"To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don't need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself." Thich Nhat Hanh.

The river of life begs us to flow with it and bear witness to the beauty being presented.​

​“Both science and mysticism describe a force that connects everything together and gives us the power to influence how matter behaves—and reality itself—simply through the way we perceive the world around us.” 
― Gregg Braden, The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief


“When we nurture our Inner Beauty we are able to see it in each other and in the world we create.” Gary Stiles

​“Listen with ears of tolerance!  See through the eyes of compassion! Speak with the language of love.  - Rumi, 13th century Persian poet

Maybe we don’t do this all the time, but we always come back to living our lives with tolerance, compassion and love.  I experienced this during our Strategic Planning sessions, our talkbacks, our services, and throughout our communications every week.  This is what I love about our Congregation.

“You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” – Christopher Columbus
We hold on to our preprogramed beliefs even as uncomfortable it is when we try to apply them to the present moment. When we lose sight of them we find a new world of possibilities. Do we have the courage?— Gary

​“When we avoid difficult conversations, we trade short-term discomfort for long-term dysfunction.” - Peter Bromberg, author

We all have been in situations where we know we should have a conversation with someone, but we don’t.  Where has that led us?  We are going through a transition, and we need to have conversations so we move ahead in a positive direction. I hope you will join the Strategic Plan conversations next week.  In the future if you don’t know where to start your conversation, I suggest starting with “Help me understand.”

​“The universalism I aspire to does neither.  It holds that the same light shines through all our windows, but that each window is different.” - John Buehrens, author of A Chosen Faith: An Introduction to Universalist Unitarianism

We are all different.  We are a combination of our upbringing, our education, our experiences, the list continues.  Yet we come together.  We see the light we share, and we appreciate the light we see in ourselves and each other.

Awakening

When I wake from a dream at times I say “that was strange, how did my mind come up with that?” What we often don’t realize is that what we call the everyday waking state is a conglomeration of beliefs and programs we have adopted from the past that has nothing to do with what is True in the present moment. Much of the discord we experience in this world is because we believe our dream is real and expect others, who have their own dream to agree with ours. 

In order to experience the love and harmony that life is, we must wake up from this dream we have created for ourselves.

Gary Stiles

​“Help us be brave enough for life and love, and guide us in our search through doubt and darkness until we find the faith which knows no place or season - until we learn at last that though the very stars may wander, there is that within us which need never lose its way. - A. Powell Davies, Unitarian Universalist Minister

In these times of uncertainty, we all need to find and keep our faith that gives us hope and strength everyday.