Oct 19, 2022

Dear ones,

I’m still reveling in the joy of blessing/rededicating our space together last Sunday. Even though we got a little bit wet, the rain didn’t get in our way, and we had quite a good crowd (including guests and visitors!) assembled to celebrate how happy we are to have once again full use of all the spaces on our campus and to speak blessings for all the beings who use our facilities and grounds.

Our service this coming Sunday will consider some of the reasons the commitment to create a church home based on covenantal community can require courage, but while I’m still basking in the home-blessing glow, here are a couple musical offerings I’ve been enjoying because they express some of my hopes for GNUUC:

“Pool of Love” by Alexa Sunshine Rose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfYm8qLaOKs

“Crowded Table” by The Highwomen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPfI8zBWub4

Still yours in joy and in gratitude,

Rev. Denise

Rev. Denise Gyauch
Minister, Greater Nashville UU Congregation
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

Much of ministry is a benediction—
A speaking well of each other and the world—
A speaking well of what we value:

honesty
love
forgiveness
trust

A speaking well of our efforts—
A speaking well of our dreams.
This is how we celebrate life:
Through speaking well of it,
Living the benediction,
and becoming as a word
well-spoken.

(by Susan Manker-Seale)

Beloveds,

This Sunday, we are going to speak some good words together! Wear your walking shoes because we will gather in our breezeway at 11:00 am and then move around our campus (indoors and out), blessing all the spaces of our church home, rededicating some of them after last year's damage and renovations.

Although we will not have a fully hybrid service, we will establish a Zoom connection between those walking around the campus and anyone who would prefer to join us on Zoom from a comfy chair at church or at home. Religious Education participants will participate in blessing our outdoor spaces and the Religious Education building, and then split off for their own programming.

Yours in gratitude for the space that holds us as a community,

Rev. Denise

P.S. Still wondering: Where on our church campus do you feel most at home? And why? What is special, comforting, awe-inspiring or whatever about your favorite GNUUC space? Please send a quick email to let me know!

Rev. Denise Gyauch
Minister, Greater Nashville UU Congregation
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

“The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.”

~The Indigo Girls

Beloveds,

I heard an old song recently, and the line above has been on replay in my head. It speaks to something in me that periodically (or maybe almost-constantly) tries its best to convince me that arranging things just right, knowing the absolute, factual truth, and choosing the very best “right” course of action is a matter of survival. I believe neuroscience might (informally) label this my “lizard brain”, and when I’m not too stressed, I can also access the mammalian & human centers of my brain, which remind me that connection and relationship and love are crucial for my own individual well-being and for our collective flourishing. No matter how well I study up on the workings of my brain, however, I still find myself sometimes back in my reptilian brain and needing to be reminded to use the full complement of my mental and emotional tools and not just the most basic and quickly engaged reactions (which I do honor for their tenacity at the important job of keeping me alive!). Personally, I tend to find, over and over again, that everything I need to know comes to me set to music! Insert here a moment of gratitude for the Indigo Girls and other favorite artists.

If you, too, find yourself caught up in the pressure to do, think, feel, or be something “right”, consider this a random invitation (from me to you) to take a deep breath, pause in the sometimes unrelenting pursuit of “rightness” and just feel fine. (The song quoted above is entitled “Closer to Fine” if you want to see if listening helps.) Recall our covenant with each other, and know that together we will seek truth and love and the life of the spirit, and as long as we have each other, our survival doesn’t depend on each of us being perfectly correct at every moment.

Yours in all the fineness available to us,

Rev. Denise

P.S. I am still wondering: Where on our church campus do you feel most at home? And why? What is special, comforting, awe-inspiring or whatever about your favorite GNUUC space? Please send a quick email to let me know!

Rev. Denise Gyauch
Minister, Greater Nashville UU Congregation
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

“There’s no place like home.”
-Dorothy

Hello, friends!

Many of you know that we use resources provided by a program called Soul Matters to structure much of our worship and religious education programming. From Soul Matters, we receive a monthly theme and suggestions for readings and reflections on those themes. Our theme this month has been Belonging; on Sunday, our service will introduce next month’s theme: Courage, and in November we’ll be thinking about Change.

In my mind, however, our theme for the fall months is simply Home. In part, this is because I have been with you for just a little over a year now, and we are (I hope) getting to feel at home with each other. I’ve had plenty of time now to observe how y’all take care to build safe and welcoming spaces for each other. And, this fall we are bringing closure to some of last year’s disasters and disruptions, not just the pandemic, but also the challenges of repair and renovation work on our buildings and grounds. We are reclaiming some of our spaces and celebrating the shared life that all of our campus makes possible.

Between now & Thanksgiving, your Worship and Shared Ministries teams have planned several opportunities for us to celebrate together our sense of community and appreciation of our shared home. I hope we will see you at one or more of these events: an active & interactive blessing of spaces throughout our campus (Sunday, Oct. 16), a Worship Team retreat open to all (Saturday, Nov. 5), and a Homecoming Sunday (Nov. 20). Please watch our weekly email and website for more details about these, but first, I’d like to invite you to help me think and plan for these:

If you would like, I’d love to hear about your favorite spot on our church campus: Where do you feel most at home? And why? What is special, comforting, awe-inspiring or whatever about your favorite GNUUC space? Please send a quick email to let me know!

