Prayer 101
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It is eleven o’clock in the evening. The children are in bed. I am sitting on the couch in my living room attempting to read. My eyes have tracked one page three times without connecting. My mind is wandering. Read more →
Finding Healing Through the Mail
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Many UUs don’t realize that the CLF ministers to over 350 incarcerated members through its Prison Ministry Letter Writing Program. Rev. Patty Franz matches incarcerated members of the CLF with freeworld UUs for the exchange of friendly letters. Members of my own family don’t understand why I do this. “If a person has done something terrible then they deserve to suffer, so why bother?” Why indeed?
From Your Minister
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I wanted to see Harriet Tubman’s grave.
I wanted to see it enough that I drove from Boston, Massachusetts, to Rochester, New York, about 400 miles, for a speaking gig I ordinarily would have flown to. Tubman is buried in Auburn, New York, close to Rochester. Read more →
REsources for Living
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For Christians, Easter is a big deal holiday. Unitarian Universalists (Christian and otherwise) tend to focus on the life and teachings of Jesus, rather than his death. But for most Christians the Easter story of how Jesus died—and then reappeared to his friends three days later—is the central mystery of their religion. Read more →
Mending
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How shall we mend you, sweet Soul?
What shall we use, and how is it
in the first place you’ve come to be torn?
Come sit. Come tell me.
We will find a way to mend you.
I would offer you so much, sweet Soul:
this banana, sliced in rounds of palest
yellow atop hot cereal, or these raisins
scattered through it, if you’d rather.
Would offer cellos in the background singing
melodies Vivaldi heard and wrote
for us to keep. Would hold out to you
everything colored blue or lavender
or light green. All of this I would offer you,
sweet Soul. All of it, or any piece of it,
might mend you.
I would offer you, sweet Soul,
this chair by the window, this sunlight
on the floor and the cat asleep in it.
I would offer you my silence,
my presence, all this love I have,
and my sorrow you’ve become torn.
How shall we mend you, sweet Soul?
With these, I think, gently
we can begin: we will mend you with a rocking
chair, some raisins,
a cat, a field of lavender beginning
now to bloom. We will mend you with songs
remembered entirely the first time
ever they are heard.
We will mend you with pieces of your own
sweet self, sweet Soul — with what you’ve taught
from the very beginning.
From the meditation manual, Instructions in Joy, by Rev. Nancy Shaffer, published by Skinner House in 2002. Available from the CLF library or (617) 948-6150.
Spiritual Courage
Finding the Blessing
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I was standing beside a small mountain waterfall at a Shinto shrine in the mountains outside Nagoya during my first visit to Japan. The Guji, or head priest, of the Tsubaki Grand Shrine had invited me to take part in a Shinto cleansing ritual called misogi. The ritual practice involves stepping into the waterfall and allowing the water to cleanse not only the body but also the spirit.
As I have held the idea of courage in my mind, preparing to write this column, I have seen and heard it all around me.
