolerant. It is much firmer ground to stand on than any kind of self-righteous superiority on our part.

As you can tell by now, I’m a big fan of Jesus. I never gave him a thought growing up UU – if anything, I was quite suspicious of the man and believed what I heard from other UUs, that he was a waste of time. It wasn’t until Seminary, when I worked intimately with the homeless, that I finally understood what Jesus was really about. I embodied his teaching of compassion when I learned to massage homeless people in San Francisco. When I laid my hands on the people who are so marginalized in our society, I finally understood where the holy lies – it’s when compassion becomes an act and not just an idea.

My prayer for us all this Christmas is that we see the opportunities to put compassion and forgiveness into action. That we take advantage of our free will and trust that the unknown has something to teach us and contains the best gifts of the season. In the end, Jesus actually has very little to do with it. In the end, Jesus is only the messenger. And rather than what some of the Christian Fundamentalists do, who eat the menu, we can choose to eat the meal. It is a beautiful gift we can to choose to open for ourselves. It’s a beautiful gift we can choose to share with others.

Don’t eat the menu this Christmas – eat the meal. It’s food for the spirit, nourishing at Christmas and every other day of the year.

© Hannah Wells
30 November 2003
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

This could be a rather philosophical sermon, but I’m going to try to keep it down to earth. “Self-Reliance vs. Free Will” suggests I am pitting one against the other, and it’s true, I would like to convince you today why ‘self-reliance’ has its limitations compared to ‘free will.’ But they are both fine concepts that our religious tradition as well as our national culture have been founded on. They are the essence of what we offer: the freedom to make up your own mind about what you believe – that you don’t require the authority of any figure or dogma to help you define what you think and know to be true about life. You can rely on yourself to draw these conclusions.

Both self reliance and free will are so imbued in our liberal faith and culture that we take them for granted – at least, we rarely stop to think how they affect the decisions we make.

It’s possible that our beloved ideal of self-reliance could use a system of checks and balances. Ralph Waldo Emerson is an easy target to pick on here, as he did so much to advance self-reliance in his essay writing and the example of his life. However, I refer to him more as a springboard into this discussion. Emerson is an admirable figure in many ways – he was originally a Unitarian minister in the early 19th century who delivered such a radical commencement sermon to a room full of Harvard big wigs that his ordination was taken away from him. His controversial argument was that people can find God in nature and in the sensual, everyday experiences of life – not just in the piety of scripture and church. Again, this was urging us toward a more self-contained experience of religion.

Emerson went on to do a lot of writing, which is what he is most well known for. He wrote a lot about what the ideal American character should look like – he thought that an independent nation should have independent citizens, people who are innovative, creative, and industrious – people who could take care of themselves. He worked very hard at everything he did and was constantly striving toward excellence. If the Puritans set a precedent in this country for sexual piety, Emerson set the standard in this country for standards of personal excellence.

Emerson contributed heavily to our heritage and that’s great.

But I get to pick on him today because he is so closely associated with the ideal of self-reliance.

So you are probably wondering, what is wrong with self-reliance? Isn’t it a good thing to be self-sufficient and independent? Yes, it is! But I worry that it has taken us too far apart from each other. At this point, I want to try to adjust the aperture of this lens and focus on the very personal.

It’s after a big family holiday such as Thanksgiving that we are sometimes painfully reminded of what our family members’ or our own ‘growing edges’ are. ‘Growing edge’ is a kind of euphemism for ‘personal problem.’ We all have degrees of personal challenges in our lives because nobody is perfect. Yet we live in a society that is constantly urging us toward perfection. You all know this – the idea that we are so heavily defined by how successful we are, whether that is on the scale of career, family life, what we look like, or how many friends we have. Most of us strive on a very deep level to be respected and loved, which is heavily dependent on how people perceive us.

We all play roles in life – that is the nature of this society. But it is the nature of reality that no one can play a role perfectly, that we all fail from time to time. Often our failings have to do with the growing edges that are specific to us, that usually become a repetitive theme that lasts throughout our lives. We tend to fail more when we do not address the problems our growing edges create. Let me provide some examples. Chronic low self-esteem is a big one. In a perfectionist society, it can be very hard for people to feel good about themselves most of the time. Being fearful and lacking courage is another – the fear of failure can be a big deterrent for people who need to take risks and move on to more positive phases in their lives. Health issues rank quite high too – a stressful society produces many addictions and obsessions, whether that is to food, drugs, alcohol, sex, spending money. Many ‘growing edges’ are in the form of our various vices.

I bring up Thanksgiving and family because sometimes, such gatherings can be a showcase of such personal issues. It’s the sister or brother we have who needs more courage and self-esteem to take a crack at what they really want to do in life instead of being paralyzed by the fear of failure. It’s our mother or father who needs to exercise more or eat better so their health isn’t so at risk. It’s the lonely, divorced uncle or aunt who need to stop feeling sorry for themselves and see what other fish there are in the sea. It’s the cousin who needs to stop drinking too much. It’s the husband or wife who need to admit they’re depressed and get help. It’s the mother in law who is too controlling and judgmental. It’s ourselves and whatever we perceive our own failings and growing edges to be.

I hope you had a relatively peaceful and joyful holiday, but for many folks, holidays are opportunities for the worst of us to emerge in a family setting. The point is that all of us tend to be quite aware of what the growing edges are of the people we care about the most. I’ve always thought it fascinating that we can often see what another person’s problems are much more clearly than our own. That might sound judgmental, but I think you know what I’m getting at. We judge our loved ones critically because we want them to be happy, we want them to overcome their difficulties – so we do think a lot about their problems, because we love them.

So at this point, I hope I have established that we all have our issues – we all have personal growing edges – whether they create big problems or small problems in our lives. I know what mine are and I bet you all have ideas about what yours are. Now, the question is, how do we deal with them? How do we work towards their solution? This is where the effects of our high ideals of self-reliance can come into play.

My concern is that, when faced with seeking solutions to our problems, we limit our options to what we can do by ourselves – because a self-reliant person takes care of his or her own problems. So often we say, I can handle this on my own. Or we think, this is something I need to figure out by myself. Being self-reliant is a good thing unto itself – but it has its limits when we need to address a problem for which our own resources are inadequate. We think, if I just think about this enough and use the power of my intelligence, I can come up with the right thing to do.

And often, that is indeed the case. Religious liberals, especially, have great faith in their intellect – and I think it’s true that we are often able to see clearly what must be done, what steps must be taken to solve our problems. Having a good brain is an essential step toward the desire to solve the problem in the first place. However – there are so many solutions that cannot be arrived at by brainpower alone.

There are times when we have to admit that we can’t do it alone – that despite our best thinking, we are still baffled. At this point we have to abandon our fierce self-reliance, and this involves humility on our part – admitting that we are limited by ourselves. It is this humility, I believe, that brings us down to earth, that ultimately delivers us to the truth of ourselves. It is a kind of surrender that happens – when we say, “I give up – I need help with the answers because what I’m coming up with isn’t working.” It’s usually a big relief, when we let go of what’s been holding us back – ourselves. It’s this surrender that leads us into uncharted territory, which of course is terrifying at first, but it is also so often the route to our emancipation.

You may know that ‘humility’, ‘humanity’, and ‘humus’ all come from the same root. Humus means earthiness – which links our humility with our humanity. So it’s a coming down to earth, but it’s also like a coming home, in a deep sense, it’s an essential kind of honesty.

Another way of explaining the importance of humility is to think of it as a bridge between the brain and the heart. It is helpful to remember the difference between the brain and the intellect, and the heart and a sense of hope. The brain thinks it can work through a problem, the heart simply hopes that a solution can be found and is open to the unknown. This humility allows us to say that, ‘although I don’t understand now, one day I will.’ Humility is a kind of faith. Both the brain and the heart are important, and a good balance can be struck between the two when we allow our sense of humility to connect them.

This can be really hard to do! But it is harder NOT to do. Because it is staying locked up in our minds that so often serves as the force of denial in our lives. It is a false sense of self-reliance that we cling to when we say, ‘I have this under control,’ when in fact, we don’t. The forces of denial are especially strong in a perfectionist society – it’s very hard to admit our problems because perfect people don’t have problems.

There’s lots of people who could use professional help or support groups but refuse to because they are embarrassed or think that it makes them a weak person. But whoever said you have to be stoic and strong all the time?

