The Rev. Jeremiah Lal Shahbaz Kalendae - February 26, 2023
Wake Up and Dream
“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly,” writes Langston Hughes. What are your dreams? What are our common dreams? Let’s consider waking up to our dreams this morning to truly soar. Please join us at noon for a Special Meeting of the Congregation to consider adoption of the bylaws drafted by the Bylaws Refresh Task Force and endorsed by the Board. Sue Bickford, worship associate
From Monthly: "Love"
We’ll explore in our worship, small groups, and personal reflection this month’s theme, The Path of Love. If you judge people, you have no time to love them. If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive. ~ Mother Teresa Know that love is a vulnerability but not a weakness. Love is the volunteer in you that raises its hand and steps forward without needing to be rewarded. Love is a currency that functions in reverse, because the only way to be wealthy with it is to give more of it away. ~ Shane Koyczan One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others. There was a time when I felt lousy about my over-forty body, saw myself as too fat, too this, or too that. Yet I fantasized about finding a lover who would give me the gift of being loved as I am. It is silly, isn’t it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself. This was a moment when the maxim “You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself” made clear sense. And I add, “Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself. ~ Bell Hooks Our main job, both as a Universalist community and as individual persons is to remember love, whenever we can, whenever it is available to be remembered or experienced. And to remind one another when we have forgotten. We remind each other not by a logical argument, but by being love. By embodying and manifesting love, by grounding our actions, our choices, our words in that bedrock of love that underlays and supports everything, that is deeper than the suffering and struggle of this moment. ~ Rev. Darcey Laine Heartbreak is an essential part of what it means to be human. We all try so desperately to shield ourselves from it. But there it is. Bound up with our love. Bound up with those moments when we feel cut off from that love. In fact, we can predict that heartbreak will visit all of us. What we cannot predict is what we will choose to do with our heartbreak. ~ emilie boggis, from Choose Love on Substack I want you to know that you are loved beyond your wildest imaginings by the spirit of creation. Every bit of you is holy—even the embarrassing parts, even the thoughts you wouldn’t tell your best friend. God is in your every cell, calling you to live a loving, joyful, boisterous life. To go easier on yourself. To accept that you are a blessing. To spread the word that there is no original sin, that we are all glorious gifts to a world that desperately needs us. ~ Rev. Kate Landis, an excerpt from Stubborn Grace: Faith, Mental Illness, and Demanding a Blessing There are days I drop words of comfort [and love] on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by myself. ~ Brian Andreas I didn’t climb the tree because I [was] angry at the corporations and the government. I climbed the tree because when I fell in love with the redwoods, I fell in love with the world. My feeling of “connection” is what drives me, instead of my anger and feeling of being disconnected. ~ Julia “Butterfly” Hill, on her 738-day vigil to protect redwoods from logging