Notes from Rev. Denise
Dear Ones,
For this very green April week, a poem of joy and possibility from a favorite poet:
So Much Happiness, by Naomi Shihab Nye
It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records . . .
Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.
Yours in the possibility of coffee cake and happiness that flows,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
“When you really pay attention, everything is your teacher.”
~ Ezra Bayda
Beloveds,
Yesterday (or maybe the day before), my teacher was a yellow-bellied sapsucker I spotted on the maple tree outside my kitchen window. I was surprised to see it circling and drilling into the treetrunk for over an hour, and I watched it pause repeatedly to fluff up the feathers on its belly (it was cold that day–must have been Monday) and to smooth its wing & tail feathers. Despite having a bright red cap and yellowish belly, in moments of stillness the bird was nearly invisible against the tree bark, as the pattern on its folded wing and tail feathers looked remarkably similar to the tree’s bark.
Only after observing it for some time as I moved about my kitchen did I ask the Merlin app for help identifying it. It was quite large compared to the woodpeckers we usually see in our yard, so it was quick work to find my new friend. After reading up since then on sapsuckers, I realize now she (no red throat, like the males have) was drilling tap wells (sapsuckers love sugar maples) which she may return to visit. And perhaps other birds will also feast on the sap and small insects trapped in it as it hardens. I’ll be keeping an eye out. According to the maps, Tennessee is winter territory for these birds, so I suppose I shouldn’t hope to see nestlings nearby this spring.
So what lessons has my yellow-bellied teacher offered? I’m still reflecting, but I think they are about persistence and planning (you’ve got to put in work to get to the good meals!), and alternating hard work with periods of rest and preening. Also about generosity and sharing: other species have or will feed at the many sap wells drilled into that tree trunk, the sap feeds new growth within and around the tree, and the tree adds so much in other ways to its biome (which includes me) and elicits my gratitude for its beauty and shade and soil-retaining root system, as well as the attraction of birds I enjoy watching.
I hope some of your attention this springtime is yielding observations similarly rich and sweetly educational!
Yours in love and learning,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
“When you really pay attention, everything is your teacher.”
~ Ezra Bayda
Beloveds,
Yesterday (or maybe the day before), my teacher was a yellow-bellied sapsucker I spotted on the maple tree outside my kitchen window. I was surprised to see it circling and drilling into the treetrunk for over an hour, and I watched it pause repeatedly to fluff up the feathers on its belly (it was cold that day–must have been Monday) and to smooth its wing & tail feathers. Despite having a bright red cap and yellowish belly, in moments of stillness the bird was nearly invisible against the tree bark, as the pattern on its folded wing and tail feathers looked remarkably similar to the tree’s bark.
Only after observing it for some time as I moved about my kitchen did I ask the Merlin app for help identifying it. It was quite large compared to the woodpeckers we usually see in our yard, so it was quick work to find my new friend. After reading up since then on sapsuckers, I realize now she (no red throat, like the males have) was drilling tap wells (sapsuckers love sugar maples) which she may return to visit. And perhaps other birds will also feast on the sap and small insects trapped in it as it hardens. I’ll be keeping an eye out. According to the maps, Tennessee is winter territory for these birds, so I suppose I shouldn’t hope to see nestlings nearby this spring.
So what lessons has my yellow-bellied teacher offered? I’m still reflecting, but I think they are about persistence and planning (you’ve got to put in work to get to the good meals!), and alternating hard work with periods of rest and preening. Also about generosity and sharing: other species have or will feed at the many sap wells drilled into that tree trunk, the sap feeds new growth within and around the tree, and the tree adds so much in other ways to its biome (which includes me) and elicits my gratitude for its beauty and shade and soil-retaining root system, as well as the attraction of birds I enjoy watching.
I hope some of your attention this springtime is yielding observations similarly rich and sweetly educational!