This business of reaching out to others when you need help is motivated by religious beliefs. If there is such an emphasis on self-reliance in your spiritual beliefs, you will probably tend to keep your problems to yourself, thereby limiting your options. But if your spiritual beliefs emphasize wholeness in relation to others, you are more apt to reach out to others who can help you. A lot of times we think our problems are very unique to ourselves until we seek help and find out there are a lot of people like us. The problem with self-reliance is that we can think we are quite alone, when we work on our problems by ourselves in isolation.

But we’re never alone, and that is my point. Self-reliance has its limits. We need friends, we need family, sometimes we need therapy and support groups, and many of us decide we need God, too.

That was the case for me, when I decided a few years ago I needed to stop drinking. I’ve been going to AA for about a year and a half now, and I’ve been learning a lot about alcoholics. Before we get help, we are a real stubborn bunch – not only do we think the drinking is under control, but we think we’ve got it all under control. But we wake up one day and realize, not only can I not fix the drinking, I can’t fix a lot of things by myself. My life is out of control. AA suggests finding faith in God, or a higher power, so the alcoholic can let go of that false sense of control.

When I was a practicing alcoholic, this false sense of control I had was my case of extreme self-reliance at its worst. Growing up UU, God was always a non-issue. I never really thought much about it. But when I had to begin recovery for my alcoholism, God became very important because it helped me to finally surrender, and say, I can’t do this by myself. It’s true that very few alcoholics can recover by themselves, which is why AA is such a helpful program for addicts – not only does it provide the fellowship of other alcoholics, but it helps make God accessible in a way that reminds the addict they are never alone. The program has also helped me to see that the greatest gift of my sobriety is that once again I have choices – a healthy sense of free will has been returned to me.

And how is free will different from self reliance? What is free will? Free will is a matter of personal empowerment, but not in a direction that may be destined to isolate us. At the heart of free will, is the luxury of choice. You have choices; thou may do something, or thou may not. It is a luxury, because not everyone in the world has choices. Millions of women and men are born into situations where their choices are incredibly limited, due to poverty, due to oppressive cultural and political situations.

But in a country like the United States, and in a religion that has fairly high socio-economical standards, we actually enjoy access to quite a wide swath of free-will, or choices. The difference with self-reliance, is that your choices are going to be limited to yourself and what you can do. However, a strong ethic of free will recognizes that there are many choices and options outside of one’s self.

Above all, free will is about taking responsibility for yourself. The ironic thing is that taking responsibility for yourself can mean choosing to rely on others more – to go a little easier on yourself instead of trying to do everything alone. Free will allows for many choices and options and says that it’s your responsibility to choose the best one.

As you know, it’s near impossible to change anyone – we all have to take responsibility for changing ourselves. We can’t change anyone because people have to WANT to change. That desire to change is a matter of free will – many of us opt NOT to change.

But when we do decide we want to change, we are much better off when we choose to keep our options open – and it is a matter of free will, to allow these options to be accessible, to be possibilities for ourselves.

I hope I have made it clear what the differences are between self-reliance and free will. Maybe I haven’t, because it is confusing, and perhaps this sermon did end up being too philosophical. Maybe you can tell that this topic is very important to me. What I am really trying to get at is this: I worry that sometimes we UUs are a little too hard on ourselves! Maybe sometimes we try too hard to be what Emerson tried to be – that perfect person of countless talents who is successful at everything, that person who knows everything, or always has the intelligent, profound thing to say. But we don’t know everything! And we can’t BE everything either.

And sometimes our convictions to be “right” about everything can often translate into a lot of self-righteousness that doesn’t have much to do with religion at all. If I had to describe what the best of religious faith is in plain language it would be this: that we’re all in this mess together! That the saving grace in life is that I always have someone to lean on who cares about me, that the most sacred times in life are when we are helping each other. That is where we can always find the holy. It is this mutual exchange of energy, love and inspiration that helps us to find our courage. We can’t do these things alone!

Let us not do these things alone. Let your faith be strengthened and founded on the belief that it is always better to heal, to change, and to find freedom from your difficulties in the company of others.

Thou may, or thou may not. It is up to you.

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© Davidson Loehr
Hannah Wells
23 November 2003
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Prayer

This morning’s prayer was written by Max Coots, the emeritus minister of the Unitarian Universalist church in Canton, New York. It is called “Let Us Give Thanks.”

PRAYER: “Let Us Give Thanks,”
by Max Coots

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people.

For children who are our second planting, and, though they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are.

Let us give thanks:

For generous friends, with hearts and smiles as bright as their blossoms;

For feisty friends as tart as apples;

For continuous friends who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we’ve had them.

For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the others, as plain as potatoes and as good for you;

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes, and serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;

For friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you throughout the winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts, and witherings;

And, finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, and who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter.

For all these, we give thanks.

PRAYER: (for 5:30 service only)

Let us give thanks: for imperfect lives in an imperfect world, let us give thanks. Let us learn to be grateful for the blessing of life, even though it be a terribly mixed blessing, with enough of sorrow and loss to make us bitter if we let it.
When our vision becomes narrowed and our expectations become inflated, we wonder how we could ever be thankful for something as flawed and often unsatisfying as life can seem to be. Our job is not as we had imagined it would be. Our relationships are not as fulfilling as our fantasies of them had been; our friends are neither as numerous nor as true as we feel we deserve. Our families have problems.
We think, perhaps, that if only life would get better, we would be glad to be thankful for it, but that surely no one would be thankful for this kind of life. Yet it is precisely this life for which we must learn to be thankful. For it is the ability to see life as a blessing rather than as a burden which can lift its burden from our backs and let us sing and dance with the sheer joy of being alive.
This is the season when we are given the opportunity to renew our attitude toward life: to recapture the sense of joy and of gratitude for the simple fact that we are here, that today life is ours, and today there is the chance to relish it.
And so let us give thanks: for imperfect lives in an imperfect world, let us give thanks. Amen.

SERMON: “Thanks-giving”
Davidson Loehr

Thanksgiving is a holiday especially for people who have lost a lot and need to know how to go on. If everything in your life is just swell, and it has been just swell for as far back as you want to remember, Thanksgiving will just be another swell day, with turkey.

But if you have lost something this year, you need to lay claim to this holiday, because it is for you. I mean hard, painful losses: a parent, a partner, a child, a beloved friend or relative, even a pet you loved. Or a more abstract pain: a loss of innocence, outgrowing a faith too small to cherish you without yet knowing how to replace it. Or the loss of a job, or the loss of confidence, optimism and hope.

It was so long ago, that first Thanksgiving, it’s hard to imagine it could still be such a big thing. It took place 382 years ago. Bach wouldn’t be born for 64 more years. The founders of the United States – Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Washington – wouldn’t be born for another century or more. The United States itself wouldn’t exist for another 155 years. Charles Darwin was 200 years in the future, and the new world he would help establish wasn’t even imaginable back in 1621 at the first Thanksgiving.

But one of the most enduring and life-affirming stories in our history was being lived out back then, in real time.

The year before, 102 Pilgrims had left to make their way to the New World. They started out in two ships, but one wasn’t seaworthy, so they came over in just the one ship, the Mayflower. They left on September 6th; the trip took 66 days, they arrived on November 11, 1620.

They were greeted, after a harrowing trip across the Atlantic, by a brutal and deadly Massachusettes winter. Of the one hundred and two who left to come here; by the following summer, only 55 were left alive. Nearly half of them died.

Imagine this! 102 people leave their homes, say farewell to families and friends, say goodbye to a whole way of life, a whole world. They arrive as strangers in a strange land, and the land knows them not. It is cold, indifferent and deadly, and they spend a lonely and fearful winter freezing, starving, and dying. They bury nearly half of their number: one half of these Pilgrims buries the other half, and in the spring they plant crops and they hunt for food.

They had the amazing good luck to land near a village where the famous Indian named Squanto lived. Squanto probably spoke more English than any Indian on the continent, and he helped them survive and plant crops. Without him, they might all have died.

The crop is good. There is food here after all, there can be life here. I cannot imagine how they might have felt: the combinations of life and death, tragedy and joy, famine and feast. It was like all of life, compressed into one year. And by late summer, when they could at last celebrate a good crop, half of those with whom they had hoped to celebrate were dead.

Maybe that’s why the first Thanksgiving lasted for three days. There was much eating, drinking, and merriment between the surviving Pilgrims and Chief Massasoit and ninety of his people. The menu for the feast was venison stew cooked over an outdoor fire; spit-roasted wild turkeys stuffed with corn bread; oysters baked in their shells; sweet corn baked in its husks; and pumpkin baked in a bag and flavored with maple syrup. The food was served on large wooden serving platters, and everyone ate their fill.

