Finding the sacred everywhere. Thoughts on religion, art, books, politics, philosophy, and life in general from a Unitarian Universalist minister.
Ah, daily practices are so hard for me! I took this a few days ago as I walked through the city thinking of some of the words for meditation. This image seemed like a metaphor for how suffering often feels: shut out from human connection, cut off from parts of oneself, trapped, fragmented.
Today’s word: fear.
A couple of years ago, I slipped going down these stairs and whacked my back, hard. The spasms and bruises that followed had me in agony for days. I was back to normal within a couple of months, but the memory of that incident whispers in my ear almost every time I go down the stairs.
Is fear always the memory of pain? What do you think?
It was already past 7:00 and well past the time to make dinner, but my daughter and I paused for a minute to watch the patterns cast on the dashboard by a rainy windshield.
How often I suppress my curiosity because there’s “something else to do.” A minute wasn’t long enough for either of us to discover what the rain had to show us.
A day late…
A couple of pages from my art journal, where I joyously dove in to three quick pieces this weekend.
I never realized this truth until I started singing this song.
Today’s word is love. My family and I are at an annual camp weekend for LGBT parents and their children. Love overflows here: people rocking others’ babies and their own, friends reunited, couples getting some time alone while their kids have camp activities, strangers playing word games together and getting up from the table as friends, everyone singing.
And then there are quiet moments of connection within the crowd, like V braiding a Valentine sparkle into her wife N’s hair (shared with their permission).
Today’s word: humility.
“To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed . . .”
K. L. Allendoerfer at A Thousand Finds is also undertaking this practice, in a relaxed way that I will try to emulate. Lovely!
Today’s word: quiet. Just behind me as I took this photo was a road circling Lake Tahoe, and behind that was the bustle of the family camp I’m enjoying this weekend. The trees, snow and moon seemed to exude a quiet that blanketed all of that.
I was just wondering whether I should have a Lenten practice this year, when the UUWorld popped up in my e-mail inbox with an article about #UULent, a photo-a-day practice. Something I know about myself is that 47 straight days of anything is very challenging (Lent practices of privation skip Sundays, but this practice continues through Sundays, with a twist). However, if I only hit 30 out of 47, that will be 30 days of attention to a spiritual matter.
Today’s word is mindfulness, and the internal process that occurred when I saw this outside a restaurant window today exemplified . I saw the light coming through these leaves and two thoughts came into my mind simultaneously:
How beautiful!
It’s a geranium, and I don’t like geraniums.
I have a category in my mind–geraniums–and a judgment about it–I don’t think they’re beautiful. Mindfulness allows perceptions in (“How beautiful!”) that don’t fit in my categories, and even challenge them.
So I am beginning this season with gratitude for this geranium, the sun, and the prompt from creators Mr. Barb Greve, Karen Bellavance-grace, and Alex Kapitan to consider mindfulness with my camera. I also want to express an extra thank you for giving me a gentle way out of a long dry season of blogger’s block.
If you care to join me, I’ll be posting daily on Twitter @AmyZMorgenstern (hashtags #UULent, #UUCPA) and also on Facebook–please connect there, or in the comments, and I’ll look forward to seeing your photos–whether one or 47.
Look at that–I never posted last year’s Christmas Eve homily. Probably because I came home tired that evening, wrapped a few more presents, woke up to a lovely Christmas morning with my wife and daughter, and then traveled with them all over California visiting family, friends, and Joshua Tree National Park.
It was called “Come, Emmanuel” and it stands up quite well to re-reading one year later.
Sermons in Stones 
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