Archive: HUUMP Day Reflections. A weekly invitation to pause and practice your faith From Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church

March 2016

March HUUMP Day Reflections

HUUMP Day Reflections A weekly invitation to pause and practice your faith From Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church March 2, 2016 Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy. - Captain G. M. Gilbert      Question for the day: Make a conscious effort today to stand for a moment in the shoes of someone different than you.  What thoughts and feelings emerged as you did this?

HUUMP Day Reflections A weekly invitation to pause and practice your faith From Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church March 9, 2016 We are the earth made conscious, a unique and marvelous way in which the earth itself can see, reflect, contemplate, and choose. - Kathleen McTigue Question for the day: In what ways are you the earth made conscious?

HUUMP Day Reflections A weekly invitation to pause and practice your faith From Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church March 16, 2016 Holy hours come sometimes to all of us, freighted with love, when life seems worth living, and we feel a profound rest. All weariness is gone, all loneliness; we have a perfect peace in our heart.- James Freeman Clarke Question for the day: Recall a “holy hour” from your life.  What made it a holy for you?

HUUMP Day Reflections A weekly invitation to pause and practice your faith From Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church March 23, 2016 We have met the enemy and he is us - Pogo Question for the day: How does your “enemy within” find expression out in the world?

HUUMP Day Reflections A weekly invitation to pause and practice your faith From Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church March 30, 2016 Then God said, “Let there be light;” and there was light. - Genesis 1:3 Question for the day: How do you bring light into the world?

Archive: HUUMP Day Reflections. A weekly invitation to pause and practice your faith From Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church

February 2016

February 3, 2016

I'm not so interested in how they [dancers] move as in what moves them.     

-- Pina Bausch

Question for the day:

What moves you?

February 10, 2016

People who take their small local tastes and prejudices with them everywhere and measure everything by them – miss half the value and delight of seeing strange scenes and mingling with new people. - Brooke Herford

Question for the day:

How do you respond to new people and situations?

February 17, 2016

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. - Alan W. Watts

Question for the day:

How do you make sense of change?

February 24, 2016

To attain happiness in another world we need only to believe something, while to secure it in this world we must do something. - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Question for the day:

What is your path to happiness?

UPDATE

As of December 2015 LoveUU in the format originally conceived was discontinued.  The page will now host archives of the HUUMP Day Reflections that are sent weekly to members and friends of the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church.

December 2015

Making Room

No sooner do we put away or polish off the Thanksgiving leftovers, wash and dry the dishes and then move into the next holiday season.  Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukah, or the Winter Solstice, we enter a time of expectation, planning...and making room.  We make room in our schedules for shopping, decorating, and parties. And some of us literally make room in our homes for trees, guests and dining rearranging furniture or sleeping accommodations and putting extra leaves in the dining table.  

In the Christian tradition, the time spent in expectation, planning and making room is called Advent.  For Christians it is a time to prepare for the arrival of the Christ, celebrated as the birth of Jesus on Christmas.  In a sense Advent is a way to ensure Christians are ready for Christmas ahead of time since, according to the birth legend in Luke’s gospel, Joseph arrived with Mary, who was ready to give birth, only to discover there was no room at the inn...no preparation had been made in anticipation of their arrival.  

The implication being the world was ready or prepared for this what this child represents.  It had not made room to receive him or his message, a message which arrived in a form few expected...a helpless, little baby.  Which makes his relatively short life and eventual brutal death by execution less surprising.  We can only truly receive what we are willing to make room for in our hearts.  

The collected stories of Jesus’ life and teachings are known as the gospel, meaning “good news.”  They point toward a way of being and responding to life that is very different from the norm of his time and of our own, a way that promises salvation (which I liken to a sort of radical freedom regardless of personal circumstances, rather than a destination after death). 

There are of course other traditions that promise something akin to salvation through embodiment of a different way of living and responding to life, some of which seem universal, like compassion, forgiveness, generosity, gratitude, mercy, justice, etc. All ideas that we nod our heads in agreement with and make us feel good but that are, in practice, really difficult and often inconvenient for us to adhere to in our daily lives.  

