Feb 22, 2023

“What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?”
–George Eliot

Beloveds,

My heart is full these days. Wherever I turn, there is beauty and suffering, love and injustice, grace and difficulty. I hardly know how to focus my attention at times. 

One very strong claim on my attention is the vitality of our congregation and our call to be a force for love, among ourselves and within the wider communities of which we are a part. What does GNUUC live for? Whose lives do we make less difficult? Whose lives might we make less difficult if we turned our attention toward them? 

I am wondering how our commitment this church year to nurturing all whose paths cross ours (Board vision for 2022-23) might lead us to our future reasons for being as a community of love and justice. 

If you’d like to be part of a conversation about how GNUUC makes a difference in lives and in the world–about how we love–I encourage you to sign up for one of our listening circles. You can join us on Zoom Thursday evening or Saturday afternoon (registration required to get the Zoom link) or in person this Sunday after lunch. These conversations will take just a little longer than an hour, and those who participated last week had a good time, I hear. Read more in the announcement below, or simply sign up here.

Yours in love and so many possibilities,

Rev. Denise

RevDenise@gnuuc.org

 Feb 15, 2023

“May our love bless everyone.”

–Pool of Love, Alexa Sunshine Rose

Dear Ones,

I’ve been seeing the first signs of spring (birds getting busy, yellow things flowering), and I want to encourage you this week to think about your emergence from the hibernation of winter, too. I just happen to have a few suggestions:

A few GNUUC leaders and I hope you will join us for one of several listening circles being offered on the next two Sunday afternoons (at GNUUC, in person) and one afternoon and one evening next week/weekend on Zoom. These will be a chance to share with each other why GNUUC is important in our lives and to dream a little bit about possible futures for our congregation. We had an amazing time planning and practicing this circle experience and look forward to sharing it with you. 

Nashville Organized for Action and Hope (NOAH) is undertaking its every-few-years Listening Campaign (about which I consistently hear rave reviews from participants) to discern and select its action issues for the next few years. See the announcement below if you are interested in being a listener here at GNUUC, please say “yes” if a listener asks to talk with you, and save the date of April 30 to attend the NOAH Issues Convention to help represent GNUUC as we (the member organizations of NOAH) set our priorities for the upcoming years.

Finally, the General Assembly (GA) of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), which takes place every June, is happening in Pittsburgh, PA this year. Maybe you’d like to attend in person or remotely? Please find more information below and consider if you’d like to represent our congregation as a delegate or just to meet other UUs and learn more about the exercise of democracy (and oh, so many other things!) in our larger movement. It’s going to be a busy GA, with a presidential election and lots of voting, including an amendment to the UUA Bylaws. 

None of us can do all of the good stuff there is to do. If you’d like help figuring out how to focus your springtime energies, I love a good discernment conversation–email me!

Yours in love and so many possibilities,

Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

“Spring is coming…”
–Carrie Newcomer

Friends,

Imbolc Blessings to you all! 

Tonight & tomorrow, in the European-derived pagan traditions (and quite likely others I don’t know) the beginning of the end of winter is marked with the Festival of Imbolc. Make a cup of your favorite hot beverage and do an online search–it’s a rich tradition that arguably should be retrieved. It’s a time to think about fertility–early spring planting, fresh food to come, October babies!–and healing and blacksmithing and crafts. Brigid is a multi-talented patron; google her, too, while you’re at it.

Here’s one of my favorite end-of-winter/waiting for spring songs, from Carrie Newcomer: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLg1pCeiZUk

Yours in all that is not yet, and not soon, but surely coming,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

January 25, 2023

Beloveds,

During last Sunday’s service I had a poem for which we didn’t have time, so I am sharing it here, as promised. Parallel to my sermon’s message that dark and light are both important parts of life, each holding gifts and opportunities for us, this poem speaks (to me, anyway) of the intermingled realities of relationship and loss, which together render us “empty and full at once”.

HOLES
by Lillian Morrison

Strangest of gaps
their goneness-
mother, father, loved friends

the black holes
of the astronomer
are not more mysterious

this kind of hole
will not be filled
with candle flames
or even a thousand thoughts

the hole is inside us
it brims over
is empty and full at once.

Yours in the dark and the light, in love and in loss,

Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

January 18, 2023

“Love is the power that holds us together and is at the center of our shared values.”
–UUA, Proposed Revision of Article II

Hello, Friends,

Just a quick note today, with some recommended reading. 

If you joined us for worship the last Sunday in November, you may recall that we talked about the work being done to update the Bylaws of the Unitarian Universalist Association (of which we are a member congregation). Over the last few years, our association has been reviewing the section of the bylaws that includes the statement of our Principles, Purpose, and Sources, with an eye to recommending changes and updates. Last fall, we talked about some draft language for some changes. Now, the Article 2 Study Commission has released their final report, including proposed revisions to Article II, to the Board of the UUA. I encourage you to read this if you’re interested in understanding Unitarian Universalism as an evolving tradition: 

Report to the UUA Board of Trustees from the Article II Study Commission (PDF)

If you’re really, really interested, you can register to attend the UUA’s January Board meeting this Friday and Saturday as an observer. Note that registration is required and should be done before 9 am CT (meetings start at 10 am CT).

