October 16, 2011

Matt Alspaugh

Introduction

It was good to see some of you at the Occupy Youngstown rally yesterday, to hear Susie Beiersdorfer speak, among others. Susie, I bet you were glad to have a microphone and a sound system.

The folks at Occupy Wall Street, at Zuccotti Park had to do something different, for they are forbidden from using sound systems, even bullhorns. So they’ve developed this system, where when someone wants to start speaking, they shout ‘mic check’, and others around pick this up, also shouting ‘mic check’, which quiets everyone down.[1] Then everything the speaker says is spoken out by others, relaying the words out as a wave of sound through the very large crowd.

This ‘mic check’ thing is incredibly clever. And it’s not new. It’s what the Romans did, when they had events like chariot races at the Circus Maximus, that could hold some 150,000 people. Repeaters would relay the words and gestures of the emperor or other speaker so that all could at least have some sense of what was being said. So in a way, the Occupy Wall Street folks are going back to the roots of large gatherings.

Continue reading Sermon: Back to the Roots

October 2, 2011

Matt Alspaugh

Reading – T S Eliot – Little Gidding (excerpt)

1. Little Gidding

There’s a German movie called Lola Rennt or Run Lola Run that’s about a woman who has twenty minutes to obtain 100,000 marks to save her boyfriend’s life. What makes the film interesting is that this story is told three times, with each scenario starting exactly the same way, but with tiny deviations that compound into drastically different outcomes.

One way to look at the three scenarios offered in the movie is to see them as three variations on the same story, three possible ways the story could be told. Thinking of multiple versions of a story that could all be true is sometimes difficult for people in our culture to accept. Media, first movies, then television, then computer graphics, allow stories to be presented with such a high level of realism that they almost become accepted as truth. As a culture, we’ve lost the ability to accept that stories can be murky, incomplete, they can have multiple layers and meanings.

Continue reading Sermon: Extreme Interconnection

September 11, 2011

Matt Alspaugh

Homily: Fire

We light a chalice every Sunday, acknowledging fire as an element of good, offering warmth, and light. Our ability to create and manipulate fire is an essential part of our evolution as humans.

And yet fire is not always good, as Pat related earlier with her house fire experience. Let us confront this aspect of fire. Let us now go down into the smoldering ruins of a difficult day of ten years ago.

Continue reading Sermon: Fire and Water

August 21, 2011

Rev. Matt Alspaugh

Years ago, I was traveling with my brother in Costa Rica. We found ourselves early one morning, steaming coffees in hand, standing on a bluff above one of the beaches on the Pacific coast.  My brother pointed out surfers laying out on their boards, paddling for position as they waited for the good waves to ride.

Now my brother had surfed these beaches in his past, and told me surfers look for groups or sets of three waves, believing that at this beach, the waves often do come in sets of three, and that the last wave is often the biggest and best. Sure enough,  we counted the waves, one, two , then watched several surfers rise to ride the third wave.

In their book, “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us”, Robert Putnam and David Campbell have documented the tumultuous changes in the American religious landscape in the last half century . The authors’ focus is on religious polarization and pluralism, but along the way they present a plethora of data about religious trends and changes, which lead me to think about what this means for our future.

Continue reading Sermon: Changing Face of American Religion

June 5, 2011

Matt Alspaugh

I remember years ago one of my own experiences with an incentive bonus program. I was selected as one of two engineers in my department to receive an award and a cash bonus, it was something like 2000 dollars, a nice sum for me. We were to receive the award from some senior executive, over in the more posh, paneled and carpeted area of the building. But the other engineer who was chosen for this honor– well I thought he was a buffoon! Incompetent and kind of lazy to boot. He seemed to spend most of his time on the phone talking to his family. The only reason he was getting the award was because he was the long-time buddy of the department head. The realization that the award was not so much for merit as for connection tormented my young and idealistic mind. I’m older now, maybe a bit more cynical, but still wonder about money and its effect on behavior.

So let’s talk about money. Let’s start by talking about those who have done well with money. Maybe some of you here.

Continue reading Sermon: How Much Is Enough?

