I'm currently working on a project that addresses issues in online ministerial identity. One section of the paper discusses the Twitterverse - which led to the following question: what would a 140 character UU elevator speech look like?
I warmly welcome your thoughts and responses - please, be as creative as you like!
Monday, November 30, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Thanksgiving Blessing
Today's shabad reads: "The beautiful fragrance of sandalwood emanates from the sandalwood tree, and attaches to the other trees of the forest" (SGGS 1351). As we gather with friends and loved ones to share in a Thanksgiving meal, may we humble ourselves in gratitude for the bread of life; may we heal wounds and bridge chasms; may we emanate the beautiful fragrance of tenderness, inspiriting the forest with soft wisps of care.
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Wednesday, November 18, 2009
The Unshaken Cave
Today's shabad asks: Where is that cave, within which one may remain unshaken? (SGGS 943)
We might be tempted to answer material wealth, but markets crash and homes foreclose.
We might be tempted to answer occupation, but bosses fire and firms let off.
We might be tempted to answer love, but partners pass and families meddle.
We might be tempted to answer death, but memory resurrects and love sustains.
Where is that cave, within which one may remain unshaken?
When we open to the world and lean into God's grace,
Life shakes with pain and passion
But we remain unshaken.
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We might be tempted to answer material wealth, but markets crash and homes foreclose.
We might be tempted to answer occupation, but bosses fire and firms let off.
We might be tempted to answer love, but partners pass and families meddle.
We might be tempted to answer death, but memory resurrects and love sustains.
Where is that cave, within which one may remain unshaken?
When we open to the world and lean into God's grace,
Life shakes with pain and passion
But we remain unshaken.
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Autumnal Blessing
God of sinking light -
God of growing night -
Ripe with budding hopes, we pause for spitting snows.
Sleeping into shadows, we hallow fading glows.
"Nothing gold can stay" ablaze,
The tumbling leaves depart;
Yet may this holy harvest warm
Our body, mind and heart.
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God of growing night -
Ripe with budding hopes, we pause for spitting snows.
Sleeping into shadows, we hallow fading glows.
"Nothing gold can stay" ablaze,
The tumbling leaves depart;
Yet may this holy harvest warm
Our body, mind and heart.
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Tuesday, November 3, 2009
The Soil of Human Flourishing
In an 1814 collection of sermons, Rev. James Freeman, former minister of King's Chapel, contends that the best form of prosperity is being rich in good works. He considers human life “a soil, where every kind of seed will vegetate” if you water and nurture it. You plant your own garden. You plant your own life. But just as your plot of land draws its nutrients from sources beyond itself, so too the fertility of your soil directly impacts the plants around you. You affect, and are affected by, the ecosystem of which you are a part.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, Freeman observed how “the air [was] filled with the seeds of vice.” He therefore exhorted his parishioners to “Pluck up…the weeds of evil, as soon as they appear.” Two hundred years later, Freeman’s advice remains frightfully relevant. We, too, must pluck up the weeds of excess and irresponsibility. Instead of living way beyond our means, we should adopt the practice of self-emptying. We should release ourselves from gratuitous desire. We should lose a life of surfeit in order to gain a life of sustainability.
Our garden depends on it. The soil of the world, literally, depends on it.
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At the turn of the nineteenth century, Freeman observed how “the air [was] filled with the seeds of vice.” He therefore exhorted his parishioners to “Pluck up…the weeds of evil, as soon as they appear.” Two hundred years later, Freeman’s advice remains frightfully relevant. We, too, must pluck up the weeds of excess and irresponsibility. Instead of living way beyond our means, we should adopt the practice of self-emptying. We should release ourselves from gratuitous desire. We should lose a life of surfeit in order to gain a life of sustainability.
Our garden depends on it. The soil of the world, literally, depends on it.
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Freedom and Grace
Actions should reflect sincere intention, ethical behavior should issue forth from interior conviction, our hands should do the work of the soul. In his 1831 tract Formation of the Christian Character, Henry Ware Jr. articulates this mantra in the following way: "It is not the external conduct, not the observance of the moral law alone, which constitutes a religious man: but the principles from which he acts, the motives by which he is governed, the state of his heart.”
