UU A Way Of Life Joke Of The Day

A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean a mother.

Sometimes we can't believe what we just said. We ask ourselves, "How could I have said something so stupid?" We are surprised and sometimes embarrassed and sometimes pleased. "I didn't know I knew that" we might say to ourselves.

Listening to what we say is a form of mindfulness. We get into the witness part of ourselves, and observe our own functioning. It is best if we can be nonjudgmental and just observe.

"The past." This is my quick reply to the social worker who's come to ask where I might like to live. I ask where she might like to live. She says we're here to talk about me. I had suspicions that might be the case.

"Nineteen forty-six," I say, "would be my first choice." Back before I can remember. And, once there, I would spend my days peppering my family with questions, asking, "Must it come to pass the way it does? Is there nothing we can do?" I want to be like a cub reporter with a tight skirt and a lined tablet and write everything in pencil so that we could erase things, change the facts if anybody came up with some notion as to how we might make the whole thing go some other way,

Linda McCullough Moore, "On My Way Now", The Sun, April, 2014, p.14

Blow on the divine spark and become a raging fire of love

Osho said one time:

"Meditation simply means transforming your unconscious in to consciousness. Normally only one-tenth of our mind is conscious, and nine-tenths is unconscious. Just a small part of our mind, a think layer, has light; otherwise the whole house is in darkness. And the challenge is to grow that small light so that the whole house is flooded with light, so that not even a nook or corner is left in darkness.

When the whole house is full of light, then life is a miracle; it has the quality of magic. Then it is no longer ordinary - everything becomes extraordinary. The mundane is transformed into the sacred, and the small things of life start having such tremendous significance that one could not have ever imagined it. Ordinary stones look as beautiful as diamonds; the whole of existence becomes illuminated. The moment you are illuminated, the whole of existence is illuminated. If you are dark, then the whole of existence is dark. It all depends on you. "

It says in A Course In Miracles "Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you?"

It also says, " The real world is attained simply by complete forgiveness of the old, the world you see without forgiveness."

Peace Pilgrim said, "I look for the divine spark in every person and I focus on that."

In Unitarian Universalism we covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person and we ask the universe to forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. In A Course In Miracles it teaches us that these trespasses are a figment of our imaginations. They are not really real. They are the hell we have made up when we separated ourselves from our original divine spark by our conditioning and our choices. Making our fantasies disappear by forgiving them, frees us to experience the divine bliss which is our birthright. But we have forgotten and it is our job in life to re-member the kingdom of God with our aware presence. Until we make the unconscious conscious we feel victimized by forces, circumstances, and events we didn't choose, but when we become conscious we awaken to a loving compassion for ourselves and others and the whole world.

As Unitarian Univeralism we cherish and honor the divine spark in our lighted chalice and we sing, "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine."

Laughter - you either laugh or cry

Laughter can sometimes signal an epiphany. We see through the crack, what Kurt Vonnegut called the "peep hole" into the cosmic consciousness. We can become what St. Paul  called "fools for Christ" in his first letter to Corinthians. And so UU Way Of Life will start to include humor in its regular offerings. Feel free to suggest your own favorites either in the comments or send them to davidgmarkham@gmail.com.

"If you wish to glance inside a human soul and get to know a man... just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man."

Fydor Dostoyevsky

Watch this video and feed some kids

Without a spirituality we die

"We must find some spiritual basis for living, else we die."

Bill Wilson, one of the founders along with Dr. Bob, of Alcoholics Anonymous

It is interesting that Bill Wilson says that we must find some spiritual basis for living, else we die and not a religious basis for living. The founders of AA were very clear that spirituality and religion are two different things and while they insisted on spirituality they did not insist on religion for the simple reason that when confronted with addiction religion doesn't work.

"Getting religion" is not the answer to addiction any more than "getting religion" is the answer to cancer, or diabetes, or Alzheimer's disease. And yet when wounded, when terrified, when on the edge of life as we know it, spirituality is the best place to turn because that is where God, our higher power, the Tao, the force in the universe is.

Walter Clark said that "One goes to church and gets a little something that then protects him or her against the real thing." Carl Jung said "...one of the main functions of formalized religion is to protect people from their direct experience of God."

Unitarian Universalism is wild. Its detractors accuse it of not even being a real religion because it doesn't have a creed and UUs can believe anything. Unitarian Universalism is a small religion because it doesn't offer the structure, the answers, the security of most religions, but on the contrary it does offer the free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and it does offer the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within its congregations and in society at large. No popes, no kings, no grand poobahs to pronounce the infallible truth or off with your heads or consignment to hell for all eternity.

The spiritual basis for living in the Unitarian Universalist tradition comes from the 7 values or principles which Unitarian Universalists covenant to affirm and promote. Having entered into such a covenant they go looking for inspiration both without and within.

The real spirituality of Unitarian Universalism occurs over coffee hour each week where we listen to each other's stories. It reminds me of the stories of early Christians when the non christians observed them they often remarked, "Look how they love one another."

Without our shared values, we would die, and yet with them, we live, in faith, hope, justice, peace, and joy.

It's all good, isn't it?

From Seneca's second letter:

"Judging from what you tell me and from what I hear, I feel that you show great promise. You do not tear from place to place and unsettle yourself with one move after another. Restlessness of that sort is symptomatic of a sick mind. Nothing, to my way of thinking, is better proof of a well ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company."

Reminds me of the old psychiatrist's joke. The psychiatrist says to his patient, "Why don't you take yourself out to dinner alone and see how you enjoy the company?"

I was reading Osho the other day and he was describing the difference between pleasure, happiness, joy, and bliss. We all seek pleasure as all animals do. The meaning of life the Dali Lama says is happiness. The next question is the most important and that is, "What will make me happy?" It's not a bad life if we know how to live it, and if we figure that out we will experience joy which is best described I think as an abiding sense of contentment. When we connect with the flow of the universe we experience bliss which is rare.

I think what Seneca may be pointing to is the fact that seeking pleasure and happiness constantly does not give us joy and certainly not bliss. For joy and bliss there must be a letting go of the pursuit of pleasure and even happiness because we know from experience that all things are impermanent as the Buddhists have taught us. So can we just sit with our pleasures as well as our pain and suffering? Can we just face and observe our own joys and sorrows, pleasures and pain, and say with equanimity "It's all good!"

And what does Unitarianism Universalism have to teach us about being comfortable in our own skin, about being content, about giving up the grasping and greed for material and physical pleasures? It teaches us that we are just a small part of the interdependent web of existence and that our happiness comes from respecting that interdependent web. We need to work towards balance, to rectify the imbalance, and to realize that sooner or later, one way or another, the universe is evolving exactly as it should. This is the basis of our universalist faith, that it all comes out in the wash, that everything, even what we call "bad", serves a purpose even if we don't understand it at the time.

Justice, equity, and compassion and compassion is the greatest of the three when it comes to forgiveness

Yesterday I wrote; "Our goal as Unitarian Universalists is not to get people into heaven, but heaven into people and forgiveness is the alchemy which turns coal into gold." and today, I find an article on the PsyBlog entitled, "Forgiveness: The Wonderful Psychological Perks". Increasingly research is showing that people who forgive are happier, more mentally healthy, have less stress and live longer. For a description of  the latest research on forgiveness published in Psychological Science, click here.

Osho describes science and religion being two sides of the same coin of life, science looking outward, and religion looking inward. In this case, it is interesting that psychological science is confirming what religion has been teaching for millennia.

What Unitarian Universalism teaches is justice, equity, and compassion in human relations and I think when it comes to a forgiving heart, compassion is the greatest of the three.