Yours in love and learning,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it. “
~Mary Oliver
Friends,
As you may have noticed, our theme for March is attention. (If you haven’t noticed, well, it’s never too late to pay attention!) I’m feeling a bit scattered this week, so I will invite you to consider a couple of prompts that are on my desktop courtesy of this month’s Soul Matters subscription packet. I’ll be thinking about these questions over the next few days as well, and I’d love to hear where they lead you.
-It is said we become what we give our attention to. What are 2-3 things that you pay attention to that capture 2-3 things you treasure about yourself?
-As you’ve aged, what new things have grabbed your attention in a way they haven’t before? How are you a different kind of person because of this?
Perhaps you will discover something astonishing about yourself. (I assure you: you are astonishing!)
Yours in attention and astonishment,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
“The earth laughs in flowers.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
~Earth
Dear Ones,
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that spring has just pounced on us all at once this year. And I’m finding that welcome, given the winter we’ve just had.
What I’ve spotted over just the last few days: redbud (a personal favorite), Bradford pear blossoms (an embarrassing but pretty holdover from the less horticulturally enlightened Nashville of the 1980s), daffodils, peach blossoms (indications are that the squirrels in my backyard will be well-fed this summer!), forsythia, all the so-called weeds that start growing before the grass gets around to greening up, Lenten roses, garlic sprouts (Egyptian walking garlic in my front yard!), leaves returning to all sorts of roadside underbrush (well, probably mostly shrub honeysuckle), and most recently & most welcomed after the hard winter our trees have had: new leaves beginning to grow on our big trees. I am so very eager this spring to see our tree canopy leaf out and turn green after the damage suffered over the winter.
More than usually and for many reasons I–and perhaps you, too–need a lush Middle Tennessee spring this year. I hope you will spend some time attending to the joy and encouragement this season brings.
Yours in soaking up the return of greenness and blooming,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
“Our human compassion binds us the one to the other–not in pity or patronizingly,
but as human beings who have learnt how to turn
our common suffering into hope for the future.”
~Nelson Mandela
Beloveds,
One of the wise people in my life recently reflected to me that I am feeling anxious. They’re right, and there are a number of factors both close and very far away contributing to this week’s version of anxiety. And I’m accustomed to recognizing my anxiety and inviting it to step back and give me some breathing space.
Recently, I’ve begun to feel that we (people alive right now) are most closely bound by our anxieties; there is certainly plenty in our world and the unfolding of our leaders’ actions to induce anxiety. It’s not hard to see how anxiety and fearful concern bind us together, AND I wonder what possibilities might arise if we choose to turn our attention to the human compassion and hope that Nelson Mandela suggests can be alchemized in the service of a better future. Perhaps we are (or could become) more connected by our hopes than by our fears.
Yours in noticing our humanity and our hope,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
“The ultimate form of preparation is not planning for a specific scenario,
but a mindset that can handle uncertainty.”
~James Clear
Dear Ones,
I am ambivalent about uncertainty: surprises can be nice (especially when they are yummy) but it can take me a moment to recalibrate if I was expecting something else to happen in the immediate future. Sometimes it takes a loooong moment…
I am a planner, a system-builder by nature, and I appreciate structure, especially if I have the feeling that it is or can be controlled (not necessarily by me). In other words, rolling with uncertainty is perhaps not my strongest personality trait.
And yet, our resilience and survival depend on some degree of tolerance of and skill with uncertainty. You know what they say about death and taxes being the only sure things in life, right? As a planner and system-builder, I would rather believe that good planning could keep me and those I love safer, but that would require that I ignore a good deal of evidence to the contrary, I’m afraid.
So as we wrap up our monthly theme of embodying resilience, I’m wondering if March’s theme of paying attention might be just what we need right now, as the world seems to be changing faster and in more frightening ways. Putting my fingers in my ears and singing “la, la, la, I can’t hear you!” may not in fact make us particularly resilient or happy in the face of life as it is. And life–however it is–is what I want us to share.
