Dear Members and Friends,
I hope you enjoyed a meaningful Thanksgiving Day and weekend. We’ve now entered the Holiday Season, and this year it may seem especially challenging. Fortunately, Giving Tuesday offers us an opportunity to think about what is important to us.
I imagine your email box is like mine: full of requests. I also received dozens of envelopes from various organizations and two postcards from UU organizations that I have given to in the past. It all can feel on a range of overwhelming to annoying to remorseful. While it is easy for Giving Tuesday to feel like Guilty Tuesday, it would be ideal if we could approach it as Gratitude Tuesday.
Here at UU Westport, a Holiday Appeal will be mailed later this week, so I’m not asking that you respond to this message. Instead, I invite you to take some time this week and take 10-15 minutes and just slow down enough to breathe deeply, notice what is going on inside and outside of you, and see if you can find that quiet, inner space of gratitude. Notice what comes up as you ask: Who are you grateful for, what are you grateful for?
As Unitarian Universalists, many of us give generously to multiple organizations. If there are specific organizations that you feel especially connected to, let them know you’re thinking of them with a donation—and if you don’t have any disposable funds, send a message of appreciation.
It’s easy for the beautiful spirit of Giving Tuesday to get lost in the frenzy of Cyber Monday and the ongoing rush of the Season. And, so, I ask you to join me in reflecting on what you’re grateful for and who is doing work that touches you deeply—and when you make a donation, may it be so much more meaningful to make than that click for a consumer purchase.
If we think of Giving Tuesday as Gratitude Tuesday, this is a reminder to move away from a consumer mentality to one that connects us with the meaning of the season. For ultimately, we give to organizations for the sake of the impact they make in line with our most cherished values. It’s funny how it works: cultivate gratitude and generosity will naturally follow.
Throughout the holiday season, it is helpful to maintain a practice of reflecting on what generates gratitude within, taking the time to touch into that space where tears often emerge and meaning becomes clearer.
May this be a season of gratitude for us all.
Warmly,
Alan
From Rev. Gretchen Haley:
In a world that feeds on moral outrage, we are here to cultivate moral courage
In a time that prizes picking sides, we gather to draw a wider circle
And in a culture that teaches us to get for what we give
And to ask “what’s in it for me?”
We come to practice generosity and to remember,
We are all in this together.
In the midst of life’s bitterness, we choose to sing, to give thanks,
to laugh together, and to be keepers of beauty
to offer a place of belonging for all who come,
in gladness and in pain,
to resist the push to the next moment, and the next
to slow down, to breathe more deeply, to feel a part of something greater.
Let us be the change we wish to see.
“For the Senses” by John O’Donohue
May the touch of your skin
Register the beauty
Of the otherness
That surrounds you
May your listening be attuned
To the deeper silence
Where sound is honed
To bring distance home.
May the fragrance
Of a breathing meadow
Refresh your heart
And remind you you are
A child of the earth.
And when you partake
Of food and drink,
May your taste quicken
To the gift and sweetness
That flows from the earth.
May your inner eye
See through the surfaces
And glean the real presence
Of everything that meets you
May your soul beautify
The desire of your eyes
That you might glimpse
The infinity that hides
In the simple sights
That seem worn
To your usual eyes.
“The Way It Is” by Lynn Ungar from Poetry of Presence
One morning you might wake up
to realize that the knot in your stomach
had loosened itself and slipped away,
and that the pit of unfulfilled longing in your heart
had gradually, and without your really noticing,
been filled in—patched like a pothole, not quite
the same as it was, but good enough.
And in that moment it might occur to you
that your life, though not the way
you planned it, and maybe not even entirely
the way you wanted it, is nonetheless—
persistently, abundantly, miraculously—
exactly the way it is.
