August typically brings the Water Ceremony to our church calendar. This year the ceremony moves to September 9th. Over time, it’s undergone changes, but it remains as an important symbol of the connections we cherish as a congregation. It also symbolizes our diversity. Water has always symbolized connection for me. My understanding is that all water is, in the final analysis, connected. The oceans are not locked away from each other but join in one great expanse of ocean that goes by different names in different areas. Rivers flow into bigger rivers, and those into bigger rivers yet, the water from the smallest brook finally making its way to some sea. And it’s all joined in the cycle of evaporating water that returns to the earth as rain and snow. Then there’s the connection with our own bodies: We begin life floating in the waters of the amniotic sac. Something like 70% of us is water, and the saltiness of the oceans echoes in the saltiness of our life’s blood, in our tears of sorrow and of joy. All living beings must have water, or we will die as all our life processes shut down, unable to continue. I’ve liked being around water for as long as I can remember, especially ocean waves and inland waterfalls. I used to live by a river, and I still miss its many moods. A shallow stream in summer’s drought, a cracking crystal river of ice in the winter, dark with fallen leaves in

I often recap previous Unigram columns in my July column, a “church year in review” kind of thing. This isn’t quite the usual month-by-month recap. This time, I’ve woven together excerpts from three previous columns that seem to me to be especially relevant as we reflect on the church year that is ending and look forward to the growth and challenges of the coming year. We can all learn to be more present for each other and with ourselves, to “hold space.”  One author describes holding space this way: “It means that we are willing to walk alongside another person in whatever journey they’re on without judging them, making them feel inadequate, trying to fix them, or trying to impact the outcome. When we hold space for other people, we open our hearts, offer unconditional support, and let go of judgement and control.” In short, it’s being present, fully, unconditionally present, without judgment and without trying to fix the person or situation. When we offer this gift to each other, we can feel safe and supported even when we make what we see as mistakes, especially when we make mistakes. We need the kind of safety that allows us to risk making mistakes. Sometimes, perhaps often, the person for whom we are holding space will make a decision we would not make, and that’s OK too. Others’ decisions aren’t ours to dictate or control. We can hold space for others only if we are able to give ourselves the same gift. We cannot

ACHOO!! The sudden sneeze startled everyone, perhaps none more than the one who sneezed. “Bless you!” “Gesundheit!” “God bless you!” several of those within hearing distance responded. Did they think about what that predictable phrase meant? I doubt it. Blessing someone who sneezes originated in folk belief. Some people believed that a sneeze caused the soul to escape the body through the nose. Saying "bless you" would stop the devil from claiming the person's disembodied soul. Others believed the opposite: that evil spirits could use the sneeze as an opportunity to enter a person's body. I seriously doubt if any of us reading this believe anything of that sort. But what is going on with blessing? Reverend Seth frequently ends our services with “Go and be blessed and be a blessing.” A hasty scan through our UU Worship Web reveal that contributors to that site have written blessings for risk-takers and failures, those divorced or separated, meals, houses, new church buildings, justice builders, the sky, new drivers, playgrounds, teachers’ hands, all living things, “life and the end of life,” bicycles, bodies, the world, and backpacks, among others. Most of humankind’s religious and spiritual traditions engage in some form of blessing. The daily cycle of blessings that Orthodox Jewish men say is among the most detailed and extensive. [Women are exempt from most of these out of concern that doing so would be a burden when added to their child-care responsibilities.] Among the ritual blessings incumbent upon Jewish men are those upon awakening

I’ve been thinking a lot about risk lately. A lot more than I would have chosen, had life given me that choice. But it didn’t. Instead, life presented me with another set of choices. I’ve always been very active, and particularly enjoy walking, hiking and bicycling. As most of you are aware, I fell a couple of months ago and sustained a minor pelvic fracture. I was told in very stark terms while I was in the hospital that in the future I would need to substantially limit or modify what I do. It seems, according to what I was told, that I’m now in a category of people labeled the “medically frail elderly.” Clearly, there are risks associated both with allowing that label to define what I can do, and with not allowing it to do so. The risks of continuing to do what I’ve enjoyed doing for so long are obvious. Those I would incur by “accepting my fate” are more subtle. I can summarize them in one phrase: significant diminishment of my life. And of Tom’s and my shared life, because those are all things we enjoy together. What makes this of more than passing interest is our culture’s continuing propensity for labeling people, usually with labels that are inherently limiting. My experience in the hospital was truly horrid. [This occurred while we were in Florida; it does not pertain at all to IU Health Ball Memorial, with which I have had uniformly good experiences.] As I’ve tried to process

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about things breaking, which isn’t surprising since I took a tumble and broke myself a few weeks ago. I sustained what is really a minor, although very painful, fracture. My self-image, however, was shattered. Then I read the lead story in the Muncie StarPress on Sunday, March 11, which led me to more pondering on the relationship between things breaking and our April theme of Emergence. The article featured Jim Wright and his family of Yorktown. If you missed the original reporting, he and his family were driving in their car when a tree blew over on the car, and all four were injured. Mr. Wright’s injuries left him paralyzed from the chest down. A lot of this follow-up article focused on his reflection on the meaning of what happened to him, and the emergence of a more outspoken and robust Christian faith as a result. I’ll be frank: I have theological problems with the line of reasoning he takes. As a result of the scans done after the accident, doctors discovered blood clots and a cancerous tumor that otherwise would have gone undetected and would probably have been fatal eventually. Mr. Wright believes God allowed the accident to happen because God has a plan, a mission for Mr. Wright. That is vastly different than saying that God caused the accident to happen. His sense of this mission and God’s plan emerged as a result of the terrible breakage of his life endured in the accident. Here’s

“Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past…. Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where. And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.” ~T.S. Eliot As I began thinking about this month’s theme of balance, these lines from the fourth of T.S. Eliot’s “The Four Quartets” came to my mind. This has been one of my favorite poems since I first read it (for a real treat, click here to hear Eliot himself read the entire selection). I’ve frequently joked that the way I maintain balance is by falling off opposite sides of Eliot’s “still point” alternately. That, however, isn’t at all an adequate way of attaining balance! Many psychologists, spiritual teachers and life coaches have tried to limn what constitutes a balanced life. I wouldn’t have thought there could be so many diagrams devoted to expressing the concept of life balance visually. Overlapping circles. Various arrangements of arrows. Arrows and circles. Squares

1. A Dog and a Sandbank: If at First… The house where we live in Florida is built on one-story concrete pilings due to its being beachfront. Our access to the beach entails going down off our deck, across a small backyard, over the dune walkover, and then down a slight sandy embankment to the beach. Usually. Since the last time we were here, fierce winds and churning surf have sculpted that gentle slope into a four-foot high sand cliff. Getting to the beach has been quite a scramble. The shape of the bank changes daily, adding to the excitement. Our dog Callum provides me with a fine example of perseverance in the face of this sand cliff. She had certainly not seen anything like that before! When we went down to the beach the first time, she paused, looked over the cliff, and tried to make her way around it. She soon realized this wasn’t an option, since the cliff stretched for miles. I will admit, my initial response was to walk the block or so down the road to a public beach access, thinking that repair crews might have restored access at public sites first. Not at that beach anyway. It was in the same condition. Determination won out, and we returned to our own beach access. Still excited even in the face of the trouble we were having, Callum cocked her head, looked over the brink, and launched herself into the air, landing at the base of the cliff in a flurry

Sometimes, I worry about hope. Huh? Why would anyone worry about hope? Psychologists tell us that we simply fare better if we have hope. It’s one of the attitudes Saint Paul counseled the Christians at Corinth to maintain, along with faith and love (1 Corinthians 13:13). One source lists some of its synonyms: aspiration, desire, wish, expectation, ambition, aim, goal, plan. What could be the harm in any of these? One of my mentors in the Buddhist tradition, Thich Nhat Hanh, says of hope, “Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today,” (Peace is Every Step). So what gives? Here’s my concern: Hope sometimes pulls me out of the present, means that I’m projecting my energies on some future point, goal, or aspiration. When I’m doing that, I am less grounded in the present. I’m less focused on living creatively in the present, especially with whatever aspect of the present I would prefer to be different. Recently, I read a description of hope that appealed to me and addressed these concerns. What’s interesting is that the author was not describing hope! She was describing acceptance, but she describes a hope that makes sense to me. This hope “does not mean denying or diminishing life’s suffering….And it certainly doesn’t mean having a blindly optimistic ‘Pollyanna’ attitude. [Hope] doesn’t mean we have to like or be glad for everything that happens….Rather, it is the

I showered in a rainbow one afternoon awhile back. Let me explain. We have a large skylight in our bathroom. Late in the afternoon, the sunlight shining in through the skylight glints on the water streaming out of the shower at just the right angle, turning it into myriad droplets of rainbow. Then there is the dialogue that took place in my kitchen recently. Our three-year-old grandson had arrived to spend the day with us, as he usually does on Wednesdays. I had given him his breakfast, and needed to step around the corner into the next room for a moment. From the next room, I became aware of a lively discussion going on in the kitchen. Roland was carrying on a dialogue in two distinctly different voices. Stealthily, I peeked around the corner. The discussion was between…. two dried Bing cherries, one grasped in each firm fist! My black lab-redbone hound mix dog has a favorite resting position: on her back, back legs stretched back, front legs extended over her head. Often, she leans up against a piece of furniture, or the side of the house if she’s outdoors, so she doesn’t have to hold herself up. To say she looks lovably silly is an understatement. It always brings a smile to my face, and usually gets her a belly rub as well. For me, the key thing here is being aware, awake, enough, and slowing down enough to notice these moments. To pay attention. Can I allow myself the time to

There’s a lot to like in the hymn “The Fire of Commitment.” I won’t speculate on what all Mary Katherine Morn and Jason Shelton, who penned the lyrics, wanted their words to say. I’m sure it’s a lot broader than my interpretation of the small part that gives the hymn a very special meaning for me, and usually leaves me with tears in my eyes when we sing it: “From the stories of our living rings a song both brave and free, Calling pilgrims still to witness to a life of liberty.” Many, if not most of you, know the rudiments of my story. I’m a survivor. Briefly, my father sexually abused me in several ways from the time I was four or maybe five years old until my parents divorced and he moved out when I was twelve. There was also emotional and physical abuse, and the effects of his alcoholism and womanizing affected our family dynamics as well. Working through that part of my life story with a compassionate, caring and competent listener who had a seemingly endless capacity to walk beside me into the scary, shaming, grieving places of my life made healing possible. As we tell our stories in an open, nonjudgmental space, new possibilities emerge, which can translate into a life far different than we had imagined possible. As we tell our stories, we piece together our wholeness, bringing together those parts of ourselves that have been shattered and split off by the external circumstances of our lives, or those