by Barbara J. Pescan, minister, Unitarian Church of Evanston, Illinois
Every day on the way to church I pass a storefront church with a big sign above the entrance in black and red against a yellow background. The sign reads: “Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries.” There are phone and FAX numbers beneath and, off to the side, a graphic of a mountain with fire. The sign gets to me. The idea of a mountainous ministry made of fire and miracles gets to me.
I got to thinking about a ministry of mountain and fire, about all I remember about mountains and fire and ministry. I got to thinking about Theresa of Avila. She founded the Carmelite Sisters and was continually disobeying her spiritual advisors, because she kept meditating and praying and developing practices for the sisters way beyond what was within the lawful purview of an obedient abbess. Theresa, perhaps speaking to those who were praying to be good, or praying to be obedient, or maybe speaking to the priests who were always cautioning her to behave herself, once wrote: Do not trouble God with affairs of no importance. The world is on fire!
In a class in seminary on the Holocaust of World War II, Robert McAfee Brown quoted to us the assertion of Rabbi Irving Greenberg: “No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children.” Meaning, I suppose, something similar to what Theresa was getting at: Let us not trivialize what we are doing here, let us not fool around with theologies that are too small or too narrow or too low. Let us be aware that what we do here may have little observable effect, but it is immensely important that we do what we do with the proper focus and intent, for there are unspeakable things in this world.
Let us have no theologies that are not credible in the presence of burning children. Do not trouble God with affairs of no importance; the world is on fire! Let us not piddle around making itsy bitsy statues and itsy bitsy belief systems and itsy bitsy friends for itsy bitsy years on end when we could be making a holy racket, finding the mountain of fire and miracles and staking our claim to it. Staking claim to it and climbing up it to see what the fire is all about. To see what the fire is all about and bring it down the mountain to light the shadows in the valley and on the plains.
And, lest we think we are in charge of this story, this myth of fire and miracles, lest we think we can control whether or not there is fire, or where the fire burns or how hot or how long, I turn my thoughts to those twin questions that the Quaker author and educator Parker Palmer asks again and again, and that hover over his work and might hover over us: Who are you? Whose are you? These fires and these miracles have been going on for a long time. These questions have been around for a very long time.
After he had been teaching a while, and word of his good stories had gotten around the Galilee, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do they say that I am?” They told him that the people thought he was the Son of God.
I ask you to put yourself at the center of that question: Who do they say that you are? This is not a tombstone, epitaph kind of question—this is a question for your life, now. Who do they say that you are? Pretty good question, huh? Are you a child of God? Take it easy, now; don’t be literal, now, and spoil it for yourself.… Are you, say, a child of integrity and honesty, are you a child of life who makes more good in the world than evil?
And, after you have spent some time with that question—say, about thirty years or so—consider this question: Whose are you? To whom and to what do you belong? Though you could see this as a question of choosing sides, it is not merely a matter of choosing teams, but of acknowledging where and among whom you find yourself as you look upon the arc of events and choices of your life.
For millennia human beings have assembled in family, clan and tribe, gathered to protect the herd and the harvest against animal and human predation so that people could live their days in safety and security. For most of time, people have experienced life as nasty, brutish and short, Darwinian in its rough simplicity, eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. One response to these truths has been to surrender to despair for life on earth, and to long for paradise after leaving earth’s troubles and trials. Another response has been to gather all that can be gathered for me and mine. A third response has been to gather—and then to share some of what has been stored with those who do not have enough. Individual instances of kindness have come down to us as story; amazed, people have seen and remembered these stories, recorded them and passed them on.
These miracle stories of human behavior have come down to us, and out of these stories something else has come to be articulated about the possibilities for human existence. In our governing documents and in our religious expressions, societies around the world have been grasping the thread of ideas that extend back to Isaiah and Jesus and Buddha, to Confucius, and to the images of respect for life and life-giving that come down to us as figures of full-breasted, full-bellied goddesses. Around the world, people have concluded that human life is worth something, that it need not be only nasty, brutish and short, but that life can be beautiful, and life can be good, and our relations in life can be just, and that it is in us to create the means by which these miracles in life can come about.
