“Sometimes healing begins not with fixing, but with allowing.”

Sean Fargo

In the Soul Matters Small Group Discussion materials, there is an exercise that suggests taking pictures of things that are broken but beautiful.  I decided to try this as I’m recovering from shoulder surgery, feeling a bit broken myself.  

Maybe I have a little problem with getting rid of things that aren’t perfect.  Call me sentimental. But, I remember the time my son threw the baseball in the house and broke my mother’s Lladro.  I still have it, the arm tentatively glued back on.  It was a moment where my son knew that he broke something that was precious to me and there was no undoing what was done. I saw it in his eyes. I forced myself to push down my horror and explain calmly that glue would fix it, and baseballs belong outside.

The Lladro was still beautiful in my eyes.  

My mother loved Lladros;  the soft blue and cream porcelain, the delicate sculptures, serene in their beauty.  I went to Spain on my honeymoon, and bought one for her at quite a great price.  I was so thrilled to give it to her.  It was a lounging girl with a curly bob, a little hat on her head, and a blue bird in her outstretched hand. My mom did adore it.  She said it looked just like me when I was younger.  I felt like it was the perfect gift.

When my mom died, I decided that this little Lladro was coming to stay with me, and I felt connected to her whenever I looked at it.  I told my kids how special it was when they wanted to pick it up- they understood.  So you can imagine the energy in the room, when that very thing was broken.  

The group discussion activity asks, after you take photos of “broken yet beautiful” things in your life, to ask yourself some questions.

•  How these broken but beautiful things are inviting you to view your life anew.
•  How might they be wanting you to understand “brokenness” differently? Or “beauty” differently?
•  What message about beauty and pain do they want you to hear?
•  What kind of healing might they be offering you?

Yes, we can and should wonder about the brokenness and healing of the self.  How are you still beautiful despite the hardship you’ve endured?  Is there a way to see an alternate view?  Can you use something that once broke in you to help someone through a crisis with added empathy.

With the children last week, the leaders discussed how light heals when there is suffering in the dark places.  A single person can heal another by shedding their light of hope and care upon them. Their light can be as simple as a smile, or a kind comment, or time spent beside one who feels broken. This, I feel, is what we are here to do as a community of wanderers…to share the healing, view the areas that have been broken with new eyes, shedding light on the possibilities of repair.

Warmly,

Robin

The post Healing What’s Broken first appeared on Unitarian Universalist Church of Worcester.

The post The Work of Citizenship first appeared on Unitarian Universalist Church of Worcester.

Hello My Friends,

Today I am offering the first third of a very long poem by Ross Gay.  The poem is called “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” and it pours forth a lifetime of experience, all viewed through a lens of prayer and celebrations.

You can watch and hear the poet perform the entire poem here:

https://wordsfortheyear.com/2018/02/25/catalog-of-unabashed-gratitude-by-ross-gay/

But before you decide whether to turn your attention to poetry for the whole adventure, you can read here the beginning of the piece.

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

By Ross Gay

Friends, will you bear with me today,
for I have awakened
from a dream in which a robin
made with its shabby wings a kind of veil
behind which it shimmied and stomped something from the south
of Spain, its breast aflare,
looking me dead in the eye
from the branch that grew into my window,
coochie-cooing my chin,
the bird shuffling its little talons left, then right,
while the leaves bristled
against the plaster wall, two of them drifting
onto my blanket while the bird
opened and closed its wings like a matador
giving up on murder,
jutting its beak, turning a circle,
and flashing, again,
the ruddy bombast of its breast
by which I knew upon waking
it was telling me
in no uncertain terms
to bellow forth the tubas and sousaphones,
the whole rusty brass band of gratitude
not quite dormant in my belly—
it said so in a human voice,
“Bellow forth”—
and who among us could ignore such odd
and precise counsel?
Hear ye! hear ye! I am here
to holler that I have hauled tons—by which I don’t mean lots,
I mean tons — of cowshit
and stood ankle deep in swales of maggots
swirling the spent beer grains
the brewery man was good enough to dump off
holding his nose, for they smell very bad,
but make the compost writhe giddy and lick its lips,

