There is a Fountain

There is a Fountain

We used to have a neighbor named Charlie, who was in his 80’s when we moved there, and over time he became like a surrogate grandfather for our children. He was a hardworking Yankee and great person to have next door. One summer he helped me rebuild our front porch. He loved to putter around his house and yard. One of his sayings was, “If the sun’s out, so am I.” One year, around this time, I wondered aloud to him why the yard was so dry. It had been raining now and then, but things seemed parched. “Well, think about it,” Charlie said. “The days are so long right now; the sun is shining down all day, and it dries things out. Especially where there’s no shade.” It was simple, what Charlie said. I just had never noticed it. 

I wonder—how much attention do you give to your soul, to your spiritual life, to your own wellbeing?

Make Good Choices!

Make Good Choices!

I was hustling around yesterday, having fun doing some chores, getting things done, and I thought of this hour, in this place, and Georgia O’Keeffe’s words that are at the top of the order of service came to mind:

“Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven't time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”

I love that when we gather here, we take the time to be here, to see one another, to look inside. We enter sabbath time, a time to just be. And it’s good for us. It’s necessary, I believe, for a good and grounded life. 

The View From Here

The View From Here

You know, we each have our own particular ways of perceiving the world, our own biases and preconceptions. We come by this naturally; for early humans, it was important to sense if that person ahead was friend or foe. Or if that animal coming your way was was one you might want to capture and eat, or one you should run away from! Early religions often functioned as communities of safety and sameness, with clear distinctions between who was in and who was out, and this was a strategy of survival. So we have wired within us this tendency to notice differences and make judgments based on all kinds of factors. 

One of the thing I love about being part of a church community is that my preconceived notions are regularly being upended, or at least adjusted, by getting to know folks, and hear their stories. We are each more complex and nuanced that anyone would guess at first glance. Do you know what I mean? Someone may seem gruff at first, until you get to know them, and learn that under that hard shell they are really a pussycat.

Refuge and Repair

Refuge and Repair

Earlier this week I was in a meeting with a couple of you, and one of you said something that’s stayed with me since: it was something like, “I’m aware of how our church is a refuge for people these days—it certainly is for me—and that’s good, and important, and needed.”

As we wrap up this month of reflecting on “repair,” today I want to talk about this—about refuge as a necessary ingredient for repair. But first I want to say thank you to Taffy and Aiden, for the beautiful and important ways of repair you offered in your sermons, about the healing process of grieving a huge loss and how you can eventually start to fill the empty space that loss brings; and the needed repair that comes from reading the Bible through the lens and perspectives of people who have been harmed by it, notably queer folks who read the Bible as a text of liberation.

Queering the Bible

Queering the Bible

        “Death and life are in the power of the tongue,” says the book of Proverbs. Death and life are in the stories we tell. It saddens me how many of the stories we tell about the Bible are stories of death, when I have come to see it as so full of life.

        Tell me your stories.

        In her book The Queer God, Marcella Althaus-Reid, one of the earliest voices in the field of Queer Theology wrote that “Queer Theology is…a first-person theology: diasporic, self-disclosing, autobiographical and responsible for its own words.”

Needs Repair

Needs Repair

I love that hymn. It’s just beautiful, isn’t it? Hear again the words of the last verse:

For the world we raise our voices, for the home that gives us birth;
in our joy we sing returning home to our bluegreen hills of earth.

Do you hear how it puts together the work of caring for this world with the experience of joy?

There’s a refrain that echoes through the Hebrew prophets, calling the people to return, to remember who they are and whose they are. The prophet Malachi quotes God saying, “Return to me, and I will return to you.” You could translate that as, “Come to your senses, come home to your true nature, and your life will be renewed and richly blessed.” What if we, like the hymn we just sang, combine this idea of return with joy? That paying attention to what matters, giving your hands to that good work, will bring goodness and gladness.

Filling the Voids and Moving Forward After a Loss

Filling the Voids and Moving Forward After a Loss

In October, Frank talked about grief and loss.   If you recall the fall sermons, we discussed many types of losses:  loss of a loved one, marriage, job, to name a few and Bronnie Ware added to this list with natural disasters in the reading.   As we learned, these losses involve grieving, which everyone must go through in their own way and time.  

As I sat listening to the October services, I thought about filling the voids left by loss.   Just to be specific, I am not thinking that we can fill the void in your heart left by the loss of a loved one.  That void will always be there, the best we can do is learn to move forward with the void.  However, losses leave more voids than many think about.

Questions You Might Ask

Questions You Might Ask

One of the things I love about parish ministry is getting to hear the stories of people who are new here, or checking us out, looking for a spiritual home. Over the years, I’ve noticed something that a number of us have in common. You’ve said something like, “When I was young, in parochial school, or in church, the teacher or the minister said to me, ‘Why do you ask so many questions? Can’t you just have faith?’” One of the things we have in common, it seems, is that we have questions. We wonder about things.

The Comfort Paradox

The Comfort Paradox

One day this week, I went out into my back yard, and discovered that there was an invasion underway. The invaders came armed, and they had gained a lot of ground while I wasn’t looking.

You see, last summer I noticed there was a thistle growing in a corner of my yard—one of the big invasive ones that are nearly as tall as I am and are covered, on every inch of leaf and stem, with spikes an inch or two long. Do you know the ones I mean? I know those spikes. They’ll go right through my gloves, even the heavy leather ones for pruning roses. It was going to be a beast to remove, and probably painful, and I wasn’t really suited up for it right then, so I told myself I’d come back out for it in a day or two.

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