Daily Compass

Inspiration:

Ring the bells that still can ring 
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
— Anthem, Leonard Cohen

 

 

Brokenness

When I heard the song Anthem recently, I thought (not for the first time) that this image of light shining through the cracks of our brokenness is such a beautiful one. And then I wondered why I have trouble seeing the light when I’m broken, or why it takes me longer than I’d like to feel its warmth.

I suddenly pictured myself in tears, sitting on the floor, with lots and lots of pieces of an “Iris vase” scattered about me. Some were large and chunky, others were sharp little shards…it was an overwhelming mess.  When my children were small, and we were struggling with a difficult diagnosis for one of them, I felt alone with my broken pieces. All I thought about were my own broken pieces. I couldn’t begin to figure out how to fashion a vase out of the mess around me. Cracked or not.

Before I can see light coming through the cracks of my brokenness, I need some help getting to the point where I am “merely cracked,” and not scattered in countless pieces all over the floor! It takes courage to reveal what feels like such a mess to another, to share my pain and to listen in turn to another’s. The mutual sharing, the listening, the understanding…all these create a connection that is better than any cement for putting together those broken pieces in new ways, stronger ways, ways that allow for a great light to shine through – even when my own little candle has gone out.

Iris Hardin attends Andover Newton Theological School and is a candidate for the Unitarian Universalist ministry.  She is married with three stepchildren in their late twenties and nineteen-year-old twin sons.  Her son Adam has autism. TO READ MORE

 

Inspiration:

 

Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again.
–Dag Hammarskjold

 

 

 

 

A Pattern So Vast

Rochelle Melander of the Alban Institute has some good thoughts in her article “Learning to Apologize.” She suggests a four-part process. The first step is to listen and learn how we’ve hurt the other person. It’s usually not comfortable. “We want to say, ‘No, you’re wrong, I’m not that bad!’” Instead, the idea is to be still and listen, and then ask, “Is there more?” And when we’ve heard the whole story, we check to see that we’ve heard well. “Is this what you are saying?” we ask, repeating the story until we get it right.

The second step is to say, “I’m sorry.” Period. We do not qualify our apology by saying, “I’m sorry if you took offense at what I said.” Or “I’m sorry if you felt that way,” or “…if you heard me say that.”

That’s like saying, “I’m sorry you are hyper-sensitive; I’m sorry you are mixed up; I’m sorry you don’t hear well.” The best apology is just, “I’m sorry.”

The third step is to make it right. Both parties talk about what can be done to bring healing. They ask: “What are our needs here?” “What do we do or say differently from now on?” They look each other in the eye and agree on a plan.

The fourth step is to ask for forgiveness. Receiving forgiveness—officially—is essential. It isn’t helpful when the offended person brushes off our apology with, “No big deal,” or “What’s done is done.”

Melander says, “It’s hard to be content with ‘no-big-deal’ responses when we suspect that it was a big deal. These responses don’t have the healing power of ‘I forgive you.’ To say ‘I forgive you’ is to say we are letting go of any claim for punishment or payment. We’re ending our hold on the other person. We’re setting them free.”

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

 

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