The Practice of Joy: Creative Gratitude

Posted on April 3, 2025 by admin

I recently had a conversation with a friend regarding the simple joys we see in everyday
life when we practice gratitude. We exchanged ideas and practices we each use to
express our gratitude for the people, places and things that bring a smile to our face on
a day-to-day basis. One of the things mentioned that I found inspiring is to write a list of
three people (by name if possible), events or situations that brought a surprise of
happiness to our day.

I especially like the idea of naming the person(s) involved. This journal they use was started as a way to creatively seek out and record happy moments from each day, especially because times are difficult. This discussion made me want to start a similar practice for myself.

I enjoy getting creative with gratitude lists. I sometimes list in an A to Z format, listing one or more items beginning with the corresponding letters of the alphabet. At times I use the same process to draw objects, places, and people (such as my cat, Benny) starting with each letter. I like to experiment with how I can express and practice gratitude.

As someone who struggles with bipolar disorder, including painful phases of depression, finding joy in these practices truly helps me keep a more positive perspective. Writing this reminds me that this practice, ever evolving, is always available to me when I need it. What types of gratitude practices bring you joy? Is there something new that comes to your imagination? Try it out; see where it takes you today.

~Jen Garrison

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Roots and Blossoms

Posted on April 2, 2025 by admin

I’ve been planting a lot of new perennials in my yard this year, a significant part of this is in response to the uncertainty I’m feeling in a new world with heavy tariffs and a significant number of agricultural workers being unethically detained.

When I told my dad (who knows a ridiculous amount about plants (complementary! )) that I had planted some new plants, he told me to heavily water them to establish the roots. It’s important that the roots of the plants have all the water they could want to get comfortable in their new place in my yard.

I’ve been very focused on those roots. Watering often, and getting others in my family to water when I can’t. 

I’ve been very focused on laying these foundations for our future.

However, yesterday, when I was pulling out of the driveway to go to work, I noticed that the branches of a crabtree I had just planted were blooming with pink flowers. I looked around and there were dozens of white blooms on my pear tree, a handful of hot pink buds on my blueberries, light pink buds on my almond tree, and bright green leaves sprouting on every branch I’ve placed in this earth.

I’ve been so focused on establishing those roots, that I forgot to appreciate the buds, flowers, and fruits.

I still want to put all the effort into helping the roots get established, but I also need to take a few moments to appreciate the fruits of those roots.

~Aline Harris

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In Search of Joy

Posted on April 1, 2025 by Bob Patrick

More than one person has recently indicated to me some concern about this month’s theme. During the month of April we turn our hearts, minds and actions to Living Love Through the Practice of Joy. We are living in a time in our nation’s life where identifying joy may feel difficult if not impossible to us. How in the world, in the face of atrocities, deception and public betrayal, are we to practice joy on any given day?

It reminds me of some study I began doing several years ago with a very old fragmentary document written in Old Irish. I will likely offer some reflections based on it this month, but I will share this part now. That ancient document teaches that to become the fully gifted humans that we are meant to be, there are parts of us that must be activated by joy. It goes on to note that some kinds of joy are human joy and other kinds of joy are divine joy.  Both are necessary to bring us fully alive. 

Despite these difficult times, this is what I know. I know that this is no time for us to be less alive than we can be. This is no time to shrink, to withdraw, to cower, and to run away. Now is the time, more than ever, for us to be fully alive. 

Even though it may feel hard, now is the perfect time for each of us to dig deep within ourselves and ask what joy is to us. What human activities and experiences bring us joy and allow us to convey joy to others? What experiences have you had–and wish to have again–that you would call divine joy? How do you access joy in your life? How do you bring joy into the lives of others? 

These are not philosophical questions. They are vital questions. Finding our varied and beautiful answers to them stands to bring us fully alive. Dear friends, I need you–and I think you need me–to be fully alive these days.  More than ever. Will you join this search for joy?

~Bob Patrick

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Trusting Our Capacity to Build

Posted on March 31, 2025 by admin

In my drawing class, I’m part of a rapscallion group of new friends who gather at the same table every week. We often begin the week’s assignment silently absorbed in the flow of our charcoal, pastels, oil, or ink across the page. It’s peaceful, literally drawing us out of the maelstrom of bad news that bombards us at other hours.

Soon, though, one of us is bound to stage-whisper a quip about how our self-portrait looks like a person with mumps, or our chair looks like a frog. And then we’re off into a fit of giggles and comparisons, reassurance and praise, which almost always wind their way into sharing stories of our lives. I know two of my new friends are unemployed; they know I’m a Unitarian
Universalist minister. They cheer me on when I audition for and get into a choir. We heartily welcome the sweetheart of one when she brings them to class for a session.

We have plans to get together when the class ends, continuing to draw and chat and share refreshments. We can’t know if we’ll build lasting friendships, but I do know that we’re already building something vital and sweet and meaningful.

Every week this new micro-community brings me joy and hope.

