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Mystic Messenger Mystic Many of Us, a Time of Trying to Make

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Mystic Messenger Mystic Many of Us, a Time of Trying to Make Volume 6, Issue 2 December’s Theme is Stillness Stillness December 1, 2020 By Rebecca Kelley-Morgan, Director of some fashion. Keeping, as the poet Lifespan Religious Education Neruda writes, “our lives moving”. Reading, cleaning, exercising, baking Usually this season, December is a sourdough breads, household projects, rush of activity, gifting, cooking, plan- parenting, and home schooling, all on ning, and taking advantage of the steroids. I was encouraged to keep a many different times and ways to pandemic journal, so that a future Ken gather. Not this December. I have Burns has material to describe these always believed the many festivals times. I declined to accept the chal- during the winter were an instinctive lenge. push back at the darkness, finding consolation for the short days in cele- There are others who found a different bration with each other. Not this De- focus, falling into a sort of inertia, while cember. The pandemic has forced a doom scrolling through the news and protracted pause on our accustomed pandemic statistics, perseverating up- rhythms of living. on them. A couple of months ago, I found this Whatever our reactions and responses, poem by Pablo Neruda and promptly they all become exhausting. and at posted it above my computer screen. some point, the weight of keeping busy forces us into stillness. Stillness borne “Now we will count to twelve on fatigue, when the mind goes blank, when the hands grow idle. But are we and we will all keep still ever still? Our hearts beat on, our bod- for once... ies go about their business and we If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves…” (Continued on page 2) These last 9 months have been, for Mystic Messenger Mystic many of us, a time of trying to make Inside this issue: sense of the abrupt and continuing disruption to them. Observing my Stillness│ 1 A Publication of the Winchester Unitarianown Society and other’s reactions to the ini- www.winchesteruu.org 478 Main St Winchester MA 01890 tial lockdown, once the shock wore Imagination│ 3 The off, I watched (and took part) as many Beloved Community│ 4 careened from one activity to anoth- The Power of Service (excerpt) | 5 er, trying to make this time work in African American Classical Music | 6 Volume 6, Issue 2 Page 1 December’s Theme is Stillness cradle and grave? things that must be done. And Am I still while an even more so in intensive care infinitesimal bit of settings, where seconds might RNA and protein save lives. But that pause just wreaks havoc on might connect the many faces and our lives? Probably hands of care to their calling, to not. My breath their humanity and even to their continues, my body failures. goes about its busi- ness while I am Those seconds of stillness might deeply and pro- save souls. foundly aware of the unknown and This year, we are beset by the im- unknowable. pulse toward movement, urgency, of all the things that must be It is not stillness we done. Doing in a new way, trying seek, perhaps, but a on, seeking new normal while try- breathe in and we breathe out. pause. A shift in awareness, a si- ing to keep as much of the “usual” lent celebration of the air I alive in our vocations and homes. I have any number of spiritual breathe, the warmth of my skin, What if we were to take the poet’s practices and I fall deeply into one the subtle pulses of blood moving advice, and count to twelve, let or the other for an intense period to and from my beating heart. A ourselves keep still. Pausing that and then move on. But whatever moment within liminal spaces be- movement in our lives, so that we I am doing, whether journaling, or tween sunset and full dark, and could just be. Settling into the practicing asanas, or praying, or, within full dark to the bleaching of pause, the stillness that connects or, or, or I always come back to the sky. But always, always, I re- us to our triumphs and our fail- my breath. Back to, not a rhythm turn to my breath, and that tiny ures, our connections to each oth- – I come back to the pause, the pause between inhale and exhale. er, and our humanity. That pause, moment when the inhale ends, those precious seconds of stillness before the exhale begins. That There is a custom expanding that we can gather, just might tiny moment, that pause, is the through-out the medical profes- save souls. stillness that both honors my life sions in hospitals – The Pause. and my being, but also honors my The Pause was introduced by the impermanence. One day the in- Cleveland Clinic a few years ago, hale will not be followed by an to humanize the medical moment exhale, and I will be no longer. It is when someone dies. When a a poignant and profound truth death occurs, whether sudden or that I return to, particularly this not, the medical staff and family time of year, when the wheel of members, if they are present, stop the seasons turns to darkness and and pause for 15-30 seconds, rec- the greyness of the landscape ognizing the profound passage reaches into my soul. Am I still from life to death. Hospitals and when the wind takes my hair and most health care settings are plac- adorns it with leaves? Am I still es of movement, where light and watching the spiders weave up noise are a constant hum against their art, their webs that are both the backdrop of urgency, of all the Page 2 The Mystic Messenger January’s Theme is Imagination By Sam Wilson, Director of the “Imagination Ball” was planting Winchester Unitarian Society Imagine What “seeds of hope” in a “Garden of Youth Group Dreams.” We Could Do 4 years ago, WUSYG hosted an So, here, I offer you the wisdom “Imagination Ball” for this congre- if We Could from those same seeds: respect gation: a free, all-ages event on for all; be the change you wish to the eve of Trump’s inauguration to Do What We see; love is key; science is real; “celebrate community, lift up love stay calm and be cool; vaccines & diversity, and resist hate!” Imagine!! keep loved ones healthy; you can There was food, music, dancing, make a difference; stay awesome; face-painting, a costume contest, love one another; resistance, com- and various interactive ways for soon-to-be-8 principles1). Alt- munity & more love. May you con- people of all ages to share their hough, thankfully, this year’s elec- tinue to nurture these seeds, and hopes and dreams and focus on tion results largely leave all of us may we all continue to reap the the positive. What fun we all had, feeling a bit less far away from our benefits. imagining a better world! Many of “goal of community with peace, us certainly knew what was in liberty and justice for all,” we still store for us over the next 4 years, know that our country has a long 1 - Black Lives of UU Organizing to some extent, but I don’t think way to go toward achieving true Collective Urges Adoption of 8th that any of us could have possibly “justice, equity and compassion” Principle in Unitarian Universal- predicted to what extent the in our relations with one another. ism: “inherent worth and dignity” of Indeed, in the past several human beings would be repeated- months, this goal has felt more “We, the member congregations ly questioned and challenged, or unattainable to me than at any of the Unitarian Universalist Asso- even how much the “democratic other point in my life. And yet, ciation, covenant to affirm and process” would have been rou- where there are progressive reli- promote: journeying toward spir- tinely eroded. In other words, how gious folx such as ourselves who itual wholeness by working to much damage there would be to recommit ourselves to the work - build a diverse multicultural Be- basic tenets of our collective the- and continue to hold out hope by loved Community by our actions ology and everything that we hold imagining what could be - there is that accountably dismantle racism sacred as Unitarian Universalists a way forward. One of the activi- and other oppressions in ourselves (per, of course, our 7 hopefully- ties for participants at our and our institutions.” Volume 6, Issue 2 Page 3 February’s Theme is Beloved Community By The Rev. Heather Janules through the challenging, human decide to join a Unitarian Univer- work of non-violent advocacy. salist congregation is that they are In “The Role of the Church in Fac- joining a community that will sus- ing the Nation's Chief Moral Di- Creating the Beloved Community lemma,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Lu- is not possible without individual ther King Jr. wrote in 1957 that, and collective conflicts. But, de- “the end is reconciliation; the end spite and perhaps through con- is redemption; the end is the crea- flict, bridges are built between tion of the beloved community. It differing minds. As I understand it, is this type of spirit and this type the Beloved Community is the em- of love that can transform oppos- bodiment of words (falsely) ers into friends…It is an overflow- attributed to Dávid Ferenc: “We ing love which seeks nothing in need not think alike to love alike.” return.
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