Healing Music

My latest newsletter column.

On the evening of December 30, I sat in a darkened sanctuary. A few lights toward the pulpit turned the whole place into the color of toasted wheat. The wind outside howled. David Bowlin and his crew of merry-makers known as Chamber Music Quad Cities played magical music. I closed my eyes and let the sound wash over me. I was transported.

I’ve often said that, for me, music is akin to church. Music is exhilarating. Music is renewing. Music can make me weep. Music gives me hope.

Music hits a place deep in my bones.

But there was something more on the 30th. I sat there in gratitude for my family. We have had a very good year. I sat there with the difficulties of the church year heavy on my mind. I sat there with the many blessings of the church year accompanying me. I have seen many of you in life’s most significant moments—celebrating new babies with some of you; planning memorial services with others of you; listening deeply about life’s losses and making a way when there seems to be no way. Sometimes I sat with you in less dramatic but still important times: planning worship services; exploring ideas around religion and life in the board room. There has been laughter this year. And there have been growing edges and growing pains that have been frankly quite difficult.

Life in community, with its blessings and its speed bumps.

I sat there in the sanctuary, listening to piano and violin and cello. And I for a moment felt whole. I experienced a bit of the healing power of music. The musicians were vessels, absorbed in their own process, absorbed in the mixture of giving and receiving that is at the heart of the creative endeavor.

They were vessels of powerful grace, each in the sanctuary full of their own worries, full of their own concerns, full of their own gratitudes. Each open, as they were able, to the possibilities. Each open as the child on Christmas morn—Santa’s been here! What will happen next? Each open as the birder glimpsing the first eagle of the season. What majesty. What power.

Last Sunday in church, we talked about Anna the prophet in the story in the gospel of Luke who glimpses something holy upon seeing this Jesus, 8 days old in the temple. She was a widow. She was old. She was poor. She was not terribly ambitious. But she prayed and she fasted and she had eyes to see. For the Unitarian Universalist reading that story, the invitation is to reflect upon the question: What can I do to put myself in a position to have eyes to see the holy, the miraculous, all around? How shall I put my experience through the purifying heat of the fire of thought so that I am immersed in an understanding of my life as a part of the great story of the unfolding, evolving universe and its story, holy and powerful?

What is possible? What will happen next? What majesty! And I and my little concerns all wrapped up in the unfolding life of the holy earth. Life in community, with its blessings and bumps and bruises.

Choose to bless the world in 2009, no matter what! May you be blessed and be a blessing!

Roger

Frank Rich, Obama and Warren

Frank Rich has a wonderful piece in the New York Times, 12/28/08 on the controversy around President Elect Obama's invitation to Pastor Warren to give the prayer on Jan 20th.
Read it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/opinion/28rich.html?hp

I also encourage you to read Scott Wells' piece at boyinthebands.com which is also printed in this blog.

SPRING 2009 SUNDAY SERVICE DRAFT

I have been thinking about spring semester. As I've done the last several years I am passing around a draft for comments.

This is obviously not finalized. RSC does not have any dates on this, so that is obviously going to change.

I will be writing some others for input in a few weeks, so that will likely cause it to change. But I want to begin with you all and get your input.


In the next little bit, I will ask for worship associates. For example, I know sometime in Feb or March Heather Maxwell and I will be doing a service on overcoming relationship break ups and disappointments. But some of this will change based on the give and take with worship associates.

Oh, one note: I will definitely take the lead on the Alan Egly commemoration. I love him to death. But I will not be involved in the 50th anniversary of the sanctuary. That is for the board to do, though I will help as needed.

We know these will happen and need some input:
Darwin
Easter/50th Anniversary of Sanctuary
RSC Sundays

DRAFT SERVICES SPRING 09 DRAFT COMMENTS PLEASE, COMMENTS PLEASE

Feb 1: The Four Chaplains
On diversity and its uses.
The future of interfaith relations (here in the QCA and nationally and theologically).
Gustav Niehbur (Syracuse) has a wonderful new book out on the promise of interfaith relations, and Harvey Cox (Harvard) has written in this area for a long time.
The subtitle: On diversity and its uses comes from a James Luther Adams essay which I will no doubt reference.
I will ask Ron Quay to work with me on this.

February 8: Happy B’Day Charles Darwin with Joe Lehman (and likely others too).


February 15: Nirvana with John Dunsheath (and Steve Spring invited)
What is the deal with the Buddhist conception of Nirvana. What is the idea behind it? I'll probably try to get Steve Spring (mindfulness community of the qc) and or John Dunsheath to come and be with me that day.

