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?
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
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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.
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.
Inspiration:
One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found – and it is found in terrible places… For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. –James Baldwin
Someday this life for all of us will be completely over, so why not hope beyond reason, beyond the logical, beyond the chains of history? I would have never been able to lose over 150 lbs. (without surgery) and keep it off for ten years (and counting) without the ability to choose hope every day over despair at the state I had allowed my body to degenerate into. Making hope possible rather than despair convincing seems to be a better choice for me…I spent a lot of early life making despair convincing and I decided when I was 18 years old that without any logical reason that I would embrace hope that I could be different and this world could be different, if only so that I could just feel better about waking up every morning that I have. It may, as my bumper sticker says, be radical, but it is also just the only way I’ve been able to make it through my life so far—choosing to embrace hope over despair and doing so again and again and again….
Inspiration:
Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
–Anton Chekhov
Jesus and Buddha looked at the crowd and saw light. They were not speaking to people who already knew this. Notice that Jesus did not say, “Blessed are the powerful, the wealthy, the popular. Blessed are the handsome; blessed are the cool.” He was speaking to the rest of us. You, whose marriage failed, or who remained single in a world where people are expected to be married—you are light. You with a jailed child, you are light. Your child is, too. You who work at a job you hate, you who lost your job—you are light. You are light when you don’t like yourself very much, when you have failed. That’s the miracle of the light—God in you—it’s still there and it can be there even against your will.
Hiding it makes no sense; why waste something so precious? And yet we do. They didn’t say you could be light some day if you worked hard at it, were good enough, or did something worthwhile with your life. You, now. Make of yourself a light…You are the light of the world.
