Kintsugi

Posted on November 6, 2024 by admin

I’ve been reflecting on the concept of Kintsugi recently, and I’ve been meditating on viewing my scars as something valuable and beautiful. 

Each invisible wound I endured from a young age has always haunted me. My classmates would tease me about my weight, call me the ugly girl with dirty dishwater hair, or give me humiliating nick names like Mrs. Piggy, fatty and telling others to have pity on me because I was poor or didn’t have a father. These insults left cracks deep in my soul. My ego built defenses with anger, and with each year of torment my scars only grew deeper. 

Abuse from family members did not help, either. My stepfather kept up the insults calling me a fat pig and forcing me to eat as much as I could and engaged in making pig noises as I ate. I tried to have fun in this abuse but the reality of it was that I learned how to mask the pain with humor and joy. The scars then grew and my ego turned food into an escape from the pain. 

As I grew older, I worked diligently on these scars, the abandonment from my father and then the mental and emotional abuse when I found him and went to live with him. The feelings of neglect from my mother, the destruction of being pitied instead of being shown compassion. It has taken and will take many years to address all the scars on my heart.

Slowly, I have begun to transform these invisible scars—letting go of the rusted red and bleeding pain and repairing them with a golden dust of compassion. I am embracing each wound as a symbol of my strength and resilience, rather than shame and humiliation. Each scar is a part of my story and proof of my survival. Much like the art of Kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with gold, my scars are no longer painful marks I hide; they are now golden cracks of healing. 

~Candice Carver

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Crushing It

Posted on November 5, 2024 by admin

On October 29, 2024 I found myself inside of the Ellipse listening to Kamala Harris give her campaign speech in Washington, D.C. 

I was there to visit Hannah and Blake whose new jobs required them to live in the area.

When Hannah realized that the Vice President was not only going to be in town but was going to speak outside she was like, “Mom, we should try to go.” We registered online.

That afternoon we waited almost 3 hours in a line that wound up going nowhere and soon found ourselves being  herded towards the opening somewhere ahead of us. 

Actually,  ALL of the lines were dissolving into crowds trying to get in at the last minute.

We were quickly swarmed into a small area where we were being crushed up against the fence. The officers on the other side were closing the gate. No one else was coming in until they cleared out folks who were being asked to leave.  Hannah and I intertwined our hands and promised each other whatever happened we would not let go.

The situation was really scary. As the crowd swarmed again Hannah saw me start to trip and helped me step over a curb because if I fell I would be trampled. I turned around to the woman behind me and said something like, “Mind the curb. If any one of us falls we will be trampled”. She thanked me and immediately told the person pushing up behind her who told the next person and so on. 


Miraculously, somewhere in the passage of information, the ‘practice of repair had begun’. Folks started looking out for one another.

The officers let out the offenders, opened the gate slowly and we walked in peacefully, thanked the officers and quietly got into the security line for final checks. 

~Lydia Patrick

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Living Love Through the Practice of Repair: Home

Posted on November 4, 2024 by admin

Jon Bon Jovi had a duet song playing on the radio almost 20 years ago that chimes, “Who says you can’t go home?” The song is ultimately a story about finding yourself in a place where going home is not only alright after being on a long journey, but right where you should be. It’s a full circle kind of thing.

My childhood home has been a place of deep pain and a shaky foundation, but literally a safe haven for healing. Not only am I working through past and present tense traumas, but I have friends living with me now who are doing the same in their own ways. I am learning that living love through the practice of repair includes caring for and loving myself.

I found myself on Sunday afternoon full of frustration and overstimulation because I am so worried about my friends’ and my health, and our futures. I came to the labyrinth in a fit of desperate rage. I admit I had it out with God/Universe. Why was I chosen to be a caregiver? Why did Mom leave me just as I got to know her? I shouted, pointed my fingers at the sky, then sat at the center of the labyrinth and cried. I suddenly detected the scent of sage, but I did not know its source. All I know is that I finally released what I had been holding onto for so long.

In the practice of repair, we learn what is ours to heal, and what is not. I feel like I finally relieved the little girl who grew up way before her time of her duty. Caring is not about saving people; it’s about sharing the journey. A late friend of mine would tell me that “a burden shared, is halved.”

That truly is living love.

~Jen Garrison

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Two Bookends and a Center

Posted on November 1, 2024 by Bob Patrick

Today we begin the theme for the month of November: Living Love Through the Practice of Repair. I see this theme as a couple of beautiful bookends with a center that could be troubling for us. 

The first bookend is “living in love,” and that’s something that most of us aspire to and likely make attempts at every day. The second bookend is “the practice of repair.” The implication is that practicing this repair is one of the ways that we live in love, and so, that feels good, too. The work of repair, of making whole or better or right something that was broken or wounded or wrong is a significant way of living love. Many religious traditions, as I understand them, affirm this kind of repair as essential to love and compassion. Indeed, in our own newly expressed Unitarian Universalist values, love is the center out of which we engage in works of justice, equity, transformation, pluralism, interdependence and generosity.  Each of them can be an area of repair work.

Taoism calls us away from extremes which cause harm and destruction to a balanced and interpenetrating middle. We repair damage done by too much aggression by practicing generosity.

Judaism’s high holy days focus on Atonement, an expression of sorrow for harms done and a commitment to renew and repair those harms. 

Buddhism offers the invitation to the Bodhisattva vow, a vow to live compassion (love) for the healing of brokenness in the world, and to keep returning to human incarnation for that purpose until all is healed.

