Daily Compass

Inspiration:

 

 

The only way to see the beauty of an agate is to break it open.

“Amazing Grace”

To believe that life is meaningless, without worth, is to defy the gift of creation. Despair contends that the creative wonder of billions of years of evolution can be set aside on the strength of one person’s inability or refusal to participate in the ongoing dance of life.

But more often our pride emerges in small ways, as we get caught up in the busyness of our lives, in all the details and things that need to be done, so that the moments of grace simply get missed as we walk by with blinders on. Annie Dillard writes: “We are here to abet creation and to witness to it, to notice each other’s beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to an empty house.” Grace offers us the chance to witness creation, to take our place in that crowded theater. But all too often we are too self-absorbed, too taken up with the manufactured importance of our deadlines and duties to look toward the lighted stage, let alone recognize that we ourselves are part of the drama. We lose our capacity to witness and wonder at creation, and then complain that so much of our lives are filled with drudgery.

And yet, through the distractions of busyness, through the moments of despair or selfish pride, grace manages to break through with a gift of wonder and the opportunity to float, if only for a moment, with the current of the river. If only for a moment, the illusion of our separateness is broken and our eyes are opened to the part we play in the shared drama of life. We hear the world calling to us, over and over announcing our place in the family of things, and, like the wild geese, we join our companions in the long journey toward home.

 

Inspiration:

One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found – and it is found in terrible places…  For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock.  Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.  The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us.  The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. –James Baldwin

“Bumper Sticker Hope”

Someday this life for all of us will be completely over, so why not hope beyond reason, beyond the logical, beyond the chains of history? I would have never been able to lose over 150 lbs. (without surgery) and keep it off for ten years (and counting) without the ability to choose hope every day over despair at the state I had allowed my body to degenerate into. Making hope possible rather than despair convincing seems to be a better choice for me…I spent a lot of early life making despair convincing and I decided when I was 18 years old that without any logical reason that I would embrace hope that I could be different and this world could be different, if only so that I could just feel better about waking up every morning that I have. It may, as my bumper sticker says, be radical, but it is also just the only way I’ve been able to make it through my life so far—choosing to embrace hope over despair and doing so again and again and again….

 

Inspiration:

 

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
–Anton Chekhov 

 

 

“You Are the Light of the World”

Jesus and Buddha looked at the crowd and saw light.  They were not speaking to people who already knew this. Notice that Jesus did not say, “Blessed are the powerful, the wealthy, the popular. Blessed are the handsome; blessed are the cool.” He was speaking to the rest of us. You, whose marriage failed, or who remained single in a world where people are expected to be married—you are light. You with a jailed child, you are light. Your child is, too. You who work at a job you hate, you who lost your job—you are light. You are light when you don’t like yourself very much, when you have failed. That’s the miracle of the light—God in you—it’s still there and it can be there even against your will.

Hiding it makes no sense; why waste something so precious? And yet we do. They didn’t say you could be light some day if you worked hard at it, were good enough, or did something worthwhile with your life. You, now. Make of yourself a light…You are the light of the world.

 

Inspiration:

 

 

When I am alone today, may I bring fullness to my solitude. When I am with others today, may I make room for the fullness of what each person brings.

 

“Coming Out In a Conservative Family”

I am honored to be a part of a inclusive religious tradition that values not only the worth and dignity of all people but that also actively seeks to affirm and invite diversity, which is not always the case for those of us who grew up in more exclusive religious paradigms. There are, still, many religious institutions which cling to a dying worldview that people who are not heterosexual are not normal. Or they take it a step further, and say that lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered persons are an abomination to God. This is a sad and harmful stance, and it leaves a trail of pain and suffering for those who have endured such teachings. Some of us have been able to escape the bonds of belief systems that condemn us through religious hate-speak. As an “escapee,” I offer you words of comfort: You are not an abomination. You are not flawed. You are good and worthy, and you deserve to live life in an unfragmented fashion—as who you are, knowing that you are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” that you are loved, and that you deserve to be happy and whole—as well as confident that you deserve to walk your own spiritual path with authenticity.

by by Mary Frances Comer, Pastoral Care Associate, Church of the Larger Fellowship
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Inspiration:

If you break a bone or tear a muscle or ligament, after the healing has begun you are likely to engage in physical therapy to regain strength and flexibility. What do you to regain strength and flexibility for a broken heart or a torn spirit?

 

 

 

Mending

How shall we mend you, sweet Soul?
What shall we use, and how is it
in the first place you’ve come to be torn?
Come sit. Come tell me.
We will find a way to mend you.

I would offer you so much, sweet Soul:
this banana, sliced in rounds of palest
yellow atop hot cereal, or these raisins
scattered through it, if you’d rather.
Would offer cellos in the background singing
melodies Vivaldi heard and wrote
for us to keep. Would hold out to you
everything colored blue or lavender
or light green. All of this I would offer you,
sweet Soul. All of it, or any piece of it,
might mend you.

I would offer you, sweet Soul,
this chair by the window, this sunlight
on the floor and the cat asleep in it.
I would offer you my silence,
my presence, all this love I have,
and my sorrow you’ve become torn.

How shall we mend you, sweet Soul?
With these, I think, gently
we can begin: we will mend you with a rocking
chair, some raisins,
a cat, a field of lavender beginning
now to bloom. We will mend you with songs
remembered entirely the first time
ever they are heard.

We will mend you with pieces of your own
sweet self, sweet Soul — with what you’ve taught
from the very beginning.

by Nancy Shaffer, associate minister, First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ann Arbor, Michigan
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