February 22: Transfiguration
The story of the transfiguration is a fascinating tale. Like all such bible stories, it is not meant to be taken literally. Rather it is a midrash on a story about Moses from the Hebrew scriptures. More importantly, it raises serious questions about how a liberal Christian is to read the bible after the Shoah. This is a favorite passage of mine, and the sermon will be an overview of a paper I wrote in New Testament entitled Reading the Transfiguration After the Shoah. It is an important topic, I think: supercessionism, the textual insistence on asking about the relationship between the emerging Christian community and its Jewish lineage.

March 1: The Duties of Hard Times with Lars Rehnberg Worship Associate
http://www.boyinthebands.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/the-duties-of-hard-times_line_300dpi.pdf

A very old Unitarian sermon, delivered in 1830 at First Church in Boston, asks the question: What is our duty in hard times? I’ll reflect on the sermon, and think about what it says to us in our own difficult times. Probably the biggest question in terms of mission that the church has to face next year is what shall we do given our context, which right now involves lots of economic uncertainty. It is fascinting to see the sermon reflect on economic uncertainty in 1830.

March 8: The End of the Culture Wars? With Stephen Klien
As I prepare to be a part of a panel at Augustana College on the question of culture wars, I ask the question: Will the culture wars ever end? Should they? How did they start? What do they mean? Where are they headed? What can we do to make public discourse more light and less heat?

March 15: Ethical Wills, and the spiritual discipline of writing your own obituary!

March 22: RSC SUNDAY or if it is mine: Unitarian Universalist Theology: Interdependence, Relationality, and What Saves Us...

March 29: Beloved: The Clearing
This is a service that takes off from Toni Morrison’s Beloved. We’ll compare what Emerson wrote in The Divinity School Address with what Morrison writes about with Baby Suggs.

April 5: Passover Seder. We’ll take some time to explore the seder in our church service, and we’ll do a ‘chosen family’ seder.

April 12: Easter—50th anniversary of the sanctuary celebration

April 19: Yom HaShoah Sunday: Plantations and Death Camps: Human Dignity, Religion, and Ideology
Based on a book by one of my teachers, Beverly Mitchell.

April 26: Fifty Years Ordained: A celebration of Rev. Alan Egly with Alan Egly
April 31st Thursday, dinner and lecture with Kendyl Gibbons

May 3 RSC

May 10: Celebrate the Mothers (Perhaps this could be a Music Sunday?)

May 17: The tangled bank: toward a eco-theology of responsible participation
Based on a book by Michael Hogue, teacher at Meadville Lombard Theological Seminary

May 24: Memorial Day. The power of re-membering

May 31: Surrender. This idea within Islamic Thought is powerful. What could it say to us as religious liberals/Unitarian universalists?

June 7: What looks interesting at General Assembly

June 14: Flower Communion

June 21: If I had Just One Sermon To Preach (It's about the dignity and possibility and beauty and power of humanity and the impossible idea that we are surrounded all the time by grace, grace, grace and beauty)
Likely, this is the big Ta Da!

June: 22: Off to General Assembly


Some other possibilities:
My uncle has published a book called Love as a Way of Life. I’ll take a look at it on this Sunday and share some stories about what he means to me, and what the book is about.

Heather Maxwell on overcoming disappointment and dogged strength in the face of failed relationships.

Hans Jonas, a life What Hans Jonas can teach us: about responsibility, about ethics, about the environment, about living a life well.

Today, 12.28.08 I asked during service what people might be interested in next semester: Some of the answers: living out my faith through service; simplicity; The rabbinic law and Unitarian Universalism (the suggestion was to have it be with Rabbi Samuel); and endowment.

Rick Warren, Obama, and a note from Scott Wells

Scott Wells, Universalist minister, colleague and friend, writes about his upset around the Rick Warren invitation. I share it here because it is well worth a read. You can find more of his writing at http://boyinthebands.com/. If he lived closer, I would ask him to come and preach in Davenport, but alas. It is not to be.


My short response to the Obama-Warren messSaturday, 20 December 2008

The longer I ponder a response to Barack Obama’s invitation of Rick Warren to give the invocation at the Inauguration, the less likely I’ll be to finish it. So here’s the nub.

