Month: March 2012

Inspiration:

Spirit of Life, teach me to recognize the difference between the discomfort of stretching toward my truest self and the pain of twisting myself to match a false image of who someone else thinks I should be.

 

 

 

To Be Seen

No matter what our religious beliefs, being seen for who we truly are is something that most of us rarely experience.

Look around—we are a people of masks and disguises. We are a people who have been taught to transform ourselves into what others need us to be. We’ve learned the roles and rules—the art of subtle artifice. We’ve come to believe that most people don’t want to see or hear what we feel, what we need, who we are. We’ve learned that most people don’t want to see the messiness and confusion that each of us carries inside. We’ve learned that only parts of ourselves are publicly presentable. Other parts must be hidden away. For acceptability, approval or promotion, we conceal the rough edges, the broken places. Appearance is the key.

We are afraid that if anyone truly sees inside us, they will run screaming from the sight.

What have you hidden from view? What don’t you let anyone see? What don’t you let yourself see?

There is a great price to pay for this fragmentation of our frailties. We cut parts of ourselves off from others. We cut parts of ourselves off from our own self. We become segmented people, compartmentalized false creations rather than the complex people we naturally are. And then we wonder: “Why do I feel out of sorts?” “Why do I feel like something isn’t right in my life?” “Why don’t I feel like me?”

BY TIM KUTZMARK, MINISTER, UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH OF READING, MASSACHUSETTS TO READ MORE

Inspiration:

 

Was the Big Bang the shattering of perfection, or the beginning of creative possibility?

 

 

 

Finding Our Place in the World

So much in our world tells us that who we are (never mind what we have done) is unacceptable. It may be the color of our skin or the accent of our words; it may be the size of our body or the number of our years; it may be our gender, or who we love; it may be the abilities of our body, or what we do for a living. Whatever it is, we have all received messages telling us it would be so much better if we could look or be different than how we are. And we have often bought those messages hook, line and sinker.

As I was writing those words, I was suddenly reminded of an old Christian hymn that my ex-husband grew up with, and played for me on the piano when we first became friends in high school. The only words I remembered were those of the title: “Just As I Am.” So I found the piece on the Internet, and it’s actually a lovely hymn that was apparently written by a young woman upon being asked by a stranger if she was a Christian. She told him to mind his own business, but later went back to the man and asked him how to find Jesus. He answered, “Just come as you are.”

One of the verses goes, “Just as I am, tho’ tossed about with many a conflict, many a doubt, fightings and fears within, without, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.” The hymn was used as an altar call in my ex-husband’s childhood church, sung as people made their way forward to be accepted into the “family of Christ.”

Now, the full theology behind this hymn is no longer ours. But its message—that we will be loved and accepted just as we are—is our Universalist message.

It does not matter who or what we are; it does not matter what mistakes we’ve made in the past; it does not matter what size we are, or the color of our skin, or who we love, or whether we are able-bodied, or how much money we earn, or whether we even have a job…the world is ours. It is calling to us to dream our dreams, to imagine the possibilities that await us, to discover our place in the cosmos.

by Anne Felton Hines, Minister, Emerson Unitarian Universalist Church, Canoga Park, California TO READ MORE

 

Inspiration:

 

 

I can only fix the great problems of life by mending the small pieces I can touch.

 

 

 

 

 

The Scratched Diamond

“Something had been lost, but something even greater had been gained …”

by the Rev. Dr. Lynn Ungar, Minister for Lifespan Learning, Church of the Larger Fellowship 

 

Join us at 1:30 pm ET today for our service of Reflection & Connection: http://www.livestream.com/questformeaning

Inspiration: 

Imagine that you have been forgiven – absolutely and for everything. How might that change how you feel inside? How might that change how you treat others?

 

“A Pattern So Vast”

I remember a particular time when I narrowly escaped a bad crash. It was my fault. In a confused moment I turned left against the light. The oncoming car screamed to a stop and saved us both. I was so rattled I immediately pulled over into the closest parking area, just to get my breath and fall apart a little.

When the other car followed and pulled up beside me I braced myself. The guy who got out of the old Chevy was twenty-something with tattoos, and he was gonna let me have it. I was ready—I’d been stupid. But what this young man did was come over to me with a face full of concern, as he asked politely, “Are you okay?” He asked me, the negligent one, if I was okay, after I’d nearly killed him. I felt something release way down in my chest. It was beyond personal. He not only gave me back my dignity; he redeemed the whole human race.

One thing I understood, right then, was that the hardest thing, ultimately, is to be the perpetrator. And I got a better understanding of something else, too—something Jesus reportedly said to his disciples when they complained about the sudden generosity of a former sinner. Jesus said, essentially: “One who has been forgiven much, loves much.”

 by Kate Tucker, Associate Minister, First Universalist Church of Minneapolis
TO READ MORE

 

Join us at 7 pm ET tonight for our service of Reflection & Connection: http://www.livestream.com/questformeaning

Inspiration:

 

 

The only way to see the beauty of an agate is to break it open.

“Amazing Grace”

To believe that life is meaningless, without worth, is to defy the gift of creation. Despair contends that the creative wonder of billions of years of evolution can be set aside on the strength of one person’s inability or refusal to participate in the ongoing dance of life.

But more often our pride emerges in small ways, as we get caught up in the busyness of our lives, in all the details and things that need to be done, so that the moments of grace simply get missed as we walk by with blinders on. Annie Dillard writes: “We are here to abet creation and to witness to it, to notice each other’s beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to an empty house.” Grace offers us the chance to witness creation, to take our place in that crowded theater. But all too often we are too self-absorbed, too taken up with the manufactured importance of our deadlines and duties to look toward the lighted stage, let alone recognize that we ourselves are part of the drama. We lose our capacity to witness and wonder at creation, and then complain that so much of our lives are filled with drudgery.

And yet, through the distractions of busyness, through the moments of despair or selfish pride, grace manages to break through with a gift of wonder and the opportunity to float, if only for a moment, with the current of the river. If only for a moment, the illusion of our separateness is broken and our eyes are opened to the part we play in the shared drama of life. We hear the world calling to us, over and over announcing our place in the family of things, and, like the wild geese, we join our companions in the long journey toward home.