If We Build It, Will They Come?

Posted on September 3, 2025 by admin

We are building a new way.
We are building a new way.
We are building a new way,
feeling stronger ev’ry day,
We are building a new way.

-Sharing The Journey # 1017, Martha Sandefer

We sing these words with some regularity. I love the active voice. Each verse tells a story of defiance. Whether defying the established order, oppression, hunger or war, these words state what we are doing. In the absence of sacred texts, the songs and words we share carry greater weight. Unitarian Universalists draw inspiration from many sources, including sacred texts of world religions, but we do not, as a whole, revere the primacy of any. We now have three hymnals: the gray book, Singing the Living Tradition, the teal book, Singing the Journey, and now our virtual hymnal, Sing Out Love. The extraordinary thing about these is, particularly with the development of Sing Out Love, our sacred music grows, just as our faith and our understanding of Unitarian Universalist values do. 

Our Values, like our music, are not fixed in one moment in time. We ARE BUILDING a new way, it didn’t just happen back in 1961. We are building a new way to engage with the world, with our community, with our congregation, and with ourselves. It’s amazing. With all that we have to offer the individual in spiritual nourishment, camaraderie and community, why aren’t the seats packed every week? I knew I was home from the first service I attended just about two years ago, now. Before learning about the Shared Values, I knew Love was at the center of what UUCG does each day. Why isn’t the sanctuary packed? Our message is shared with authenticity. There’s room at our table for everyone. Do they know? Do they believe it? 

These questions have no easy answers, but they occupy my thoughts as we begin this program year. 

~Ian Van Sice

Posted in Building Belonging | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Longing for Belonging

Posted on September 2, 2025 by admin

Toko-pa Turner, in her wonderful book Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, says that at the very heart of our ache to belong “is the longing to be recognized for one’s gifts, to be welcomed in love and kinship, to feel a sense of purpose and necessity to our community.” Yes, that’s it! Deep down, our bodies and souls know how much we need each other. This longing to belong is written into our very DNA. No wonder it feels so painful, and sometimes life-threatening, when we feel left out. 

But it’s more than just a personal problem. When profit and wealth are more highly valued than living beings, then the culture has to create in its people a fear of not being or having enough. This leaves us all in an epidemic of alienation, of “unbelongingness,” as Turner says. So what are we to do?

Well, Turner suggests that belonging is not a place where we find our beloveds, our people. Rather, it’s a skill that we need to remember. It starts with looking honestly at this ache we share, with grieving and retrieving those parts of ourselves that we’ve tried to cut out so that we could fit in. It starts with belonging to ourselves again, the way we were born.

And it starts with building a community where all of our gifts and our imperfections are recognized and welcomed, where we get a chance to grow together, to become more ourselves both individually and as a community. Turner says that then maybe we can “open to the sacred dimension of our lives, [can] feel in service to something noble, [can] live in magic and wonder.”

Once we began to open ourselves beyond the boxes we’d been trained to occupy, we realized that we need each other’s gifts, and we cherish each other’s vulnerability. 

~Rev. Nancy Palmer Jones

Posted in Building Belonging | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Building Belonging

Posted on September 1, 2025 by Bob Patrick

It is with great joy and some trepidation that I write these opening words for our 2025-2026 season of the Words of Wisdom? reflections. 

Great Joy! Those of us who collaborate to write daily reflections on our Unitarian Universalist themes love taking these themes into our hearts and minds. We love the creative process of looking for ways to express these themes in ways that will not only speak to our community, but even moreso, in ways that might encourage, inspire and ignite us all into the service and love that Unitarian Universalism calls us to. In other words, we love to find words that will speak for us as a community of people engaging the fullness of life and love in this world.

Some trepidation. A spiritual writer whose work I follow speaks often these days of “the collapse” that we are witnessing. I’ll be honest that a part of me does not want to speak or think that way. And, to be more honest than that, I also know what we are seeing and hearing and experiencing on a daily basis, and collapse is probably the right word. 

Today just might help me hold those two things at the same time. Today is Labor Day, a day that hails in the history of this country our very own efforts to build belonging through work that is filled with dignity, respect and compassion. As we witness signs of collapse happening about us, the history of Labor Day which established all kinds of fairness, dignity and protection around those who work calls to us: collapse is the perfect setting in which to begin building belonging anew.

And so, we do, friends. We call ourselves together to begin building belonging together again, today in the face of whatever fell apart yesterday, and last week and last month. 

We hope you will join us here each day, Monday through Friday, to take courage, maybe a little wisdom and a lot of inspiration to do this work together. 

~Bob Patrick

Posted in Building Belonging | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Imagining Ourselves to Freedom

Posted on May 30, 2025 by admin

So many thoughts, feelings, words, images, deadlines, desires, worries, daydreams, and to-do’s are tumbling around inside me this morning. My inner state reminds me of this old image:

On a black-and-white TV screen, the camera focuses on a huge plexiglass globe. Inside it are small numbered balls lying in a heap. When the host of the show turns the crank on the globe, it spins, slowly, then faster and faster. At first the balls just bubble up, but soon they are zinging and ricocheting off the walls of the round container. This is what discombobulated looks like, I realize now. It’s also the way my brain feels this morning!

I know one reason why: When I reach immediately for my phone right after I wake up, it plunges me into a torrent of discombobulating news, a stream of words and images on the screen. It cramps my spirit and drowns out my imagination. It makes me feel sick.

I’ve got to unhook myself from scrolling for minutes or hours at a time. No matter whether I’m looking for news, social connection, education, entertainment, or sheer distraction, the scrolling deadens me. Especially in the morning, I need the space to imagine what I want this day to be.