An aside to Mr. Obama:
We know you’re not a liberal, but a lot of liberals, labor people, environmentalists, feminists and others supported you because you had the organizational chops and charisma to beat the Republican. Oh, and let’s not forget The Gays, who are pretty hopping mad at you right now and have been since the election. Together, we will be a part of your Big Tent: either as invited guests or a burr in your saddle. Turn on us and we’ll turn on you. And so will the Obama Kids: there’s nothing they hate more than a hypocrite. Inviting that bigot Rick Warren is a slap in the face. Just because he’s got his head screwed on straight for a few issues of human decency doesn’t give him carte blanche to go after gay people like me, sick people who need stem cell research, anyone who wants to decide about their own reproduction or even the president of Iran.

An aside to the liberals, labor people, environmentalists, feminists and others, including The Gays:

Barack Obama isn’t a liberal; rather, the world dodged a bullet by not having a McCain-Palin administration. He will only live up to his change rhetoric if he’s held to it. Inclusion isn’t dependent on the next president’s character — the old Unitarian canard — but the power people bring or withhold from him. The last eight years of presidential unresponsiveness shouldn’t keep us from being organized, visible and loud. We need to be everywhere. More about the tactics later. For now, one word: solidarity. I do not expect non-gay liberals to pat me on the head and say I’m sorry you’re so upset. I expect them to be angry and vocal. And I’ll be there for the gag rule, card check, transit funding, and other issues that need to be reversed or improved. The Right expects us to stay apart.

A last point:
To remind y’all, my thrift shtick isn’t because I’m some tightwad. I plan to have money in the bank when the call comes: for political contributions, for issue campaigns, for legal defense funds.

Stay vigilant.

No honeymoon.

TAKE HOME REFLECTIONS
December 21.
Written by Angela Chenus.

December 21st:
A magical date since times long ago, solstice, the day the ancients believed the sun had abandoned the world for good, so dark and long was the night. Celebrating the solstice is celebrating faith, faith that the sun and spring will return, that there will be a long period of darkness yet, but that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Can you find a way to embrace the cold and dark, knowing that it will not last forever?

Is there a celebration to be found in cozy days by the fireplace, adventures in the snow, hot cocoa and the warmth of shared stories and shared snuggles?

Today: read together a story from the Inuit. Their mythology is fun and powerful, they were, after all, making it through six months of winter darkness each year! Titles for children:

Raven, by Gerald McDermott from James Houston's Treasury of Inuit Legends
And/or: Light candles to banish the darkness from the corners. Making candles is a tradition we have in our family on this day; an easy method is rolling a sheet of beeswax around a wick. Materials can be easily found on bee-keepers' websites and kits in children's catalogs.

Then go for a candle light walk in the woods (or a close approximation thereof, the back yard may be adventure enough,) to welcome the return of the light that begins at midnight.


December 22nd:
Today is Hanukkah; Happy Hanukkah! and yes, Christmas is almost here, and you really don't have time to be reading these reflections, well-intentioned as they may be, there are things to do! As I look around me at this time of the year, there are inevitably a million things I have not done that I would like to accomplish, yet if I take a closer look, there is much good that has been done, and at this late date, that will have suffice.

Today: take a moment to breathe, to contemplate, to meditate. You could start your day with a personal meditation and lead your family in a collective sharing of something each is grateful for. We call our daily gathering in our house “joys and sorrows” like at church, but sometimes we banish the two categories in favor of sharing a gratitude.

Remembering how fortunate we are can help subvert the “gimmes” that have perhaps set in for the children and the despair of not doing it all for the adults.

December 23rd:
In my Catholic tradition, each year we would breathlessly await the coming of the “little lord Jesus” as my four-year-old calls him. Today is the day before the eve. The excitement is beginning to become palapable in households with children. It is also a time of awe, as we contemplate the miracle of birth, again. Here are a couple of ideas for cultivating the awe and wonder.

If your house contains a Nativity scene, you could gather around it with the kids and imagine out loud what each character might be thinking right now. Spin a story for a figure; that angel on Earth-duty for the first time, what a night for it! Joseph, first-time father; ask Dad what Joseph might be feeling. One lamb, lost among the big feet, or in the arms of his trusted shepheard, in awe at being let up this late tonight.

If your house does not contain a Nativity scene, you could create a “birth of the sun” scene, with a cradle or cushion in the middle and all of the figurines, stuffed animals and dolls your house contains all around to witness the rebirth of the sun. They surely have tales to tell as well.

December 24th, It is the Eve, the big one, Santa is probably coming to your house, ready or not, Christian or not. Breathe in, be in the moment, welcome the holy presence you believe in into your own heart first today. Your mood and attitude will set the mood for the rest of the family, take care of yourself first.

