Can We Trust That?

Posted on March 21, 2025 by Bob Patrick

Trusting ourselves might just be core to all other kinds of trust. But, there is problem. We learn to trust ourselves in relationships, and those don’t always go so well, especially while we are growing up. 

From almost every direction in life, we receive messages about our trustworthiness. They come from many sources.

Childhood peer messages: you’re stupid? You’re an idiot! Why would you do that?

Parental/Adult messages: what were you thinking? Why would you think/do that? I don’t care what you think. While you live under my roof, I’ll tell you what to do and think!

School messages: does not meet expectations; does not play well with others; you don’t have the skills we need on the (athletic team, drama cast, chorus, band, debate team); I am sorry to inform you that you have not been accepted into XYZ University.

Religious messages: human beings are inherently evil; you are a sinner; God cannot look at you. God hates sin. If you do not XYZ you will burn in hell forever. 

Job interviews: You have not been selected for the recent position in our company. Other candidates with a better array of skills have been chosen. 

I dare say that most of us arrive in our adult years with these and other kinds of messages playing in our hearts and minds about our trustworthiness. We don’t trust ourselves, and we have plenty of “evidence” to convince ourselves that any ideas, dreams and visions we might have for our lives and relationships are too suspect to trust. Is there any way forward into the practice of self-trust?

It requires some courage, but I think we can begin to generate our own personal messages. When we sit still and breathe with intention, can we affirm that we are sitting, that we are still, that we are breathing, that we are in the present moment, and trust that? Can we identify how we feel in our own bodies and trust that? Can we ask ourselves what it is that we need to do in the next hour, or day and trust that those are the things we will do? When we have finished one or more of those tasks, can we pause and affirm that we have done those tasks and that we did them well?

We can begin, with intention, to affirm that we do know, understand, feel, discern, act and accomplish all kinds of things with purpose, and that we do those things well, or when we do not, that we learn well from the things we have done poorly. We can begin to build withinourselves a personal trustworthiness that no one else’s message can overcome. We are who we are, and that is enough. We can trust that.

~Bob Patrick

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Mending An Ancestral Blessing

Posted on March 20, 2025 by admin

Something I do around this time of year for some reason is revitalize research on my Magyar (Hungarian) ancestry. I find myself searching for fragments of pre-Christian Magyar beliefs, culture, and everyday life. Along the journey this year, I came across a beautiful Magyar house prayer called the Házi Áldás:

“Hol hit, ott szeretet. Hol szeretet, ott béke. Hol béke, ott áldás. Hol áldás, ott Isten. Hol Isten, ott szükség nincsen.”

In English, it translates to: “Where there is faith, there is love. Where there is love, there is peace. Where there is peace, there is blessing. Where there is blessing, there is God. Where God is, there is no need.”

This blessing is also in the Blue hymnal number 1043 Szekely Aldas.

The sentiment is lovely, but I have trust issues with the words Faith and God. To me, those words often feel limiting, weighted by histories of control rather than liberation. So, I felt the need to reframe this blessing to better reflect my own beliefs and weave in my love for my ancestry.

From my previous studies, I knew that the Magyar were nomads with a rich tapestry of influences—from Norse to Islamic cultures. Their spiritual practices were individualistic, rooted in personal belief rather than rigid doctrine. When Christianity became the official religion of Hungary, most Magyars didn’t resist. Instead, they simply added this new God to their existing pantheon, it was the same for the Celt/Irish. For those who were already monotheistic, it was an easy transition.

Interestingly, the Magyar word for God, Isten (pronounced “eesh-ten”), can also be understood more broadly as the Divine. With this reframing, I can honor my family’s traditions without having to give up my own beliefs.

Through meditation restructured the Házi Áldás to align with words I trust, words that hold meaning within the context of my own spiritual path:

“Hol bizalom, ott szeretet. Hol szeretet, ott béke. Hol béke, ott áldás. Hol áldás, ott Isten. Hol Isten, ott egyensúly.”

“Where there is trust, there is love. Where there is love, there is peace. Where there is peace, there is blessing. Where there is blessing, there is the Divine. Where there is the Divine, there is balance.”

This mending of the prayer feels authentic to me. It weaves together the values of my ancestors and my own journey—a balancing of old and new, of honoring tradition while embracing my personal truth.

~Candice Carver

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The (My) Living Years

Posted on March 19, 2025 by admin

Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It’s too late when we die
To admit we don’t see eye to eye.

From “The Living Years”, sung by Mike and the Mechanics


This chorus from the song “The Living Years” is an integral part of an incredibly potent song about living with regret from broken trust between parents and their children. It is so painful that this is my second attempt at writing a reflection about it. My father and I cannot see eye to eye on the current events of our times or how we understand and value life in our world. The spiritual journey I have been on since I first tried to write a reflection has taught me several things: First of all, my father’s stance on life and living is not in my control, nor is the pain between us my fault. Second, it is not my duty to repair everything between us. Relationship, including between parents and adult children, is a two-way street.


The past week has taught me that I should not expect myself to pick up all the pieces of
the shattered trust between my father and me, because I was not the one to throw the
stone into the mirror in the first place. However, it is my responsibility to heal the image I
see in that mirror, for myself alone. I have worried for far too long how I am going to
make things right between my father and me, fearing the sting of regret. But if he is not
willing, it’s something I have to let go of. Even when he passes away, I still have my life
to live, and to answer to myself and my sense of the Divine for how I live that life. In the
end, that’s all that matters.

~Jen Garrison

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The Trust We Overlook

Posted on March 18, 2025 by admin

Trust is a quiet thread, woven into the fabric of everyday life. We rarely see it, yet we move
through the world wrapped in its presence.

