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?

October 2015
Theme: Impermanence

 Impermanence and Acceptance

 Do you miss something that is lost or changed?

What would you like to accomplish by your next birthday?

 What is something that is hard for you now?

 When is it hard to be a friend?

Who is someone you’d like to be friends with?

Heart Talk-A Great Adventure

I ask a lot of questions both in my role as religious educator and as a parent. Thoughtful questions are a great way to inspire thinking and conversation, investigating and sharing and learning about each other.

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!

Big Blessings,

Laurel

September 2015
Theme: Conviction

Belief and Doubt

~Game: Two Truths and a Lie

Instruct each player to think of three statements about themselves. Two must be true statements, and one must be false. For each person, he or she shares the three statements (in any order) to the group. The goal of the game is to determine which statement is false. The group votes on which one they feel is a lie, and at the end of each round, the person reveals which one was the lie.

~Book Suggestions: Find Belief and Doubt in;

            Imani’s Moon by Janay Brown-Wood

            Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

Quote from Peter Pan, by JM Barrie

“The moment where you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever being able to do it.”

What does this mean?  What does doubt mean? How does doubt impact what you do?

Conviction

.A quote from The Lorax by T.D. Geisel

“… all that the Lorax left here in this mess was a small pile of rocks, with one word...

UNLESS.

But now, says the Once-ler…, UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot,

nothing is going to get better. It's not.    

What does that mean?

Can one person make a difference in the world?

Do you believe that you can make a difference in the world?

Does believing help you in making a difference?

UU Connection: UU Principle #4 We Search for what is true and #5 All people have a voice

September Theme: Conviction

“A person has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it, and one's religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.” 

- D. H. Lawrence

Questions for Reflection

1. Do you agree or disagree with Lawrence’s statement?

a. Why or why not?

2. What shapes or has shaped your religious views?

3. When it comes to religious conviction, are belief and doubt mutually exclusive?  Explain.

You’re invited to post your reflections below.

June 2015

From the Rev. Danny R. Reed, Minister, The Unitarian Church in Charleston...

Friends

I write on behalf of the Charleston congregation to thank you for the many messages of concern and support we have received, and to provide a brief perspective on the soul and state of our beloved city.
Of course, we’re reeling and will be for some time, yet poignant examples of healing and unity abound in our midst. Last night, members of our church gathered with thousands of our neighbors to grieve, pray, and sing together in a downtown arena. An interfaith core of clergy revisited ancient, holy words as source of comfort and perspective, and also as clarion call toward renewed equity, justice, and moral solidarity. Our civic leaders, particularly our popular, forty-year mayor, Joseph P. Riley, Jr., called for a revival of community cooperation and reminded us that once united, we will recover and move forward. He also addressed our national fixation with handguns and said it is surely time for more reasoned conversation and swift reform.
Afterward, we walked the few blocks from the arena to nearby Emanuel AME church, longstanding symbol of African American identity and progress, and sadly now and evermore, a murder site where 3 men and 6 women were slain. Flowers, layers deep, brought by friends, mourners, and supporters, lined the sidewalk outside the church. A piper, in full regalia, moved to the center of the street and played “Amazing Grace.” Hundreds in the street, of different age, faith, and race joined in song. Soon after, those same voices shared an impromptu chorus of “This Little Light of Mine.” Then, a dozen or so Jewish Charlestonians formed a circle in the street and sang their songs of evening prayer and Kaddish. Though we walked, left our memorial flowers, and sang through tears, and despite the recent bloodshed that called us together, it was after all, still the Sabbath.
Forty percent of enslaved people delivered to America entered through the port of Charleston. The Civil War was ignited here and the Confederate flag continues to fly on our Statehouse grounds. These and other difficult truths point to the significant baggage of racism and injustice that continues to influence life in Charleston. Yet, please know that we are more united than one might think. Thus far, our streets are filled more with abiding faith than blind rage. Property has not been vandalized and vigils have been marked by diversity and peace. Earlier Friday, as the disturbed and poisoned young man who wrought such violence stood at his bond hearing, the family members of those he murdered—those most entitled to rage and vengeance, instead spoke to him words of compassion and even forgiveness.
As you gather in worship yourselves, thank you again for remembering the deceased and their families: Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Rev. Daniel Simmons, and Myra Thompson. Remember too those survivors wounded in the attack and recovering.
We will never be the same. Charleston will bear the scars of the assault on Mother Emanuel church, yet we will not be defeated. The work of justice is never-ending and commitment to the beloved community is ever needed. Even in the haunted American south, love will prevail.

Thank you.

Source: http://www.standingonthesideoflove.org/ourstories/love-will-prevail 

May 2015
Theme: Justice

source: statusq.org

But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

- Amos 5:24 

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

- Martin Luther King Jr.                                        

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. 

- Aristotle 

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight, I can divine it by conscience.  And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

- Theodore Parker, Unitarian Minister

Justice or happiness without battle is an illusion.

- Buddhist saying

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. 

- Matthew 23:23                                    

Let justice roll...

In the wake of events like the protests and riots in cities like Ferguson and Baltimore, the debate over life in prison versus the death penalty for Dzokhar Tsarnaev, and the ongoing, deeply partisan political ideologies concerning economic, social and foreign policy in the United States, calls for justice inevitably arise.  

But what is justice?  How do we know?

What’s the difference between justice and revenge?

You’re invited to share your thoughts and perspective below. 