What mountain are you climbing? Have you seen the fire up there? Have you noticed the miracles? People stand up and march in the Civil Rights movement, subject themselves to dogs and truncheons and water hoses. South African students in Soweto sing and march for freedom. Campesinos throughout Latin America assert that they, too, are children of God. Suffragists march for the vote. Women run against breast cancer, and for the courage of others. Men and women put their livelihood and lives on the line for the right to love whom they love, no matter what color or ethnicity, gay or straight or transgender. The people of Eastern Europe bring down a wall.
Outrageous! Miraculous! Unbelievable! In the words of Parker Palmer, “They have come to understand that no punishment anyone might inflict on them could possibly be worse than the punishment they inflict on themselves by conspiring in their own diminishment.”
It may be that your mountain to climb is the legacy of a difficult childhood, an abusive parent, a pervasive physical challenge or a chronic health concern. You may be walking up the steep path of having participated in your own diminishment for so long, it seems like the only explanation for your life is that you are not worthy of it. And yet, every time you choose to continue on, every time you choose faith in the fire of possibility for yourself and others, you manage to live by the light of that fire on your own mountain of miracles.
You probably have heard the phrase, “the day of miracles is past.” You may, in your more literalist moments, not even believe in miracles. But, I ask you to consider casting your lot with Emerson who, looking at his hand, found miracle enough to wonder at in its form and function. If your hand won’t do, if you’re feeling that your hand today holds more mistakes than miracles, more past errors than future possibilities, ask a child you know to let you hold his or her hand, and look at that hand. Perhaps, even, hand in hand, you will be ready to head up the mountain.
Let your life speak, says Parker Palmer. Listen to your life. I would add, Listen to life. Listen to all of life, to see where passion is and your healing, and where there are miracles, and where there are the answering voices of all of life on fire with life, with the glory of it, and its miracles. You can be tooling along, minding your own business, going about your routines and something will pop up in your peripheral vision that, for some reason, you notice and that opens for you a little window through which, for a moment, you see the world a little differently. You drop your frown and laugh for a moment, or hope.
If you are looking for some stimulating reading, you will want to take a look at the CLF Lending Library’s searchable database online (www.clfuu.org/library). We have added more than 100 books in 2004, and there is something for almost everyone. Here are a few of our new titles.
The Kid’s Book of Awesome Stuff, Charlene Brotman, Brotman-Marshfield Curriculums, Biddeford, ME, 2004. A wonderful book of stories and things to do that engage children in taking care of the earth.
Never Far from Home (Stories From The Radio Pulpit), Carl Scovel, Skinner House, Boston, MA, 2004. The 100 sermons collected in this book were culled from about 950 sermons that Carl Scovel presented on a weekly, five-minute show, broadcast from 1979 to 1999. Scovel keeps his eye on the noble truths of life, the simple wisdom that reaches through layers of paradox toward the heart of the matter.
Historical Dictionary of Unitarian Universalism, Mark W. Harris, The Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland and Oxford, 2004. This historical dictionary shows the beginnings and then the growth of the UU movement, and covers many subjects, both historical and contemporary. It provides a comprehensive understanding of multiple facets of this faith.
Why I Wake Early (New Poems), Mary Oliver, Beacon Press, Boston MA, 2004. Mary Oliver's newest book of poetry invites us to pause and look with her, and to see and feel each new aspect of our world. She writes of “what it means to be human and what is worthwhile about life,” or, more simply, why the poet awakens early.
by Maud Robinson, seminarian, Oxford University, England
“Forget not your power in the days of your powerlessness.” This is a line taken from a benediction regularly used in the Dublin Unitarian Church, where I am a member.
For many of us there are times when our energy is lower than low—times when with every effort of will we cannot reclaim that power with which we are sometimes blessed. For me the exhortation, “Forget not your power in the times of your powerlessness” does not necessarily urge us to jump back into the fray of life and somehow achieve all that we might be capable of achieving. It is a call to, somehow, not forget that our time of power will come again, to have faith that we have our place and our role to play in the universe—though it might not be just now. It is a reminder that if we keep faith in ourselves, and in the higher power of the universe, our path will open out before us again.
