When the gap between the suffering we witness and our capacity to respond become overwhelming and unbearable it is time to pause – both as individuals and as a community.  Compassion fatigue is a kind of moral injury.  It is crucial to name it honestly rather than push through with gritted teeth before unacknowledged fatigue … Continue reading Compassion Fatigue

How do we build compassionate bridges between people and communities that do not trust, respect, or value each other?  So many bridges have been destroyed in recent years.  Many continue to be under attack.  It may take generations to re-build some of what has been lost.  What foundations can we lay today?  How can compassion … Continue reading Building Compassionate Bridges

Empathy is feeling with someone – absorbing their pain, mirroring their distress. It’s powerful and connecting, but it can also be overwhelming and paralyzing. Compassion adds something crucial: it holds awareness of suffering and the desire to alleviate it, but with enough emotional equilibrium to actually be useful. It’s empathy plus wisdom and action. How … Continue reading From Empathy to Compassion

If the self is an illusion or construct, as Buddhism, neuroscience, and postmodern philosophy postulate, what happens to our sense of belonging, our deep human need for connection and place? How might we let go of the stories our narrative-self tells, constraining our freedom, limiting our fundamental wellbeing?

Our theme for the year is “Building Bridges,” an aspiration to listen beyond our echo chambers, to leave our silos of comfort, to explore the possibility of expanding our sense of belonging while holding the tension of difference and disagreement. What are the essentials in building belonging? What tools do we require to build the … Continue reading Building Bridges, Building Belonging

“Oh the longing for belonging, it is real and it is strong. With the yearning for connection, for respect, a holy song. Our dignity acknowledged, with love centered, we can flourish. In a meadow of belonging, each can flower (or move on). Many meadows overlapping, open to each other’s fruit. Each with value, beauty, kindness, … Continue reading To be Known and to Belong

As the varied brooks, creeks, and streamlets of life bring us back together in our beautiful sanctuary for our annual water communion service, may we experience a sense of renewal, welcome, and belonging with hearts opened by music and ritual, invited by friendly faces and a caring community. Our water communion honors the diverse stories … Continue reading Watering the Garden: A Water Communion Service

As we celebrate our annual Flower Communion service, may we remember the Navajo prayer that there is beauty before us, behind us, above us, and below us – provided we choose to notice.  Please bring a flower if you can – though we’ll have plenty of extras.  The sermon will be the story of the … Continue reading Flower Communion Sunday: Now I Walk in Beauty

Music Sunday will trace the musical journey of our choir this year, acknowledging the emotional ups and downs we have experienced as a community, singing about the centrality of love as we follow the way of the heart, embracing faith and hope as life calls us on.

There is great energy arising in response to the many changes the U.S. government is envisioning for us. How do we channel that energy into concrete actions while also capitalizing on this opportunity to imagine new ways of being with each other, of treating the earth, of relating to the world beyond the US borders, … Continue reading Imagination – Now More Than Ever