twirling dung with my pitchfork
again and again
with hundreds and hundreds of other people,
we dreamt an orchard this way,
furrowing our brows,
and hauling our wheelbarrows,
and sweating through our shirts,
and two years later there was a party
at which trees were sunk into the well-fed earth,
one of which, a liberty apple, after being watered in
was tamped by a baby barefoot
with a bow hanging in her hair
biting her lip in her joyous work
and friends this is the realest place I know,
it makes me squirm like a worm I am so grateful,
you could ride your bike there
or roller skate or catch the bus
there is a fence and a gate twisted by hand,
there is a fig tree taller than you in Indiana,
it will make you gasp.
It might make you want to stay alive even, thank you;
and thank you
for not taking my pal when the engine
of his mind dragged him
to swig fistfuls of Xanax and a bottle or two of booze,
and thank you for taking my father
a few years after his own father went down thank you
mercy, mercy, thank you
for not smoking meth with your mother
oh thank you thank you
for leaving and for coming back,
and thank you for what inside my friends’
love bursts like a throng of roadside goldenrod
gleaming into the world,
likely hauling a shovel with her
like one named Aralee ought,
with hands big as a horse’s,
and who, like one named Aralee ought,
will laugh time to time til the juice

runs from her nose; oh
thank you
for the way a small thing’s wail makes
the milk or what once was milk
in us gather into horses
huckle-buckling across a field;
and thank you, friends, when last spring
the hyacinth bells rang
and the crocuses flaunted
their upturned skirts, and a quiet roved
the beehive which when I entered
were snugged two or three dead
fist-sized clutches of bees between the frames,
almost clinging to one another,
this one’s tiny head pushed
into another’s tiny wing,
one’s forelegs resting on another’s face,
the translucent paper of their wings fluttering
beneath my breath and when
a few dropped to the frames beneath:
honey; and after falling down to cry,
everything’s glacial shine.

The post Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude first appeared on Unitarian Universalist Church of Worcester.

Autumn in New England is a busy time.  We are peeping at leaves, picking produce in fields, carving gourdes, dressing up in costume, eating candy, going on hayrides, and trying to make it through the corn maze.  

When it begins to get cooler, energy levels increase and try to squeeze everything in until it begins to get dark at 4:30pm and we lose that burst.

So, finding my way through this beautiful season gets challenging for me, and I know it does for many others too.  Also, I know that many venues from schools, farms, fairgrounds, and even churches jump in on the fall celebrations.  We are gathering, harvesting, and giving thanks, but…..also let’s breathe.  The air is crisp, tree colors are warm, and autumn is preparing us to hunker down and slow our frenzied activities.  Well, I try to think of it like that, even though I know the winter holidays zoom right behind it and we switch on the colored lights and jump into the new business of seasons.  I am trying to really appreciate the fact that I live in New England and we have those seasons (sometimes all at the same time!)

That brings me to say that we, at UUCW, in the Religious Exploration arena, we spend time exploring and celebrating the seasons and what they mean around the world, and to us as Unitarian Universalists. In the fall, folks from UUCW join together to do a good amount of outreach like native gardening, distributing food to folks who need a hand, walking to support hunger through our CROP Walk, and giving globally  to kids in need globally through UNICEF and our Halloween Fair. I hope you can join in and add the joy of supporting others through the seasons (even if you dress up as a clown to do it!)

See Emily Stolarski this week in Fellowship Hall during coffee hour to support or take part in the CROP Walk which is happening on Sunday October 18th right up the street in Holden. You can also help by bringing some cash and buying a baked good from our RE Families at the bake sale, which is being run by our 6th and 7th grade class.    

Our High School Youth Group will be celebrating community and the earth by going on a pumpkin picking outing at Tougas Farm in Northboro this Sunday afternoon from 3:00-4:45pm.

On Sunday October 25th- Our children will be dressed up and “Trick-or-Treating for UNICEF” up and down the church pews, and then gathering in Fellowship Hall for a UNICEF Halloween Carnival!

When you are traveling through the fall maze of the season, remember to breathe and take in the beauty and the love of helpers all around us.

Happy Picking and Carving!

Robin 

The post Finding Our Way Through Fall first appeared on Unitarian Universalist Church of Worcester.

TRIGGER WARNING: This piece deals with sexual violence.

“We talk about how many women were raped last year, not about how many men raped women. We talk about how many girls in a school district were harassed last year, not about how many boys harassed girls. We talk about how many teenage girls in the state of Vermont got pregnant last year, rather than how many men and boys impregnated teenage girls.”