April 2015
Theme: Easter

Maundy Thursday Reflection 

The Rev. Craig M. Nowak

April 2, 2015

“Do this in remembrance of me.” Tonight on this Maundy Thursday, many of our Christian friends and some of our fellow Unitarian Universalists will gather for a service of communion… a time to remember and to give thanks…to recall the past that we might live fully in the present with gratitude.  

The Unitarian Universalist communion services I have led commemorate what the Christian tradition refers to as the last supper…the last meal the radical, socially and politically inconvenient itinerate preacher and truth teller called Jesus of Nazareth shared with his closest friends and followers.  As contemporary Unitarian Universalists, we recognize and give thanks for the Christian roots of our faith and our Unitarian and Universalist forbears who sought to understand and make manifest in this world the teachings of Jesus rather than to craft and conform to a doctrine about Jesus.  

At this time of year we are reminded that Jesus held up a vision of, and lived into existence, a life blessed by hospitality, abundance, love, compassion, mercy, and justice for all people…a way of living he called the “kingdom of God.” …a life worth living; a way of life foreign to the ways of the world of his time…and that of our own.  

Indeed, Jesus taught and lived what it means to be fully human and in doing so realized the Holy within and for this he was condemned to death and crucified.  

Just as the life of Jesus reminds us that to be a person of faith is to defy the power of death…by countering fear with hospitality; greed with abundance; apathy with love; cruelty with compassion; oppression with mercy; and privilege with justice, his death reminds us that to be a person of faith is also to risk the breath of life in pursuit of a life worth living.  

And so whether we break bread and share the fruit of the vine together this evening  or not, let us at least take pause in remembrance of, and thanksgiving for, the life and teachings of Jesus.  

Our remembrance and gratitude of course means very little if we do not also commit ourselves to live more fully the life and teachings we profess to honor.  This is our challenge and our charge as individuals and as a community... and the time to begin in now.

And so let us promise to one another and to ourselves that we will seek in body and spirit, word and deed, to awaken to our own profound humanity and that of others that we might meet the Holy in each other’s eyes, and in so doing, humanity will finally cease to be its own brutal executioner. 

Amen 

March 2015
Theme: Saints

   Design: Westminster Unitarian Church, RI 2014

                         
March 17th is the feast day of St. Patrick in the Roman Catholic Church.  St. Patrick was a 5th century Romano-Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland whose life, legend, and memory is held dear in the hearts and minds of the Irish people and is celebrated annually by people within and outside Ireland regardless of religious affiliation.

While the names of various saints, particularly Christian saints, are well known to many Unitarian Universalists, our tradition, unlike our Catholic friends, for example, does not have a formal process by which we recognize or canonize people as saints.  Nonetheless, we do have a long history of women and men who some UU’s consider the saints of our faith, even if unofficially so.   Some of them are named in the image above, whose design comes from Westminster Unitarian Church, RI.

Reflection:

* What makes someone a saint?  

* Take a look at some of the names listed in the image above.  Who among those listed, whether you're a UU or of another tradition, might you consider a saint?

You're invited to post your response below.

Continue your exploration of this theme here:

Click here for information on UU "saints".

Click the play button on the image below to watch a YouTube tribute to notable Unitarians and Universalists.

February 2015

Theme: Love

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Long before Tina Turner posed the question, “What’s love got to do with it?” in music, the world’s religions invited reflection and offered teachings related to love and its practice in the world.  

By the time Jesus came along, for example, Judaism had a long established teaching on love that instructed followers to love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18).  Jesus agreed with this teaching but he seems to have also felt the word "neighbor" was being taken a little too literally.  For the people of his day, “neighbor” was understood as one’s countrymen, one’s own kind, so to speak.  So Jesus, reflecting on the ancient teaching of his faith, rewords it slightly, ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you...” (Matt 5:43-44).  Here Jesus cites both ancient scripture, “love your neighbor”, along with its then popular interpretation -love your own kind and hate your enemies- and restates the teaching. In doing so, he invites us to transcend the limits of the literal or popular interpretation of the day associated with that teaching.

For many in our own time, Jesus’ call to “love your enemies”, is problematic.   The question I most often hear or am asked about this teaching is, how can one “love” one’s enemies?  Here, I find, more often than not, the issue is not really how but what?  or “What’s love got to do with it?” In other words, “what is love” in the context of this teaching?

You are welcome to offer your reflection/response to this question below.

January 2015
Theme: Racism/Justice

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Rev. Jame Reeb

Despite the proclamations of pundits and the wishful hopes of people of good will, the election of the first African-American president in US history in 2008 did not mark the end of racism in America.  Disparities in educational and economic opportunity, rates of incarceration and tensions between communities of color and law enforcement continue to highlight the sad truth that racism remains a significant barrier to the fulfillment of this nation’s promise of liberty and justice for all.  

How are we, as people of faith, as Unitarian Universalists call respond to racism, wherever it might dwell within or among us or however it manifests itself in our communities and institutions?  

For reflection on this question, you’re invited to visit:

Beacon Press: Witnessing For The Truth

There you will find a copy of Witnessing For The Truth: Martin Luther King Jr., Unitarian Universalism, and Beacon Press containing two writing by the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  The first is “A Witness to the Truth”, the eulogy Dr. King gave for the Rev. James Reeb at Brown Chapel in Selma Alabama.  Reeb was a young UU minister who died of injuries sustained in an attack by white segregationists in Selma in 1965 while participating in the Selma Voting Rights Movement.  The second is the 1966 Ware Lecture, “Don’t Sleep Through The Revolution”, which Dr. King delivered at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in 1966 in Florida. Both writings present powerful, challenging, and relevant words for us today.