May 13, 2026

“What could we achieve if we allowed everyone to reorient 
from escaping desperation to pursuing happiness?”
~Jared K. Anderson

Beloveds,

I hope you enjoyed a splendid Flower Communion last weekend; I am sorry to have missed it, but thinking of all the shared beauty in our sanctuary is causing a smile to spread across my face as I write.

In this month of curiosity, I wonder if we have the capacity to imagine what it would be like to truly honor the pursuit of happiness as an important part of being alive–not just for all humans (as much of a stretch as that would be) but for all the creatures of our earth. We pretty obviously acknowledge that animals feel something like the happiness we do, but I think we also intuit the same about plants (you know what I mean if I say a plant looks “sad”, right?), and I personally sometimes have similar intuitions about things like rocks or stars or mountains, and I suspect many, if not most, of us do, too. 

And if we accept that we have such imaginative capacity, I am further curious about what it would look, feel, taste like to escape the capitalist project that drives so many humans into the never-ending fear of need and imperfection that separates us from happiness and from the people and world around us. 

I wonder: if we prioritized a broadly universal happiness, what might we achieve?

Yours in curiosity and love,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

P.S. As mentioned in last week’s email, I am away from work through May 19. If during this time you experience a pastoral emergency, please contact the church office by phone or email (615-673-7699; gnuuc@gnuuc.org). Please state in your message that you need pastoral care, and our administrator, Kris Thresher, will connect you with a local minister-in-training who has agreed to be available.

“There is nothing but blunt forgiveness.”
~Kate Baer, “Dream Death”

Beloveds,

The season of tumbling turmoil I wrote about a couple weeks ago is ongoing in my life, and I will be taking some time off work to attend to big family milestones. I will be unavailable from Saturday, May 9, through Tuesday, May 19. See notes in the postscript below about how to access care in the event of a pastoral emergency.  

Meanwhile, here’s the rest of the lovely poem “Dream Death” from Kate Baer’s book How About Now?:

I walk into the great blue.
There is nothing but blunt forgiveness.
But what of hell?
What of fury?
What of good intention?

The great eye blinks.
The great mouth yawns.
As I swallow this,
So peace swallows me.

I’ve been thinking lately of my propensity to assure others (and myself, too) in times of distress that “It will be okay.” I’m realizing that phrase no longer feels true to me or to many around me. One of my adult children has taken to saying instead, “It will be.” Sometimes things are not okay, but maybe, as Baer’s poem suggests, there is still a great, blue space where we encounter forgiveness and peace.

Yours in peace and love despite it all,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

P.S. As noted above, I will be away from work May 9-19. If during that time you experience a pastoral emergency, please contact the church office by phone or email (615-673-7699; gnuuc@gnuuc.org). Please state in your message that you need pastoral care, and our administrator, Kris Thresher, will connect you with a local minister-in-training who has agreed to be available.

“Maybe I've a reason to believe 
We all will be received
In Graceland.”
~Paul Simon

Dear Ones,

To be honest with you, I’m in a season of my life in which I feel like the “girl in NYC” from Paul Simon’s song Graceland: 

There is a girl in New York City
Who calls herself the human trampoline
And sometimes when I'm falling, flying
Or tumbling in turmoil I say
"Whoa, so this is what she means"
She means we're bouncing into Graceland

Of course, Graceland in the song is Elvis Presley’s home in Memphis, Tennessee, but it’s also a place or a state of being in which everyone is received. This is southern hospitality, universalist style: We all will be received; radical welcome, y’all! As I’ve been falling, flying, and tumbling in turmoil through recent days and weeks, it’s been a comfort to have this song running through my head (and sometimes my vocal chords). 

If you take nothing else away from our month of considering possibility, I hope you consider (in some shape or form) the possibilities presented in this song: 

I may be obliged to defend
Every love, every ending
Or maybe there's no obligations now
Maybe I've a reason to believe
We all will be received
In Graceland

Could this be one way of expressing what lies at the core of a life of faith–this idea that although we often feel driven to explain, the obligation to defend ourselves is ultimately insignificant in the context of the generosity and irrevocability of a deeper belonging?

Yours in having reason to believe we all will be received,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

P.S. Paul Simon, Graceland 

“I know of nothing else but miracles.”
~Walt Whitman

Beloveds,

I truly love fall. I find winter restful and the ways we celebrate it comforting. Summer and I are still working out our differences. But spring–ah! Spring is Easter season (seven weeks in many Christian traditions!)--the time of new and renewed life. Spring is so much greening, so much blooming, so much mating and hatching, so many expected and unexpected possibilities unfolding and being realized, we might as well call it the season of miracles. 

Looking out whatever windows I have in whatever moment of this season, all I see (when I stop to consider deeply) are miracles. And also: looking around at my communities, my people, all the other beings who share our earth–in these weeks of springtime there is enough green, enough hope that perhaps once every so often, all I see are miracles. Seeing everything and everyone this way isn’t a constant in my experience, but the possibility of recognizing miracles for a season or even a moment is, perhaps, a gift of spring.

Yours among the miracles,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

P.S. Speaking of possibility, please do not forget that we are approaching the end of our peculiar organizational rite of spring: Stewardship Pledge Drive! It’s the time of year when we ask members and friends to carefully discern and communicate how they plan to support our congregational life with their financial contributions in the next fiscal year (July 2026-June 2027). Please submit your pledge on paper (via the form in your pledge packet) or online by this Sunday, April 19. Your generosity in pledging and giving is the very practical miracle upon which the possibilities of our community of love and justice depend.

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