“So you can see how the use of the passive voice has a political effect. [It] shifts the focus off of men and boys and onto girls and women. Even the term ‘violence against women’ is problematic. It ‘s a passive construction; there’s no active agent in the sentence. It’s a bad thing that happens to women, but when you look at that term ‘violence against women,’ nobody is doing it to them. It just happens to them… Men aren’t even a part of it!”

– Jackson Katz

This month’s Soul Matters Theme is Courage, and it coincides with Domestic Violence Awareness Month, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and National Coming Out Day. Today is also the 3rd anniversary of the attack by Hamas on the people of Israel. And at the risk of preaching the sermon I plan for this coming Sunday, I wanted to pause here and address some of that which has been so prominent in the news of late, given all that has happened and continues to happen across our country related to all of this, especially the news about the Cornell Seven.

What is striking about the news reporting on the gang rape that occurred on Cornell’s campus is that those who have been implicated in this horrific act of violence have been named. As the Jackson Katz quote above suggests, this is not the norm in our culture, but it should be.

I am not a lawyer, and I do not have insight into the legal intricacies of this situation. I am, however, a minister who firmly believes that at its core, what we continue to deal with in our country amounts to a moral tragedy and an ongoing ethical failure on the part of our communities and institutions.

As a father of both a daughter and a son, I also reflect on this issue as one who has tried to instill in both my children the means by which they can maintain their own safety and that of those with whom they travel.

What it seems to me is the fundamental moral failure in our culture is that the onus to report and seek justice for acts of violence against others falls hugely and disproportionately on those who are the victims of such violence. Mostly women, but not all, as our indigenous and transgender brothers and sisters will attest. The issue of inculturated skepticism is at hand here. So I want to say without hesitation, when you tell me that you’ve been sexually assaulted, I see you, and I believe you. Period. And I will walk with you as you decide the best course of action for you.

I also believe this is the response that those who have experienced such violence should receive in the communities that hold them.

Safety is first an experience of trust. As a community and as a culture, we must make this our first response.

In addition, I believe we must work to challenge any system that places those who have experienced violence under a moral microscope. As Katz suggests above, we do not do this to those who perpetrate violence. The conversation must shift to who is responsible for creating and maintaining safe environments. And we must respond and address the way in which we perpetuate moral scrutiny on our social media, realities that largely perpetuate trauma and isolate those who have been harmed.
We cannot continue to place responsibility primarily on those who are victimized by violence for their own safety. We must create environments where that safety is a communal responsibility borne by all, especially in our culture – men.

As we honor the work of those in our community who are committed to walking with victims of domestic violence, let us also carry with us the burden of shifting the culture to address the reality that for every one who is victimized, there is at least one person who perpetrated that violence, and in fact, given our culture’s complicity in such violence, I would argue legions are responsible.

Might we, as a community, partner with those who support victims of such violence as well as advocate and create the means to educate those who so often perpetrate such violence, to teach them how to be a force for safety and care.

This is a meditation in process for me, and I’m interested in how you think and feel about all of this.
And please remember. I/We see you. I/We believe you. Period.

Blessings,
Aaron

The post Courage in Context first appeared on Unitarian Universalist Church of Worcester.

Many thanks to our congregation for all who stepped up in last spring’s pledge drive!

Summer may feel like a quiet season at UUCW, but our expenses don’t take a break. Numbers from our summer finances tell an important story.

Staff salaries and support staff costs stay steady all summer long, and while facilities and committee expenses dip a bit with lighter building use, they don’t disappear. Meanwhile, our income tells a different tale: pledge payments — our largest source of income — drop significantly over the summer months, even as other income stays roughly flat. That gap between steady expenses and shrinking income can create real cash flow challenges for the congregation.

The fix is simple: If you haven’t made pledge payments over the summer, please catch up on those now!  If you’d like to make it effortless, check out the donation section of our website for a step-by-step guide to setting up automated pledge payments. And if your pledge amount is changing from last year, please let us know so our records stay accurate.

Thank you for keeping UUCW strong all year round — and welcome back!

The Stewardship Team

Moira Rouse & Dave Schowalter

The post Catch up on your Summer Pledge Payments first appeared on Unitarian Universalist Church of Worcester.

I love September. It’s the beginning of so many things: school, church, autumn. But this year, I think of September in a different way, as a time when we begin a new year without so many public figures who’ve left us recently, those who left us their examples, their inspiration, and a better world.

