When things change and we have to start over, one of our strongest concerns is for taking care of ourselves, doing what's best for ourselves - or, if we have a family, doing what's best for our people, our family. And as Vicki said, we're always starting over at something, because things are always changing.

If there's a science or an art to starting over, it might be summed up in the lines of a wise and witty little poem by Piet Hein, called "The Road to Wisdom":

The road to wisdom?
Well, it's clear and easy to express:
Just err and err and err again,
But less and less and less

Every time we start over, it's a time to err and err and err again - hopefully, less and less and less. This advice is so much more human and forgiving than expecting perfection at something we haven't tried before, and beating ourselves up when we fail.

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr and Vicki Rao on 12 September 2004

The text for this and other sermons can be viewed online at
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21:00

We have discovered Neanderthal burial sites in China from 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, in which the dead were buried in fetal positions, in womb-shaped graves, facing east, toward the direction of the rising sun. It looks like they were trying to call forth the invisible powers of the sun and the earth to give their dead people a kind of rebirth. So some of the oldest evidence of human activity we have found shows these early two-legged animals treating the ground as Mother Earth, and burying their people in styles and positions suggesting that they believed they were parts of a benevolent cosmic whole that might, somehow and somewhere, let them be "born again."...

...We have called these unseen dimensions of life by many names, and depicted them in many ways. But always, those who were the most religiously musical or imaginative have tried to call them forth, to make the greater context of our lives visible and memorable.

We have created gods in human form or in animal form, and invented a thousand rituals - from lighting a fire to reciting the same words in the same ways to begin and end ceremonies. It may look like we are worshiping those gods, whether drawn as an ancient shaman made of animal parts or created in our own image, like the gods of the Greeks, Jews, and Hindus. But we are not necessarily worshiping those gods or enslaved by the rituals. Instead, the gods are among the vehicles we have created along the way to carry this great burden of ours.

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 22 October 2000

The text for this sermon can be viewed online at
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41:32

I want to talk with you about God, but the two most important things you need to know about God, about all the gods, are that, first, they were invented many centuries ago as vehicles to carry and guard our highest ideals. That's why scholars say it's the most important reality in the world. But the second thing you need to know is that the reality is not God, not any of the gods; the reality is the importance of our highest ideals....

...The prophet Amos said that the people had misunderstood the nature of their covenant with this God. The priests were saying it made them the special people, the chosen people. Amos said No, being associated with this God meant responsibility, not privilege.

What Amos was doing was what all the prophets were doing, including Jesus. They were reclaiming the high ideals as things which must be written in our hearts and lived out in our lives, not hidden in a temple to be bowed down to as we listened to bad priests misrepresenting them.

I want you to understand what this means. It means that they all saw - even if they didn't put it this way - that God is a part of us. God is the vehicle our ancestors imagined, on which they projected our highest ideals. And the gods are only useful as long as the represent the highest ideals. When they are kidnapped for low and mean purposes, we need to reclaim our ideals from them.

Still, there's something audacious about thinking we have the right or the authority to reclaim our highest ideals. We project them out onto Lady Justice or Lady Liberty, onto idealistic visions of America, onto God, and then it feels that they are out of our hands, entirely above us, things we could never aspire to reclaim.

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 6 February 2005

The text for this and other sermons can be viewed online at
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30:27

Each time I revisit the ancient Greek myths, I'm more struck by how modern they are. The Greeks saw their Olympian gods as personifications of the natural and psychological forces within and around us. So you didn't have to "believe in" them the way Western religions have always taught. Instead, you could just look within and around you, and find the powers, the voices, the passions and urges from which the gods were made. They're still a good way of getting a different kind of understanding of who we are and why we often seem so confused about what to serve with our lives, even from day to day....

...This visit to the Greek gods can give us a new way of understanding both ourselves - especially men - and the world that men are running: namely, our world. One thing this means to me is that all the griping among political liberals about George W. Bush is a little misdirected. As the Greeks would see, he isn't unique; he's just the puppet, the instrument, of the rise to power of the gods Apollo and Hermes, with Ares operating our Army and soon, perhaps, our domestic police. They are in the service of the voice they have taken to be the voice of their Zeus: the voice of the privileged class who feel entitled to money and power taken from the "ignorant and meddlesome" masses.

Our four gods now are Apollo, Hermes, Ares and an ersatz Zeus. Zeus is played by the large corporations, directing both our domestic and foreign economic policies. Nothing godly there except their power and arrogance. Apollo is all the functionaries serving these demands, including (at least) our past four presidents. Hermes is Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, the speechwriters and advertising companies who wrap the agenda in deceptive language and images, to sell it to those of us who have been put in our place as spectators of action.

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 30 January 2005

The text for this and other sermons can be viewed online at
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35:14

The Gods of Men and Societies

This is the third sermon I've done on the Greek gods and goddesses, and it's such a rich field that each time I've been led to places I hadn't expected. This morning is the first of two sermons on the Greek gods.