Yours in the embodied resilience and love of community,
Rev. Denise
“ I want to dance with everybody who came through that door”
~Drew Holcomb & Ketch Secor, Dance with Everybody
Beloveds,
How are you this grey February day? I am all over the place, finding plenty of things about which to feel anxious, unsettled, and unhappy (to be honest, angry and dismayed are more accurate), but I am also settling into the reality that the members of GNUUC have called me to be their “settled minister”--which makes me want to dance!
I may have played the song linked above a few times before settling down to write. It’s a song that has always reminded me of our congregation, with its commitment to welcoming and and enjoying every person who walks in our doors, and this week I am celebrating having been invited on a more permanent basis into our dance of shared ministry. I may be imagining a big dance party with y’all.
I am grateful to all our members, and especially the members of the Contract to Call Task Force, for having undertaken the careful process of deciding to “call” me from my status as a contract (employed year-to-year) minister into the position of being a settled minister. This is one of those things that changes nothing and everything: our day to day life and work together will continue much as it has been, but the covenant between us has and will be deepened and strengthened.
Yours (along with all the people who walk through our door),
Rev. Denise
“There’s so much to do. We need everyone to be healthier. Trusting each other
- individually, as a congregation, as a larger system of congregations and communities - is the only way we’re gonna get it done.”
~Kimberly Debus
Dear Ones,
The quotation above landed in my inbox this morning, courtesy of my colleague Kimberly Debus’ blog “Hold My Chalice”. This week’s post considers trust in the context of covenant. (You can read it here, if you like. It also features some pretty funny “Puritan Valentines”!)
Kimberly has me thinking about the necessity of trust for doing the “so much to do” that surrounds us more than ever right now. I can barely (indeed some days I just cannot!) face the news and opinion feeds on my electronic devices without trusting in the presence and support of many others in my life. And that’s just about knowing what is going on in the world beyond my direct experience, nevermind thinking about what might be mine to do by way of responding! For that, I definitely need good company.
Together, we are healthier (living organisms simply don’t do well in isolation!) and being healthy together requires that we trust each other to provide mutual support, clear and honest communication, and a place to practice tolerating how vulnerable we human beings are. Not easy, but doable, if we are willing–and I hope we are, because I suspect that my colleague is correct that trust is the only way we will be able to do what will be ours to do.
Yours in faith and love,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
“I have come to believe that we are all rather like tree rings and shell patterns…”
~Anngwyn St. Just
Beloveds,
I hope you are finding this week warmer than last!
One of my favorite Christmas presents this year was a lovely little book entitled How to Be More Tree (by Liz Marvin, illus. Annie Davidson), and my attention has been more focused on the trees around me in recent days than usual. Consequently the sentence above stood out to me as I was reading last week. Here is the rest of it & a little more:
I have come to believe that we are all rather like tree rings and shell patterns in that what has happened to us leaves a permanent record. The goal of trauma work, therefore, as I see it, is not to erase or cure but rather to expand and include and grow larger than whatever has happened to us. If one thinks in terms of integration and resolving rather than eliminating trauma, then there is a possibility of guiding a multidimensional human organism toward an experience of relative balance and resiliency. (St. Just, Relative Balance in an Unstable World)
I am not a trauma expert, but I see the wisdom in approaching the inevitable experiences that do not serve to create joy and peace in our lives (like being cold or afraid of damage to our homes or harm to our loved ones) as invitations offering a possibility (wanted or not) for expansion and inclusion. This is, I think, a bit more than a restatement of the old adage “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” It is an invitation to know ourselves not just as strong, resilient beings, but also as deeply connected to all that is and embedded in connections that offer healing and enlargement, even in the face of threats of all kinds. This way of seeing a human being focuses on resilience, our ability to acknowledge and work with even the lessons, experiences, and facts of life we might choose to escape if we could.
Yours in love and being like a tree,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
P.S. If any of you are still without power, please do check-in by email if we can help. Email directory@gnuuc.org to send messages of need and/or encouragement and offers of help to each other.
Jan. 21, 2026
If you find yourself lost in the woods, … build yourself a house.
