Journeying: Words from Our Minister

January. Flat and open. An endless horizon meeting the open sky. No big holidays. No meaningful expectations. Just January. As I sit here today reflecting on the last few months at LCUUC, I find myself happy but exhausted. The learning
curve has been high, on all of our parts, and the journey forward-moving, if not exactly straight. But what journey is ever straight, despite the best laid plans?

It is often easy to think of January and February and March as being one long, endless landscape of sheer survival in these northern climates. But what if we see these months, instead, as one long, endless landscape of days for us to fill with love and meaning? What if we see that we are being given a pure white landscape where anything we write upon it will be seen, and kept in place: our hopes and dreams for a life well-spent writ large upon untrammeled snow; kept fresh in the crystalline air and held in place with shards of frozen, prismed light? What if we turn our faces to the sun on those bright blue, cold days of winter, and breathe in the fresh air and push out our sadness and despair? What if we use the gray days of winter for getting together with friends, and eating hot soup and listening to “A
Chapter A Day” on the radio?

What if we light the dark ground with vases made of ice, where candles are placed and lit, or where colorful luminaria create warm rainbows to light our way?

What if? What if? What if?

As long as we are alive, as long as we breathe in and we breathe out, as long as we can rise and sit and rise again – alone or with the help of others – endless possibilities of making beauty out of harshness exist.

There are at least 90 days until Spring. If God created the world in seven days and could look upon it after the flurry of creation was over and say, “And it was good,” just think what we might be able to create of equal endurance in these 90 days ahead. After all, there are lots of us creating this time, not just one, and we have the advantage of seeing what didn’t work so well the first time through and coming up with ways to make it better; ways to make it how we think it should look….

A stark, white landscape upon which to think and create. How lucky is that!

I look forward to seeing what might transpire.

Affectionately,
Jane

This page was last updated January 3, 2010