This business of gods is more complex than you might think. For instance, when we talked about the Greek goddesses, I was just using them to see different archetypes of behaviors that are still familiar to most women in our culture. But we could have used them to understand the values of many families or public schools or good nursing, since these are areas often defined by women. So you find more feminine values in these areas, concerned with relationships, nurturing, treating everyone with respect regardless of their status, and so on.

When we study the male gods, we have to talk about how they define the areas of the world that men control, because it's most areas of the world.

But first, if we're going to talk about Greek gods, we need to take some time to understand what gods are. Different cultures have produced very different kinds of gods....

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 16 January 2005

The text for this and other sermons can be viewed online at
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31:57

The Independent Goddesses

Two weeks ago, I brought you the three "dependent" goddesses: Hera the wife, Demeter the mother, and Persephone the maiden. Today I want to bring you the uppity goddesses. They were called the Virgin, or Independent, Goddesses. They never married, and men were not necessary to make them feel completed. These goddesses were Artemis, Athena, and Hestia, plus the Wild Card: Aphrodite.

Much of the information about the goddesses I'm using here came from Jungian psychiatrist Jean Shinoda-Bolen's book Goddesses in Everywoman, which I think is an excellent book for understanding the "goddess" styles as psychological dynamics that are alive and well today.

Artemis was the hunter who spurned both men and society, and traveled with a band of women who served and looked up to her.

Athena wore armor, and was a warrior goddess who protected her chosen heroes, all of whom were males.

Hestia was the only one of the six who was never portrayed in human form. She was more of a spirit, like a spirit of a contentment derived from going within, either in involvement with homemaking or spiritual meditation. Like the other self-contained goddesses, Hestia had no significant or necessary men in her life.

Aphrodite was the goddess of love and beauty. Aphrodite interacted with men the way a wine connoisseur interacts with a fine wine: enjoying its qualities, but just for a while. The T-shirt slogan "So many men, so little time" is one of Aphrodite's slogans.

When you think of these character styles in terms of the ancient Greek goddesses, and then look back over the past fifty years of our country's history, some surprising patterns emerge, for there have been major shifts in our scripts about what a woman should be over the past few decades.

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 24 October 2004

The text for this and other sermons can be viewed online at
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29:20

The Dependent Goddesses

According to Greek mythology, the three Fates spin out the thread of our lives, stretch that thread as far as they choose, and cut it when they will. That was their way of saying life is a gift of unknown length. During the little span of life we are allotted by the Fates, we often puzzle over just what kind of gift it is, this gift of life. We wonder who we think we are, or who we should be, what we think we're doing with our few years, and how to pull it all together in a better way. We try to find the path that feels most true, most worthy of a gift so short, yet so precious. We try to live a life that makes a story worth telling.

The question of who we are is complicated because there are so many levels to it, so many competing scripts. Babies in the crib have personality styles that are still a part of them twenty, fifty, eighty years later. Some of them whine, some gurgle and coo, and the odds are those dispositions will remain parts of their characteristic styles. This is what makes children become later attracted to some stories and myths, but not to others. In some, they recognize a part of themselves, and the story gives it words and form. In other stories, they see nothing but senseless make-believe.

I've been aware of much of this in my own life. The stories that have been most important to me-stories like "The Little Red Hen," "The Little Engine That Could," the parable of the blind men and the elephant, and the story of the Greek god Proteus who remained something sacred even when he changed shape-these are nearly all expressions of styles that my parents and relatives assure me I had exhibited while I was still in early childhood. The stories were attractive because they gave voice to parts of my own soul. And the stories and proverbs that are most important to you probably also reflect personality traits that have been yours since infancy.

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 10 October 2004

The text for this and other sermons can be viewed online at
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25:22

A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. And all worlds are senseless until we can find a way to make sense of them! Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence. Myths are like the beams in a house: not exposed to outside view, they are the structure which holds the house together so people can live in it. Myth making is essential in gaining mental health, and the compassionate therapist will not discourage it. Indeed, the very birth and proliferation of psychotherapy in our contemporary age were called forth by the disintegration of our myths.

What is a myth? Well, it is a script for our life, a kind of story buried deep within us and probably going back beyond our childhood even to the crib, a story that defines our peculiar style of living, and makes us who we are. This is the story, the script, that we live out in more ways than we can count. So a myth is a script.

The psychiatrist Alfred Adler spoke of these stories as our "guiding fictions," and that is another good phrase. A myth is a guiding fiction, an internalized story that assigns us a role within it, that tells us who we are and should be, and we tend to follow that script throughout our lives, both as individuals and as a society....

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 3 October 2004

The text for this and other sermons can be viewed online at
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29:04

At the end of his book The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran's "prophet" is asked to speak of religion, and he gives a brief lesson in Religion 101 when he says:

"Have I spoken this day of anything else?"

Is not religion all deeds and all reflection, and that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?

Who can separate our faith from our actions, or our belief from our occupations?

... Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Whenever you enter into it take with you your all....