After dinner, legend has it that Chief Massasoit’s brother disappeared into the woods and returned with a bushel of popped popcorn, which the Pilgrims had never tasted before.

These are the bare bones of the story of the first Thanksgiving: we don’t know many other details. It was the story of a small group of people who seemed to have both the character and the courage necessary to transform hell into heaven.

By all rights, all 102 of them should have been dead by spring. But they were not dead, and they proved it in a way that still beckons to us by its sheer magnificence of spirit. After the harvest, in the midst of a field dotted with the markers of almost four dozen graves, graves of wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters-in the midst of this field, they threw a party of thanksgiving. They invited over some new friends, had a sumptuous feast, they said some prayers to honor the still-warm memory of those they had lost, and then they did a simple thing so powerful that it freed them from despair, a simple thing so powerful that it can still do the same for us: they gave thanks.

They gave thanks because they knew that this life, even as it is punctuated with occasional pain, suffering, loss of life and loss of love, is still pure miracle, the greatest gift we will ever receive.

May we all, this Thanksgiving, find again that more adequate and more honest attitude toward life: that attitude that overwhelms us with the sheer wonder of it all. May we give a rest to our habits of complaining that the gift is not perfect, long enough to recognize that the gift is miraculous, and fleeting. And may we not let it pass us by without stopping to give thanks.

SERMON: “A Patriotism of Optimism”
Hannah Wells

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. What chokes me up about it is that I’m convinced Thanksgiving is really a religious holiday dressed up like a secular one. It fools us all. Yet it is inclusive of ALL Americans, regardless of what their faith is, what color they are, how rich they are, or any of that. All are welcome at this table.

It is an American holiday where patriotism is celebrated in a more subtle manner than other holidays. Thanksgiving returns us almost to a more feminine and maternal interpretation of patriotism. That we are all part of this motherland, and we give thanks for the gifts we receive from the land itself – that America has provided us with such bounty, with such a rich way of life. On one level, Thanksgiving celebrates what makes living in this country so great – that ideally, all Americans are invited to participate in the American way of life – to work hard, to have plenty, to be content – again, regardless of race, class, or religion. This is the America I love, and partly why I hold this holiday dear to my heart.

This year, Thanksgiving is coming at a time when our country is growing with agitation and discontent. The war in Iraq is beginning to divide us much in the same way the war in Vietnam did. The economy hangs in the balance. We need a time-out from this and give any feelings of powerlessness a break. Thanksgiving this year offers a time when this divisiveness can be put to rest for a few days. Perhaps a gentler mode of celebrating patriotism can be an opportunity to reclaim a patriotism of optimism. I am convinced that what this country needs right now more than anything is a sense of hope; we need a bold reassurance that better days are to come, that this country will once again be proud of its presence in the world and in the manner in which it cares for its own people.

What I am most thankful for this year, is that I truly do believe in a better tomorrow, that I hold this faith in optimism sacred. Hope and optimism are religious postures. As in the times surrounding Vietnam, it was the posture so many leaders took – John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy all carried a sense of undeterred commitment to their vision of service: to make justice accessible to all Americans, and to attain higher standards towards equality and moral responsibility. They were optimistic that such changes were possible – they really believed it because changes were happening so quickly around them. Their powerful faith directed their profound influence on the country.

What they had was an optimistic patriotism, or a patriotism of hope. And it’s been said that it died when they did. That losing those three leaders plunged three swords in the heart of optimistic patriotism. I’ve been told this heart stopped beating when theirs did, and hasn’t been resurrected since.

As you know, yesterday was the 40th anniversary of John Kennedy’s death in Dallas, TX. But I want to talk about Bobby Kennedy today, the last one, the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was not aware of the story of his death until just this past week, when I turned on the PBS station to watch while I ate a bowl of soup. There is a series of Kennedy documentaries airing, and I happened to catch the story of Bobby Kennedy, which I had never heard before.

I’m not a total space cadet when it comes to American history, why didn’t I ever learn this? Sure, I learned in 3rd grade that John Kennedy was assassinated, and I still remember the oral report I gave to my class. I stated the famous quotation, “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” I still think that smacks of something Jesus might say.

And it was later that I learned about Martin Luther King – perhaps it registered in 5th or 6th grade what an awful tragedy that was for the country. But I don’t remember ever hearing about Bobby after that. I’m convinced it’s because the first two deaths were already too much. And Bobby’s death was even more than death. It was a marker of the end of the civil rights movement. A lot of people gave up after that. It was the end of an era, the end of hoping for the country to move in a moral and sane direction. It was the day the music died. And that is perhaps too esoteric to explain to a Jr. High American history class. Most US history curriculums I received ended just before Vietnam, just as summer vacation arrived to conclude classes for the school year. Teachers ran out of time and wouldn’t have to tell or revisit these sad chapters of recent American history – and I think in the 80′s, we were only beginning to find the words to tell them.

So it wasn’t until I became 30 years old that I finally got this history lesson. Bobby Kennedy was running for the presidential primary in 1968 and his platform was economic justice for all Americans, regardless of race. I wasn’t aware that he so passionately believed in this – I have grown up in an era where it seems no politician so courageously prioritizes the simple ideal of equality for all people, of the dream Martin Luther King had.

As he campaigned across the country, Bobby drew great crowds of people of color, of African Americans and Hispanics – they could hardly believe a presidential candidate cared about them so much, but he really did and he convinced them to have faith in him. When King was shot, Kennedy was about to speak at a campaign rally, and he had to inform the crowd of the shocking news. This is what he said to them:

“For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and disgust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, and he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.”

That is what he said the night Martin Luther King was killed, and I know I have never heard a politician speak that way since.

California was a crucial primary to win, and after losing in Oregon, Bobby Kennedy came to California behind in the race. So when he DID win the California primary, it was a very ecstatic and hopeful victory indeed. As he was leaving the press conference after the win, Bobby Kennedy was shot.

As I watched this footage on the documentary, a hidden reservoir of emotion broke loose from deep within me and I began to weep. I wept hard. I relived one of the most painful moments in American history which I had not in fact lived through. It was like a final puzzle piece was put into place, as I realized that it was this event that cast a shadow of despair on the American political climate for decades to come – up to now, up to today.

I never understood that the last days of the civil rights movement were quite this definitive. Because I’ve always wondered: what happened to the optimism and hope of that era, and HOW can we get it back? I see now that a lot of it died with Bobby Kennedy.

Yet – I want to convince you today that there is plenty of indication that we can revive a posture of optimism and hope. Now – in November of 2003. We have reason to believe that good changes are coming.

It seems to me that the patriotism we are most familiar with now is one of fear – we have been urged towards a patriotism of fear of the other – that what makes America great these days is that we can squash those we fear into submission. It’s a patriotism of coercion, violence, and hatred. But Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King’s patriotism actually EMBRACED the other, and insisted that this is our country’s greatest strength – that investing in our diversity is what builds a strong nation.

There are so many Americans who still believe this and know it to be true. Molly Ivans, the liberal journalist who is the pride and joy of Texas, represents such a voice. I heard her state her testimony of optimism on the radio lately. She said, “living through the 60′s Civil Rights Movement as a southern democrat in Texas has given me eternal faith that change can come about by the people, by the distinctly oppressed people, and this change can come about very quickly.”

I think she’s right. She is using the lens of the past to view the present and the potential of the future, and I think we should try to do the same. One example is that it’s been about 20 years since the gay rights movement first got rolling, and with the steady perseverance of the people major changes are happening now – a landmark law was passed just last week in Massachusetts, granting civil unions to gay couples.

Positive changes do happen and will continue to happen.

I have a wish, a Thanksgiving wish. A wish that we keep in mind that we – ourselves, and this country – the political landscape, are all works in progress. That simply having faith in change, or a religious conviction of optimism, is a huge step in the right direction – and that sometimes, that is enough. We don’t give up on ourselves or the people we love, just as we cannot give up on our beautiful country. There are just too many of us who still have The Dream – who still believe that such dramatic revisions are possible.

This is a faith of love and hope. It can define a fervent and vibrant brand of patriotism, too – a love of country founded on the belief that justice and a better life is possible for all its people. If we look back in history, all battles won for a just society were preceded by a lot of bad days, days of terrible struggle. It’s the same for our personal victories – we change our own lives when we overcome fear and work hard with a lot of hard days along the way.