“Well, I was lost, but now I live here! I have severely improved my predicament!”
~Mitch Hedberg (comedian)
Beloveds,
Do any of you feel like we are all lost in the woods? I wasn’t aware that I’ve been feeling this way until I read the quotation above in Oliver Burkeman’s book Meditations for Mortals.
The other random input that arrived this morning (on my phone) was a lovely video of dozens of people in Minnesota engaged in a coordinated, nonviolent, and very creative protest against Target’s cooperation with ICE (in allowing them to target employees and use parking lots as staging areas) by standing in line with their carts at the Customer Service desk to return the single cardboard canisters of salt each had purchased. (Because salt melts ice!) This made me happy and is, like Hedberg’s joke, a good reminder that being lost is far from being powerless.
We may be lost in the woods, and we may be right in suspecting that we’re stuck here for some time to come–but that doesn’t mean we have no power to “severely improve” our predicament. Humor, cooperation, imagination, community care–these are some of the ways we can resist and live where we are now in the best possible style–maybe even with a punchline!
Yours in love and creative resistance,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
P.S. The weather forecast for this weekend is exciting! We have decided NOT to try to meet in person on our campus (see announcements below for rescheduling of this weekend’s events), but we plan to meet on Zoom for worship at our regular time (11 am) on Sunday.
Jan. 21, 2026
If you find yourself lost in the woods, … build yourself a house.
“Well, I was lost, but now I live here! I have severely improved my predicament!”
~Mitch Hedberg (comedian)
Beloveds,
Do any of you feel like we are all lost in the woods? I wasn’t aware that I’ve been feeling this way until I read the quotation above in Oliver Burkeman’s book Meditations for Mortals.
The other random input that arrived this morning (on my phone) was a lovely video of dozens of people in Minnesota engaged in a coordinated, nonviolent, and very creative protest against Target’s cooperation with ICE (in allowing them to target employees and use parking lots as staging areas) by standing in line with their carts at the Customer Service desk to return the single cardboard canisters of salt each had purchased. (Because salt melts ice!) This made me happy and is, like Hedberg’s joke, a good reminder that being lost is far from being powerless.
We may be lost in the woods, and we may be right in suspecting that we’re stuck here for some time to come–but that doesn’t mean we have no power to “severely improve” our predicament. Humor, cooperation, imagination, community care–these are some of the ways we can resist and live where we are now in the best possible style–maybe even with a punchline!
Yours in love and creative resistance,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
P.S. The weather forecast for this weekend is exciting! We have decided NOT to try to meet in person on our campus (see announcements below for rescheduling of this weekend’s events), but we plan to meet on Zoom for worship at our regular time (11 am) on Sunday.
Companies achieving outsized results have designed their cultures
to help as many people as possible deploy their “zone of genius.”
~Edward Sullivan & John Baird, Leading with Heart
Dear Ones,
Sullivan and Baird (quoted above) define a “zone of genius” as any ability that feels effortless but seems extraordinary to others. In many ways, we are a small congregation that achieves outsized results, and our leadership is pretty constantly on the lookout, perhaps not for sheer effortlessness, but for ways to deploy our energy, talents, and other resources that move us in the direction of justice, inclusion, and love–without draining our energy and spirit. Our wisest moves are not always effortless, but they do lead to excitement, funds raised, bodies and spirits nourished and encouraged to engage in reflection and further action. And they also, not incidentally, make us glad to be together in community.
Yesterday, Sandy and I joined a group of Tennessee faith leaders gathered at the Tennessee Capitol building to mark the opening of the General Assembly. Among other things, we learned that a relatively small group standing in the rotunda can make a mighty good sound, singing surrounded by all that stone! We enjoyed our bus ride to and from the capital (parking is so much easier at the mall!), met some good folks on the bus and at the action, saw some old acquaintances, and lifted our voices in “our house” on that big hill downtown.
In this time that calls for resistance as the only responsible reaction to so much happening from day to day, it was good to be part of a faithful gathering of Tennesseans committed to fairness, justice, and care for all our neighbors. And yes, I found it easy to sing in that place, and if the results weren’t necessarily “extraordinary”, we did sound pretty good!