Recently, Timothy Snyder’s book, On Freedom, teaches me the difference between negative freedom and positive freedom. Negative freedom is freedom from—freedom from any obstacles to what “we” want to do. There’s always an us vs. them in negative freedom, and the problem always lies with “them.” If we can just get them and their obstacles out of the way,
then we will be truly free and happy. Right? Yeah, not so much.

Positive freedom, on the other hand, is freedom for. It’s the freedom to create and build. It’s not focused on us vs. them. We may face obstacles, but positive freedom says that together we already have the capacity, the creativity, and the responsibility to create a better society, whether on a small or large scale. This is a freedom that no one can take away from us.

My table of rapscallion new friends reminds me that this work of building the Beloved Community can happen anywhere and everywhere. Each of us is growing stronger and more resilient because of this community we are creating. We can trust our capacity to build.

~Rev. Nancy Palmer Jones

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Cats and Trust: It’s An Earned Thing

Posted on March 28, 2025 by admin

I’ve adopted all sorts of cats. My son once brought home a gray tabby from a gas station parking lot, promising his girlfriend would adopt the cat. She didn’t. Our spicy bobtail black and white kitty survived a “hoard,” while another was saved from a kill shelter. After a neighbor’s pleading phone call, her cul-de-sac cat moved in with us, and when my mother agreed to an assisted living arrangement, I inherited her cat. I’ve also fostered two feral kittens whose mother repeatedly deposited them in our truck’s engine compartment. In the end, I found a home for those kittens, my own, thus ending my cat fostering career.

Adult cats come with baggage. You never know what they have been through or how they have been treated. You find out pretty quickly that trust is an earned thing. Raising my kittens was different. Here were two completely dependent creatures that needed round the clock feeding. Too small to leave unattended, I put them in a large pet crate with food, water and a hot water bottle to snuggle on. After vet trips, medications, regular feedings, and playtime, they began to grow and thrive. 

They are now adult cats, and yet, I still see them as those tiny kittens that placed their trust in me. They are secure and happy, believing they will be lovingly cared for everyday. If I scold one of them for scratching my chair, she fearlessly runs to me ready to have a conversation. Their trust in me is humbling, even sacred. Accepting their trust means accepting the responsibility of preserving that trust. After all, our trust is something that belongs to us, even if we are cats.

~Lisa Kiel

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Life Trust

Posted on March 27, 2025 by admin

When I was a child, believe it or not, I used to be one many, many moons ago, I don’t remember going to the doctor. I don’t know if it’s because my mother never felt a need to take me or that we couldn’t afford it. I would guess that we couldn’t afford it. Well. I still can’t afford to go to all the different doctors that I should go to. Being without healthcare with all my health problems physically and mentally is horrible.

I didn’t have trust in any doctor. I was always pretty healthy. The only thing that I had was high blood pressure. I would go to the doctor to get my prescription for my two pills to lower my blood pressure and that’s all. The only other two times that I went to a doctor regularly is when I was pregnant with my Amancio and my Jalila.  Going to the doctor was not my thing.

Everything changed when I found a lump in my left breast. I was diagnosed with breast cancer on January 21, 2021. My life became doctor visits. Every week I saw the doctor and had my blood drawn. I then realized that I was  trusting the doctors with my life.  I was trusting their education and experience. It was up to them to save my life. They did it. They saved my life!!! To me that is one of the highest forms of trust that a person can give. 

I no longer fear doctors. I trust them. I see a doctor that takes uninsured patients. Thank goodness for the Hope Clinic. That’s where my doctor has his practice. All I can say is trusting doctors with your life is not an easy thing to do. I mean how many people do you trust with your life? Not many!!!

~Rita Romero 

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Trust the Seeds

Posted on March 26, 2025 by admin

This past Sunday, I sang along with the UUCG Covenant Choir, as I do most weeks. Music is one of my spiritual practices. I love the songs we share, especially when the lyrics express something I deeply believe in or feel inspired by. Our anthem this week was “Trust the Seeds” by Elizabeth Alexander (Seafarer Press). I’d like to share the full lyrics of the song here, since we were not able to perform the song in its entirety:

Trust the seeds, although they lie in darkness
Stirring beyond your watchful eye
Though they may not flower as you dreamed they would
When the planting’s over you must trust the seeds.
Some soon bloom
To fill your heart with wonder
Some only after you are gone
You must give them freedom
To grow as they should.
In your heart, you know that some may wither,
All you can do is hope and pray.
Some will rise up grander than you dreamed they could.
There is joy in planting if you trust the seeds.

This song was written as a reflection by the composer about her children when they were young. Since I am not a mother to children, for me this song represents the relationship between my parents and me, and their dreams for my life when I was little. I am not completely clear on what dreams my parents had for my future, but I can say without a doubt that the seeds of music that were planted in me from a young age have served me well throughout my life. They have opened doors to learning, to fellowship, confidence, and self-actualization. The seeds of love that have been sown between myself and other musicians is one of my life’s greatest gifts.

I can trust that although the Universe has taken me on a round-about trip, where I have landed is right where I belong.

~Jen Garrison

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