One of our favorite traditions is attending the evening service at church, then taking a plateful of cookies to the neighbors' houses, caroling through the neighborhood at the top of our (mostly the kids') voices. This always has a nice effect when it has snowed and all is still. You could find your own way of spreading cheer and sharing the joy with others today.

December 25th, Merry Christmas! If you are not Christian today, you and your family, as Unitarians honoring the lives of great religious leaders, could bake a cake for the birthday of Jesus. Enjoy the day together!


Happy Hanukkah! Merry Christmas! Happy Solstice! Joyful Yuletide! Angela Chenus

About Hanukkah

A wonderful piece in the Washington Post about Hanukkah

Human Rights Central to Message of Hanukkah
By This Week's WordSaturday, December 20, 2008; B09

Rabbi Sid Schwarz is the founding rabbi of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda. He is president of PANIM: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values. His full sermon is at http://www.panim.org.

Tomorrow night, Dec. 21, which corresponds to the 25th day of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar, marks the first night of Hanukkah. Some rabbis have cynically commented that the popularity of Hanukkah is Jews' attempt to copy their gentile neighbors' observance of Christmas.

But motivations for observance notwithstanding, just as serious Christians try hard to put the Christ back into Christmas, Jews, too, must drill down to discover the power of the Hanukkah message. They will discover a message as central to Jewish teaching as any in our tradition.

It is also a message desperately needed in the world.

In 169, Antiochus Epiphanies, king of Syria, devastated Jerusalem, massacring thousands of Jews and desecrating Judaism's holiest shrine, the Temple in Jerusalem.

Under the military leadership of Judah Maccabee, Israel gradually rallied against Antiochus. On the 25th day of Kislev, the Maccabees retook Jerusalem and rededicated the Temple for Jewish worship. The Hebrew word Hanukkah literally means ''dedication.''

The custom of celebrating eight days of Hanukkah stems from the belief that the small amount of oil available to rekindle the Temple's menorah (sacred lamp) burned for eight days, even though the amount of oil was barely sufficient for one.

Whether one believes literally in the miracle of the high-octane oil, on a spiritual level Hanukkah is about a much bigger miracle. It is the miracle of faith conquering fear, of the few overcoming the many, of liberty winning out over oppression.

Every year, Hanukkah comes close to Human Rights Day, which was celebrated this year on Dec. 10. We ignore the day at our peril.

Enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are principles at the core of democracy: the right to life, liberty and security of person; equal justice before the law; protection against cruel and degrading forms of punishment; freedom of thought, conscience and religious practice.

These principles are also at the core of Judaism. Genesis 1:27 articulates the principle that every human being is made in the image of God (tzelem elohim).

I believe that tzelem elohim is the most radical teaching in the Torah. If we internalized the message in our own behavior and got societies and nation-states to abide by it, we would be well on our way to the Messianic era. But we are far from that place!

In violation of the teachings of Torah, we stand as idle witnesses to the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

We stand as idle witnesses to the ongoing repression in Burma.

We stand as idle witnesses to the illegal rule of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

In the Hanukkah story, the Maccabees fought for liberty, for the right to practice their religion, for the dignity of human freedom. Who are the Maccabees who stand for human rights in our world today?

Nelson Mandela is a Maccabee for helping South Africa emerge from a history of apartheid. He ensured that his society would be ruled by forgiveness and reconciliation, not by vengeance over the past.

The Dalai Lama is a Maccabee for representing peaceful resistance to the Chinese occupation of his native Tibet and has become a peace emissary to the world.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Maccabee by helping this country face its racism and showed us a path to a better America.

Recently, I participated in a national conference sponsored by Rabbis for Human Rights in Washington, D.C. The conference was infused with the Maccabee spirit because the organization understands that truth and honesty demand that we not only act on violations of human rights around the world, but that we need also look in our own back yard.

It is now common knowledge that our own country has been involved in state-sponsored torture of detainees, not only in Guantanamo but in prisons all around the globe. It has been documented that the prisoners range in age from 14 to 80. Most have been denied access to legal representation.

Not only do military experts tell us that the use of torture is ineffective in extracting information from prisoners, but the practice has made a mockery of America's claim to be fighting to protect democracy and human rights around the world.

Hanukkah coincides with the winter solstice. It is the darkest time of the year. And into that darkness, we are commanded to bring forth light.

We live in a dark time. In a world ravaged by war, prejudice, disease and now, an economic crisis that will put hundreds of thousands of people at risk of great suffering, we need to bring more light. Every day, we need more light, just like on Hanukkah. And to bring light, we need to become Maccabees -- people of faith who believe that liberty is worth fighting for, that human dignity is worth fighting for and that justice is worth fighting for.