Yours in resistance with joy and good company,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
“We seldom admit the seductive comfort of hopelessness.
It saves us from ambiguity. It has an answer for every question:
‘There’s just no point. It’s just not worth the effort.’”
~Jarod K. Anderson
Friends,
During the month of January, we are working with the theme of “Embodying Resistance.” (We are one of a few hundred UU congregations who participate in the Soul Matters program, in which we lean into monthly themes/ideas closely related to and/or explored through our shared UU values.)
Today, I am struck by what an interesting theme resistance presents following December’s concentration on “choosing hope”: Resistance isn’t always/only about a stance toward forces and events in the external world; it is also a skill we exercise in cultivating our worlds. Cultivating or choosing hope requires us to resist hopelessness, which is such a broad and open-ended way of thinking about changing the world.
No matter the headlines, no matter how many and difficult the choices we need to make in response to the world around us, in our own little community, we already have a jumpstart on January’s work of resistance. We have been practicing choosing hope, and not being hopeless is absolutely essential to action in the world. It is a refusal to believe that our actions, along with our willingness to make choices and act, to be present despite discomfort and ambiguity, make a difference. (Resistance is not, in the end, futile!) Hope and resistance are important tools for showing up over and over to create a life and a world shaped by our deep needs and values and concern for the wellbeing of all that is.
Yours in faith, love, and resisting hopelessness,
Rev. Denise
P.S. Our administrator, Kris, will be on medical leave starting on January 22 and continuing until February 10. While we have plans for covering essential functions while she’s recovering from her procedure, you may wish to submit announcements and address other administrative needs before she leaves, if possible.
“In its essence optimism is … a power of life”
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Beloveds,
Between being a parish minister and being a human living in such interesting times, plus being interested generally in hearing from many different voices, my inbox tends to collect musings from many directions. Sometimes it’s a bit overwhelming & a clear prompt to delete, delete, delete. Other times, one of the many non-profits I half-follow send something that is just right for the moment, like the following excerpt from a National Health Law Program email in which Executive Director Elizabeth G. Taylor, reflecting on the past year and looking for wisdom to pass to others in service of the year to come, draws on the work of several historical justice workers, among whom was one of my favorite Protestant theologians:
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who was imprisoned and ultimately put to death for his outspoken efforts to defeat Hitler and Nazism, had this to say from prison:
It is more sensible to be pessimistic; disappointments are left behind, and one can face people unembarrassed. Hence, the clever frown upon optimism. In its essence optimism is not a way of looking at the present situation but a power of life, a power of hope when others resign, a power to hold our heads high when all seems to have come to naught, a power to tolerate setbacks, a power that never abandons the future to the opponent but lays claim to it.
Bonhoeffer was also clear that if one is going to claim optimism, one must act to bring the future we want into being. I say let us claim optimism and together act to bring that future into being.
As we end not just our month of “Choosing Hope” but also the year 2025, I send as a blessing the words with which Elizabeth G. Taylor closed the email I almost didn’t open:
Let us go into 2026 with a fearless sense of hope, and together we will change the way the wind blows.
May it be so.
Yours in faith and the power of hope,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
P.S. Once again this week, you are receiving this a day early because tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. We’ll be back in your inbox on Wednesdays starting next week.
“Now is the moment of magic”
~Victoria Safford
Friends,
Today we are right in between the Winter Solstice and Christmas. Hopefully, as you read this, I am somewhere in between wrapping presents and opening them. (The space between those events can be quite short some years!) We are all in between the longest night of the year and the day when we are likely to actually notice daylight outweighing darkness. We are also in between in lots of other ways: some of them delightful and others more challenging: between hope and frustration, between joy and grief, between the past and the present. This is life. Each of these in-between moments is also, in the words of the Rev. Victoria Safford, “the moment of Magic.”
