September, 2009
Dear Friends,
July, my vacation month, was entirely devoted to my gardens. What a blessing; what a curse. It was a blessed month because I love to garden, and it was lovely and cool when it wasn’t raining. It is a curse because there is so much yet to do, and I’ve run out of time. Maybe next year.
Last spring 15 church members and my neighbors helped clean up the awful mess of the ice storm (the Lord be praised!). I still have a mountain of wood to be split, and a burn pile that surely is way beyond reasonable limits to deal with, but my neighbors will help, and the work will get done when the time is right.
I am learning that lending a helping hand is the way New Hampshire folk do life. When someone in my village of Temple needs help, everyone who has a free moment is there to help. When someone in this congregation needs help, including this minister, everyone who has a free moment is there to help. What greater meaning can life hold?
What a joy for me to be looking forward to a second year with you! We’ve done the hard work of the first year of interim ministry…looking openly and honestly together at our history, taking the time to respond to the Search Committee Survey, so ministers can grasp what this congregation is about. You’ve said, over and over again, you want to learn how to do conflict better. Thirteenth century Sufi poet, Rumi, once said:
“Out beyond ideas of right and wrong doing there is a field; I’ll meet you there.”
“Judge not, that ye be not judged,” the Bible cautions. Judgments of other people’s actions in terms of right and wrong turn us away from one another. Letting go of judgments can lead us to a more compassionate, life affirming community. This is really hard, to be sure. Our brains have been programmed to judge, and to react in fight or flight mode for some 8,000 years, some experts say. The good news is that there is a middle path we can follow: listening to one another with compassion. That, I think, is where this congregation wants to go: to that field beyond judgment where compassion and understanding grow.
My prayer for us this year is that we learn to listen beyond judgment; to listen to the needs being expressed when concerns arise. If we can do that, well, we’ll just be the greatest congregation any UU minister could ever want to serve.
In Faith,
- Olivia |
