Inspiration:
Songwriter Bob Franke writes: “There’s a hole in the middle of the prettiest life….” Where is there a hole in your life? What do you fill it with?
Brokenness and the Golden Mortar
“I am a Universalist because people have shocked – and removed – the hell out of my theology, my worldview, and me.”
by Joanna Fontaine Crawford, Intern Minister, Church of the Larger Fellowship
Inspiration:
I am a judge with the capacity to pardon all who come before me.
From Your Minister
by Rev. Meg Riley, Senior Minister, Church of the Larger Fellowship
How do I stay present when things are breaking or broken? How do I allow things to break when they need to break, and still stay on the side of Life? How do I manage to not numb out or move into denial, without going mad and breaking apart myself, when systems far beyond my control or even my comprehension, are wreaking havoc? And for what do I go down fighting? MORE
Join us at 1:30 pm ET today for our service of Reflection & Connection: http://www.livestream.com/questformeaning
Inspiration:
Where in your body do you physically feel pain or discomfort? Spend a moment envisioning that spot surrounded with warmth, light, and acceptance of the flawed state it is in.
To Be Joyfully Determined
by Joshua Mason Pawelek, minister, Unitarian Universalist Society: East, Manchester, Connecticut
Happiness and fulfillment, says Ben-Shahar, come from what we choose to see and seek, what we choose to focus our attention on. These days it can be difficult to see goodness, dignity, worth and wholeness, let alone bring it into our lives. In a world facing potentially catastrophic climate change; in the midst of tragic land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a more amorphous and seemingly unending war on terror; in the midst of an economic recession with enormous housing and job insecurity; in the midst of a first world culture focused on material consumption and addicted to corporate media—in the midst of all this breaking and brokenness, all these generators of fear, anxiety and numbness, all these demonstrations of human shortsightedness, arrogance, selfishness, and sinfulness—how do we focus on what is working well, on what brings joy, on what brings happiness and fulfillment? Tal Ben-Shahar says, “Practice.” MORE
Join us at 7 pm ET tonight for our service of Reflection & Connection: http://www.livestream.com/questformeaning
Inspiration:
A boulder cannot imagine what it would mean to become part of a beach.
by Forrest Church, Minister Of All Souls Church (Unitarian Universalist) in New York City from 1978 until his death in 2009
Prayer is the art of listening. Reverent attention to something unites us with it. Distraction divides, fragmenting us. Salvation and sin are much the same. Salvation: wholeness, health, healing — all words stemming from the same root — occurs in this lifetime when we are at peace with ourselves, united with one another, and at one with God. Sin is a state of brokenness. It exists when we are consumed by preoccupations and distractions, inattentive to the needs of others, at war with ourselves and the world. MORE
Inspiration:
He halted in the wind, and, what was that
Far in the maples, pale, but not a ghost?
He stood there bringing March against his thought,
And yet too ready to believe the most.‘Oh, that’s the Paradise-in-bloom,’ I said;
And truly it was fair enough for flowers
had we but in us to assume in March
Such white luxuriance of May for ours.We stood a moment so in a strange world,
Myself as one his own pretense deceives;
And then I said the truth (and we moved on).
A young beech clinging to its last year’s leaves.— Robert Frost
Rev. Meg: Forgiveness and Brokenness
“…and one day, I realized: I don’t know why she doesn’t like me!”