That is the American character I love and cherish. Working hard for worthwhile changes. And recognizing that we need each other along the way to do it. Above all, this patriotism of optimism that we are reclaiming is about returning to the truth, that ultimately, WE are responsible for The Dream, WE are responsible for asking, “what can I do for my country?” But the difference when we have hope, is that we ask this question with optimism. We don’t say, oh, there’s nothing I can do. We say, OH, there is SO much I can do!

The beating hearts of patriotic optimism do not have to stay dead. The Dream will be brought back to life once the people have the will to do it. WE are those people. This favorite saying of Bobby Kennedy’s can be our springboard:

“Some see things as they are, and say, “Why?” I dream of things that never were, and say “why not?”

Why not?

© Hannah Wells
October 26, 2003
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

SERMON

I get puzzled when people from other religions ask me where I think I’ll go when I die. I want to say “That’s not the right question! The right questions are about what quality of life I’m hoping for here, and now.”

Nowadays, we liberal religious types don’t discuss life after death that much – we are more likely to discuss the lack thereof. Like so many of our beliefs, what you think happens to you after you die is your own business – you are encouraged to decide this for yourself, and you’re also welcome to not decide anything. It’s also quite acceptable to say, “how would I know what happens after I die? I’ve never died!”

I suspect our beliefs about death vary as much as our beliefs about God do – some do believe in life after death, some aren’t sure, some don’t care, and some are certain we are just dead. It’s pretty cool that we allow for such a diversity of opinion here – it wasn’t always like this.

In fact, 100 to 200 years ago, the members of our liberal religious heritage were pretty obsessed with this topic, particularly the Universalists. Back then, folks were much more concerned with arriving at the correct interpretation of life after death, and they wanted to be in agreement about it. It was completely dependent on what they believed about God, because God was the architect of life after death. If God was mean, then God had built a house of hell. If God was nice, then no hell had been constructed. Back then, they were not questioning the existence of God, nor were they questioning the powerful role Jesus played. What they were questioning was just what exactly God and Jesus cooked up together – they treated the whole Christian story like a murder mystery that they had to get to the bottom of.

This may shock some of you, but our UU historical roots were about as Christian as you can imagine. In fact, they tended to believe they were the only ones who got the Christian story RIGHT.

So this is a sermon that reveals some of UU’s historical adventures in Christian theology, particularly on the Universalist side. It will contain some hardcore history and some hardcore discussion around theology – or what people way back when believed.

The holiday season of All Souls’ Day, the Day of the Dead, and Halloween is the perfect backdrop for this – these are all holidays that treat the topic of death, and vary in religiosity. All Souls’ Day is originally Roman Catholic – it comes after All Saints’ Day to shift the attention of souls in heaven to souls in purgatory. I tend to believe that this must be how our Halloween celebrations came to emphasize the morbid and the spooky – focusing on loved ones suffering in some kind of hellish limbo is a much freakier image than the pagans celebrating the Autumn harvest. You are probably familiar with the arguments about the origin of Halloween – I think it came to be what it is today through an amalgam of Catholic, Pagan, and American Capitalist influences.

So let’s get to it, early Universalist theology – a lot of Unitarian Universalists don’t know much about Universalism in general. Three years ago when I showed up at Seminary the most I could say about it was, “they merged.” Yes, American Universalism was a separate religion – older than Unitarianism, and they merged in 1961. What else does a modern day UU need to know? Let’s travel back in time and see.

Okay, so it’s the dawn of our nation, 1790′s, early 1800′s. What the heck is Universalism? Like the early Unitarians, the early Universalists reacted to the judgmental and retributive God of the Calvinists, who believed in pre-destined election. That is, God decides whether a person will be saved – sent to Heaven as opposed to Hell – even before he or she is born. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” does apply here. The Universalists thought this was ridiculous. Like the Unitarians, they were some of the earliest heretics in our country’s history. However, they didn’t think of themselves as heretics. Rather, they felt they were offering an improved version of Calvinism. Like the Unitarians, they inserted reason, or rationale, into the old theology to make it more palatable and practical.

So the Universalists’ “heresy” was this: they chose to believe in a God who was loving and benevolent, a God who ultimately wanted humanity to be united, fulfilled, and happy, both before and after death. In other words, we are all saved, even the most disreputable of characters. Since every being is held in one universal love by God, then all beings return to this love after the journey of life. We are all reunited to the One. Or, God brings us all home, and that means everybody, even Hitler, even bin Laden, even the boogey man. Nobody is left out. So the universal in Universalism originally referred to the central belief in universal salvation, or universal love and forgiveness by God. Nobody is excluded from the Christian belief in heaven, and hell does not exist in the afterlife.

So it is key to understand that the Universalists in their earlier stages were Trinitarian Christians. In fact, they felt like they were the only real Christians because they believed that the message of Jesus, as well, was Universalist. That was the good news: we are ALL saved! – So what I have just told you is the nutshell version of early Universalist theology. The first major Universalist preachers actually had several different ways of describing or explaining the concept of Universalist salvation and indeed there was much debate among early Universalist ministers and itinerant preachers. From what I understand, it was actually considered fine Saturday night entertainment for preachers to engage in preach-offs, where they actually debate their theological arguments in turn and the people decided who was the most convincing through their applause. Back before radio and television, this was the best show in town. Can you imagine Davidson and I doing this? I would definitely charge a fee for that ordeal!

Now it is also very key to understand how this interpretation of salvation differed, and still does, from the vast majority of Christian belief, whether Catholic or Protestant. The conventional idea behind the Christ, the savior, the crucifixion, atonement, etc., blah blah blah, is that God needed to be reconciled. God was pissed. So Jesus, bless his heart, came along and died for us all, representing the ultimate sacrifice to appease an angry God. That’s the conventional theology that still thrives today – unfortunately.

But the pivotal difference in Universalist belief is that it’s the other way around. It is not God who needs to be reconciled, but rather humanity that needs to be reconciled. This reconciliation takes place when we practice the universal love of God that we are all held in.” But Jesus still served a purpose. Jesus came to teach us about this love – this incredible, holy, dynamic love – that is possible in the sisterhood and brotherhood of humanity. We are reconciled when we see that God comes through for when we treat each other with dignity, love, and respect. So – very important – universal salvation can also be thought of as worldly, as what can happen as we live – not just after we die.

For this line of thinking, Universalists were labeled heretical, radical, and eventually, liberal, kind of like the Unitarians. However, I want to make it very clear how the Universalist theology was totally different from the Unitarians. There is a saying that Universalists believed that God was too good to damn them while the Unitarians believed they were too good to be damned. I think this comes fairly close to accurate. Whereas the Unitarians threw out the trinity and embraced the ability of a person’s free moral agency to do right, the Universalists maintained the trinity and believed that it was only through relationship with God that living a good life was possible.

Now one might assume that the Universalists were quite a minority, kind of like the UUs are today. But you might be surprised. In the young decades of our nation, people were hungry for a religious identity that offered a positive and liberating outlook over the rigid, gloomy, and morbid doctrines of the Calvinists or the churches of the Standing Order. Universalists represented one of the earliest voices for freedom of religious expression in our country. In the spirit of a nation redefining its character from the Old World, Universalism was quite appealing indeed and enjoyed a fairly long golden period. The centennial celebration held in 1870 in Gloucester, Massachusetts was the largest organized religious assembly to date in the history of the United States, with 12,000 people in attendance at its peak. We’ve never even had a General Assembly that big!

A few other fun facts to be proud of is that first President George Washington picked a Universalist minister to be the official chaplain of the Revolutionary War, despite strong opposition from mainline Protestants. That was John Murray, whose words I used for the prayer. And early in the 20th century, the youth contingency of the movement was so active in their social service work that their organization was invited to visit the President at the White House – those kids were the pre-cursors to LRY and YRUU. That’s exciting stuff, but the main point to be made here is that Universalists were incredibly patriotic. They really felt that they offered the quintessential religion of democracy and New World ideals of freedom and equality. It was a religion in which everyone was invited to participate.