Deep Freeze

God of spring, summer, fall and winter.

God whose name is unknowable, whose face is too bright to behold.

Find in these deep frozen places--of the heart, of the mind, of the spirit--some place that can find new life, some place that can mend and heal and thaw.

Breathe new life into these weary, shivering bones.

And when the time comes, and the days draw especially short, remind us that the earth holds in its embrace the new seeds that will birth bright colors come spring.

Come spring. But not too soon.Let me not rush the next thing. Still my heart, o God, to rest in this season, to let the seed be--still, silent, invisible. Waiting. The seed lives. The seed endures.

The seed will grow.

Give me patience, amidst the deep freeze. Give me eyes to see the life that is all around.

Amen.

Thomas Merton and Silence

Today, Sister Catherine Cleary sent this to me. What a great gift.


On this 40th anniversary of Thomas Merton's death, we offer a reflection by Frederick Smock, Chair of the English Department at Bellarmine University.




The monk/poet's journey toward silence

By Frederick Smock


Special to The Courier-Journal

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Thomas Merton's death, I want to think about silence. Certainly, Merton took a vow of silence, and he was occasionally silenced by the Vatican. But I am not thinking of those forms of silence. Rather, I want to think about silence and the poet's art.

Much of a monk's life is spent in silence. Much of a poet's life is spent in silence, too -- a poet spends a fraction of his time actually writing poems. Merton was both a monk and a poet, and thus well-acquainted with silence. Like meditation, and like prayer, poetry is surrounded by silence. Poetry begins and ends in silence. Silence is also inherent within a poem, like the silences between notes in music. As the great Chinese poet Yang Wan-li said, a thousand years ago, "A poem is made of words, yes, but take away the words and the poem remains."

Still, when we think of silence, we do not necessarily think of Merton. He was a voluble man, and a prolific writer. He continues to publish, posthumously. He always seems to be speaking to us. Bookshelves groan under the accumulating weight of his oeurvre. However, late in his life, Merton lamented the fact that he had written so many editorials, and not more poems and prayers -- forms that partake of silence. "More and more I see the necessity of leaving my own ridiculous 'career' as a religious journalist," he wrote in his journal (Dec. 2, 1959). "Stop writing for publication -- except poems and creative meditations."

"What do I really want to do?" Merton asked himself, in his journal (June 21, 1959). "Long hours of quiet in the woods, reading a little, meditating a lot, walking up and down in the pine needles in bare feet." What a man commits to his journal is, at once, the most private and the most authentic version of his self. Books written for public consumption are not errant, just not as heartfelt. In his journal for the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas (March 7, 1961), Merton wrote, "Determined to write less, to gradually vanish." He added, at the end of that entry, "The last thing I will give up writing will be this journal and notebooks and poems. No more books of piety."

Life is a journey toward silence, and not just the silence of death. Youth talks a lot -- is noisy. Old age is reticent. There is so much to consider, after all. Older men tend to hold their tongues. They know the wisdom of forbearance. To have seen many things is to reserve judgment. In this modern era, when news and politics are dominated by endlessly talking heads, silence becomes a precious commodity. The mere absence of speech sounds like silence. But true silence is a presence, not an absence. A fullness. A richness that depends for its worth on the purity of intent, not just the lack of distractions.

In a late journal entry (Dec. 4, 1968), Merton wrote of visiting the grand stupas of Buddha and Ananda at Gil Vihara, Sri Lanka. "The silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing...." Speaking of the figure of Ananda, Merton concluded, "It says everything. It needs nothing. Because it needs nothing it can afford to be silent, unnoticed, undiscovered." He also photographed these statues, focusing on their beatific serenity.

When we are silent, we can hear the wind in the trees, and the water in the brook, and is this not more eloquent than anything that we ourselves might have to say? Of living in his newly-built hermitage, Merton wrote in his journal (Feb. 24, 1965), "I can imagine no other joy on earth than to have such a place and to be at peace in it, to live in silence, to think and write, to listen to the wind and to all the voices of the wood, to live in the shadow of the big cedar cross, to prepare for my death...."

Is it ironic for a writer to praise silence? No more so, perhaps, than to praise ignorance, which is what Wendell Berry does in his poem "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front." There Berry writes, "Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered, he has not destroyed." So, perhaps we should praise silence, for as much as a man has not said, he has not lied.