Yours in the joy of co-creating home,

Rev. Denise

Rev. Denise Gyauch
Minister, Greater Nashville UU Congregation
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

~Albert Einstein

Beloveds–

Have you noticed what the sun’s been doing? Or really, I suppose, it’s what the earth is doing in relation to the sun. Right about now we’re in one of the times of year when daytime and nighttime are roughly equal in length. Some days are still getting summery-hot, but not for as long as in July or August, and early mornings and evenings are gradually getting cooler and cooler. Google tells me that the equinox officially happens this week on Thursday at 8:03 pm in our time zone. That particular moment of absolutely even balance between light & dark is part of a celestial dance between our planet and our sun, without which life would be impossible and pumpkin spice lattes would never appear in our coffeehouses.

We understand at a very basic level that balance is crucial, and yet I at least frequently forget that real balance is hardly ever static. Instead, it is cyclical, patterned, always changing, always on the way in and on the way out. As I reflect on my attempts to lead a balanced life, I realize that somewhere behind much of my effort and almost all of my frustration lies a false assumption that once I figure it out just right, I will be able to maintain my balance, always knowing what I need to stay perfectly aligned in every moment. I suspect it mostly doesn’t happen that way for most of us. Perhaps, like our planet, we would do well “just” to keep moving, trusting that just the right sense of balance will emerge at just the right moments as surely as it will slip away, to return at the next right moment.

Yours in the dance and the balancing acts,

Rev. Denise

Rev. Denise Gyauch
Minister, Greater Nashville UU Congregation
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

“How could anyone ever tell you you were anything less than beautiful?”

~Libby Roderick

Hello, Beloveds–

This morning has been a near-perfect (or maybe perfect) early fall morning: it’s not too warm out, but not cool enough that one needs to worry about dressing to stay warm; leaves are getting ready to turn, but the trees are still lushly green as they sway in the breeze; my parked car will be a little too warm for comfort when I return to it, but it will cool off so much more quickly than it did last month; and right this moment, clouds are starting to roll in, suggesting we might get a bit of rain to refresh all the plants still growing & ripening in our gardens. Life (mine and yours and ours) has a number of challenges (always), and I am filled with gratitude for the beauty in each of you and in our shared life as a congregation. Just wanted you to know.

Speaking of our shared congregational life, please do check out the latest news below, and be on the lookout for a future announcement about our postponed worship retreat. The worship team will be offering you a couple of different options for helping us think about how our Sunday services serve our mission.

Yours in love and faith,

Rev. Denise

Rev. Denise Gyauch
Minister, Greater Nashville UU Congregation
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

~Mary Oliver

Dear ones–

Lots of wild and precious life going on right now at GNUUC! So much is different from this time last year: I’m not new here anymore, we’re not as limited by worries about COVID-19 as we were, we have survived a few umm.. interesting challenges to our physical spaces and emerged with upgrades and new ideas and closer relationships with some of our neighbors and trust in our abilities to solve problems together.

I’m having fun these days not knowing exactly what our wild and precious church year will look like, but there are a few things on our shared horizon to which I’d like to draw your attention:

This Saturday, Mary Early-Zald, whom some of you remember as a ministerial intern at GNUUC, will be ordained in New Jersey. The service will be live-streamed (Youtube & Facebook; find more information below), and it will include a couple of familiar faces.

Nashville’s Room In The Inn Winter Shelter program will start; will GNUUC participate this year? If yes, we need to identify a coordinator/contact person very soon. See more below…

The Worship Team is hosting a retreat on Saturday, September 17, to which anyone who cares about Sunday services at GNUUC is invited! Guess where you can read more.

Nothing to read about this yet, but plans are brewing for a special Sunday service on October 16, to bless and rededicate our campus. It will probably be an in-person only Sunday (no Zoom), so maybe put it on your calendar now.

So much more in the announcements this week–take a quick peek.

For now, I’m looking forward to this Sunday–it’s Startup Sunday! The Board will present our 2022-23 Vision of Ministry, Children’s RE (which never really stops) will officially begin for the year, and we will share a potluck lunch. I hope to see you this Sunday.

Yours in newness and reconnection,

Rev. Denise

Rev. Denise Gyauch
Minister, Greater Nashville UU Congregation
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

I hope your summer has had a few pockets of simplicity and freedom. Our world, our country, our habitual ways of being human together can sometimes take us very far away from those values cultivated by Shaker communities and much admired by others over the years. What I am coming to realize is that the gifts of being simple and free are not things bestowed upon us by external powers that be; they are possibilities available to us if we take care to recognize, cultivate, and appreciate them. And they don’t generally present themselves in any absolute or perfect form. For example, I am spending much of my summer helping my daughter prepare to leave for college, a project that mostly feels neither simple nor free, but we recently shared a hike in the rain on a familiar and beautiful state park trail that was both. We were mostly alone, the rain didn’t last long, and afterward, we counted hawks in the sky and studied mosses and marveled at the shades of green around us.

As you may have heard already, I plan to be away from GNUUC for the month of July. I’ll be busy resting and reading and enjoying time with my family. This will be time off work for me (thank you for being a good employer!), which means I will not respond to emails or other messages until August arrives. (Yes, I will miss you! And yes, I am looking forward to some time off!)