At the time when I came to that conclusion, I was in the grip of depression—a condition (in its greater and lesser forms) with which I have done battle for many years. So it makes sense that I then felt quite strongly that a feeling of personal power is far preferable to those times when that power deserts one.
Now, however, I want to turn that idea on its head. I want to consider the proposition, “Forget not your powerlessness in the days of your power.”
Why would you want to dwell on the days of your powerlessness, when you’ve managed to extricate yourself from them and when you are “in your power”?
Surely that’s negative thinking and backsliding. Surely it’s better just to take up the baton of your strength and run with it, build on it, “onward and upward, forever.”
Having spoken passionately, not so long ago, about the importance of striving to “forget not your power,” why do I now suggest that you should “forget not your powerlessness”?
To illustrate, I want to refer to a piece of sculpture, entitled ”Alienation,” created by Vanessa Soodeen, an Irish/Trinidadian artist and a close friend. This piece of work, in clay, textile and wood, depicts three cell-like compartments, completely grey and featureless on the inside. In each compartment is a solitary figure, swathed in the same greyness. Each figure, completely isolated from the other two in their own grim cells, is curled in a fetus-like position of self-protection, with sagging shoulders and head bowed down in dejection. Furthermore the figures are all without arms, indicating—to me—an inability to reach out in action or in love.
A grim and haunting piece of work, which cries out in pain.
How keen so many of us are about protecting our privacy, jealously guarding our individuality and our personal space—I know I am. And is this what we’re building for ourselves? A world where we are each carefully sealed into our own compartment, fearful to reach out in love, in case we will have to compromise our precious personal space and time. Not wanting to be beholden to anybody and therefore rejecting the hand of friendship extended to us.
At an exhibition of Vanessa’s work, the sculpture “Alienation” had a powerful impact on me. When Vanessa offered me a gift of any of the exhibition pieces, this was the one that I wanted.
Vanessa’s immediate reaction was to wonder why I wanted this grim and lonely piece. She told me that, having lived with me through periods of my deepest depression, what she wanted to give to me was a piece full of colour and vitality and joy, one of many such pieces in the exhibition.
However, I was sure that this was the piece that I wanted. It wasn’t out of a masochistic desire to wallow in the misery of my past, but because, for me, it was a powerful evocation of that past. It allowed me to remember and affirm all the more strongly the gratitude and joy of being able to overcome the times of depression and powerlessness. Gratitude that through love—human love and divine love (if these can be separated out)—I have been able to overcome my demons, if only for the moment.
Looking at this sculpture evokes humility, as well. Humility allowed me to acknowledge my lack of strength and gave me the grace to accept all the love and support that I needed to be able to fight my demons. For me, acknowledging how small and fragile I am and how much love I need can be a positive and uplifting thing.
Often, when we feel empowered and capable we stride through life feeling that we can take on the world. It’s a great place to be—no doubt about that—but life is a delicate balance and the rug can easily be pulled from under our feet. Sometimes we need to be reminded of that fragility.
My advice? Take hold of and use well your own power—it’s a unique gift. But, forget not your powerlessness. Be grateful for your gift and exercise humility in dealing with others who may have lost sight of their own power. Remember, in the days of your powerlessness, that none of us survives by our own power alone, but only through the grace of a sustaining universe, which gives us life and breath and the power of love.
by Barbara Merritt, senior minister, First Unitarian Church, Worcester, Massachusetts
I finally found the perfect ice-skating partner. The Merritt family went on a short winter vacation at Mohunk, a Quaker resort in the Catskills that has been in operation since the middle of the 1800s. And while I know that there are many who worship snowmobiles, high-tech skis and the modern innovations and advances in the world of recreation, not all that is new is improved.
For in Mohunk, I discovered the ice-skating chair. It was forged by a local blacksmith at the turn of the century. Essentially, it is a wooden chair with high handlebars on the back, and it has skate runners instead of feet. This opens up a world of possibilities for the novice skater, the small child, and the minister who hasn’t has been on ice skates in over 10 years.