Here's another short quote about religion 101, from the American psychologist William James, who was quoting one of his favorite professors:

"Not God, but life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life is, in the last analysis, the end of religion. The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse."

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 6 June 2004

The text for this and other sermons can be viewed online at
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27:31

This morning I want to take you on a trip to the very heart of almost all religions, all philosophies, and all physcologies. It begins with the idea of atonement which most of us know as the center of the Jewish festival. But the idea is no more particularly Jewish than it is Hindu, or Muslim than anything else. The idea is at the center of every spiritual or personal path by whatever name though each one has its own ideas of how to do it...

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 5 October 2003

25:57

It has been months since I did the first sermon on Dan Brown's book The DaVinci Code. Since then, I've read some more in some of the many areas of study involved in the many theories he weaves together. I've also read several critiques of his book, mostly by religion scholars trying to protect orthodoxy from this sudden public interest in what Dan Brown presents as twenty centuries of schemes and lies by the churches to keep believers from understanding the real message of the man Jesus.

There is a whole industry around some of these theories, with books of all kinds appearing. The industry began over twenty years ago with the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, but there are wild and wooly theories on every aspect of this complex story.

I want to grant the critics their due, and identify some other theories which, though very intriguing, simply cannot be proven either way.

But even after eliminating all these things, including some fascinating theories which may well be true but can't be proven, enough remains to justify a best-selling book. So I'll want to talk about those things which are clearly true, are the real center of Brown's message, and which all by themselves justify the charges of two thousand years of misleading and flat-out dishonest misrepresentation of the religion of the man Jesus.

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 28 March 2004

The text for this and other sermons can be viewed online at
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31:53

Dan Brown's book The DaVinci Code has generated more curiosity and excitement than any book about religion in years. Partly, it's because he's just a very good writer, and it's a good read. But it is a book that basically says that Christian churches have been lying to their people for two thousand years about things as fundamental as who Jesus was, what he taught, whether he was ever really crucified, and his relationship with Mary Magdalen, who is really the central figure in this story.

The book is a novel, but it weaves together a lot of theories, and every theory presented is shared by some biblical scholars; some are shared by many. Some are pretty exciting, some are even sexy. But at a deeper level, the book grows out of, and is a powerful example of, a profound loss of trust and belief - not in God or Jesus, but in the things that Christian churches and teachers have said about them for twenty centuries.

This morning, I want to introduce you to some of the theories about Jesus, Mary Magdalen, their teachings, and the distortions created by those who ruled the Christian churches to hide these truths and mislead believers. Those are strong statements, but if any of the theories are correct, they are justified. And some of the theories are almost certainly correct.

I'm not trashing Christianity, as much as I'm exposing some of the ways it has betrayed and suppressed the original intent of Jesus. For what it's worth - and to me it's worth a lot - from my study of the teachings of Jesus, I think Jesus would hate what Christianity has done in his name.

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 9/21/03

The text for this and other sermons can be viewed online at
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39:36

All of our Western religions were born into a kind of cradle, or manger. They were born into the worldview of their time, which was very different than the way we see our world today. Christianity was born into this kind of a manger. Two thousand years ago, it was born into what today we might call the worldview of ancient understandings, the scientific worldview of the ancient world.

Scholars call that old worldview the "three-story universe." It's probably the most intuitive, common-sense view of the universe we've ever had. You can still experience it just by going outside on a clear day far from the city.

Look around you and you'll see what the ancients saw: the earth looks flat, like a pizza. Just standing there, youre seeing farther than most people strayed from where they were born. Up above, you can see the dome of the sky. They called it the "firmament" because they thought it was made of rock. It was so heavy, the Greeks assigned their strongest god, Atlas, to hold it up. There were holes in the firmament, which light came through at night, in the patterns of the constellations. Up above the dome of the sky was where the light came from, and where the "enlightened," "illuminated" powers and deities were presumed to live in some way....

It was quite a small universe, really just a local affair. There was us, there was Up, there was Down.

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 24 March 2002

The text for this sermon can be viewed online at
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32:34

There are fundamental things to understand about the phenomenon of fundamentalism, especially since September 11th. Also, an adequate understanding of fundamentalism has some inescapable and uncomfortable critiques of America's cultural liberalism of the past four decades. We were given the rare chance of a revelation in the aftermath of those attacks....

...One of the most important things we need to learn about the agendas of all fundamentalisms in the world. They are all alike. And the only way that can be the case is if the agenda preceded all of the religions.

And it did. These behaviors are familiar because we've all heard and seen them many times. These men are acting the role of Alpha Males who define the boundaries of their group's territory, and the norms and behaviors that define members of their in-group. These are the behaviors of tens of thousands of territorial species in which males are stronger than females. Or to put it into jargon, these are the characteristic behaviors of sexually dimorphous territorial animals. Males set and enforce the rules, females obey the males and raise the children, there is a clear separation between the in-group and the out-group. The in-group is protected, the outsiders are expelled or fought....

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 3 February 2002

The text for this sermon can be viewed online at
http://austinuu.org/sermons/

30:54