The Invitation of the Year

Posted on September 30, 2024 by admin

“You are invited!” If we had mailed out every one of UUCG’s invitations this
September, we might have supported the U.S. Post Office for quite a while!
Which invitations do you remember now? Here are a few—and yes, I had to check
the calendar!

  • To respect the worthiness of all who labor
  • To beautify our property and connect with trees
  • To pour all our summer learnings and all our fresh visions for UUCG into
  • one bowl to serve as our guide this year
  • To join a covenant group
  • To visit the VolunteeRen Faire
  • To gather with Spiral Scouts, the Men’s Group, or to learn the Tarot
  • To listen to immigrants’ voices and expand our Community of Care
  • To visit the Board meeting or join Sharing the Journey
  • To experience the Interfaith Peace Festival or the Autumn Equinox ritual
  • To celebrate belonging and the pagan way
  • To revive our hope and mission through the UU Climate Justice Revival


Did we respond to each invitation with authenticity? When did we answer, Yes!, or
Maybe, or Can’t make it this time but will try again, or Sorry, that’s not for me? In
the process, did we grow a little in curiosity, courage, and compassion? And when
we did jump in, what transformations did we experience?


Each month’s theme this year invites us to go deeper with some practice that is
central to Unitarian Universalism. October’s invitation, “The Practice of Deep
Listening,” also asks us to respond authentically. Can we listen to our own
knowing, to our pain and joy, and to the wisdom, pain, and joy of others? What
transformations will we experience, and how will we grow?
This is the “Invitation of the Year,” beloveds. May we bring our full selves to the
practice.


~Rev. Nancy Palmer Jones

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The Guest List

Posted on September 27, 2024 by admin

Recently, I have grown weary from the never ending assault of news updates, sound bites, social media memes, and campaign advertisements. All of it feels like an uninvited, contentious guest in my home, and I wonder, how did all this chaos end up on my mind’s guest list? My goals are to be informed, to vote responsibly and to support social justice. I have the best of intentions. But sometimes I feel paralyzed by the enormity of information available to me at a finger’s touch, and I don’t believe I’m the only one with this dilemma. So, how to balance the needs of both our interior and exterior worlds? I started by accepting different invitations. Take a deep breath and ask yourself:

Are you exhausted from non-stop media?

I invite you to experience a media free day.

Are you overwhelmed by choices?

I invite you to focus on one, only one, thing at a time.

Are you unable to finish your to-do list?

I invite you to accept your human need to rest.

Are you feeling disconnected?

I invite you to share time with a friend, a pet, a favorite book.

Are you frightened by what may happen?

I invite you to remain grounded here in the present.

Are you wounded by the rhetoric and actions of hatred?

I invite you back into the sanctuary of your own heart.

Around us invitations abound. We are invited into places of fear, and we are invited into places of hope. We are invited to be anxious or comforted. We have choices which invitations we accept. We also have choices about the invitations we extend. Today, right now, may you recognize and embrace the invitations coming from love. It’s ok to say, no thank you, to the others. 

~Lisa Kiel

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Invitation to the Little Things

Posted on September 26, 2024 by admin

Life can be hectic. It seems like you never have any rest from the responsibilities of life. You have bills to pay. You have to get the children off to school. You have deadlines at work.  You have to decide what you are going to cook for dinner. You have to clean. You have to get your children ready for bed. This is when you can finally rest. 

You turn on the TV and all you see is the worst of this world. You don’t understand anything that is going on. You are angry, scared, sad and frustrated. How can there be so much hate? What happened? Well, I can answer those two questions for you. I don’t know!  I believe most of us can understand all of these feelings and thoughts.

You wonder if you will ever have peace, love or joy in life again. I can tell you that you probably have this everyday. This is when I invite you to the little things in life. I know that your responsibilities can overshadow them. Maybe, we can slow down just enough to enjoy them. 

Let’s see if we can remember any. The hug that your child gave you this morning. Noticing that the flowers are blooming. The beautiful blue sky. Watching funny cat videos. Hearing a stupid joke that made you smile. Eating a good meal. Watching your favorite movie. Having a stimulating conversation. Reading a good book. Having a quiet moment. Having a bit of time for your hobby.  Getting into your cozy bed. These are a few little things in life that are so easily overlooked and may give you peace, love and joy. Maybe, we should invite each other to slow down and enjoy the little things in life.

~Rita Romero 

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Healing Our Emotions

Posted on September 25, 2024 by admin

A good friend of our family recently had a stroke, she was very close to my sister and her children. Although I was not as close to her I knew my sister and niece were in pain. When I spoke to my sister she expressed to me that she was angry with the world right now. She wanted to paint the whole world red, that is how angry she was. 

I am very awkward when comforting people when they are facing the death of a loved one, so I inquired why she would be angry? But also acknowledge that it was a natural and reasonable emotion. She couldn’t answer me. She was just angry at death, angry that she couldn’t stop it or keep it from happening. Just as death came too soon for our Aunt, she knew it was coming too soon for our dear family friend. 

I invited my sister to then hold her anger and understand it. She has a right to be angry, to grieve, to worry, but I could not comfort her with the idea that anyone can withhold death. As my sister and our friend are Christian I sent her some of our hymns to comfort her and this passage from the Bible.

