Notes from Rev. Denise

“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

RevDenise@gnuuc.org

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)

Frie​nds,

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!

“Story is our only boat for sailing on the river of time.”
~Ursula K. LeGuin

Beloveds,

Today I am grateful for the stories of gratitude we shared on Sunday, and grateful to Kristin for creating the service which invited those stories. It’s easy to find unhappy things to worry about, sadnesses that genuinely need our attention and compassion, and dangers that call for vigilance and vigorous resistance.  It is equally true that our lives are gifted with the presence of each other, the acts of kindness and courage we witness and work, the simple (but not always easy) discipline of keeping each other company, and the joy and inspiration that comes from sharing our stories. 

This morning, I spent Zoom time with my sisters, which is always filled with stories: of recent happenings, about our children (who are not children) and elders, comparing notes on what we know about ancestors, trading medical advice and stories (we’re that age now!), and titles of books we have loved enough to recommend. Once again, I am reminded that so many stories touch my own, and I am grateful to have such wise and nourishing companions (you, the sisters, children, elders, the books) as part of my story. I hope your day has its own story of gratitude running through it…

Yours in story and gratitude, 
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org  

P.S. Update on our collection of pasta for Second Harvest (with thanks to Elizabeth for raising the question and Caren for researching a better answer than I had!): Second Harvest also needs sauces for the pasta we are collecting! So: for the month of November, we are collecting pasta AND sauce. Pick up a few extra items when you do your regular shopping and leave them in the collection box at church. I will be delivering to 2nd Harvest throughout the month, so give as often as you like through Nov 30!