I have always loved that Dolly Parton took the deprivation of her childhood and decided children shouldn’t be deprived of the opportunity to read. I love that Gloria Steinem left us the example of how to change the world for the better for women. I love that Wendell Berry encouraged us to find the peace of nature, that we learn to block out the buzz of the world around us. And our recent loss of Annie Dillard reminds me of how breathless I become each time I read her work, and how spirituality infuses every word.

In 1939, the world was on the verge of war and two great people passed away, inspiring poet W.H. Auden, who wrote: “. . . every day they die among us, those who were doing us some good.”

A small voice inside me, when it speaks, is afraid: who will replace these amazing people, these leaders-by-example, in this confusing, upsetting, unloving world we live in now? Who will help us? Who will provide their examples of kindness, compassion, inspiration and energy to fix a broken world? Does anyone know how to replace them?

But I think these heroes we’re thinking of now as they leave us knew something important: we mustn’t look to others. They certainly didn’t. They took their own focused vision for a better world and invested all they were in that vision; they did what they could do for their piece of the world.

Which brings me to my questions for myself, for our congregation:

What is your piece of the world? 

What is your goal? 

And how can we help achieve it?

As we bid farewell to Dillard, and Berry I have been reminded of how many times, because of writers like them, I’ve leaned on literature for the answers, and here’s a bit of poem (not theirs, but beloved just the same):

“You must hold your quiet center,

where you do what only you can do.”

—From A Center, by Ha Jin

I hope UUCW can help you find and protect your quiet center.

Namaste.

Melissa McKeon, Board President

The post September first appeared on Unitarian Universalist Church of Worcester.

Hello my UU friends,

Welcome back for the new church season.  Fall came quickly this year.  I remember when I was young, fall always arrived right at Labor Day weekend.  In the last couple decades, summer extended into September, and then in recent years, even into October.  It was weird, but very pleasant.  Not this year!  Back to the old Labor Day weekend schedule!  The crisp cool days paired with the still-green leaves and the remnants of long hours of daylight is refreshing.  Some people see fall as a fresh start, especially if they are starting a new academic year, new classes, new textbooks, sharpening new pencils for inviting blank composition books…  Other people see increasing darkness as a time to pull out the warm clothes, light a few candles and cozy into a time of self-reflection.  

I think Jack Gilbert falls into the self-reflective camp.  His poems meditate on the fragility of life and love, and although the themes are universal, his reflections are always grounded in his most intimate experiences.  He writes often about his love for his wife Michiko, a former student, much younger than he, who died very young of cancer.  Although he had other lovers, and other wives, she is the closest companion of his heart.

In this poem, the gods come to his table and ask him to reflect on his life.  He journeys from youth through the ages of love to the fear and anticipation of the final stage.  The gods ask open-ended questions, but his answers stick close to his personal themes.  If the gods asked me, I would certainly find myself reflecting on the loves of my life, but also the places I’ve lived and the places I’ve traveled to.  I have been thinking recently about the environment, and our changing planet, and all the destinations I might never reach.

I also think about the people I haven’t yet met, and may never meet.  I think of people on the other side of the world, or even the masses at airport terminals, people similar in background to me, strangers passing in the night.

I ask you to imagine, if the gods came to your supper table, how would you answer them?