However, the Universalists began losing numbers when their theology became less radical as other Protestant faiths stopped preaching fire and brimstone. There were a few important people in the 20th century who, after the war, tried to pump new life into the denomination, and changed the face of Universalism very significantly. People like Robert Cummins and Ken Patton offered a radical switch from the more conservative and traditionally Christian bent of Universalism. The new focus was on what you may be more familiar with or recognize in our UU denomination today, the focus on universal world religion, or a religion for one world, drawing on all sources of religious faith, knowledge, and practice. A minister in Detroit named Tracy Pullman summarized this new liberal direction in a 1946 sermon by calling for a religion that is “greater than Christianity because it is an evolutionary religion, because it is universal rather than partial, because it is one with the spirit of science and is primarily interested in bringing out that which is God-like in man.”

Is this starting to sound familiar to y’all? These are the same kind of beliefs that I think can easily be found in UUism today: respect for all the world religions and our appreciation of them. Now what’s interesting, is that really these are modern expressions of the theme of Universal salvation. Because it is very similar in meaning to the idea that nobody is left out. Let me repeat that. The idea that nobody is left out. For me, that could explain UUism in a nutshell, that we strive to not judge anyone to the point that they are not welcome in our circle of worship. Rather, we go to lengths to make the point that all are welcome, that difference is embraced and that we are all universally loved. I really feel that we have the Universalists to thank for this cardinal characteristic of Unitarian Universalism.

Because let’s face it; the Unitarians were a lot more, shall we say, snooty. I don’t like to emphasize the fairly well known fact that Universalists were, on the whole, less educated, less well to do, and were mostly farmers. When this distinction is made I think it runs the risk of belittling the integrity of Universalism in a denomination that values education so highly. Of course we UUs today can be very judgmental, even when we are trying hard not to be. But the ideal version of non-judgmentalism, which I think is one of our most distinguishing features as a denomination today, probably came more from the Universalists than the Unitarians.

Why didn’t the two religions agree to merge sooner? What made the Universalists try to hold on? It was the fear that what made them distinct would be swallowed up by the much larger, Unitarian denomination. It was the fear that the merger would represent more of a take-over than a collaborative effort. Well, I believe these fears were realized to a large extent. Many of you have probably heard this Universalist history today only for the first time. There are mountains of scholarly historical research that have yet to be done for lack of interest. I do think the Universalists got swallowed up by the Unitarians.

I want to move towards conclusion today by telling you what I believe. And that is, I believe this. I believe in Universal salvation. Now I know that in this church, there is a great spirit of humanism, and perhaps not a whole lot of interest in what happens after we die. And isn’t that great about Unitarian Universalists, that we can each live in peace with our eschatological beliefs, or our feelings about what happens after we die.

But I don’t believe in universal salvation so much for what I think happens once my body ceases to live. I believe in it for what it symbolizes in this life. To me, universal salvation is a great metaphor for what is truly precious in life, and it represents my deepest, most prized belief: that not only are we never ultimately separated from God, but never are we ultimately separated from each other. Humanity’s reconciliation to God can only happen through our reconciliation to each other, in this life, on this Earth. All enemies shall reconcile, all lost love shall reunite.

Even though Universal salvation is a dated theological concept, it’s still entirely relevant for folks who remain compelled by the idea of life after death – and it comes directly out of our liberal faith tradition.

Next week we will be celebrating the lives of those who went before us, for La Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. It is all All Souls’ Day on the Catholic calendar. When we remember people we have lost, it is perfectly natural to also wonder – where they are now? Are they somewhere? – whether or not we believe in life after death, these questions may still arise in our hearts. I think it is comforting that the forbears of our religion were optimistic – they were not imagining their loved ones in purgatory, or in hell. No, when the Universalists of long ago celebrated the memory of their ancestors, they imagined them in Heaven. And, they were happy for them.

In the late 1800′s, Unitarian churches around the world were being named “All Souls,” borrowing from the liberal Universalist theology. When I was inquiring on the UU history chat line about the origin of the name “All Souls,” I received this response from a retired Scottish minister: He wrote, “All Souls appeared an ideal name for a Non-Subscribing Church. It was comprehensive, it excluded no one, and it expressed the fundamental principle of religion that all souls were God’s. Men and women and children, of all nations, sects, and parties, belonged to God, and were kindred with God. They were all souls, spirits, with a kinship to the Highest, with a longing and yearning for the kingdom of God.”

That may be too much religious language for some of you. But if you think it’s true, then you may be a Universalist.

© Hannah Wells
October 19, 2003
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

SERMON

A few weeks ago, I heard a statistic on TV that just floored me. It shocked me so much I wrote it down. That is, four times a day in this country, a woman is killed by her boyfriend or husband.

Numbers and statistics don’t work well in sermons, so that’s the only stat you’re going to hear today. Four women a day are killed by their partners.

As hard as it may be, I want us to try to put our defenses down for this topic and begin from a place of total humility. As I was writing this sermon, I realized I kept trying to intellectualize it, and I had to say to myself, “who do you think you’re fooling?” That is, I had to admit that this is a really hard issue to get close to. Sometimes it’s easier to intellectualize an issue in order to keep it at a distance. The truth is I don’t really understand why people are hard-wired to be so violent towards each other, especially people who love each other.

Last week, a member of the church handed me an editorial from the Austin American-Statesman. The headline was ANOTHER REASON WHY DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IS EVERYBODY’S PROBLEM. I’ve included this article in your order of service, and you’re invited to read it at your convenience. What I learned after reading it was something I wasn’t aware of: that apparently the experts have been saying for decades that domestic violence is everybody’s problem. I mean, I know it’s horrible, but what do I have to do with it? I live by myself, I don’t know of anyone who’s in an abusive relationship, and generally I feel powerless to change a statistic like the one I mentioned at the beginning: four women each day get killed by their sweetie. That’s awful, but how is it my problem?

I know this much: domestic violence, whether it’s in the form of physical or emotional abuse, is about power and control. It’s also very much about learned behaviors and the ways we learned to deal with anger growing up. We’ve all heard about cycles of abuse, and how history tends to repeat itself, as people grow up and become like their parents. What does it take to break the cycle of violence and abuse in a family?

I believe this is where religion can help. Because breaking the cycle – any cycle – takes a lot of work and courage. It involves saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know where this rage comes from. I don’t understand it. I need help.” It also involves letting go of trying to control people and giving up the illusion of power. One has to surrender the compulsion to control people. The need to control others comes out of a deep insecurity and fear. Fear that one’s weaknesses may be exposed, or fear that in order to not be hurt, one must hurt others first.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t people who are just plain brutal and cruel – there are, and they tend to have anti-social personality disorders. But I think it’s safe to say that all of us, to some extent, have developed defense mechanisms designed to protect the most vulnerable sides of ourselves. The question is, are these defenses healthy or volatile? Is the defense more like offense?

The reason religion has a role to play here is because our belief system can have a profound influence on our actions – our religious beliefs can help us to change. When we are most spiritually fit is when we are most likely to be honest with ourselves. What does being spiritually fit mean? I’m just talking about honesty here, plain and simple. The honest person is free of guilt, anxiety, and is especially free of fear. Sometimes that honesty is between you and your God, but in relationships, that honesty is how you stay morally accountable to your loved ones and to yourself.

I’m not sure, but I think at the heart of the issue of domestic violence is how to take responsibility. As religious people, we try to be morally responsible. Even though the Bible is full of violence and mayhem, I think its transcendent purpose is to try to teach people how to be morally responsible to one another. That’s what religion is for, whether or not we use a creed.

All we really have is each other and our relationships, the people we love the most. Life is about constantly working toward right relationship, and it sure isn’t easy sometimes. You are only yourself in relation to others and in relation to God. But the point I want to especially drive home is this: everyone, whether they are an abuser or a victim, is a child of God. In fact, it is specific to our tradition, Unitarian Universalism, that no one is damned. The Universalists refused to believe in a punishing God, and we still believe this is true. Everybody can find their way home and be forgiven.

Forgiveness and saying I’m sorry is a big part of all this. One reason why it’s so hard for abusers to change is because there’s such a social stigma around this. Ideally, religion can serve to help an abuser change by offering forgiveness, not punishment. If we are as non-judgmental as possible, a religious community can support an abuser on the road to recovery.

Because the truth is, throughout our lives, we are all likely to move across the boundaries of abuser and victim. That is, at times we fill the role of victim – especially as children, and other times the role of abuser. If you’re saying in your head, no, I don’t think I’ve ever been in either role, I would really question that. Abusing and being abused at some point in our lives is part of the human condition – and maybe that’s why domestic violence is “everybody’s problem.” Because so many of us know about these frightening power dynamics all too well.

