Blog
I thoroughly loved this post, and it's inspired me
to do a mass gratitude experiment with my church family.
-Sheri, in a comment on patheos.com
to do a mass gratitude experiment with my church family.
-Sheri, in a comment on patheos.com
In 2013, I was invited to blog for the UU Collective at Patheos.com, a project of the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF).
I had been blogging for CLF since 2011 and was glad to leap over to Patheos.com. I write twice each month and love using this electronic medium to reach a wide array of people with my personal reflections, prayers and poems.
You never know who will read something that inspires them!
Here are a couple of my favorite posts. Read the rest HERE.
Blessings from Heaven
September 8, 2014
This past weekend I had the chance to do one of my favorite things. Presiding over friends’ weddings is a great perk of the ministry gig. This was a beautiful wedding, joining two families from very different backgrounds. Guests came from Milwaukee and Mumbai, wore brightly colored saris and sundresses, suits and kurtas. On the dance floor, Bollywood mingled with Madonna and midwestern polkas. And everyone ate and drank and danced as the skies opened and poured blessings on the barn roof.
At one point in the evening, I found myself standing in a doorway overlooking the dance floor. I took it in: the bride and groom surrounded by family and friends from all over the world, everyone moving, arms and legs and bodies, mouths open in delight,
music echoing, laughter filling the air.
My daughter was asleep on my chest, wrapped tight against me in her sling. I held her close as I watched the joyous scene before us.
I thought of how people have danced at weddings for thousands of years and still do — every day, everywhere, even as bombs fall and disease spreads, even as we mourn devastating losses, cradle our broken hearts and lift our heads high, even as we fear what might be and hold fast to hope for what could be. For all of human history people of every hue, every tongue, every nation have danced at weddings with joy and fear and pain and hope and love.
Love brought us all to the barn on a September evening. A gentle, kind-hearted, soul-rich, giving kind of love that is contagious in the best kind of way.
The bride and groom chose a poem from the 14th century Sufi poet, Hafiz, to preface their vows.
I offer it here as a prayer that love might continue to do its work in our broken, hurting world.
Congratulations K&K.
˜
It happens all the time in heaven,
And some day
It will begin to happen
Again on earth -
That men and women who are married,
And men and men who are
Lovers,
And women and women
Who give each other
Light,
Often will get down on their knees
And while so tenderly
Holding their lover’s hand,
With tears in their eyes,
Will sincerely speak, saying,
My dear,
How can I be more loving to you;
How can I be more kind?
I had been blogging for CLF since 2011 and was glad to leap over to Patheos.com. I write twice each month and love using this electronic medium to reach a wide array of people with my personal reflections, prayers and poems.
You never know who will read something that inspires them!
Here are a couple of my favorite posts. Read the rest HERE.
Blessings from Heaven
September 8, 2014
This past weekend I had the chance to do one of my favorite things. Presiding over friends’ weddings is a great perk of the ministry gig. This was a beautiful wedding, joining two families from very different backgrounds. Guests came from Milwaukee and Mumbai, wore brightly colored saris and sundresses, suits and kurtas. On the dance floor, Bollywood mingled with Madonna and midwestern polkas. And everyone ate and drank and danced as the skies opened and poured blessings on the barn roof.
At one point in the evening, I found myself standing in a doorway overlooking the dance floor. I took it in: the bride and groom surrounded by family and friends from all over the world, everyone moving, arms and legs and bodies, mouths open in delight,
music echoing, laughter filling the air.
My daughter was asleep on my chest, wrapped tight against me in her sling. I held her close as I watched the joyous scene before us.
I thought of how people have danced at weddings for thousands of years and still do — every day, everywhere, even as bombs fall and disease spreads, even as we mourn devastating losses, cradle our broken hearts and lift our heads high, even as we fear what might be and hold fast to hope for what could be. For all of human history people of every hue, every tongue, every nation have danced at weddings with joy and fear and pain and hope and love.
Love brought us all to the barn on a September evening. A gentle, kind-hearted, soul-rich, giving kind of love that is contagious in the best kind of way.
The bride and groom chose a poem from the 14th century Sufi poet, Hafiz, to preface their vows.
I offer it here as a prayer that love might continue to do its work in our broken, hurting world.
Congratulations K&K.
˜
It happens all the time in heaven,
And some day
It will begin to happen
Again on earth -
That men and women who are married,
And men and men who are
Lovers,
And women and women
Who give each other
Light,
Often will get down on their knees
And while so tenderly
Holding their lover’s hand,
With tears in their eyes,
Will sincerely speak, saying,
My dear,
How can I be more loving to you;
How can I be more kind?
Thank You For…
February 24, 2014
I had a great time visiting New York City this past weekend. A couple years ago, I would not have expected to enjoy “The City” ever again.
You see, I called New York home for five years. And by the time we prepared to move out of the city, I was pretty overwhelmed by that amazing, infuriating, beautiful, exhausting island.
For the first four years we lived there, I tamped down my frustration, my fear, my overwhelm. But when we made the decision to move out of the city…oooh, it just came flowing out of me.
Rage at people who pushed me on the subway.
Tears.
Yes, Manhattan made me cry.
But we had just decided to move. We weren’t actually moving for another eight months, so I had to do something. I started a list on Facebook. I called it: “Things to like -- or even love -- about New York City.”