BRING IN THE GODS 

By Jack Gilbert

Bring in the gods I say, and he goes out. When he comes
back and I know they are with him, I say, Put tables in front 
of them so they may be seated, and food upon the tables 
so they may eat. When they have eaten, I ask which of them
will question me. Let him hold up his hand, I say. 
The one on the left raises his hand and I tell him to ask. 
Where are you now, he says. I stand on top of myself, I hear 
myself answer. I stand on myself like a hilltop and my life 
is spread before me. Does it surprise you, he asks. I explain 
that in our youth and for a long time after our youth we cannot 
see our lives. Because we are inside of that. Because we can
see no shape to it since we have nothing to compare it to. 
We have not seen it grow and change because we are too close.
We don’t know the names of things that would bind them to us, 
so we cannot feed on them. One near the middle asks why not. 
Because we don’t have the knack for eating what we are living. 
Why is that? she asks. Because we are too much in a hurry. 
Where are you now? the one on the left says. With the ghosts. 
I am with Gianna those two years in Perugia. Meeting secretly 
in the thirteenth-century alleys of stone. Walking in the fields 
through the spring light, she well dressed and walking in heels 
over the plowed land. We are just outside the city walls 
hidden under the thorny blackberry bushes and her breasts naked. 
I am with her those many twilights in the olive orchards, 
holding the heart of her as she whimpers. Now where are you? 
he says. I am with Linda those years and years. In American 
cities, in København, on Greek islands season after season.
Lindos and Monolithos and the other places. I am with Michiko 
for eleven years, East and West, holding her clear in my mind 
the way a native can hold all of his village at one moment. 
Where are you now? he says. I am standing on myself the way 
a bird sits in her nest, with the babies half asleep underneath 
and the world all leaves and morning air. What do you want? 
a blonde one asks. To keep what I already have, I say. You ask 
too much, he says sternly. Then you are at peace, she says. 
I am not at peace, I tell her. I want to fail. I am hungry 
for what I am becoming. What will you do? she asks. I will 
continue north, carrying the past in my arms, flying into winter.

The post Bring In The Gods first appeared on Unitarian Universalist Church of Worcester.

I’m Emily Miller Mlčák, UUCW’s new ministerial intern for the next two years.  I’ve already felt so welcomed by this congregation.  Thank you for taking on an intern! 

A few things about me:  I’m in  my second year of seminary at Meadville Lombard Theological School.  I’m someone who has had many different careers and interests, all of which revolve around transformation.  Currently I work as an ADHD coach, helping people with anxiety, depression, and childhood trauma increase their resiliency and joy.   I’ve been a teacher as well.  Mostly I taught writing, at various colleges as well as in the Young Writers Workshop, a summer writing program for high schoolers at Bard College.  I’m interested in issues of vulnerability, resistance and what it means to be human.

I’ve also taught theater, visual arts, dance, and music at Touchstone Community School, and I’ve performed (or shown my artwork) in all of those areas, except for dance.   Gardening, weightlifting, and open-water swimming are my stress relievers.  Pretty much anything water works – particularly when I can dive in and spot the turtles and frogs in the water. 

I have one daughter, who has a 6-month-old daughter herself.  She and her husband live in Georgia. 

Please come have tea with me after church on Sunday, October 4^th.  We’ll meet in the lounge at noon (BYO tea or coffee) and I’ll bring some homemade baked good.  Come tell me about yourself, the best lunch spot in Worcester, a favorite poet, a great song – and I’ll do the same.

My email: intern@uucworcester.org

The post Introducing Ministerial Intern Emily Miller Mlčák  first appeared on Unitarian Universalist Church of Worcester.

Last Friday night I met with the Religious Exploration Team to put on a Welcome Back Families event . It was extraordinary!

In the room, there was love.  It wasn’t because of the pizza and the popsicles!  It was love for our community gathering together.

The twenty children met each other with excitement and smiles. The teens showed up to help with the little ones. The legos were taken out of the bins and the floor was filled with builders. Children felt at home in their surroundings.

Parents and caregivers greeted one another with renewed familiarity.. We were honored that our new ministerial intern Emily came to meet our attending families.

After a while, the children split off with the teens and I sat down with parents and we chatted. It was a fairly large group, but it felt intimate and light-hearted and familiar. We heard about each other’s excellent adventures over the summer and shared laughs and interest. The RE team and I then shared from our hearts what Religious Exploration meant to us. The key elements that ran through all of our descriptions were love, respect, acceptance, safe space, and discovery. 

Yes, we went through all the pertinent info about our program, our Safe Church Policies, our calendar, and individual classes.  But truly, we were just beginning with love: for our community and the programs we strive to deliver, and the connections we hope to nourish.

At the end of the evening, a dad of a younger child came up to me privately and told me how he really never knew the scope of what went into the Religious Exploration program and how he was very moved by the detail in which we honor our children.  At the end of the evening we had parents asking to be trained in our extra programming like Our Whole Lives (OWL) -Human Sexuality Education taught across the lifespan. At the end, the RE team who worked together to put everything together with the food and the set-up, cleared up and we went on our way. At the end, I felt blessed to be a part of our community.  We began with love.

AND we begin our RE programming on September 27th at 10am and I  can’t wait to meet all the families again…with love.

With Happy Anticipation,

Robin

The post Beginning With Love first appeared on Unitarian Universalist Church of Worcester.