The God Beyond
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I want to start out with two stories.
The first—ancient—is about Abraham, the father of faith for Christians, Muslims and Jews. In biblical accounts it’s difficult to discern what Abraham actually believed. He doesn’t possess a certainty of faith. He is regularly confused and asks many questions, often without receiving very satisfying answers. But this patriarch of the three great western traditions did indeed possess at least one marvelous religious experience.
Transcending Boundaries
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When I was a child, I would stand and gaze at the starry firmament and contemplate infinity. As I stood there, the boundary that is time dissolved; I expanded my Spirit to fill the boundary that is space. My being stilled and all fear, anxiety, and anguish disappeared. Forgotten were the chores, the homework, the ordinary around me.
Oppression
Notice of Annual Meeting
Notice to all members of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, Unitarian Universalist:
Per Article VII, Sections 1 and 2, of the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF) Bylaws, the 42nd Annual Meeting will be held via conference call and screen-sharing on June 27, 2012, at 6:00PM Eastern time.
We will post all the necessary documents and contact information here by June 15, 2012. You can download the materials, print them, fill out the ballot, if it’s necessary, and send it along to the CLF office at 24 Farnsworth Street, Boston MA 02210. Or call the CLF office at 617-948-6166 and request a paper copy.
The purpose of the meeting is to elect a moderator from among members present to preside at the meeting, and to elect, if contested, from the slate of candidates presented on the ballot, three members to three-year terms and two members to one-year terms on the board of directors, and the clerk and the treasurer.
Lucia Santini Field, Clerk, May 1, 2012
From Your Minister
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I am talking to a man whose wife has just told him she loves someone else. I need to go to the ocean, says this Midwesterner, to see something bigger than my pain.
I am on the phone with a woman whose sister is dying. Her sister’s young child is inconsolable. Even here, says the woman on the phone, there is beauty. There is joy. Even here, there is something beyond the pain.
REsources for Living
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Get over yourself! Or at least get beyond yourself. That’s kind of the idea of “transcendence,” our theme for this month. When you transcend something you go beyond it. Read more →
Walking (Excerpt)
Tonight I walk. I am watching the sky. I think of the people who came before me and how they knew the placement of stars in the sky, watched the moving sun long and hard enough to witness how a certain angle of light touched a stone only once a year. Read more →
A Prayer for the Overwhelmed
For you who are stretched too thin,
Flat out,
Buried up to your eyeballs,
Pulled in too many directions,
Keeping too many balls in the air,
Tracking too many loose ends.
May you drop it all, just for a moment, and know strength and wholeness.
Prayers for Those Who Love Soldiers
… who are in harm’s way
For the parents, who remember with longing when you could hold that child in diapers, sending out mothers’ or fathers’ intimate care,
The Intersections of Privilege
I shaved my head with a Bic razor when I turned 21 years old. I did it intentionally and as a ritual of sorts. I wanted to do something quasi-original for my 21st birthday (in addition to the partying, which to be certain, I did as well).
Though shaving your head isn’t that original, deciding to do it completely sober as ritual of reaching a milestone in our culture seemed about the right amount of original for me. I was elated to find out that I didn’t have an odd shaped head and that I actually looked really cute with a bald head.
I thought about how I was pushing up against culturally norms of femininity but how I also felt that this new look more closely matched an expression of my genuine self. I have kept my hair short ever since. During that time I also absolutely came to relish the pets and touches that my friends jokingly, shockingly, and in surprise lavished upon me.
