Dear Members and Friends,
It was so good to be with you this past Sunday for worship and the Annual Meeting. It was a fabulous day. Congratulations to Luke Garvey, Steve Grathwohl, Deb Garskof, and Wendy Levy for concluding their service on the UUWestport Board. I include a photo of them below taken by Beth Cliff.
We are nearing the end of our “regular worship year.” This Sunday, June 16, The Choir will present their Summer Solstice Concert during the service.
On June 23rd, there will be no service in person at UUWestport. However, there are two worship opportunities that day. One is Pride in the Pews at a joint Unitarian Universalist and United Church of Christ Service at First Congregational Church, 655 Stillwater Road, Stamford at 10:30 AM. Then, all are encouraged to attend the Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly service online at 1:00 PM by clicking HERE.
Our Summer Services begin June 30th and the schedule is the following:
June 30 ~ Dayle Brownstein ~ Life Lessons
July 7 ~ Rev. Carrie McEvoy ~ Meaningful Memories
July 14 ~ David Emberling ~ Tending Climate Change
July 21 ~ Carolyn Gundell ~ Seeking Wellness
July 28 ~ Ravi and Sudha Sankar ~ Courage to Change
August 4 ~ Jenna McPartland ~ Spirituality of Veganism
August 11 ~ Janet Luongo ~ Sacred Activism
August 18 ~ Rev. Tom Rosiello ~ Partnering for Justice
August 25 ~ Michael O’Connor ~ Forging Opportunities for Refugees
I will return this weekend for Sherry Jagerson’s memorial service on Saturday at 1:30 PM. Unless there is a significant pastoral need, I won’t be with you until mid-August. I will be on vacation from June 25 to July 20, followed by study leave until August 12. During my vacation, I will spend two weeks in Bakersfield to support my father and then take my family to Camp UniStar, a UU summer camp in northern Minnesota.
Several of you requested the poems I shared on Sunday. They are below.
Warmly,
Alan
“The Way It Is” by William Safford
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
“Saint Francis and the Sow” by Galway Kinnell
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
“The Way It Is” by Lyn Ungar
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.
“On the Other Side” by Lynn Ungar
Through the looking glass,
down the rabbit hole,
into the wardrobe and out
into the enchanted forest
where animals talk
and danger lurks and nothing
works quite the way it did before,
you have fallen into a new story.
It is possible that you
are much bigger—or smaller—
than you thought.
It is possible to drown
in the ocean of your own tears.
It is possible that mysterious friends
have armed you with magical weapons
you don’t yet understand,
but which you will need
to save your own life and the world.
Everything here is foreign.
Nothing quite makes sense.
That’s how it works.
Do not confuse the beginning
of the story with the end.
Wendy Levy, Steve Grathwohl, Luke Garvey and Deb Garskof
