Month: March 2012

Inspiration: 

 

Take a look around and find one thing that is not to your liking – something that is cluttered, broken, dirty or less than what you want it to be. Let your gaze remain there until you can find a way to enjoy or appreciate that flawed thing or what it means to you.

“Not Necessarily Flaws”

Perhaps what we all need to be is not flawless, but rather carried by a love that recognizes how our flaws can be part of a larger wholeness. Our Universalist heritage guides us toward an understanding of God as a kind of Love that can find the wholeness in our cracked selves. Our humanist heritage points us toward an understanding of community as a place where we create a wholeness that is greater than any one member of the group. And through all our different theologies we carry a belief that our differences are gifts, not failings. Francis David said back in the 1500s that “We need not think alike to love alike.” Modern day UUs are likely to add that we also need not look alike, sound alike, have the same abilities or the same backgrounds in order to love alike.

A quote from Albert Einstein has been making its way around Facebook lately: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.” A fish trying to climb a tree looks pretty darn broken, and a squirrel in the ocean doesn’t look so hot either. Our society can be quick to tell people with disabilities, or the elderly, or children, or immigrants or gay or lesbian folks, or people with mental or physical illnesses, or people living in poverty or in prison that they are “less than,” that they are not fully whole, fully human.

But the gift of the Beloved Community is to see each person for the genius they are, for the wholeness that they are. What we have to offer as Unitarian Universalists is neither the ability to become flawless nor the ability to cure others of their flaws. What we have instead, at least in our best moments, is the holy capacity to appreciate the field of flowers that all of us cracked pots have created.

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

 

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

Inspiration: 

There is no change without loss. There is no loss without change.

 

“What’s Broken Is Brilliant”

When I was in seminary I remember being taught about Henri Nouwen’s concept of the “wounded healer.” I never understood quite what this was until I shared my wounds with another in pain and we both began to heal. I expect you have knowledge and experience of this, too. If you were abused, perhaps there was a time when you overcame the shame and told the truth to another, and you both found courage. If your heart was broken, perhaps a time came when you opened it again in spite of the risk. If your life was shattered by violence, perhaps you understood for the first time why it matters to work for peace—and did so.

I cannot know what lives in the deep recesses of each of your hearts. But I do believe that the tender, broken parts in each of us are precious. Does this mean I would wish brokenness on each of us? Of course not. I don’t have to wish it. Brokenness comes with living. Nary a one of us is free from it. And yet, even the harshest tragedies, the most senseless losses, have gifts to give.

by BARBARA WELLS TEN HOVE, CO-MINISTER, CEDARS UU CHURCH, BAINBRIDGE ISLAND AND NORTH KITSAP COUNTY, WASHINGTON
TO READ MORE

 

Inspiration: 

Apparently with no surprise,
To any happy flower,
The frost beheads it at its play,
In accidental power.
The blond assassin passes on.
The sun proceeds unmoved,
To measure off another day,
For an approving God.

–Emily Dickinson

 

“The Stretcher and the Swan”

I drove by an accident the other day. Emergency services people were putting a woman on a stretcher. They were tender, attentive, capable. She was being taken care of. Traffic was directed competently around the wreck. It would be cleaned up, hauled away. Taken care of. A fire truck was parked beside the ambulance, its chunky lights flashing. Standing by, just in case a fire happened. So they could take care of it. That was one well-taken-care-of situation.

I wanted to be on that stretcher. I wanted calm and capable people to take care of everything. It looked restful…I talked to a friend of mine who used to work in an emergency room and she said that what happens when you come in is that fast-moving people with big scissors cut off all your clothes. That didn’t sound restful at all. She suggested I pay for a day at a spa where helpful, calm people would fuss over me all day long. I’d rest, but no one would cut off my clothes with scissors. It would be cheaper than a hospital stay, and I could drive home afterward.

I know now that when I have a “stretcher day,” when being helpless looks good to me, I just need to rest. How did I get to be a grown-up and not know that I need to rest sometimes?

by Meg Barnhouse, minister, First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin, Texas
TO READ MORE 

 

Inspiration:

Do not be too hard, lest you be broken; do not be too soft,

lest you be squeezed.–Ali ibn Abi Talib

“All The Stuffing Pulled Out”

Life is, sadly, full of stuff that gets broken. Maybe you’re just having a look around the table for crumbs and a cup falls off and shatters. Or maybe your nicest leash just plain wears out and breaks. But you know what is the saddest? When stuff breaks because you broke it, and you knew at the time you were doing it, but didn’t stop…All of us, dogs and people, don’t do things we know we should do, and do do things that we know we shouldn’t. Somehow, things are bound to get broken before you ever set your teeth on them.

Forgiveness from the people who love you is good. And we can remember that this kind of brokenness happens for all of us, and be ready to forgive others and ourselves. And we can work on ways to do things better the next time, like when Mama buys me toys that don’t have any stuffing in them to come out. And sometimes, when we are lying on the floor with all our stuffing pulled out, someone will come along, and instead of throwing us out will take the time to tuck the stuffing back in, and sew on a patch, and we’ll go on, not the same as before, but still good.

by Taz, the six-year-old Belgian Tervuren, companion of Lynn Ungar, the CLF’s minister for lifespan learning. 
TO READ MORE 

 

Inspiration:

Spirit of Wholeness, guard my heart from both complacency and contempt. Help me to expect the best from myself and others.

“Abundant Life”

We can understand the abundance of the universe in two ways: as an invitation to complacency, or as an invitation to generosity. Much depends upon that choice. For if we respond with complacency—if we merely accept all the creative energy and all the love and sacrifice that have made our own lives possible, then the abundance of the universe comes to a stop in us. If we choose to receive what we have concluded is our due—and even, perhaps, to complain that it is not given exactly as we would have preferred it—then we make ourselves something outside the process, something other than the ever-flowing stream of life, something transitory and futile and ultimately trivial. It is when we respond to the abundance of life with gratitude and generosity that we become a part of that universal creativity. When we contribute our own energy to the flowing stream then it fills us and pours out of us to others, so that the stream is enhanced.

by Kendyl Gibbons, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Society, Minneapolis, Minnesota
TO READ MORE