Daily Compass

Inspiration:

Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one. –Marianne Williamson

Finding the Blessing

(The Brewster, Massachusetts) church was built by wealthy merchants and sea captains in the 18th century. The walls of the fellowship hall are lined with pictures of sailing ships, which they were proud to display.A few years ago, one congregant asked what might seem to be an obvious question: “What were those ships carrying?” They took the question seriously, did their research, and found that many of those ships had been slavers and that, in fact, a good bit of the money that had built that beautiful church had come from the slave trade.

Knowing that history was challenging for them, especially for the few descendants of those captains who were still members. But it proved to be a blessing. They were able to reclaim their history and create a narrative about how that congregation had grown, had struggled to know what they were called to do and been transformed in the process. It was a narrative that acknowledged their past but did not leave them trapped in it.

Unitarian Universalists affirm as one of our seven principles “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” We normally understand that statement as an affirmation of our part in the natural world, and it supports our work for environmental justice. But the interdependent web is also geographical. We are a part of a world community. The web does not stop at our borders, no matter how tall the fences we may build.

And the interdependent web also exists in time. It connects us to our history, to the history of our nations and to a future. This is a faith of both memory and hope.

by Bill Sinkford, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Church Of Portland, Oregon, Former President of the UUA TO READ MORE

Inspiration:

 

 

Creative Spirit, may evolution take place within me as well as around me.

 

Tapping Transformation

Will justice ever roll down like waters? Will we find our way to right relationship in our personal lives, in our neighborhoods, and in our world? Many days, it seems the odds are against us, stacked much higher than forty to one. But if it sounds like too much effort or like something requiring miracles too hard to believe in, our congregations teach us otherwise. For whenever and however we gather in a community of faith, we are powerfully blessed by what the early religious communities in New England called an assembly of “visible saints.” It is a sainthood in which each of us presents to one another tangible evidence of the transformative power of faith moving in our lives today. And when we together act upon our faith, within our church or beyond it, we are also making visible the world’s own transformative turning.

This is the work of congregational life―to open our awareness of the world as it might be and as it is becoming. It awakens us to the transformation already taking place within us and around us, and strengthens our patience and determination to bring that transformation to fruition. For as the maple tree produces sweetness within the fibers of its being, the world carries its own inner inclination toward justice and peace. May we be willing to show up and do the work of tapping.

BY KAREN HERING, CONSULTING LITERARY MINISTER, UNITY CHURCH-UNITARIAN, ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA TO READ MORE

Inspiration:

 

 

What would you need to give up to let something new in your life?

 

 

A World-Wide Journey

I didn’t have the choice of where to live when I was a child. It wasn’t until my third year in college that I had a choice of where I wanted to live and what direction I wanted my life to go. It was then that it became clear to me that my life would not go in the direction my family, or I, had thought it would. As soon as I started questioning the Muslim journey, I realized that I would rock the boat with my family in a way that would forever change how I would be in the world. I would give up the security and stability of being held by the people who raised me if I chose a path that would take me away from Islam. So I did just that. I could not be dishonest with the God who I was raised to believe knew what was in my heart and soul…

Journeys are what happens when we let life take us on a ride. I try to “plan” in life, but like the saying goes, “You make plans and God laughs.” To me, it is more important to be open to new experiences and flexible when need be.

by Aisha Hauser TO READ MORE

Inspiration:

 

I can’t change others, but I can change how I relate to them.

Changed Lives

As a minister I have been told that something I said or did changed someone’s life. Of course I live for this! However, what people say in this context is often mysterious and surprising. People quote lines to me that I don’t remember speaking, and then share what they have gone on to make or do because of my words.

I have certainly made some pretty major decisions of my own inspired by a scrap of poetry or the random words of a hitch-hiker. I am a highly intuitive person and, for better or worse, navigate my life in ways that completely baffle more rational souls. But, as mysterious as the ways our lives touch and affect each other might be, I want to use my precious days consciously creating more life and being in contact with others who are doing the same. I want more love, more vitality, more health for me and for the world—those I affect directly through the ripples I send out, and those inhabiting some section of the interdependent web that I’ll never even know about.

by Meg Riley, Senior Minister, Church Of The Larger Fellowship TO READ MORE

Inspiration:

 

How will you be re-born today?

The Impossible and the Laughable

I believe that we are religious when we allow ourselves to be constantly surprised and awed by the world’s complexities. “People flock to religion not in spite of the fact that it’s laughable, but precisely because of it,” says UU minister Rob Hardies. “The reason people come to church on Easter is to look for hope…. The church is the repository of human hope…. The church is the place where we stash away those stories of hope for when we and the world need them most.”

The richly-textured fabric of our Unitarian Universalist community holds countless stories of hope. Those stories give us reason to trust that the impossible can happen. What impossible things does your heart yearn for? What hopes, if you named them out loud, would seem laughable?

Is the “impossible,” for you, the hope that you might emerge on the other side of some harrowing inner struggle?

Is it laughable to think that whatever’s burdening your heart right now might grow lighter, until one day it’s gone?

Does “peace” seem impossible to you? Is it laughable to think that we human beings could live in peace in the Middle East? Between the gang zones in your own city? In our own families?

Or perhaps what seems impossible is that our culture will one day reflect the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

Is it so laughable to believe that you’re nothing less than beautiful, nothing less than whole?

These are all religious matters, every one of them. Do they seem laughable? Do they seem impossible?

Let us decide, nevertheless, to be religious.

by the Rev. Erika Hewitt TO READ MORE