While I finish up preparations for tomorrow (see details below), I hope you enjoy her poem for this in-between season (from Walking Toward Morning):
The Moment of Magic by Victoria Safford
Now is the moment of magic,
when the whole, round earth turns again toward the sun,
and here’s a blessing:
the days will be longer and brighter now,
even before the winter settles in to chill us.
Now is the moment of magic,
when people beaten down and broken,
with nothing left but misery and candles and their own clear voices,
kindle tiny lights and whisper secret music,
and here’s a blessing:
the dark universe is suddenly illuminated by the lights of the menorah,
suddenly ablaze with the lights of the kinara,
and the whole world is glad and loud with winter singing.
Now is the moment of magic,
when an eastern star beckons the ignorant toward an unknown goal,
and here’s a blessing:
they find nothing in the end but an ordinary baby,
born at midnight, born in poverty, and the baby’s cry, like bells ringing,
makes people wonder as they wander through their lives,
what human love might really look like,
sound like,
feel like.
Now is the moment of magic,
and here’s a blessing:
we already possess all the gifts we need;
we’ve already received our presents:
ears to hear music,
eyes to behold lights,
hands to build true peace on earth
and to hold each other tight in love.
Yours in the magic and the blessings,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
P.S. I’m sending this a day early this week, because tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and I hope I’ll see you at church for our candlelight service at 4:30 pm (come early–Fran will be starting prelude music at 4:15). We will hear some holiday readings and sing some familiar carols, light candles in the dark, and more–I can’t wait! (And afterwards we plan to enjoy good food and good company in the back room at Asihi Hibachi and Buffet. Please join us; details below.)
Dec. 10, 2025
“There is a limit to the time assigned to you,
and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and never return.”
~Marcus Aurelius
Beloveds,
Forgive me for selecting what might seem a stern quotation in this month during which we are focusing on hope, but as I read it, Marcus Aurelius isn’t focused so much on our limitations as on the possibility of our freedom. I won’t focus on freedom right here (that’s a sticky subject in so, so many ways!), but I do want you to know that my hope and (I think) the hope and vision of all of us at GNUUC is that together in love we support each other in cultivating hope and freedom and agency in ourselves, each other, and in the rest of the world.
Life is always limited, but life (in all its forms, not just human experience) also entails freedom and hope. Always, there is possibility. Not forever, but for the time we have. I hope you and I and all of us find ample love and occasionally overflowing joy in the time assigned to us!
Yours in limitation and the love that anchors our freedom,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
Dec. 3, 2025
“Real change begins with the simple act of people
talking about what they care about.”
~Margaret J. Wheatley
Dear Ones,
Our congregational mission statement begins with the assertion that “The transforming power of love is our core belief.” We believe that love brings change, and thus our values are deeply entwined with hope. Now, I’m a person for whom ideas and conversations are sparkly (or intensely interesting, if you want to use serious words), so I appreciate Margaret Wheatley’s assertion that change begins with meaningful conversation.
Love can be an intimidating goal at times, but the practices of caring about what we care about and being in conversation with each other are perhaps simply basic forms of connection and love. It makes sense to me that without them there is no change, and ultimately, no hope.
Hope can also be an intimidating goal at times. That is, as long as we are thinking not of hope for things over which we have no control, as in “I hope the sun shines tomorrow,” but of hope as in an abiding trust that the world can be a place of more love and more joy for all of us. That hope and the will to work for it are hard to sustain without the nourishment of community.
I hope that this month finds us talking about the yearnings of our hearts and the needs of our world and where they intersect. Because there, I suspect, we may find the courage and the wherewithal* to embrace hope and create change.
Yours in the hope and the sparkle of the season,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
*Isn’t “wherewithal” a lovely word?