Praise of silence runs throughout Merton's meditations. For just one example: of his teaching of the novices at Gethsemani, he wrote (July 4, 1952), "Between the silence of God and the silence of my own soul stands the silence of the souls entrusted to me."

Certainly, since his death, Merton has been silent -- if not silenced. There is also the soft rustle, just out of hearing, of the poems and prayers he did not live to write.

Frederick Smock is chairman of the English Department at Bellarmine University. His recent book is Pax Intrantibus: A Meditation on the Poetry of Thomas Merton (Broadstone Books).

Take Home Reflections--2nd Week of Advent

TAKE HOME REFLECTIONS

WEEK OF DECEMBER 7-13 (2nd Week of Advent)

Theme for the year: Home

Last week’s Advent theme was hope. This week’s advent theme is peace.

Sunday December 7th
Take some time today to reflect on peace.
The cold is definitely here. Saturday night the low was expected to be around 0 degrees. This morning at church we dedicated some supplies for adults living in a shelter run by the Sisters of Humility.

Take a minute today to be grateful for the shelter that you enjoy. Take a minute to thank the house that is your dwelling. Thank the yard (if you have one) that is yours that you enjoy in all of the seasons of the year. Take a moment to honor that shelter by a special decoration (holiday) or a special nature table/corner/altar space, bringing the sacred into the home.

FAMILIES

If you have a chance this week, find the book December by Eve Bunting. It is a story about a homeless family. Read it to your children and talk about what the story brings up for you.

Monday, December 8th
Take some time today to reflect on peace.
Let us think, on a Monday, about wisdom. In Essential Spirituality, there is a passage about Tibetan Buddhism’s four great insights, known as the “four great mind-changers.” Wisdom (via experience) encourages us to learn and awaken. Learning and awakening has the potential to lead us to great peace. So reflect, today, on the four great mind-changers:

Life is inconceivably precious.
Life is short and death is certain.
Life
contains inevitable difficulties.
Our ethical choices mold our lives.

Begin by taking time to relax and quiet the mind. Then read through one idea and contemplate what it means to you. What makes your life precious? How do I feel about the idea that death is certain? What are the implications of that? Life is certainly full of difficulties…so what? So now what? What difficulties have I known? What happened? What difficulties are with me right now? How am I coping? What are the resources upon which I draw to help? What ethical choices have molded my life?

FAMILIES:

Tell you child about a wise teacher you’ve had. Ask your child about his or her teachers and what they’ve learned from them. Ask your child what he or she would like to learn about this week.

Tuesday, December 9th
Take some time today to reflect on peace.
Let us think, for a moment, about the theme of this second week of Advent: Peace. Thich Nhat Hanh has written a book entitled Peace is Every Step. In it, I believe, he speaks of the mindfulness with which he takes every step on a certain staircase in Plum Village, where he teaches and lives. He says that though he has been in Plum Village for decades, as he ascends and descends on these steps, he thinks of peace, he is aware of himself walking.
Can you spend today walking with intentionality? Can you try to take every step, while saying to yourself: I am aware that I am taking this step. I am aware that my body is moving. I am aware of my surroundings. I am at peace.

Families:
If the temperature is not terrible, take a walk with your child in a favorite park or in the neighborhood. Notice what the trees and the sky looks like. Talk about how your child is feeling and doing, in school, with friends, at home, etc.

Thursday, December 11th
Take some time today to reflect on peace.
In the Christian tradition, one of the passages read last Sunday morning from the lectionary readings is in the book of Isaiah. It begins: Comfort, o, comfort my people.
When have you known comfort? When have you comforted another? Where is a place you feel full of comfort?

Saturday, December 13
Let us take a moment to consider our theme for the year: Home. Our theme is home because our sanctuary will turn 50 and our church this year is 140 years old.
In the Jewish traditions, the Rabbis have said: Let your house be a meeting place for the wise…and drink in their words with thirst.

What kind of wisdom do you thirst for? Who among your friends and acquaintances holds deep wisdom? Have you expressed your gratitude for that person? How can you make your own home a gathering spot for the wise and the deep and the loving and the compassionate? How will you drink those words of hope and peace and wisdom?

Families:
Ask your children what questions they have about the holiday season? What do they know about Hanukah? What do they know about Christmas? What do they know about the solstice? What do they know about Kwanzaa? What can you share with them about these magical times? (For resources, contact Sarah Moulton, who has lots of books and electronic resources available on holy days and holidays. Sarah is reachable at sarahmoulton1@yahoo.com)

See you in church,
Roger