Mystery and Multiplicity

Mystery and Multiplicity

I love that hymn, and isn’t this a good week to sing it, on this Sunday before Thanksgiving?:

For all this is our life, we sing our thanks and praise,
For all life is a gift, which we are called to use
To build the common good, and make our own days glad.

These days I’m struck by what a generous world we live in; how, whatever I am feeling, whether I’m happy or sad, the sun rises every morning. The sky is still there, overhead, keeping watch, as are the stars. The earth is still here, under our feet. As are the trees, and the birds, and these human companions…

A Generous Spirit

A Generous Spirit

The other day I was part of a conversation about the state of our world. Not the news, not national or international events, but what folks are experiencing these days, in their lives. In their families, in their workplaces, with neighbors and friends. There was a sense among us that these days more people are stressed, or anxious, or worried. That it seems harder, these days, to give others the benefit of the doubt, to trust in the goodness of people and our world.

The Majesty and Vulnerability of Human Love

The Majesty and Vulnerability of Human Love

I’m going to begin with a reading, from a little book called The Road to Donaguile by Herbert O’Driscoll, an Anglican priest in Canada who grew up in Ireland. In this passage, he describes his grandmother’s declining health, which began when she lost the ability to walk at forty, and lasted until she died thirty years later. This is Herbert O’Driscoll, remembering his grandparents, from those years:

“During that time she and my grandfather continued their quiet love affair, rich with three daughters, two sons, and the memory of a child, my namesake, who would because of early death remain forever five years old.

The Things We Pass On

The Things We Pass On

I knew since I was a kid that I was going to inherit my grandmother’s china. It was a common refrain around her house that one day, she would pass it down to me. My grandmother, Rose, was the daughter of poor Italian immigrant farmers. Later in her life, she would marry a successful business man who for some time was able to give her a comfortable life. However, several years into their marriage, and after my father was born, he would sadly lose his entire livelihood and she would struggle once again.

The china, to my grandmother, represented the period in her life when she felt taken care of – it represented the possibility of success in a life of hardship, of safety and security. And in her gifting it me, she was passing that security and possibility down to me.

Does It Get Better?

Does It Get Better?

When our children were in elementary school, they had this teacher who would occasionally get exasperated with her class, as all teachers must, at times. And when she was at the end of her rope, she’d say to them, “This class is going down the tubes!”

Do you ever feel like that? Like throwing up your hands, throwing in the towel, because it seems like everything is going to hell and what’s the use of even trying? I expect most of us experience that from time to time—frustration and anguish at the state of a relationship, or the state of our nation, or our world.

Soul Friends

Soul Friends

Almost thirty years ago, I was sitting in church on a Sunday when I heard those words that were our reading today. That morning, a man named Cecil read those words by Theodore Roszak, and they cut straight to my heart:

You and I, we meet as strangers,
Each carrying a mystery within us.
I may never know who you are,
I may never know you completely.
But I trust that you are a person in your own right
possessed of a beauty and a value that are the earth's richest treasures…

WELCOMing. Caring. Faith. Community.

Universalist Unitarian Church of Haverhill
15 Kenoza Avenue, Haverhill, MA • 978-372-5173 • office@uuhaverhill.org
Mailing & office address: 16 Ashland Street, Haverhill, MA 01830