Hymn #1001 Breaths  Rev. Christopher Watkins Lamb | October 25th, 2020

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” Colossians 3:1-4.

Hymn 404 (STLT) What Gift Can We Bring by Jane Marshall

My invitation for her to hold that anger and discover where it came from allowed for her to open up to me in her beliefs that we humans suffer and die due to original sin. Our conversation led to a talk of reincarnation and her personal beliefs being so far from her Christian teachings and to narrow down that death is not the issue, but emotions are. 

So I send this invite to everyone, express your emotions, they are part of you. They shape your ideas and beliefs, they fashion how you see the world. Hold your emotions like a little ball in your hand and understand where they are coming from. Embrace the anger, the resentment, and frustration; ask it, when did it enter into your life. Understand all those things that you try to hold in and let them free. Let that little ball of emotion just float away into the healing of your soul. Hold more emotions like love, happiness and jubilation, like a ball in your hands and understand where that comes from and let that also float away into the healing of your soul. 

~Candice Carver

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Vampire Rules

Posted on September 24, 2024 by admin

There’s a joking commentary I’ve heard online from fellow neurodiverse people. 

“It’s like if you want to bring a vampire to your house. They can’t walk through the door without an invitation, you have to invite them in. You have to explicitly invite me or I won’t think I’m welcome.”

When I read it, I thought, ‘wow. I resemble that remark.’ 

As a child, I’d go shopping with my mother and pick up something to admire. I’d show her. Look at how pretty or funny this is! There was an immediate, “Put that down! I’m not buying it for you.” This always left me stunned. I wasn’t asking for it. I just wanted to share in the joy of something I found. 

In grade school, I’d hear my friends talk about parties and hangout sessions. I’d so desperately wish to go, but only felt like I could if they looked me right in the eye and asked me to join them. 

As an adult, I’d talk to a friend about something hard and would immediately fret that they would think I was asking something of them when I was just sharing.

I always strive to communicate exactly what I mean or feel, and it can be a frustrating experience. It was – and, honestly, still is – challenging for me to determine if someone telling me about their plans is because they want to share, or, if they’re sharing as an invitation. They didn’t ask. They just.. said.

“You can come if you want!” isn’t quite as inviting as you’d think. It doesn’t hold that sense of welcome, that desire for you to be there. 

“If you can come, I want you to be there.” Hearing that, knowing it’s an expressed invitation.. Tightly holding these words as I cross a threshold is what makes me feel welcomed in.

~Dmitri

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The Path of Balance

Posted on September 23, 2024 by admin

As the Autumn Equinox arrives, we stand on the edge of balance,
The world, poised between light and dark, day and night.

We honor the balance within ourselves,
The harmony between our inner light and shadow.

In this season, we are invited to slow down, to reflect,
To gather the harvest of our thoughts, our deeds, our hearts.

We accept this invitation with open hands,
Gathering love and compassion like golden leaves.

This is a time to deepen our spiritual roots,
To seek wisdom in the turning of the earth.

We root ourselves in the sacred,
Drawing strength from the quiet depths of our souls.

Let us walk the labyrinth of balance with mindful steps,
Guided by the love that unites us all.

We walk in the spirit of compassion,
Holding space for each other in this shared journey.

As day and night embrace in perfect equality,
We too embrace the fullness of life’s dualities.

In this sacred moment, we find our center,
And with grateful hearts, we move forward in peace.

~Candice C. Carver

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Hello, Dear Friend

Posted on September 20, 2024 by Bob Patrick

When I think of practicing invitation, inevitably, I am drawn to practices that I have learned from Buddhist master, Thich Nhat Hanh. The practice itself invites our imagination to engage, and with that engagement, the ability to find our way through difficult and painful feelings. 

He calls this the seventh practice of mindfulness. It works like this. We find ourselves becoming aware of a painful feeling. We pause and, perhaps, find a place where we can sit, (although, you can do this standing in the line at the grocery store with a little practice). We take an intentional inbreath, and as we breathe in, we say: hello, dear (painful feeling). I am here to take care of you.  When we breathe out, we smile at our painful feeling. 

Breathing in, we greet our painful feeling as an old friend.

Breathing out, we smile at our painful feeling. 

As he often taught around practices of mindfulness, we continue in this breathing in and breathing out practice until we feel something shift. 

If you are like me, you don’t like painful feelings, and your inclination, like mine, may be to run in the opposite direction, or engage in thoughts or activities as a distraction. Invariably, the painful feelings hang around at the door of our hearts, waiting for us to finish our running and our distractions. 

By greeting our painful feeling as an old friend, we lessen the anxious inclination to flee and to distract. We move into a place that is more calm than when we first became aware of the painful feeling. The very fact that it is a painful feeling likely means that it is an old one–one we have encountered before, and greeting it, welcoming it to sit down with us and have a cup of tea (real or imagined–I mean, why not make tea and sit with that feeling for a while, breathing and smiling) takes some of the edges off of it. Our only “job” in this practice is to be present, in the moment. This is a practice of invitation. It is one that begins to transform us and very likely how we view and what we learn from our old friends, painful feelings. 

~Bob Patrick

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