Today's shabad appears to share this orientation:
For Ware, the human subject possesses the agency to enact this transformation: "Remember always, that you are capable of being more devout, more charitable, more humble, more devoted and earnest in doing good, better acquainted with religious truth." The burden falls on the individual to ascend to higher moral ground. Similarly, the Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji exhorts disciples to position their "feet on the right path."
Importantly, however, neither text falls prey to a belligerent super-human idealism. We always need God. Ware insists: "these two things, then, may be regarded as axioms of the religious life; first, that a man's own labors are essential to his salvation; second, that his utmost virtue does nothing toward purchasing or meriting salvation." This poignant dialectic of deterministic freedom echoes in Guru Nanak's assertion: "Without the Name of the Lord, everything is false." We always need grace. We always need one another.
We are caught, it seems, in a web of freedom and constraint.
In Jean Paul Sartre's novel La Nausée, protagonist Antoine Roquentin suddenly comes to realize the existential inertia of life: "This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in disorder…in a frightful, obscene nakedness." And yet, while casually listening to the syncopating sounds of Sophie Tucker's jazz, Antoine comes to realize that we stake our humanity on small acts of creative transcendence - I would add: small acts of love, faith and, above all, grace.
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Today's shabad appears to share this orientation:
ਅੰਤਰੁ ਮੈਲਾ ਬਾਹਰੁ ਨਿਤ ਧੋਵੈ ॥ ਸਾਚੀ ਦਰਗਹਿ ਅਪਨੀ ਪਤਿ ਖੋਵੈ ॥
If a person is polluted within, he may wash himself everyday on the outside, but in the Court of the True Lord, he forfeits his honor.
[SGGS 1151]
For Ware, the human subject possesses the agency to enact this transformation: "Remember always, that you are capable of being more devout, more charitable, more humble, more devoted and earnest in doing good, better acquainted with religious truth." The burden falls on the individual to ascend to higher moral ground. Similarly, the Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji exhorts disciples to position their "feet on the right path."
Importantly, however, neither text falls prey to a belligerent super-human idealism. We always need God. Ware insists: "these two things, then, may be regarded as axioms of the religious life; first, that a man's own labors are essential to his salvation; second, that his utmost virtue does nothing toward purchasing or meriting salvation." This poignant dialectic of deterministic freedom echoes in Guru Nanak's assertion: "Without the Name of the Lord, everything is false." We always need grace. We always need one another.
We are caught, it seems, in a web of freedom and constraint.
In Jean Paul Sartre's novel La Nausée, protagonist Antoine Roquentin suddenly comes to realize the existential inertia of life: "This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in disorder…in a frightful, obscene nakedness." And yet, while casually listening to the syncopating sounds of Sophie Tucker's jazz, Antoine comes to realize that we stake our humanity on small acts of creative transcendence - I would add: small acts of love, faith and, above all, grace.
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Sunday, October 25, 2009
Clemens Taesler: Between the Gates of Eternity
Translation of Clemens Taesler's poem Zwischen den Toren der Ewigkeit, as found in his 1925 collection 'Free Spirit and Belief':
Between the Gates of Eternity
Through a dark-puzzle gate
we once entered earthly life,
Through a dark-puzzle gate,
we must all eventually depart;
We wander under the light of the sun
Through floods of pain and halls of bliss:
Only a brief span of time -
Between the gates of eternity.
Only a brief span of time
Are we granted for creating and developing
the nascent human-project,
the freedom of one's soul.
In untiring ascension
is the meaning of life unlocked:
Are we also fixed in time-
In us flows eternity.
Eternal darkness prior to birth
cannot awake anguish in us,
Eternal darkness after death
will not frighten us with terror.
From that path on which we once came,
There the journey will continue:
Out of eternity into time-
Out of time into eternity.
Translation mine.
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Between the Gates of Eternity
Through a dark-puzzle gate
we once entered earthly life,
Through a dark-puzzle gate,
we must all eventually depart;
We wander under the light of the sun
Through floods of pain and halls of bliss:
Only a brief span of time -
Between the gates of eternity.
Only a brief span of time
Are we granted for creating and developing
the nascent human-project,
the freedom of one's soul.
In untiring ascension
is the meaning of life unlocked:
Are we also fixed in time-
In us flows eternity.
Eternal darkness prior to birth
cannot awake anguish in us,
Eternal darkness after death
will not frighten us with terror.
From that path on which we once came,
There the journey will continue:
Out of eternity into time-
Out of time into eternity.
Translation mine.
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