One of the things that many of us noticed and discussed back in November was the inclusion of “evolution” as one of our core UU values. Well, that word has been replaced; go see! Also, the graphic representation of love and our values has been redesigned–more color and flair. (Check page 20.) 

Yours in love and transformation,

Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

“I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year.”

–Scrooge, A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

Dear Ones,

I have been thinking that I should probably take the wreath off my front door now, well before Valentine’s Day is upon us…but although I enjoyed holiday time spent with family, I’m feeling a distinct shortage of community celebration and merriment this year. Perhaps you are, too. (Or maybe not. If your holiday season was full of festivity, I am very happy for you!)

If you need or would enjoy a party in this dark, blustery month of January–good news: the Trans Affirming Collective at First UU (on Woodmont Blvd) is hosting a karaoke party on Friday evening (1/13 from 6-10 pm), and they’ve invited us! I am planning to be there, and I hope some of you will, too. Our invitation describes this as “a free, all-ages sober evening of fun and community”, with snacks and soft drinks provided. I’m looking forward to seeing familiar faces (both old and newer) and having some fun. 

You can read more here. RSVP at that link or by emailing transaffirming@thefuun.org. 

Yours in the newness of 2023 and in finding the joy that will sustain us,

Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

January 4, 2023

Beloveds,

Merry 11th Day of Christmas, and Happy New Year! 

I’m not quite ready, myself, to let go of the holiday season, but I’m also starting to look ahead: How will 2023 be different from the years before? What new adventures await? What can we be and do together this year? What seeds are quietly resting underground, waiting to germinate and perhaps flower? 

In the midst of the longing for new things, or the resolute determination to enact newness in our lives, we’re really just now settling into the winter season, which can seem like nothing more than a long wait for spring. But this season has its own beauty and its own work, as articulated years ago by Howard Thurman:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.

In the last days of the winter holidays, as we settle into winter and the newness of 2023, I hope you will cultivate in your own heart the peace and the music that will sustain you and those around you in the work ahead of us.  

Yours in the work of the season and the possibilities of a new year,

Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

Dec 28, 2022

“Nothing can be more useful … than a determination not to be hurried.”
–Henry David Thoreau 

Dear Ones,

Happy 4th Day of Christmas!

Even more than in a “normal” year (what is that anyway? I’m having trouble remembering…), I’m feeling a need to embrace the season of the winter holidays this year. 

Celebrating a single moment like a solstice, or a day like the appointed anniversary of a birth can be profound and glorious and uplifting, but it also oversimplifies the reality that our lives are complicated and rich with emotional states that don’t consistently align with planetary and celestial movements or with our desires, any more than our planet’s meteorological phenomenon align with our plans for celebration. 

It seems wise to me to stretch out important celebrations that call for joy and merriment–like having eight days of Hanukkah or seven days of Kwanzaa or twelve days of Christmas in the Western European tradition. (In case the marketers have confused you, the Twelve Days of Christmas start on Dec. 25 and run through Jan. 6, the feast of the Epiphany, when the kings/magi/wise guys found Jesus). Larger containers leave space for all sorts of things besides feeling deliriously happy or even moderately merry: reflection, grief, quiet contentment, disappointment, work (always in the background of any good celebration), rest, boredom, restlessness, excitement, and … oh, what else? 

What are you experiencing this week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve? Whatever it is, it is absolutely and most assuredly part of being human and, as such, welcome and worthy of notice and holding well–with gentleness, appreciation, and wonder. 

Yours in merrymaking and rest and all the feels,

Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

P.S. If you haven’t yet seen this year’s Holiday Message from the UUA, featuring UUA President Rev. Dr. Susan Frederick-Gray, I recommend it!

“Make a vow when solstice comes, to find the light in everyone.”

–Mary Chapin Carpenter

Beloveds,

It is the winter solstice–Yule in the old, old (older than Christianity) calendars of European peoples–the shortest day/longest night of the year. This year, that long night coincides with the fourth night of Hanukkah, so there are lots of reasons to light candles! Here’s one of my favorite modern solstice songs: Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “The Longest Night of the Year”.  (Or try this just-Mary-Chapin-and-her-guitar version, from December 2020.)

I hope you have a chance to enjoy the sunlight today, and luxuriate in the long darkness that will follow. Maybe light a candle, but definitely notice the “light” and the “dark.” We need them both. 

Important Note: I hope to see you at our Christmas Eve service at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday. As you may have heard, we have interesting weather heading our way, bringing very cold temperatures that will stick around for a few days. Please stay safe and warm, and plan to check our website (nashvilleuu.org) on Saturday after 10:30 a.m. to confirm whether the service will be (as we hope) a hybrid service (in the sanctuary and on Zoom) or on Zoom only. 

Our Christmas Eve service will start at 3:30, but we will be enjoying holiday music together starting around 3:10, so please arrive/log in early, if you can.

Yours in light and dark and winter storms,

Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org