I’d like to share a little bit of my own experience. I grew up with a parent who tended to – well, ‘explode.’ There was the occasional slap across the face or spanking, but it was really the screaming and yelling that characterized the scariest moments of my growing up. It was a kind of verbal intimidation. I noticed that in some of the first romantic relationships I had as an adult, I tended to do the same kind of thing. I’d let little things that bothered me add up until, boom, the anger could no longer be contained and I’d explode. After a while, I really disliked this about myself. It reminded me so much of the fear I felt sometimes growing up, and that feeling of being out of control scared me.

It was pretty easy to blame my upbringing for this at first. But part of growing up is realizing that ultimately you can’t blame anyone for anything. It was up to me if I wanted to change; I had to take responsibility for myself.

And what I’ve discovered is that, even though I believe I have learned some healthier tools to deal with anger, I’ll never really be “cured.” I’ve learned to be direct with people so anger doesn’t build up, I’ve learned to take time outs, to sleep on it, to meditate, to try to put myself in other people’s shoes. All this stuff helps a lot. But I don’t believe I’ll ever really be cured of the ‘explosion syndrome.’ I’m always going to have to work at the solution. Having learned that behavior from an early age, it’s potential to emerge is always going to be there. Which is to say, that, I’m always going to have to be vigilant when I’m dealing with conflict, which is hard work. I’m always going to have to be honest with myself, which is also hard at times.

For me, the only way I can stay honest is by being spiritually fit. Spiritual fitness is different for everyone. For some, it means building a vibrant relationship with God. For others, it means nurturing a spiritual practice, whether that’s journaling, meditation, taking walks, yoga, or whatever. The main thing is that you’re finding quiet time for yourself, quiet time that can reveal your growing edges – the areas of your life you need to attend to – such as your closest relationships.

Domestic violence is an issue that touches everybody’s lives because no sector of society is immune to it. People of the highest and lowest classes, of any race, of any education level qualify – the whole of humanity is susceptible to it. It’s like a disease, a behavioral disease. It’s a compulsion. And like alcoholism or addiction, it can only be self-diagnosed. No one can make another person change; one has to be willing to change.

I don’t want to downplay the horror of domestic violence. I’ve been talking about how we can empower ourselves to change. We can – but the children who have to witness it and live with it and be victims of it – they don’t have the luxury of choices. A lot of times women don’t have this luxury, either. It’s very complicated why women can’t get out of these relationships. I want us to think about how easy it can be to judge the victim. I know I tend to judge when I don’t understand something, and I admit I’ve wondered why women can’t leave an abuser of their own will.

But one thing I know I can’t judge or question is the total powerlessness of the children who are stuck in these abusive situations. And I think this is probably the number one reason why domestic violence is “everybody’s problem.” Because the society we can be proud of living in is the one that protects its children, whether or not they’re ours. It DOES take a village. Not only do the children suffer, they also learn to keep the cycle of abuse going. And, they learn not to trust.

Violence breaks relationships because it destroys trust. The reason why our society continues to become more distrustful is because there is violence all around us. It’s hard to escape – you hear about it on the news every night, it’s all over the movies and television. There must be, like, five crime shows on TV that focus exclusively on murder and rape.

It’s also very much a part of our foreign policy. I’ve decided the only way to make sure this sermon isn’t a total downer, is to try to make it a little politically feisty.

I’m not picking on George Bush, I’m picking on his administration and whatever menace is pulling his strings. Certainly our government has been teaching us lately that violence is their preferred method of “problem-solving.” Much of the national budget goes for “security,” which is a euphemism for troops and weapons to fight wars abroad and kill people.

What about the wars that go on in millions of households right here at home? If religion is the area where we examine the values we live by, and if politics is the area where our leaders’ values are given the power to control our society, then any religion that doesn’t address its country’s political situation is living in a separate reality.

As I perceive things, the Bush administration for the past three years can be summed up like this: spending billions of dollars on problems that never existed, while pretending the real problems don’t exist at all. The real problem of the economy has created more financial anxiety in the household, anxiety which worsens domestic violence.

I bring up politics and the Bush administration because there is an absolute connection between going to war internationally and loved ones hurting each other at home. I mean, talk about power and control issues! There are many instances in the Old Testament where the God behaves essentially like an angry, abusive pimp. It seems to me that our current foreign policy has been modeled after such a God. We seek to dominate and control what happens in the world, and use physical force to this end. I would not be surprised if people in other parts of the world think of the US as a bully on the playground, or as an abusive father. It is truly disheartening to think about what this loose canon kind of violence has done to the level of trust within the international community.

I have a friend who defines evil as “the breaking of relationship.” As hard to swallow as this may be, we model ourselves after our leaders. Violence is sanctioned from the top down in our society. And all I see right now in our national leadership is a lot of breaking of relationship, breaking of trust. I don’t think this is going to change until we get a new administration.

In the meantime, we can work on building and healing relationships in our homes, with each other. That’s how we can change things. It is scary what’s going on in the world. It’s scary how much of our tax dollars go to high-tech killing machines while women are being killed every day in our country because they have don’t have enough social services to turn to that can protect them.

Can I really blame domestic violence on our government? In terms of how money is spent, yes, I think I can. So many things in life come down to money, and domestic violence is no exception. Money does equal power and money can equal change when it’s well spent.

The Bush administration has put domestic violence at the very bottom of its list. When I Googled domestic violence on the web, I came across a Fox news article published on October 8th. George Bush talked about a 20 million dollar pilot program that will set up “family justice services” in 12 different communities. He had to throw a bone for domestic violence awareness month.

Now, first of all, these centers don’t even exist yet; the program is in the application stage. I wonder how long that will take. Second, 20 MILLION DOLLARS? That’s IT? Twenty million bucks doesn’t even cover a day in the life of the US war machine, maybe not even an hour. Third, at the end of this article, we find out that this piddely amount of money isn’t even coming out of the US treasury. It’s being raised through the sale of STAMPS by the U.S. Postal Service! So I guess if you want these services for battered women and children to happen sooner, stop emailing and start snail-mailing.

And that’s it – attention to this country’s REAL problems happens at a snail’s pace. So it’s like any other major social justice issue. We have to ask, is this the best we can do? We have to make some noise. The message needs to be sent to our nation’s leadership loud and clear that 20 million bucks from the post office just doesn’t cut it.

It’s time for this country to stop fighting wars abroad and start fighting the wars raging on American soil. We have millions of domestic refugees who need asylum.

On a world scale, I really do believe that the continued evolution of humanity is dependent on finding alternatives to violence. There is a better way – there is almost always a better way. But we can’t begin by looking for these alternative solutions on a world scale. We have to begin on the personal scale: with ourselves and with each other, here at home. The Buddhist prayer has it right: Let peace begin with me.

Let peace begin in this country, this amazing, beautiful, powerful country. Let peace begin in each American household, in each family. Let peace begin in each mother, father, and child. Let peace begin in each one of us.

Let it be so.

© Hannah Wells
October 12, 2003
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

SERMON

I am what they call a “lifer.” No, I don’t mean a convicted felon, or even a career military person. I mean a life-long Unitarian Universalist. My parents found the church when I was a year old in Deerfield, IL, north of Chicago in suburbia. As a typical UU kid, I went to Sunday school sporadically until we had the pre-cursor to the OWL – Our Whole Lives – sexuality program. It was called AYS back then, About Your Sexuality. I still think of those filmstrips sometimes and cringe. Barbaric or not, I know it kept a good group of us Junior Highers returning faithfully each Sunday for a year. Soon after, we all went through the Coming of Age program under the instruction of the same teachers we had for AYS, Tim and Claudette Dirsmith, a young married couple.

All in all, I have to say that my childhood UU curricula wasn’t all that great, but I think the commitment of the youth advisors made a bigger impression on me than anything else. There wasn’t much to the Coming of Age program when I went through it, but I definitely remember the Affirmation ceremony we had one Spring Sunday morning when I was 14 years old. We got to share a little speech with the congregation and I was excited about that.

I hold here before you the actual hand written affirmation speech. To be affirmed is the UU version of being confirmed; it’s a recognition ceremony of continuing status as a UU into adulthood. I had no idea at the time that I was going to be where I’m at today, on the path to ministry. But apparently, shoddy or not, the Coming of Age program planted a seed that I believe kept me coming back. I’m going to share now what I shared with my home congregation 16 years ago. . . .