What other partner would allow such hesitancy, such awkwardness? You stand behind the chair, and push it as slowly as you need to. It corrects your balance, provides you a steady source of support, and when you get tired, you move to the front, sit down, put your feet up and enjoy the scenery—at which point a friend can push you, even with a child on your lap.
Thus, ice-skating becomes not only the province of the agile, the strong, and the confident. There were plenty of grandparents, toddlers and out-of-practice types who could suddenly partake in the sport. I hesitate to add that this invention is not perfect. In what I refer to as my “skating accident,” my husband Jeffrey was pushing our son Robbie and me around at enormous speeds, when we came in too suddenly on some rough ice. Robbie and I flew out of the chair and landed in a heap on the ice. (Jeffrey insists that falling out of a chair hardly qualifies as a “skating accident,” but technically Robbie and I both had on our skates and were out on the ice!)
This wonderful Victorian skating chair has set my imagination going. There is a lot in life which requires that we should be agile and/or strong and ready to step out on the ice. Not only in sports, but in all kinds of work and challenges, why shouldn’t there be “chairs” to lean on, “chairs” to practice with, and “chairs” to rest on when we’ve grown weary? In our never-ending pursuit of excellence, it is important to remember there are intermediate stages between failure (or non-participation) and the seemingly effortless grace of the pros.
I’d like to see a computer designed for those of us who can’t type and are intimidated by machines. I can tolerate a 16-hour workday when there’s a nap in the middle. A long car trip can be infinitely more enjoyable when there is sufficient respite.
The Victorian skating chair is an idea that must not be forgotten. In the middle of the most consuming task, we would all do well to find a way to take it easy along the way.
“Watch for a variety of new options on the CLF landscape,” says the Rev. Dr. Lynn Ungar, the CLF’s new cyberminister for lifespan religious education. Lynn is charged with organizing on-line covenant groups, on-line classes, on-line interest groups and Web materials for children, as well as writing the REsources column for Quest.
She’s been working with four committed volunteers to get covenant groups up and running—contact her at lungar@clfuu.org if you’d like to get on the waiting list to participate in one of these small, intentional communities structured for deep sharing.
Go to our website (www.clfuu.org) and click on the Religious Education menu to check out KidTalk, a page specially designed for kids to learn about UUism, find ways to celebrate holidays, ask questions and share their thoughts with other UU kids.
Goodies for adults are also available under Religious Education. Our on-line course, a self-study guide to A Chosen Faith, has been available for the last few months. New in February is The New UU, a four-week course designed to introduce those new to the CLF and Unitarian Universalism to UU history and UUA structure, and to the ins and outs of the CLF itself. This course will be offered three times a year, and will give participants a chance to get to know other new CLFers as well as to gain a deeper understanding of how their own beliefs fit in to our UU congregation. Look in the On-Line Courses section of the Resources menu to sign up for this class.
Courses on viewing the Bible through UU eyes, and a more comprehensive look at UU history are in the works. What else would you like to see? Feel free to e-mail Lynn at lungar@clfuu.org with questions or suggestions.
by Linda Berez, intern minister, Church of the Larger Fellowship
Jack Woods, member of the Central Coast Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, which meets in Newport, Oregon, on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, wants you all to know that they have their ducks in a row—literally. Look closely at the picture below and you will see the four rubber ducks, which are proudly displayed, all in a row, right in front of the pulpit. This congregation of 35 members keeps their flock heading in a forward direction by meeting each Sunday. In the top photo two Central Coast members—program chair, Cynthia Jacobi and Rosalyn Woods—share their joys and concerns during the opening of worship by placing a flower in a vase rather then lighting a candle, which is against building codes.
At one of their recent meetings a guest speaker, Dorothy Blackcrow Mack, a member of the Red Cedar Circle, which is an affiliation of people practicing the Si.Si.Wiss (Sacred Life, Sacred Breath) medicine way, led the congregation in a prayer circle and song. Si.Si.Wiss is an intertribal spiritual practice from the Canadian Pacific to the California coast and includes traditions dating back thousands of years.
