“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

RevDenise@gnuuc.org

“ 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

RevDenise@gnuuc.org

“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.