After I finished reading this credo statement, I pressed play on a boom box and sure enough, Joan Baez sang the cover of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young.” The sanctuary was very still, and I noticed people were starting to cry. Staci Banta, my Sunday school friend who I’d known since I was two, and I sat there dry-eyed while the song played, bemused. I know we both sensed a power we hadn’t felt before. It wasn’t just a day recognizing our faith, it was a day the adults recognized US.

Do you remember that moment in your early teens? When the adults who you grew up around really saw that glimmer in you of what was to come? Or when you first did something that impressed the adults, and it gave you the first taste of what it feels like to be acknowledged as a person, regardless of your age? This is a moment of ‘coming of age,’ when you become aware of the extent of your own worth and dignity as a human being, by way of the world simply noticing you.

Maybe some of you did a Coming of Age ceremony when you were 14, but it was in a different faith. Maybe you didn’t get a chance to address the congregation. What if you were given the chance to go back in time and address a liberal church faith. What religious beliefs would you have said were most important to you when you were 14? What beliefs are most important to you now? Have you considered which beliefs you held as a youth informed the adult that you have become? And what about the times in your adulthood that you’ve welcomed such a significant amount of change in your life that it, too, was like a coming of age? Often we don’t acknowledge that the difficult yet positive changes we make in our lives can be thought of as rites of passage.

I didn’t mind leaving my home church behind when I went to college because I was ready to get away from anything “home related.” I was ready to embark upon the adventure of life after leaving home. Since I was little, I have had itchy feet. I loved going away to camp for 2 weeks every summer. I finagled overseas travel before I was 16. I decided on Kalamazoo College in Michigan for my under grad solely because they offered a 3-week adventure trip in Ontario for Freshman Orientation. At some point my family started to joke that I have wheels on my posterior.

This adventuring spirit followed me after college, when I decided to move to Oregon to fight forest fires for the summer. How perfect, the glamour and mystique of a dangerous vocation rewarded with thousands of dollars by the end of the season that I would proceed to fund my trip around the world with. But my parade was literally rained on when there were no big fires to fight that summer and no big bucks to be made. That is called a “bad fire season” from the firefighter’s point of view. So I rode my bike to the San Juan Islands and went hitchhiking to Santa Cruz instead. I went broke, and, broke up with my parents’ fantasy of a future husband, Ed, who was slaving away for Arthur Andersen in Atlanta. I was destined to begin a five year stint in the hippie capitol of the United States: Eugene, OR. You might think Berkeley is the hippie capitol but it’s Eugene because there’s not even a third of the money there is in Berkeley in Eugene.

My attitude toward life at that time reminds me of the Alanis Morrissette song, “Hand in Pocket.” . . . . “I’m free but I’m focused, I’m sane but I’m overwhelmed, I’m tired but I’m working, yeah . . .” Mostly I was right about the part that I hadn’t got it all figured out just yet. I learned a lot of hard lessons about the real world between 1995 and 2000. While many people were benefiting from the country’s economic boom I was trying to get my rent paid on time with the variety of odd jobs I had, and I do mean odd. But it all seemed worth it at the time; it was the trade off for living in a beautiful town with liberal-minded, friendly people. Or, what many people – certainly my family – called the hippie lifestyle. I tend to wrinkle my nose at this label, for if I was a hippie, I was at least one of the cleanest. But to make a point to the young people sitting in the congregation today, let’s say it was the modern day hippie lifestyle, with all its stereotypical trappings. I am here to say that, I admit, it is overrated.

One day you wake up and you realize you are hanging out with people who really aren’t going anywhere. You may share some values in common, but you notice there are a few very important ones missing, such as integrity and a sense of accomplishment. You think, maybe participating in society isn’t such a bad idea after all. Fresh out of college, I had mistaken this transient community I was a part of with something I wanted very badly: a community that shared the same values I had grown up with and wanted to live out.

In retrospect, I can see now that I romanticized the so-called hippie lifestyle for a few reasons. I was reluctant to leave the anything-goes community of Eugene, OR because I was reluctant to come to terms with who I really am. I am a well-educated Euro-American young woman who grew up Unitarian Universalist on the North Shore of Chicago. I represent a fairly small slice of the American social strata. The world is my oyster, but because of this, I feared that I would become an elitist, and the socialist in me who has great compassion for the poor did not want this to happen. In order to not fulfill the destiny that was surely mine for the taking, I felt I needed to stay “down with the people.”

But to stay down, I realized, meant, to stay down, and that was not who I am. I know now that I am extremely fortunate to possess the gifts and blessings life has given me, and it would be an injustice to my own life, I feel, if I did not use these gifts in service to others. My gifts have called me to the UU ministry. And though I would not generally label UUs and other religious liberals as “elitist,” in many structural contexts of this society, we are. Elitist or not, I believe in our sincerity to condemn injustice. We are hard working, civic-minded citizens who represent the badly needed liberal end of religious belief. Learning how to be a minister to you will be a great honor; I am serving my roots. And so I have discovered that it is only through acknowledging the truth of who I am that makes it possible, in the end, to serve others. In this way, I have come home to myself.

I look forward to that community I have searched for since college – the one that shares my values and lives them. It is ironic to me now, that in all my adventuresome spirit of my young adult years, I have been running away from what I want the most: this sacred, reliable community I can call home. I often used to wonder how my older brother could stay so close to home after college and his three best friends from High school, who all live near each other in Chicago. Now I see that a lack of community with roots was the trade off for experiencing more of the world. It reminds me of the question Forrest Church poses in the reading I read to you earlier. “How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?” I am still learning about this, and I am certain it has something to do with being at home within myself, wherever it is I may find myself.

So – some beliefs of mine have changed since I wrote that affirmation speech, but not a lot. They’ve really only gotten more specific. When I was 14 I wrote, “And I think that’s what Unitarians are about. Knowing how you feel, who you are, having a clear picture of what you believe in, seriously considering the values that are important to you and how to use them properly. It gives me the chills to think that I am so lucky to know these things are important.” – It still gives me the chills to think that I am so lucky to know these things are important. Because it seems like, no matter how much change or transition is in my life, no matter how scared I get, no matter how tough the decisions are before me, no matter who or what I lose, if I can remember that this is who I am and where I came from, I’m gonna be okay.

Speaking of transition, I just turned 30 years old, and I don’t care if 30 still sounds young to some of you, losing my 20′s is a loss! But it’s also a coming of age. And I look at moving from the laity to clergy as involving some loss too, but I know it’s also a rite of passage. What changes and losses in your life can be considered rites of passage? I invite you to recognize them as such. Because when you do, you acknowledge your dignity and worth as a human being at a particular point on the path of life. This is especially important when the changes are hard, because it’s a good way to love yourself in the midst of pain. No matter how old you are, life is a continual process of coming of age.

And if you look at the life of this church, First UU Church of Austin, it too is coming of age in many ways. There are growing pains. It’s large enough now and there’s enough youth that it’s high time for its own Coming of Age program. The very first of its kind will be launched this January. How exciting! What’s exciting about it is that the church is ready to recognize its youth as valuable members of this community. That we are making a point of saying to them, we want you to be a part of Unitarian Universalism’s future. You are our future. We want your spiritual journey home to lead you HERE. But what’s even more exciting is that we “adults” are going to get a chance to learn from them. Our youth possess the power of seeing the world with fresh eyes, and therefore can offer some of the most authentic expressions of our liberal church faith.

Coming of age. It’s part of coming to our full humanity, of claiming our promise. It’s something we’ll all be doing here this year, and I’m excited to be a part of it with you. Together, we’re going to have a great year.

© Hannah Wells
September 28, 2003
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

SERMON

This is a sermon about money. I had nightmares about preparing this sermon because, frankly, I’m not very experienced with money. I’ve never had a lot of it, and I don’t know anything about investments or credit cards. When I do have money I tend to spend it on myself – on stuff like travel and books and cds. It’s only in recent years that I began giving money to my church in Berkeley because I became a member. I did a lot of pro-bono preaching toward my pledge. What could I possibly preach to you about money that would hold any weight? What I have to offer to you today is what I’ve learned in exploring this issue in my own life. Maybe you’re not good with money either. Maybe we can all learn something together here.

It’s a time of anxiety in our country. I meet people who are out of work all the time. Some of them saved during the dot-com years and some didn’t. I’m not out of work now, but next year I will be. It makes me nervous – to think I might not even have much luck finding a temp job. I’ve gone through unemployed stretches in the past. The worst thing about it is all the restless time you have on your hands, day after day. Time to feel anxious. But also time to think creatively, if you let yourself.