Central Coast members don’t duck out of their responsibility to the wider community either. Social action is an important part of their program. Each year they give about a third of their total budget to local charities, including the Lincoln County Food Share program, which receives and buys food at very low costs and distributes it free of charge to those in need in Newport.
The CLF is delighted to be part of this line-up of active UUs through their participation in the Church of Larger Fellowship’s Church on Loan program. They first learned of the Church on Loan when two new members moved to Oregon from another fellowship that used the program. This resource and the Church OnLine program provide small and start-up UU groups such as Central Coast with print and web materials that help with children’s religious education, worship, and study programs for adults. For more information on Church On Loan and Church OnLine, check out our website at www.clfuu.org under Small Groups.
If you would like to represent the Church of the Larger Fellowship at General Assembly this year, it’s not too soon to start planning. The CLF is entitled to have 22 delegates at the General Assembly in Fort Worth, Texas from June 23 to 27, 2005. If you are interested in serving as a delegate, please contact the CLF office to apply. You'll be able to attend workshops, concerts, programs, and worship services galore, while meeting Unitarian Universalists from near and far. And, of course, as a delegate you will be able to vote during plenary sessions.
Our delegates are asked to attend the CLF Annual Meeting and the CLF Worship Service and to work a minimum of three hours in the CLF booth. We also ask that you write a short report of your experience at General Assembly. You can meet our minister, the Rev. Jane Rzepka, and the CLF staff, too.
If you’d like to participate in GA 2005 by representing the CLF as a delegate, your costs, in addition to your travel, include adult full-time registration ($260 per adult before May 1st), hotel rooms at about $130 a night (this figure may increase), and meals. Call the CLF at 617-958-6166 and speak to Lorraine or e-mail us at clf@clfuu.org before March 31 to indicate your interest. Visit the UUA's GA Web site at www.uua.org/ga for details.
CLF members are invited to submit nominations for the Unsung UU Award. The Unsung UU Award honors a person judged to have given high levels of service to UUism, while receiving relatively low levels of recognition. If you know someone in our congregation who has given to Unitarian Universalism at this level, email the office at clf@clfuu.org or mail to CLF, 25 Beacon Street, Boston MA 02108 for the board’s consideration.
by Jane Rzepka, minister, Church of the Larger Fellowship
“The Frost performs its secret ministry,” writes Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
It’s 1797 in the hilly southwest of England, near the coast—Devonshire. Coleridge is sitting in his house by the fire on a winter night at midnight. His first baby—Hartley is his name—baby Hartley is asleep right there. Maybe Coleridge is up late because of the baby—who knows. Coleridge’s wife, Sara, is probably asleep, which is something of a blessing, as we’re told she was a bit of a nag in the eyes of her philosopher-poet husband.
“The Frost performs its secret ministry,/ Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry/ Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before./ The inmates of my cottage, all at rest/ Have left me to that solitude, which suits/ Abstruser musings: save that at my side/ My cradled infant slumbers peacefully./ ’Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs/ And vexes meditation with its strange/ And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,/ This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,/ With all the numberless goings-on of life,/ Inaudible as dreams!” [from “Frost at Midnight”]
“The Frost performs its secret ministry,/ Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry/ Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before./ The inmates of my cottage, all at rest/ Have left me to that solitude, which suits/ Abstruser musings: save that at my side/ My cradled infant slumbers peacefully./ ’Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs/ And vexes meditation with its strange/ And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,/ This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,/ With all the numberless goings-on of life,/ Inaudible as dreams!”
[from “Frost at Midnight”]
So Coleridge (I call him Coleridge because he hated the name Samuel) is startled by the calm. He is taken with the “extreme silentness.” Daily life has become as “inaudible as dreams.” He is at peace.
For some of you, this scene is your idea of heaven. You recognize this feeling of deep peace as a dream come true. You know the quiet to be spiritually satisfying. To be silent. To feel the solitude. To know the stillness of winter. Peace.
