It may seem strange, but as a minister, I find the process of planning a memorial service immensely gratifying. Not because someone died, though we all will. Not because I speak with family and friends of the deceased in the intimacy of their grieving, though we have all been there in the land of grief. Rather because I receive from family and friends a treasure of stories of a life lived and living remembered.
First Parish Unitarian Universalist Cohasset E-mail Update – May 19, 2010 One of my favorite objects is a kaleidoscope. From childhood on, I couldn’t resist the appeal of this “toy” that holds tiny slivers of color shifting into pattern after pattern, like an infinite series of stained glass windows. Kaleidoscopes speak to me: “Change is [...]
Were I to ask my own mother–she who gave birth to me and did indeed nurture me–what her opinion is on this matter of nature or nurture, I can only guess what she would say. Her response would emerge from a century of traveling her own life course. In fact, this is my first Mother’s Day without my mother here to ask such questions. …what would she say as a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, and a longtime nurse, on this matter? I’ll tell you exactly what she’d say…..
My epiphany of the “nowness” of time….has…ripened into a consciousness of the fragility of time. …The “new” doesn’t last. In the blink of an eye, we are here and not here. In the blink of an eye, the universe shifts. Awareness permits us to stretch the moment.
First Parish Unitarian Universalist Cohasset E-mail Update – April 21, 2010 Tomorrow Earth Day turns 40! I know that sounds a bit strange, since the earth itself is estimated to be about 4.54 billion years old. It’s seen countless life forms come and go. Most of us grew up learning about “extinct species” or species [...]
