The Unitarian Church in Westport
10 Lyons Plains Rd., Westport, CT 06880 - Ph: (203)227-7205 Sunday Services: 10:00 AM on ZOOM and in person
This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes. I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze […]
Stand Still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is HERE, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger, Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may […]
Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Let the sky above me unroll like a scroll, and let me read upon it today’s text for my life: “You are alive, here and now. Love boldly and always tell the truth.” Let the wind arrange the naked branches of the maples and aspens and oaks into letters which proclaim this sacred text: “Your […]
Press the tender flesh of your knowing Against the steel door of your fear. Stay there, breathing, as its icy skin draws out the heat of your racing heart. Feel its resistance to the yes of your hopes, the imminent expiration of your dreams. You could have avoided this pain. You could have stayed safely […]
Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in […]
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the […]
The birds they sang at the break of day Start again I heard them say Don’t dwell on what has passed away or what is yet to be. Ah the wars they will be fought again The holy dove She will be caught again bought and sold and bought again the dove is never free. […]
The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking. He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark that he barks every time they leave the house. They must switch him on on their way out. The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking. I close all the windows in the house and put on a Beethoven symphony full […]
Human renewal comes through the shadow chains of the past By hard work. We drag those chains for days or decades, broken and beaten and often without knowledge about them. Renewal comes as the laughter after grief In the surprise of understanding. It is neither the naiveté of the child Nor the brazen veneer we […]