Of course, as many of you think Coleridege and anyone like him is nuts. Who cares if it’s 1797—you want the TV on for a little background noise. You wonder if any of the neighbors are still awake—maybe they feel like playing cards. Or the baby’s cradle needs fixing, that’s right, and it’s never too late to get a start on the laundry. This “solitude” routine sounds lonely and boring. “Silence” means nothing’s happening! “Solitude” means nobody’s come by to visit. “Stillness” means nothing’s getting done.
Occasionally, I write a sermon that highlights the solitary life of the spirit, and CLFers write in to ask when I’ll write a sermon about “our religion.” Just as often, in response to a sermon about the importance of community or social justice, Quest readers will ask the same question: “When will you be writing about our religion?”
Of course for us Unitarian Universalists, it’s all religion. As individuals we may emphasize different aspects—some of us are looking for spiritual peace; some of us crave the comfort and excitement of religious community (on-line or in person) and purposeful action—but it’s all religion.
Whether we’re the people looking for deep silence or committed action and community, we have equal access to the internal stillness that can serve each one of us well. Ira Progoff, in The Well and the Cathedral, suggests a metaphor. We can imagine spirituality, he says, as a single straight shaft which plunges like a well far into the earth. And there, deep within, each of us can find an underground stream that nourishes, awakens, and renews us. This stream is a power that moves along beneath the entire world. He goes on to say that all kinds of people representing all of the religions of the world tap this same underground stream; religions are simply cathedrals built over these wells, places that mark the spots where people have encountered the underground stream and returned inspired.
When we experience the awe of the winter seacoast, the birth of a child, the compassion of a friend, or a connection with the universe, we are drawing on this underground stream. When we ask ultimate questions we are drawing on this underground stream. When we mourn or when we celebrate our good fortune we are drawing on this underground stream.
This sense of peace, this stream of religious nurture, is available to each of us in a form appropriate to our personalities and theologies and stages in life. Perhaps you are up early, you bundle up, and take a February walk in the woods. Maybe you putter in your workshop on a balmy Saturday and find your renewal there. Or you put some music on and take a long, hot bath. Or you are a parent of young children, and you wait for that instant between the time the children go to sleep and the time you fall into bed, when you can find five minutes to read the paper, and you feel the better for it. Perhaps you live alone and on these dark evenings you light a candle, taking the time to remember people you’ve loved who have long since died. Maybe you are Coleridge, by the fire, late on a very cold night, feeling the “frost performing its secret ministry.”
The winter stillness, the underground stream, the calm soul of all things, is always out there and available, “inaudible as dreams.”
by Lynn Ungar, cyberminister for lifespan religious education, Church of the Larger Fellowship
(In an effort to bring kids more fully into our religious life, this column is designed to be child-friendly. Older kids may want to read it themselves, or families with younger children might want to read it out loud together.)
Happy Groundhog Day!
Groundhog Day is one of my favorite holidays, if only because it seems so strange and silly. What an odd idea, that on February 2nd a groundhog pokes its head up from its burrow, and if the weather is sunny it gets scared by its shadow and digs back down again. And stranger still, the behavior of this groundhog (which one?) is supposed to tell us whether spring is on its way or not. Where I live, in California, spring is always on its way in February, but when I lived in Chicago you could count on February and March being cold—no matter what the groundhog might have to say.
Groundhog Day seems funny and a bit weird, but it actually goes back to an ancient British celebration of the halfway point between the start of winter and the start of spring. Groundhog Day, or, by its ancient names, Brigid’s Day or Imbolc, marks the point when people in northern countries can hope to see the seasons start making the tiniest changes toward spring.
If you live in a place where it’s cold in February, you might want to celebrate Groundhog Day by going on what I call “Sprout Patrol.” Sprout Patrol is when you walk around your neighborhood looking for signs of spring. You might have to look carefully—remember, we are celebrating the halfway point between spring and winter, not full blossoming. But if you look closely enough, you might find that daffodils or crocuses are starting to poke up their first green nubs. You might find that bushes and trees, even though they don’t have leaves yet, are starting to change color on the twigs, or developing tiny little buds. You might listen to hear whether any birds have come back from their winter vacations. You might smell the air, and notice a scent of dampness rather than snow, or a smell of earth.