That brings up the main question I want to talk to you about today: how can we take care of ourselves the best way possible in these times of social and economic uncertainty? It has to do with staying focused on what matters the most to us, and doing all we can to keep nurturing our sources of wholeness. How do we know what that is? We’re grounded enough to know that life isn’t just about what we do for a living – most of us know that we can’t ultimately define ourselves by the status of our career. But what is this life about?

For me, life is about loving our selves, our lives, and others, in that order. It has to be in that order because you can’t love others until you love yourself. The life force of nature actually seems to be hard-wired this way. In the film, “Adaptation” the character who plays the orchid thief, John Laroche, explains the way nature designed pollination to take place between insects and orchids. He says,

” . . . what’s so wonderful is that every one of these flowers has a specific relationship with the insect that pollinates it. A certain orchid looks exactly like a certain insect so the insect is drawn to this flower that’s double it’s soul mate, and wants nothing more than to make love to it. And after, the insect flies off and spots another soul mate flower and makes love to it, thus pollinating it. And neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the significance of their lovemaking. I mean, how could they know that because of their little dance, the world lives but it does – by simply doing what they’re designed to do, something large and magnificent happens. In this sense, they show us how to live, how the only barometer you have is your heart. How, when you spot your flower, you can’t let anything get in your way.”

The metaphor here suggests that nature has designed each being to be attracted to itself to ensure attraction to others. So what we are drawn to in life is a reflection of the beauty we see or know about in our kind. The more beauty we see in ourselves, the more beauty we can find in the world. The more we love ourselves, the better we are able to love others. When we deny that we are beautiful, the world becomes colorless as well.

This concept of life can be applied to the lives of institutions as well. People are drawn to institutions that reflect their own qualities. A healthy church attracts healthy people. We love the qualities in a church that we love in ourselves, qualities such as compassion, openness, courage, honesty, a willingness to explore the aspects of life that are difficult. We support the life of a church because it reflects what is most important to us in our own lives. We choose to support those institutions that we think are a positive presence in the world – institutions that function in the community as we ourselves wish to but that no individual alone could.

When you look at the state of the world now, supporting the non-profit organizations, whether it’s churches or social service agencies, is one of the best statements of hope you can make. You’re saying that you believe in a better future, that you believe in people finding comfort in caring for each other. You’re saying that, despite the uncertainty and anxiety, that this is what really matters – that people continue to have caring institutions to associate with. Because it’s questionable whether many of us will have social security benefits in the future; it’s questionable if the middle class will ever stabilize. A lot of us don’t have basic health insurance right now; it’s a national crisis.

This is the reality, folks. But it’s the churches and non-profits – our grassroots institutions – that represent a woven tapestry of faith and hope. These support networks are what we need to feel like we can count on wrapping around ourselves like a blanket when we need to in the future, or even right now. I don’t have much faith in the government these days, but I do have faith in the people. The government may not seem to care about us as they sign another multi-billion dollar bill to fund the damage done in Iraq, but I know the people of this country care about each other. WE care about each other.

But all this goes beyond the importance of supporting the church. Everyone here already understands why that’s important. What I want you to leave with here today is thinking about better ways to take care of yourself in uncertain times. At one point in “Adaptation,” Susan Orlean, the character who plays a writer, says, “I suppose I do have one un-embarrassed passion. I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.” Do you know what you love passionately? Do you really? Because if you do, that means you are loving yourself well – if you know this, you can get through times of anxiety, you can remember what’s most important in life. If you care about something passionately, you don’t forget it and it keeps your life focused.

So what I’m suggesting here, or trying to encourage, is to love this church passionately! OR decide what you DO love passionately! Know what it means to love with passion. Find the freedom of heart that gives you permission to love passionately. Financial support is an expression of love – figure out what you love and love it well. Let yourself be the first thing you love. Doing so will lead you to support the institutions that are good for you and good for others.

Later on in the film the character Susan Orlean comments, “there are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go. I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.” This is an argument for simplicity, but it’s also saying that there are really only a very few things in life that you can love passionately. When we prioritize just a few things to love with all our strength, it actually helps make life more manageable in a world that can seem overwhelming.

I know a lot of people in their late 20′s and early 30′s who could really find some solace in this idea. So many of us haven’t heard the call yet in regards to what to DO with our lives. Vocation comes from the Latin verb, vocare, to call. Therefore, ministry is not the only profession one has to be ‘called’ to. All of us have a call to something particular in life, something particular to who we are, to what our gifts and talents are, to what are passions are. I keep thinking of that image of the insect bee-lining for its flower. What is your flower? If you are a bee, what is the flower you are drawn to that, once spotted, you can’t let anything get in your way? I suggest that we can hear this call most clearly when we let ourselves be certain about what we love most. If you are discerning what you are called to do, it’s no time to be modest and humble. That comes later, when the steady paychecks are coming in.

Yes, back to money. I think all of us can probably remember a time when we spent a lot of money on something and later on, we didn’t feel good about it. But have you ever looked back on the money spent on a charitable donation and felt bad about that? It’s taken me a while to learn this, but giving to the causes I believe in feels good. It helps me to feel good about myself; it’s actually good for my own sense of well-being. When you think about what you want to give to the church, think about the amount that later on you can feel good about. Don’t give until it hurts; give ’til it feels good! Or it feels right.

The climax of the movie “Adaptation” is the line one brother says to another brother toward the end of the film. The bizarre twists and turns of the film has led them to being fugitives in an alligator-infested swamp in Florida. Charlie Kaufman is a miserably panicked and constantly self-berating screenwriter. They are hiding behind a felled tree in the dark when his twin brother says to him, “you are what you love, not what loves you. That’s what I decided a long time ago.” You are what you love, not what loves you. I love that line, and I think it’s true. Think about it: you are defined in really lovely way by what you love and support. With the economy suffering the way it is, this becomes more important than ever.

It is so easy to be seduced by this culture into thinking that we can only know who we are through the perceptions of others. If people think you have the right job, the right clothes, the right body, and you think you are loved because of these things, then who are you living for? If you don’t have the money for these things, how can you be loved?

Now, I’m going to use a phrase that I know my peers are familiar with, but I acknowledge may be a bit risque for some of you, so I thank you for indulging me here. I have a girlfriend who just had a boob job. I got an email from her, “I got boobs,” as though she bought a new car. She is a very sexy woman, but has a notoriously difficult time meeting men. She thinks this will turn her luck around. But it seems like if she put her energy into loving what she loves, that love could more easily find her. She seems to be defining her self worth by what she can attract. How will she ever find a love that’s good for her this way?

All of us are susceptible to being seduced by enhancing our self worth through material means. It’s part of being American. But the purpose of good religion is to save us from this illusion. It’s to remind us that we are what we love, not what loves us. If we are what we love, and we love this church, then we are the church, and we love it well because we know that caring for the things we love is the freest and most healthy way to live.

If you’re not finding any of these spiritual incentives to give to the church compelling, here’s something for those of you who prefer practical incentives. And this is hopeful news about our government. A few weeks ago the house overwhelmingly passed a new bill called The Charitable Giving Act, or House Resolution 7, HR7. Its purpose is to encourage more giving to churches and non-profits, especially for those folks who don’t itemize on our taxes. For every 250th to 500th dollar you give to non-profits, you get that back in your tax return. Which essentially means you get back in your tax return half of what you donate to charity.

This isn’t just great for non-profits, this is great for those of us who are furious with the way the government is spending our tax dollars these days. It means we can take back some control of how the government spends our hard-earned money. With the way this law works, the more you spend on institutions you care about, like your church and your favorite non-profits, then the more control you reclaim on how the government spends your tax dollars. Let’s pray that the Senate passes this new law that could provide renewed faith in our country’s leadership and combat apathy. This is great hope for healing democracy.

So whether you decide to give generously to the church because it’s good for you or good for your tax return, just keep this in mind: we are the church – it is a reflection of what we collectively hold most sacred. It represents the hope we have for the future. It represents the faith we have now in the high standards of justice we seek, faith in the freedom of the unencumbered search for truth, and faith in the deep caring we have for one another. Let this be what you love.

I love that image of bees and insects teaching us about life. They see this flower that looks like what they love, and “bzzzzzzzzzz,” they go for it and they find it and life gets a jump start.

Can you see it? You find what you love in yourself. You find that expressed and supported by an institution – like, this church. You set your sights on it, you let nothing get in your way, you go for it.

“Bzzzzzzzzz . . . “