The Past Is Over

The past is over
      the wisdom is won
           the gratitude remains
                 the way is clear.
                                             Begin Again.

We block our growth in soul and wisdom by harboring grudges, regret and resentment.  We remind ourselves of our past imperfections as a kind of dysfunctional monitor to keep us in our place and away from the power of our fullness.  Forgiveness, among many things, is the willingness to give up the hope of a better past.  Let it go.  Embrace the present.  Go on from here.
                                   

How Do You Measure Happiness?

My ears perked up when I heard a question raised on a recent radio news story.  “How do you measure happiness?”  I gathered studies are being launched to measure happiness in various cultures and countries.  The response offered in this short news clip was to research a person’s job, home life and health.  My initial response was quite different. You measure happiness, I thought, by a sense of well- being in your life.  It is attitude, not circumstance,  that solidifies happiness.  Happiness is a choice, not a chance.

So, then, if it is a choice, how do we cultivate happiness?  There are, of course, as many formulae for happiness as there are people.  Let me offer one.  Attention…Intention…Extension.

First, we foster gratitude and pay attention to it.  We notice the gifts that each moment offers.  When we pay attention to what is good in our lives, we increase its presence in our consciousness.  This nurtures our sense of well -being which then takes root and grows.  When we’ve centered ourselves in gratitude , then our choices begin to resonate with the good life.  To cultivate happiness we resolve to increase the circumstances and opportunities that bring about our well being.  This calls for an inventory of mind, body and spirit and the intention toward wellness.  This cannot happen in a vacuum, but must be lived in our relational lives.  So we find communities where we can grow and engage our happiness.  We extend ourselves to others, both familiar and new,  to keep a flow of new energy about us and an ever expanding experience of the blessings in and of our lives.  We extend by sharing our wisdom, creating ways to exercise our gifts and serve others when called to contribute.  And the wonderful resonance of happiness is its desire to be spread.  It naturally follows that we then encourage those we meet and know of to come to wellness.

May you know the root of all happiness in your ways and walking.

Blessings Be,  Rev. Lisa

(this column will appear in the february edition of the UUFHC newsletter)

Our Staging of Separateness

Our birth -- our staging of separateness -- is for sensual pleasure
   Seeing, tasting, feeling, hearing, touching, connecting
       For awe and wonder
           For participation in joy
               To know love.

With this comes impermanence and death
   Encouraging our full living
       For conscious blessing
          For humble navigating
              To know the wholeness beyond understanding.

Parenting Teenagers

I am finding that in parenting teenagers, I must be able to accept failure.  I must be able to do the best I can and still not do the right thing.  It's a gift of growth, I think, a way for mother nature, in her all embracing essence, to help us evolve into our fullness.

Because you see the only thing that I can "get right" is to be my authentic self, not needing to please, not demanding attention, not expecting homage; just honoring my worth, practicing integrity and staying strong with kindness, boundaries intact.

It ain't easy and it can be damned uncomfortable.  But those of us who think that success in life is to be comfortable don't quite get the journey.  What a gift it is to continue to learn...to continue to live.

Blessings Be.

The Venture of Truth

There are times when we know we must come to an awareness of things.  These are not necessarily easy times, in fact, they rarely are, when we come to a place of knowing from which there is no return, when we break out of  “what was” to a new world before us.

Births are dramatic, they include pain and fear, they include wonder and worry, they include expansion and holding on for dear life.

When we open our lives to the new, to what will transform us or deepen us, we face an unknown that can be quite lonely, quite unnerving.

We need witness, someone or something that tells us we are welcome in this new way – someone or something that tells us we are what we’ve been waiting for – someone or something to tell us that we are not alone and that the continued journey will be met with unexpected abundance from far off places -- new things will appear and be made known to us.

This is the venture of truth.  This is the gift of life.

Faith Community

A faith community can be a place to cultivate culture – a breeding ground for our way of being with one another.  We can inspire each other to habituate justice, equity and compassion – to make it second nature in our lives and so an inspiration, an encouragement to all we meet in our ways and walking.  That’s not something that happens once or for all time.  It is a tending and a nurturing of spirit.  It is gentle reminders and well timed wake up calls.  It is sowing seeds and cultivating health.  We come together to remind ourselves how to come to our better selves, to gain insight from different perspectives, to embolden projects of love and justice and to grow in understanding of life in its majesty and mystery.

We cannot do this alone.  We cannot do this without an open heart.  We cannot do this without courage for the new.  We cannot do this without love of truth.

We have the opportunity of collective wisdom in a faith community, we can find the spiritual truth in our lives, giving it room to grow, with humility toward a larger shared truth beyond our full knowing.  We celebrate the different ways of being, ways of thinking, ways of seeing to fill our hearts with possibility and the hope of ever growing wisdom.  We find ways to live out our intution for justice, our knowledge of peace and our love of earth.  We do this every time we meet in one way or another – embolden one another toward a new and yet ancient world, waiting to thrive. 

We do it now, within our lives and from our hearts.

Let’s cherish our coming together, our joint endeavors, our learning curves and our surprising resources.  Let’s support the aspirations we have in the lives we are capable of living, for ourselves, our humanity and our world.

Each Moment the Sky is Different

There was a magenta strip of sky the other morning, with shades of purple intermingling the incoming blue. How is it that we are given such majesty?

Each moment the sky is different.  I marvel at the gift of witness, the gift of wisdom, that impermanence is the way of form, and beauty is the eternity within it.

There are times when we ache for the law of impermanence to get on with changing the circumstance.  There are times when we ache with the loss of impermanence as something changes too quickly.  But within the aches of comings and goings there is the knowledge that life has welcomed us into the dance.

There is beauty to behold.  There is love to dare.  There is eternity within.  Blessings be.