
This week has been a disaster. If you are anything like me, it has been a horrifying week in the news as what is coming out of Washington is as terrible as we thought and maybe worse. I am full of fear, disgust, dismay and absolute disbelief that some people have values that are this different than mine.
So I have found a number of things to help me try to cope. I’ve tried to find my own balance in consuming news, in social media, in long-term vision versus short-term panic, and so many other things, and I have been very intent on balancing out my despair to hope ratio. I refuse to not see the things that give me hope and joy and love. In fact, I need MORE of them in times like this.
Here are some things that are giving me hope at UUCP right now:
- We have four Intern Minister candidates and they are all fantastic–I feel very hopeful for a fabulous intern starting next Fall.
- We have two wonderful Boy Scouts who are working on their Eagle Project and building us a new amphitheater off our Memorial Garden. It will be done on February 22nd. Hopefully we’ll have a wedding in it on that very same day.
- Our Mid-Year Congregational Meeting will have a lot of information and the board has done an amazing job of preparing it!
- The sabbatical team is doing some amazing things–I actually am a little envious of what is going to be happening.
Yes, there are a lot of awful things happening right now, but there is also still beauty and joy and love.I am focusing on the pockets of resistance that are happening all around us. I hope you can find your own balance in these challenging times.
Below is a poem by one of our UU Ministers that really resonates with me.
How to Survive the Apocalypse
by Rev. Sean Parker Dennison
First, learn to listen.
Not only for enemies around
corners in hidden places,
but for the faint footsteps
of hope and the whisper of resistance.
Hone your skills, aim your
heart toward kindness and
stockpile second chances.
Under the weight of destruction,
we will need the strong shelter
of forgiveness and the deeper wells
that give the sweet water of welcome:
“We have a place for you.”
When the world ends, we must not
add destruction to destruction,
not accept a beggar’s bargain,
to fight death with more death.
In order to survive the apocalypse—
any apocalypse at all—
we have to give up
the counterfeit currency of self-
sufficiency, the mistaken addiction
to competition, the lie that the last
to die has somehow survived.