Jesus’ lived example included feeding hungry people, visiting the lonely and imprisoned, caring for the wounded and sick, including the forgotten and marginalized. He told a famous story about a father who threw a great feast to celebrate the return of his prodigal son. 

So, what is the troublesome center between these two beautiful bookends? 

We have to be willing to look at our brokenness, the harms we have had a hand in creating, the hurt we have caused, intentionally and unintentionally, to ourselves and to others, individually and collectively. These are the things on which we do our work of repair–as an expression of living love.

~Bob Patrick

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My Teacher Did What?!

Posted on October 31, 2024 by admin

One morning when I am about eight years old, Mom drops me off at elementary school especially early. In my third-grade classroom, there are only a few other students, along with our much-adored teacher Jane Hill. Miss Hill is at her desk, scribbling away and making the strangest squeaky sounds just under her breath. The murmured tune goes up and down lickety-split; at one point, she goes into a high, high falsetto, and the next she plummets into a basso profundo. A smile plays on her lips, but she pretends not to notice us students drawing closer.

“What’s that?” I ask, so excited I am dancing in place.
Raising only her eyebrows, Miss Hill reminds me to stand still. She’s the first person to let me know that people can listen to me better if I’m not in constant motion—and that I don’t have to be so jittery about speaking up.
“Just a little song I know,” she says.
By now, the whole class has assembled, and we beg her to sing it for us. This is what we hear:
Nancy, where are you going? Upstairs, to take a bath.
Nancy, with legs like toothpicks, and a neck like a giraffe.
Nancy got in the bathtub, Nancy pulled out the plug.
[squeaky falsetto] Oh my goodness, oh my soul! There goes Nancy down that hole!
[growling bass] Blub, blub, blub …


What??!! Our serious teacher is singing this outrageously silly song! She teaches it to us, and all day long, a muttered “blub, blub, blub” from somewhere in the classroom will have us all in stitches again. This memory seems so out of step with the seriousness of this day, this week, this month. Still, if I listen to what my spirit is trying to tell me, I realize that my brilliant teacher’s lesson speaks to these times too. In the midst of worry, the gifts of goofiness and laughter remind us that we are wondrous multifaceted human beings always—always—worthy of pleasure and joy.

~Rev. Nancy Palmer Jones

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Social-beat

Posted on October 30, 2024 by Bob Patrick

We recently considered the practice of listening to our own heart-beat as a way of listening to personal wisdom.

I think there is another kind of listening that we can open to. It’s not our heart-beat, but the social-beat, if you will, of the places, communities, and even the world (earth) that we live in. 

When we are outside of our place of residence and find ourselves among other people, what do we notice? Inviting ourselves to notice is like listening more carefully for our heart-beat, but in a social, public setting we are listening for the presence, interchange and energy dynamics that are created by this group of people in this place gathered together. When we tune in to the social-beat of a place, we begin to pick up on the energies of the people we come into contact with, and then, as that expands, on how all those gathered there are creating the energy of the place as a whole. 

I was in Aldi’s recently picking up a few items that we needed. As I moved through the store, I tried this kind of noticing. Suddenly, I tuned into a young father and his son talking about the cool toy on the shelf. Then it was two women, apparently friends, looking for an item they had not found yet. Then, a lone man with a buggy full of items looking for the shortest checkout line. I noticed two employees on the floor watching to see what needed restocking. And, those most important people–the cashiers–eventually came into view. They were young adults, and the lines they were serving seemed unending. I tuned into them.  I saw their gentleness, their kindness as they dealt with various individuals and families. When it was my turn, I felt the young cashier responding to me with that same energy. As I walked out of the store with my items, I think I felt lighter. It was a store full of human beings doing their needed shopping, and, somehow, choosing to tune into the social-beat allowed me to take in the energy that was making up the dance of that place.

Can we tune in to the social-beat of large places?  Cities? States? Our nation? Another nation? Can we tune in with our hearts and not just our heads where preconceived notions live? Can we pick up on the heart-beat of this planet and all her children? When we tune in to the social-beat, we should be ready. It can change us.

~Bob Patrick

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Ocean Song

Posted on October 29, 2024 by admin

Places sing calling songs.  Just now, they might be missing their people. We might learn that by allowing ourselves to miss them… In our bone-deep missing, and in our willingness to remember ourselves as worthy of being missed, we could begin to hear [their] songs.

Adam Wilson

I can hear the ocean call to me. Its sound obliterates the noisy thoughts within my head. I breathe easier and relax as waves pull or push the waters away or toward the shore where I sit. Clouds drift above me. The sun is warm. The breeze feels cool. Sometimes the song’s volume and tempo increase as waves angrily crash against the shore and dark clouds approach, and I am forced to seek shelter. The ocean has its moods, and so do I.

I don’t live at the beach, so I cannot physically hear its song every day, and yet it still calls to me. I carry the unique, familiar rhythm deep within me. When I close my eyes and breathe slowly I can hear the ocean singing its song of gather and release. It is like putting a seashell to my ear, a childhood wonder.

Each time I return I feel as if the ocean has been patiently waiting for me. Instinctively, I slip back into the timing of its refrain, lost in the sound of one wave replacing another, like chords in a song. My thoughts are suspended. There is only this moment. All the other moments, past and future, happy and sad, have been tumbled over and over by salty waves until they are so small I no longer notice them. I walk along the beach, picking up little treasures the sea has left behind and put them in my pocket. 

~Lisa Kiel

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