So this week I am returning to a spiritual practice that has changed my life before. Every morning, I get up, make the decaf, feed the cat, and then jump back into bed—and I journal. From The Artist’s Way, I used to call this practice Morning Pages. This time I’m using The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life, which includes 100 very short essays and corresponding prompts, written by awesome people, collected and introduced by Suleika Jaouad. I’m committing to writing every morning for 112 days—an essay a day, counting Suleika’s own contributions.

Now I wake excited! I’m giving my soul, my imagination, this time! It doesn’t matter what I read or write, whether I follow the prompt or not. What matters is that I have cleared space for my mind and heart to unfurl. I’ve made time to feel my hand move across the page, leaving a trail of ink. Already I know I am on a path to freedom. Already I feel more love for life
and for my part in it.

If, even after my writing, I fall back into my phone—as I did this morning—I feel the joy dim and the discombobulation return. Screens and social media are designed to ensnare us, to disconnect us from our deepest selves and a full experience of life. I don’t want them to own me. I want to keep turning toward freedom!

I choose a summer’s worth of days to settle this habit into my bones. Tell me, dear ones, how will you imagine yourself toward freedom this summer—and how shall we imagine together?

~Rev. Nancy Palmer Jones

*With this reflection from Rev. Nancy, Words of Wisdom? will be taking a summer break. We invite you to search back through the reflections of this year or of the past 12 years. We will return posting new reflections on Labor Day, September 1, 2025.

Posted in Living Love Through the Practice of Imagination | Tagged | 1 Comment

Imagination Required

Posted on May 29, 2025 by Bob Patrick

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Excerpt from Wild Geese
By Mary Oliver

Twelve years ago, we began this writing ministry that we have called “Words of Wisdom?”.

The question mark has always been intentional. Each year, we invite those in our community who are willing and able to take up the themes of the year, and we write reflectively in a way that–we hope–may become shared wisdom with our beloved community. 

Every single aspect of this effort requires imagination.  It doesn’t matter what the theme is; it will always have to do with what it means to live on planet Earth at this time in human history, and how we can live with as much meaning and love as possible. I think that each of us who writes at some point during the year fears that we will run out of meaningful and love-driven things to say. Nevertheless, we call on our imaginations, and we find things to share, to ponder, to be curious about.

Our UU-sainted poet, Mary Oliver, offers a necessary reminder. This world offers itself to our imaginations and calls us–eternally–to our place in the family of things. Her words anchor me of what I know to be true for me: writing these reflections reminds me, week after week, year after year, that I have a loving, meaningful, wonderful place in this community. I am so grateful for you, the UUCG community, and the larger community of people who read our words.

With tomorrow’s post by Rev. Nancy, we will take our summer pause. Please watch for our words to begin again on Labor Day, September 1, 2025. Maybe you have thought about writing some reflections for Words of Wisdom? Watch for the invitation to writers that will go out in August. Imagination required.

~Bob Patrick

Posted in Living Love Through the Practice of Imagination | Tagged | Leave a comment

Soon The Day Will Arrive

Posted on May 28, 2025 by admin

This past Sunday at UUCG we honored Memorial Day and the people who have served and
sacrificed their lives for our country in military service. As part of our theme for this
month, Living Love Through the Practice of Imagination, we explored what Memorial
Day means, as well as pondering where we go from here after so much pain in the past
from wars. I want to share a song that Sweet MUUsic, our house band, shared with the
congregation. It’s about imagining a future where we all are safe, free, and living in
harmony. This song is a wish for better days.

~Jen Garrison

Soon the Day Will Arrive

Soon the day will arrive, when we will be together,
And no longer will we live in fear
And the children will smile without wondering
Whether on that day thunderclouds will appear

Chorus
Wait and see, wait and see
What a world there can be if we share, if we care,
You and me
Wait and see, wait and see
What a world there can be
If we share, if we care, you and me.

Some have dreamed, some have died
To make a bright tomorrow, and our vision
Remains in our hearts
Now the torch must be passed
With new hope, not in sorrow
And a promise to make a new start

If you would like to listen to the song, here is a recording of the choir of First Unitarian Church of Baltimore performing it.

Posted in Living Love Through the Practice of Imagination | Tagged | 1 Comment

Conversation With the Divine Imagined

Posted on May 27, 2025 by admin

I wrote this poem way back in 2006, with the idea of having a gentle conversation with
the divine as a loving parent figure. It was my imagination of what the divine as a parent
might say to me. I wrote it as a way to heal old wounds from my childhood.

My Child

My child,
Your smile lights up any room
And warms the hearts of all who are in it
You bring joy to others
Because you keep it within
But I see a sadness in your eyes
Tears that only you and I can see
My little one has carried a burden
For too long

My child, It was not my plan
To place you here to lift and carry
Another human soul completely on your own
No one can focus on only one person,
As you have had to learn
Just the same, I have sent many souls
To you along the way to lift and carry you

My child,
I would never leave you alone
There have been many times
When you have felt abandoned
But I have provided for the journey
You know that to be the truth
In your heart

My child,
You feel distant from me now
Confused, looking for direction
But you know your way
Far more than you realize
You have held onto your faith
When others would have given up

My child,
You know I have sent to you
People to guide you, to listen to you
My presence is with you through them
Always has been

My child,
Let go of the pain of the past
Live for the day I have given you
You are mine forever
I love you.

~Jen Garrison

Posted in Living Love Through the Practice of Imagination | Tagged | Leave a comment