A Small Gratitude Takes Root
Feeling depressed? Make a gratitude list. Resentful? Get to a gratitude meeting. All you need is an attitude of gratitude.
It can border on the trite, the saccharine, the listing small blessings for which one might be grateful: the rain didn’t become torrential until after I got home, that driver let me merge into the exit lane, I caught a whiff of azalea, my favorite pair of jeans are clean, my brand of peanut butter is on sale, I heard the grumpy crossing guard laughing with a passing child this afternoon.
Compassion Says
About thirty years ago Charles Figley, the Paul Henry Kurzweg Chair in Disaster Mental Health at Tulane University, coined the phrase compassion fatigue to refer to
“absorbing information and often the suffering of others through empathy. It happens when a helping professional experiences exhaustion due to caring for someone, and can lead to profound emotional and physical erosion that takes place when helpers are unable to refuel and regenerate themselves.”
Counterpoints
A couple weeks ago, May 25, 2025, was the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of the American Unitarian Association–one of the precursor organizations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which this congregation is a member.
Might As Well Flower
'Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.'
A Bright, Insistent Spasm of Defiance
Last week I spoke about how in more or less normal times, when our months and weeks are filled with days that sometimes move from joy to joy to joy and that sometimes move from no good events to terrible, horrible events, to very bad events, in more or less normal times we can train ourselves to fine tune our attention to the joys.
From Joy to Joy to Joy
If I have a day of petty and not so petty problems, set-backs, and annoyances, and a chance to tell them all to my friend Emily (who preached here at our installation service in October), Emily listens with great empathy. And then she says, “I’m sorry some days are like that. Even in Australia.”
The Sea Will Hold You
“You know more than you think you do.”
If I had a re-do that would be this morning’s sermon title. We will get to the sea will hold you a bit later.
Dancing Til the Cows Come Home
“If I can’t dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.”
The Emma Goldman’s piece I read earlier this morning, is often paraphrased this way on t-shirts and social media memes. “If I can’t dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.”
Our Assignment
A person was being chased by a tiger. The tiger chased them straight to the edge of the cliff. They grabbed a strong vine and began to lower themselves to the bottom–before noticing another tiger waiting below.
Fall Back Plans
Last night, if we were on top of things, we set our clocks back an hour. And you’re here, on time, so I guess you were on top of things. Or you’ve been here waiting for an hour. Or, if you’re like me, you put a little sticky note on every flashing blue clock in your home as a reminder that you haven’t changed it yet and the time is not to be trusted. Thank goodness for phones and laptops and other Hal-like devices that changed themselves!