We trust that money holds value. That bridges hold weight. That the strangers beside us will
stop when the light turns red. These silent agreements keep life moving, unnoticed but essential.

Beyond our daily routines, trust scales up to entire systems. It is not just about transactions or
traffic laws but about the foundations of governance, security, and shared belief in a greater
good. Soldiers risk their lives for a nation, a cause, or democracy itself. Citizens trust that
elected officials and civil servants are doing their jobs. We expect laws to be enforced and the
systems meant to protect us to actually function.

Trust takes years to build but can collapse in an instant. A financial crisis, a corruption scandal, or a failure in public safety can shake belief in systems we once took for granted. When trust is broken, doubt spreads. What once seemed unshakable suddenly feels uncertain.

Yet trust is also resilient. Even after failures, people still drive across bridges, still cast votes, and still show up. We rebuild trust not through words but through actions. It comes back through consistency, fairness, and proof that faith in the system is still warranted.

Every day, we bet on one another. We trust the systems that hold things together, whether we
think about it or not.

~Ryan Peterson

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Not A Solitary Effort

Posted on March 17, 2025 by Bob Patrick

The practice of trust is inherently and always a relational practice. Try it out. Try to think of any situation in which we exercise trust without another being involved. 

I trust the ladder to support me when I climb it.  Ah, yes, but that automatically implicates trust for the human beings who created that ladder–even the human beings who created the automated machinery that created the ladder. 

The practice of trust is inherently and always a relational practice. 

I trust myself, and that requires no one else. It would seem so, but who is it that is trusting yourself? A little help from C.G. Jung and other psycho-spiritual practitioners would suggest that there are various parts of ourselves always at play, and that even when we know that we trust ourselves, it is some part of us trusting other parts of us. 

The practice of trust is inherently and always a relational practice. 

I describe myself as an introvert.  That is, I recharge and gain energy for the rest of my life by spending time alone, in quiet, engaging creative activities.  I’ve learned to trust that kind of activity within myself–some part of me trusting other parts of me. I also know that the greatest workshop for practicing trust is in community. I think that’s one of the things I love most about teaching. It’s one of the things I love about doing Spiritual Direction work with individuals. It’s what I love so much about our UUCG community, and it’s what I love about Sylvan Sanctuary. It’s even what I love about going to workout at my local gym. I know that when I show up in these places, another human being–or several–will be there on whom I can rely, in whom I place trust, to whom I can give myself, from whom I receive so much. 

The practice of trust is inherently and always a relational practice. This is the cause both for our deep pain at this time in our nation’s life, and the cause, I suggest, for great anticipation. Trust is relational. What threatens trust threatens all of who we are, and we suffer over that. What promises and promotes trust enlivens every cell in our bodies. We have each other, held in love and engaged in trust. When we know that, our practice may have a power that we have not yet imagined.

~Bob Patrick

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Trusting the Journey

Posted on March 14, 2025 by Bob Patrick

By the time that this has been posted, our son and daughter-in-law will have taken their newborn daughter, their two dogs and their essential living items into their car and struck out for California. They moved in with us almost ten months ago in a transition period that meant selling two houses in two different states, carrying on work from home jobs, accepting a new position and finding a new place to live–on the other side of the country. 

The last few weeks have been full of making preparations for the move, and much of it was not easy or enjoyable stuff. Flying across the country to find a house in a totally new and “strange” land; moving all of one’s household that has been in storage for nearly a year into moving pods, deciding what must be moved in pods and what must be in the car, finding routes to take on such a difficult journey with baby and dogs in the car, knowing that some parts of our country are hostile toward a couple of mixed ethnicities and how to navigate safer places . . . it often has felt overwhelming to me, and I’m not even the one going anywhere. I’m watching our dear ones prepare for and make this journey.

And yet. I am going somewhere. And you are, too. We are all on a life journey that is taking us places whether that includes a cross country move or taking on the next challenge that life hands to us. Life does keep handing us challenges, and they require something of us.  Thought. Reflection. Decisions. Money. Feelings–so many feelings. Risk. Hope. Fear. Hesitation. Courage. 

And trust. We don’t move anywhere in life’s journey without some trust. There have been many points in their move to California that lead up to the moment when they pull away from the curb for the last time. All that was left was  to trust into  the journey itself. All the preparations have been made. What’s left is the doing, the driving, the work of the journey. 

And so it is for each of us. Our lives have been preparing us for this moment however that looks for us. What’s left is an act of trust, the next step. We let go of the “what ifs” and we move that foot forward and rest it on a new plot of ground where we have not been before.  Until now. Which makes a huge point. Trust is always about what we choose to do now. Never in the past. Never in the future. What we choose to do now. 

~Bob Patrick

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Trust In Each Other

Posted on March 13, 2025 by admin

Everything we do is built on trust. We have a complex system of people we have to trust to obtain the things we need to live. We work a certain amount of time, trusting that we will receive currency in exchange. We take that currency to a store, trusting that they will exchange food for the currency. We trust that the people who grew and processed that food did so safely and we trust that what the package says is in the food, actually is. 

We trust that fellow drivers will stop at red lights, we trust that our rent payment will allow us to stay in our home for another month, we trust that tap water is safe to consume, we trust the police will protect us, we trust that injustice will be punished.

But what happens when the water is contaminated, the police are corrupt, and injustice is celebrated?

How can we know who we can trust?

We feed each other during potlucks.

When we meet someone new, we connect through something we share, an identity, fandom, even the weather around us.

We might be more willing to accept help from a friend’s friend than a stranger.

When we want to hire a plumber, we ask friends for a recommendation. 

How else can community help us trust each other?

~Aline Harris

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