We might scoff that such teachings are impractical, unrealistic, or even expensive.  And yes, it is true, they are not practical if we’re interested in business as usual.  They are unrealistic if our vision of what life is and could be is limited only to what we have ever known, and it is expensive if our only means of measuring costs is counting dollars and cents.  Religion and spiritual practices are not intended to teach us how to adapt to the status quo, they are meant to make us agents of its transformation.  

When we talk about or even complain a spiritual teaching or practice as being impractical, unrealistic, or expensive we reveal two things to or about ourselves:

1. We have some awareness that it contains the potential for a result that is different from the “norm”, maybe even transformative.
2. We’re not ready for whatever the different/transformation is.

In other words, we haven’t made room for it in our hearts. 

In this season of expectation, preparation and making room, let us let us give thanks for any and all awareness of our need or desire to make room in our hearts for teachings or practices that have the potential to transform us and our world.  And may we continue to support and encourage one another to spiritual growth as individuals and covenantal community that we will make room, room at the inn of our hearts.

Questions for reflection:

What do you need/want to make room for in the inn of your heart?

What might you do to help prepare a place for it?

November 2015

Theme: Transcendence 

©       Heart Talk-Taking the Time

Heart Talk is a spiritual practice though which we can share our hearts and feelings. It can help connect and enhance communication and relationships amongst our family members. You will find, right here on LOVE UU each month, several themed questions that can get you started.

©      You might print them out and keep them in the car,

©      or at the dinner table

©      or in your living room.

©      You might add more questions and

©      put them in a box or a jar for random drawing.

©      You might place a heart sticker under someone’s glass at dinner and let them draw a question.

©      Or tape a question to the salt shaker for the first person who uses it.

©      Or decorate your table with a question written on paper toweling.

©       Or write one or two words of a question on each persons’ napkin.

Let’s be sure to take every opportunity to open up the hearts of ourselves and our children! Thoughtful questions are a great way to inspire thinking and conversation, investigating and sharing and learning about each other.

Big Blessings,

Laurel

©      Who makes you smile?

©      What do you love about yourself?

©      What are the most important qualities in a friend?

©      Name someone who is special. Why?

©      What will the world be like in 10 years?

What will be the same and what will be different?

November 2015

THEME: Transcendence 

"The Starry Night" by Vincent van Gogh

“Imagine...” - John Lennon

“Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." - Mark 1:14-15

_______________________________________

It might seem strange to pair a quote from the John Lennon song that invites the listener to image there’s “no religion too.” with a Bible verse calling people to “repent and believe in the good news.”  Yet, if we take a closer look at each, we find their message is more in harmony than is commonly thought.

Lennon’s song asks us to image a world different from the one in which we live today.  It is a song about vision and transformation.  It is about removing the various and divisive lenses through which we normally see and relate to the world and one another that we might recognize our common humanity.  

Most of us have been taught that “repent” means to apologize and seek forgiveness.  But in the context of the verse from Mark’s gospel it means something quite different.  In the Jewish Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament) repentance meant “to return.” In the Christian New Testament, repentance carries an additional meaning, for the roots of the Greek word for repentance means “to go beyond the mind you have.” Thus when Jesus calls would be followers to repent, he is calling people to return to God (or that which is life giving and sustaining), to envision (or imagine) a life that is different from the one in which we live and believe that such a life is here ready to be embodied through us in the way we relate to one another and live our lives.   

John Lennon’s imagine is in many ways then, can be heard as a 20th C. affirmation of Jesus’ call to repentance, inviting us to transcend the self-inflicted limitations of the mind and embody through our lives, another way of being, the kingdom, some might say, of God.

Reflection and Exercise

Write your own version of “Imagine.”  

What kind of world do you envision and seek to embody through your life?  

October 2015

Theme: Impermanence

In her poem, The Ponds, Mary Oliver contemplates the reality of life’s impermanence.  Awareness of life’s impermanence presents us with a spiritual challenge. We can succumb to the lure of denial or the the fatigue of resignation and live our lives pretending we’ll live forever or that nothing we say or do really matters.  Or we can seek and find acceptance and live in ways that express and make the most of life’s finitude.   

Questions for Reflection

Read Mary Oliver’s The Ponds (click title)

What are ways that you succumb to the lure of denial or fatigue of resignation concerning life’s impermanence?

How do you or how might you move toward acceptance of life’s impermanence?