“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.

Jan. 21, 2026

If you find yourself lost in the woods, … build yourself a house. 
“Well, I was lost, but now I live here! I have severely improved my predicament!” 
~Mitch Hedberg (comedian)

Beloveds,

Do any of you feel like we are all lost in the woods? I wasn’t aware that I’ve been feeling this way until I read the quotation above in Oliver Burkeman’s book Meditations for Mortals. 

The other random input that arrived this morning (on my phone) was a lovely video of dozens of people in Minnesota engaged in a coordinated, nonviolent, and very creative protest against Target’s cooperation with ICE (in allowing them to target employees and use parking lots as staging areas) by standing in line with their carts at the Customer Service desk to return the single cardboard canisters of salt each had purchased. (Because salt melts ice!) This made me happy and is, like Hedberg’s joke, a good reminder that being lost is far from being powerless. 

We may be lost in the woods, and we may be right in suspecting that we’re stuck here for some time to come–but that doesn’t mean we have no power to “severely improve” our predicament. Humor, cooperation, imagination, community care–these are some of the ways we can resist and live where we are now in the best possible style–maybe even with a punchline!

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

P.S. The weather forecast for this weekend is exciting! We have decided NOT to try to meet in person on our campus (see announcements below for rescheduling of this weekend’s events), but we plan to meet on Zoom for worship at our regular time (11 am) on Sunday. 

Jan. 21, 2026

If you find yourself lost in the woods, … build yourself a house. 
“Well, I was lost, but now I live here! I have severely improved my predicament!” 
~Mitch Hedberg (comedian)

Beloveds,

Do any of you feel like we are all lost in the woods? I wasn’t aware that I’ve been feeling this way until I read the quotation above in Oliver Burkeman’s book Meditations for Mortals. 

The other random input that arrived this morning (on my phone) was a lovely video of dozens of people in Minnesota engaged in a coordinated, nonviolent, and very creative protest against Target’s cooperation with ICE (in allowing them to target employees and use parking lots as staging areas) by standing in line with their carts at the Customer Service desk to return the single cardboard canisters of salt each had purchased. (Because salt melts ice!) This made me happy and is, like Hedberg’s joke, a good reminder that being lost is far from being powerless. 

We may be lost in the woods, and we may be right in suspecting that we’re stuck here for some time to come–but that doesn’t mean we have no power to “severely improve” our predicament. Humor, cooperation, imagination, community care–these are some of the ways we can resist and live where we are now in the best possible style–maybe even with a punchline!

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

P.S. The weather forecast for this weekend is exciting! We have decided NOT to try to meet in person on our campus (see announcements below for rescheduling of this weekend’s events), but we plan to meet on Zoom for worship at our regular time (11 am) on Sunday. 

Companies achieving outsized results have designed their cultures 
to help as many people as possible deploy their “zone of genius.”
~Edward Sullivan & John Baird, Leading with Heart

Dear Ones,

Sullivan and Baird (quoted above) define a “zone of genius” as any ability that feels effortless but seems extraordinary to others. In many ways, we are a small congregation that achieves outsized results, and our leadership is pretty constantly on the lookout, perhaps not for sheer effortlessness, but for ways to deploy our energy, talents, and other resources that move us in the direction of justice, inclusion, and love–without draining our energy and spirit. Our wisest moves are not always effortless, but they do lead to excitement, funds raised, bodies and spirits nourished and encouraged to engage in reflection and further action. And they also, not incidentally, make us glad to be together in community. 

Yesterday, Sandy and I joined a group of Tennessee faith leaders gathered at the Tennessee Capitol building to mark the opening of the General Assembly. Among other things, we learned that a relatively small group standing in the rotunda can make a mighty good sound, singing surrounded by all that stone! We enjoyed our bus ride to and from the capital (parking is so much easier at the mall!), met some good folks on the bus and at the action, saw some old acquaintances, and lifted our voices in “our house” on that big hill downtown. 

In this time that calls for resistance as the only responsible reaction to so much happening from day to day, it was good to be part of a faithful gathering of Tennesseans committed to fairness, justice, and care for all our neighbors. And yes, I found it easy to sing in that place, and if the results weren’t necessarily “extraordinary”, we did sound pretty good!

Yours in resistance with joy and good company,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org

“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.)