My first item was the evergreen boughs packed around the sidewalk trees on 17th street in the winter. Number 41 was a favorite: I was grateful for the MTA guy on my morning commute at the 14th Street M15 select service bus stop. He was there the entire year I took that bus. Rain, sleet, snow, hundred degree heat. He was so kind -- even in the midst of a mass of rather grumpy commuters. He always said “Good Morning.”
The list helped. It made my last year in New York possible, pleasant even. Friends added to it and helped me see the city in ways I simply could not before I started the list. Searching for tiny things that gave me joy became a spiritual practice. Being grateful gave me new way of seeing the world around me.If you live in New York, perhaps you, too, have noticed that the sidewalk at LaGuardia airport sparkles.
A few months after I started my New York City gratitude list, I was called to the Emergency Room of the hospital where I served as a chaplain. I found the patient who had requested a pastor in an isolation room, protecting either him or the rest of us from germs.
I donned a mask and entered. He was delighted to see me. I was, to be honest, more than a little nervous.
As we spoke, I learned that this man was HIV positive, that his HIV had developed into AIDS, and that he had come in that day because his pneumonia had reoccurred. He had cancer too, but he didn’t want treatment. He did not even want to know how much of his body was affected. He felt alright, he said. He was homeless and mostly estranged from his family. He needed some new clothes and wondered if I could help. He spoke quickly, frenetically. I wasn’t sure what would come next.
And then he taught me a priceless lesson. He wanted to read something to me, (I don’t even remember now what it was) and he reached into a tattered pocket to pull out a piece of paper.
After he’d retrieved a broken pair of glasses from a different pocket, he paused, closed his eyes and said:
“Thank You, God, for the ability to read.”
Thank you, God, for the ability to read.
His prayer made me reexamine the gift that many of us receive in early elementary school and then proceed to take for granted for the rest of our lives. The man in the ER, with so much to be angry, frustrated, despairing about, with a simple prayer of gratitude, had opened my eyes.
The rest of that day the power of that simple thank you washed over me:
Thank you for the ability to walk, to express myself.
Thank you for being able to open this door for someone.
Thank you, God, for the ability to read.
What before was ordinary, with a reminder, became glorious.
I am trying to remember the power of that pause these days. It is a hard time for many of the people we love. I am learning that gratefulness is not always easy, but always lifts the heart and, it is always as simple as a Thank You For…
For what are you grateful today?
February 24, 2014
I had a great time visiting New York City this past weekend. A couple years ago, I would not have expected to enjoy “The City” ever again.
You see, I called New York home for five years. And by the time we prepared to move out of the city, I was pretty overwhelmed by that amazing, infuriating, beautiful, exhausting island.
For the first four years we lived there, I tamped down my frustration, my fear, my overwhelm. But when we made the decision to move out of the city…oooh, it just came flowing out of me.
Rage at people who pushed me on the subway.
Tears.
Yes, Manhattan made me cry.
But we had just decided to move. We weren’t actually moving for another eight months, so I had to do something. I started a list on Facebook. I called it: “Things to like -- or even love -- about New York City.”
My first item was the evergreen boughs packed around the sidewalk trees on 17th street in the winter. Number 41 was a favorite: I was grateful for the MTA guy on my morning commute at the 14th Street M15 select service bus stop. He was there the entire year I took that bus. Rain, sleet, snow, hundred degree heat. He was so kind -- even in the midst of a mass of rather grumpy commuters. He always said “Good Morning.”
The list helped. It made my last year in New York possible, pleasant even. Friends added to it and helped me see the city in ways I simply could not before I started the list. Searching for tiny things that gave me joy became a spiritual practice. Being grateful gave me new way of seeing the world around me.If you live in New York, perhaps you, too, have noticed that the sidewalk at LaGuardia airport sparkles.
A few months after I started my New York City gratitude list, I was called to the Emergency Room of the hospital where I served as a chaplain. I found the patient who had requested a pastor in an isolation room, protecting either him or the rest of us from germs.
I donned a mask and entered. He was delighted to see me. I was, to be honest, more than a little nervous.
As we spoke, I learned that this man was HIV positive, that his HIV had developed into AIDS, and that he had come in that day because his pneumonia had reoccurred. He had cancer too, but he didn’t want treatment. He did not even want to know how much of his body was affected. He felt alright, he said. He was homeless and mostly estranged from his family. He needed some new clothes and wondered if I could help. He spoke quickly, frenetically. I wasn’t sure what would come next.
And then he taught me a priceless lesson. He wanted to read something to me, (I don’t even remember now what it was) and he reached into a tattered pocket to pull out a piece of paper.
After he’d retrieved a broken pair of glasses from a different pocket, he paused, closed his eyes and said:
“Thank You, God, for the ability to read.”
Thank you, God, for the ability to read.
His prayer made me reexamine the gift that many of us receive in early elementary school and then proceed to take for granted for the rest of our lives. The man in the ER, with so much to be angry, frustrated, despairing about, with a simple prayer of gratitude, had opened my eyes.
The rest of that day the power of that simple thank you washed over me:
Thank you for the ability to walk, to express myself.
Thank you for being able to open this door for someone.
Thank you, God, for the ability to read.
What before was ordinary, with a reminder, became glorious.
I am trying to remember the power of that pause these days. It is a hard time for many of the people we love. I am learning that gratefulness is not always easy, but always lifts the heart and, it is always as simple as a Thank You For…
For what are you grateful today?