May 8, 2011

Matt Alspaugh

Many Unitarian Universalist ministers consider the Mother’s Day sermon a tough one to prepare. Of course it’s especially hard for me, a male, and a man who has no children, to preach on. I just don’t have much street cred on this topic. But even mother ministers struggle. Minister, and mother, Lynn Ungar put it this way:

It’s a well-known fact amongst ministers that Mother’s Day is a next to impossible thing to preach on. For every person who brings a sainted mother to church on Mother’s Day for a little well-deserved appreciation, there is someone else gritting their teeth over the utterly inadequate job their mother did of raising them.

So perhaps there are all kinds of us in here today. Those of you who do not want to hear about bad mothering on today of all days were probably annoyed at the second poem. Those of you who do need to hear about inadequacy and failure, so you can know you are not alone, are probably annoyed at the first poem. And maybe a lot more of you are annoyed at the third poem! This is all good.

Continue reading Sermon: Ancient Mother

April 24, 2011

Rev. Matt Alspaugh

During my time as a ministerial intern, at a much bigger and more traditional UU church, the Easter service was a big deal, and the senior co-ministers pulled out all the stops, not only on the organ, but on the service, which went a little long. I had only a small part, making the pitch for the collection — I always seem to get the money part. Anyway, one of the co-ministers spoke a brief homily on spring, and fertility, and the pagan god Eostre, and the other, the most senior of the senior co-ministers gave a whole sermon on the resurrection. The most senior senior co-minister was accosted in the receiving line at the end of the service by a long-time member of the congregation. She said to him, with all annoyance, something like, “Every year we have the battle between Jesus and the Easter bunny. And Jesus wins again.”

Continue reading Easter: Reclaiming Paradise

March 27, 2011

Matt Alspaugh

I find it a curiosity that Unitarian Universalism has so few symbols. The only commonly recognized symbol is the flaming chalice. Even that symbol is of relatively recent origin, adopted after the second world war.

We don’t have a collection of symbols like christianity does: the cross, the crown of thorns, the fish, the lamb, the cup, the dove, the star in the east. I’m sure that even mentioning these words brings up strong images and associations for many of you raised in various Christian faiths. You probably immediately visualized them in you mind, and perhaps had good or bad feelings arise about them.

Or consider some of the symbols of, say Tibetan Buddhism: the lotus, the wheel, the conch shell, the mirror, the endless knot. Now, I suspect most of you are like me, and had much less of a reaction to these symbols, and probably didn’t have strong, clear images appear in your mind. So the meaning of symbols or images is not fixed, but changes with our experience.

Continue reading Sermon: Images, Symbols, and Reality

March 13, 2011

Matt Alspaugh

I watched a Russian made documentary called “Sunrise/Sunset”, which filmed a day in the life of the Dalai Lama at his exile home in Dharmsala India. He starts at 3:30 in the morning with a torturous exercise using slider, then goes through the day meeting dignitaries and teaching to standing room only crowds. Toward the end of the day, he is relaxing watching the BBC, and a clip of himself comes on. At first he laughs and points with delight to his face on the screen. Then he grows serious and asks, “What was wrong with me that day? I wasn’t smiling.” I found it appealing that what he paid attention to was not what he was saying that day or how well he presented himself in the interview, but what his emotional state was at the time.

Continue reading Sermon: The Art of Happiness

February 13, 2011

Matt Alspaugh

As I sit in my window seat, on my way home from Monterey California, I contort to look out the window at the topography of the west, a mix of grey and brown dryness and the white brush of snow.

I notice the dry stream-beds, exposed, transparent, laid bare for me, amidst the lower peaks of the Rockies. In shadow, the stream beds stand out and I think of how water conforms into streams as it makes its way from mountain snow banks down hillsides and slopes to become rivers to flow toward the sea.

These are the life-paths of water, exposed to us. What would the streams of our lives look like, if we could see them from 40,000 feet? Would they flow fast and direct, following the only obvious path down through the deep, shadowed valleys between peaks? Would they carve out deep canyons with high walls that confine the flow and provide a path for water even through broken terrain?

Continue reading Homily: Beatrix Potter: The Meandering Path of Life