Month: June 2012

Inspiration: 

Now I walk in beauty.

Beauty is before me.
Beauty is behind me,
above and below me.

―Navajo

Standing on the Side of Love

if love is like God, denying or condemning love is a desecration. Such negation has sinful effects not only on a person but also on the soul. Who is anyone to condemn what gives another strength, hope, happiness, belief in themselves, relief in grief and endurance in despair? If you cannot see the humanity in a person because of where they find love and hope, then it is your own humanity that is in jeopardy.

I agree with the Religious Right that faithful, traditional marriage between two believing and committed souls is a social cornerstone and a sacred institution. And I believe that love is sacred because of its transformative power. But sacredness doesn’t belong as an exclusive privilege, bottled up like spring water or reserved on high for members of an exclusive club which gets to decide who can join them and who can’t. That kind of elitism has no place in faith, no place in justice, certainly no place sticking its nose into love.

We have started a change and every single one of us needs to bend our shoulder to this task. We cannot be complacent, we cannot be tired, and we certainly cannot be bored by this issue. We have never said all there is to say and never done all we can do until the day, the shining day everyone deserves for their wedding, when all people can marry their great love, regardless of gender.

by Elizabeth Lerner Maclay, Parish Minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring, Maryland TO READ MORE

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Inspiration: 

 

“Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.”
― ee cummings

 

 

Entering the World Differently

For me, one of the greatest joys in life is the feeling of my brain expanding, of learning something new, or understanding something I’ve long known in a new way. Nothing is quite as exciting as that shift of perspective, the moment when the light bulb turns on in your head. For instance, one day at a botanical garden I learned that flowers are full of markings that we never see – they show in the range of light that bees see in, but we can’t. Of course! Flowers, those mainstays of what we mean by beauty, are not beautiful for us, they are beautiful for bees. What we think of them is an evolutionary afterthought. Once again, it turned out that I was not the center of the universe.

But the trick of those beautiful moments of insight, whether they be intellectual or spiritual, is what happens next. What do we do with what we know? How will we allow ourselves to be changed? How will we enter the world differently because of what we have learned? Who, now, will learn with us?

Inspiration: 

“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere – on water and land.”
― Walt Whitman

 

Pictures of Journeys

Do people show slides of their vacations anymore? I suppose now we just post our photos to Facebook or Tumblr, but I’m sure there are plenty of people of my generation who vividly recall the post-vacation ritual of bringing friends or extended family over to view the slide show of where we had been. Pictures were carefully selected and arranged in carousels, and then, in the darkened room, they appeared, not quite as large as life, on the projection screen. One by one, the cathedrals of Europe or the waterfalls of Canada would file past, with or without family members in the foreground.

We travel to collect memories, to gather up those pictures and experiences that can somehow change us, give us a new perspective on the world. We want to bring those experiences home to those we care about. We want to offer up the treasures that we’ve gleaned across the miles. But all our friends and neighbors can see are the projections, not the treasures themselves. The best we can hope for is that others will see the pictures of our journeys and be persuaded to set off for themselves.

Inspiration: 

 

What calls to you? What does it call you to?

 

 

The Call

Moses

It would have been
an ordinary day. One we might,
with the eyes of our
frantic world, call peaceful.
Just the light ringing of the
belled herd, a hawk’s cry
sharp through the dry air,
just another bead in the long
string of days. Except. There.
A blaze that neither spreads
nor diminishes, a desert shrub
transformed into pure passion.
What would you say when
that absolute intensity called
your name? Your language
might be different from that
long-ago shepherd, but there
is only one possible response.
When that voice calls,
you will say what Moses
so simply declared.
“Hineni” “Here I am.”

by Lynn Ungar
 

Inspiration: 

 

Is it beyond thee to be glad with the gladness of this rhythm? To be tossed and lost and broken in the whirl of this fearful joy? – Rabindranath Tagore

 

Too Much Wonderful

Truthfully, yes. Some days it is beyond me to be glad with the gladness of this rhythm. Some times the abundance is too much, and there are more good options than I can choose amongst, more wonderful opportunities than I can embrace. Sometimes the possibilities of life come in a torrent, and however grateful I may be for the blessings and the privileges, I do, nonetheless, feel tossed and lost and broken in the whirl, and wish that I could drink from a slower-moving stream. Sometimes I feel like the child who, confronted with having to make a choice between one friend’s pool party and another friend’s outing to the skating rink, breaks into tears. Sometimes it is necessary to move out of that swift-moving current and let opportunities, however wonderful, go by—to merely dangle my feet at the edge of the stream of life, and take a moment to breathe.