If you want, you could even start a journal, keeping notes on when these tiny changes start to happen. Did you know that Henry David Thoreau, an important writer with close ties to Unitarians, used to do just that? He lived for a while in a tiny cabin in the woods, and the major job he assigned himself, besides thinking and writing, was keeping very careful track of how all the plants in the woods around him grew. (To find out more about Henry David Thoreau, you can look online at www.philosophyslam.org/thoreau.html)
Of course, if, like me, you live someplace where it really isn’t cold on Groundhog Day, you might need to find another way to celebrate. Since Groundhog is supposed to be spooked by the sight of its own shadow, Groundhog Day is a good time to think about the things that we find scary. Are you maybe scared of the dark, or spiders, or big dogs or thunder? What do you do when you get scared? Do you hide, like Groundhog, for weeks at a time, or do you come out of your hole and try to find a way to face what you’re scared of?
Sometimes being a little scared is fun, like telling spooky stories around a campfire. Sometimes being a little scared is useful, like when it makes you be careful about crossing the street or talking with grown-ups you don’t know. But sometimes, unlike Groundhog, you need to find ways to deal with things that scare you.
One thing that can help is having special words to say. There was an ancient Irish custom on Brigid’s Day to say this charm:
Early on Bride’s morn Shall the serpent come from the hole, I will not harm the serpent, Nor will the serpent harm me.
That might be useful if you’re scared of snakes! If bedtime is a time that makes you nervous, you might want to try this bedtime prayer:
Darkness around me, soft and deep, Hold me gently while I sleep. Guard the bed on which I lay And guide me, rested, to the day.
Do you have your own charms or prayers or poems that help when you’re scared? Send them to me at lungar@clfuu.org, and I can put them up on the website for everyone to see.
Of course, you might also want to celebrate Groundhog Day by being the scary thing yourself. I think, for this special occasion, it would be appropriate to hide behind a piece of furniture and pop out, like Groundhog from his hole, when no one is expecting you. After all, a little silliness on Groundhog Day seems only right. If you want to find some more fun stuff to do for Groundhog Day, you could look on-line at www.kidsdomain.com/holiday/groundhog.html.
But however goofy you may get with Groundhog Day, remember that you are participating in an ancient festival that ties you to the cycle of the seasons, just as it has for people through thousands of years. Our UU Principles and Purposes statement reminds us that one of the sources of our living tradition is: “Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.” Whatever the weather that February may bring to your part of the world, Groundhog can remind you to poke up from your bed and really notice the seasons and how they change. After all, noticing the world around us is the first part of caring, and caring for our natural world, the “interdependent web of life,” is an important job for us all.
This making of a whole self takes such a very long time: pieces are not sequential nor our supplies. We work here, then there, hold up tattered fabric to the light. Sew past dark, intent. Use all our thread. Sleeves may come before length, buttons, before a rounded neck. We sew at what most needs us, and as it asks, sew again. The self is not one thing, once made, unaltered. Not midnight task alone, not after other work. It’s everything we come upon, make ours: all this fitting of what-once-was and has-become.
This making of a whole self takes such a very long time: pieces are not sequential nor our supplies. We work here, then there, hold up tattered fabric to the light. Sew past dark, intent. Use all our thread.
Sleeves may come before length, buttons, before a rounded neck. We sew at what most needs us, and as it asks, sew again.
The self is not one thing, once made, unaltered. Not midnight task alone, not after other work. It’s everything we come upon, make ours: all this fitting of what-once-was and has-become.
by Nancy Shaffer, from Instructions in Joy, a 2002 UUA Meditation Manual, available in the CLF library (617-948-6150 or www.clfuu.org, under the Resources menu) and at the UUA Bookstore (800-215-9076 or www.uua.org/bookstore).
...that there is a new page just for children on the CLF website? Check out KidTalk at www.clfuu.org/kidtalk (or look in the RE menu at www.clfuu.org), and bring a kid!
CLF Home Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF), 25 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108-2823 Phone: (617) 948-6166 · Fax: (617) 523-4123 · E-mail:
Last updated June 12, 2005