“All life is connected
Nothing lives alone”
~Steve Connell
Friends,
I promised on Sunday to share the poem I meant (but failed) to leave time for at the end of my sermon. It is below my signature, but first a couple of notes from me to you:
So much thanks for all the donations to Second Harvest! We have collected & delivered 96+ pounds of pasta and 38 cans/jars of sauce, plus several boxes of pasta+sauce. Well done! If you have already purchased more items to donate, feel free to bring them this Sunday (the last one in November); also be aware that Second Harvest has started asking for donations of grocery store gift cards instead (because the warehouse is now full of food).
Next Tuesday (November 2) is US House District 7 election day. If you live in Dist. 7 and haven’t yet voted, please make a plan to participate in this very important exercise of democracy by getting to your polling place. (Let me know if you need help finding where that is.)
The poem is below. It’s on the long side; go ahead and get yourself a nice drink & settle in for a cozy read…
Yours in gratitude and love,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
This Living Earth *
Believe about the beginnings what you will;
This much we know for certain…
At some point, darkness released its grip on light
the night / cracked / wide
the universe unclenched its jaws–
and life began to talk.
The very synapses of existence
began firing all at once, moving as one thought;
since the beginning, it has been this way,
when all life on Earth communicated without words.
And still today …
in the twisting of a million butterflies,
the schools of fishes fast twitching in the surf,
and the delicate reaching up of vines;
in the shared mind of a stampede pounding,
or beneath ground, in the sound of mycelial nerves extending
… this resounding language of connection is observed.
But at some point the harmony was broken–
a dissonance occurred …
and slowly the new song of humankind was heard with words like:
“manifiest destiny” … “industrial revolution” … “dominion over all”
…”survival of the fittest” … “urban sprawl” …
And as the song of life became a solo
a new thought began
“Perhaps the world was not alive after all–
but we were simply alive on it”
And with that thought–
the world became a fixed thing–
it simply was;
as the sun or space or rocks;
as if it could never be diminished;
as if our actions could never cause it harm;
… but we were wrong.
And now we have evolved to become both destroyer and savior–
our behavior is our greatest threat,
yet hope resides in our resolve;
in our collective compassion and formidable talents;
the way we rise to any challenge
once we accept we have no choice
And that is why, if, from this moment forward, in our voice,
you once again hear a harmony with the Earth;
then from out of destruction our rebirth comes,
and isn’t that what life does best …
It goes on:
when it seems like it is finished, it survives;
that is why in the most hostile conditions in existence
something thrives–
from toxic soil, a mushroom grows
in a desiccated river bed, water flows
in a still smoldering forest, a flower leans into the wind
and in the midst of this vast expanse … spins / a planet / comprised of:
promise, spark of light, oxygen, and bone.
photosynthesis, salt water, honeycomb, hydrogen atom,
skin cell, hair follicle, matted fur, acetone,
slice of wing, wind current, opposable thumbs, cyclone, dorsal fin,
deep breath, ozone, atmospheric river, heart valve, limestone
All life is connected
Nothing lives alone
On this one and only living Earth: home.
*Steve Connell is a spoken word poet. This poem is found in Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s book, What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures (2024)
Friends,
This week, I am at The Mountain (a UU retreat center) in Highlands, NC, at a gathering of colleagues from around the Southeast. These 3.5-day retreats happen twice a year, and I try to prioritize making the trip at least once a year. To have time to learn, converse, and just generally hang out with colleagues is for all of us an important part of our continuing professional development, and often, our continued personal growth and health. Because I am honoring these days as days of retreat, this is a brief note!
Because this is our month of nurturing gratitude, I want you to know that I am grateful to you, dear ones, for supporting me with a professional expense budget for ongoing training and development and also supporting me in using it well (for things like General Assembly, UU Ministers Association programming, and–perhaps my favorite expense–books.) Being a minister is wonderful, challenging, and sometimes bewildering work; being generously supported in this and many other ways makes a big difference, so I remain…
Yours in growth and gratitude,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
P.S. Thanks to those who brought Second Harvest donations last Sunday. Reminder: besides our Share the Plate collections, we are gathering pasta & sauce; other congregations are collecting other items from Second Harvest’s list of most needed foods. Keep the donations coming: we have three more Sundays in the month of November!