zvi | Entries tagged with uu

The job situation is becoming unstable, so I've added looking for a new job to my to do list. For the end of October, because I honestly don't have time before then. Honestly, I'm glad to be…not pushed, no one's pushing, but prodded by circumstances into looking for a new job, because I kind of hate my current one. It's not that my co-workers or most of what I'm responsible for is bad, but I really don't believe in the product. Anyway.

Yesterday, I got a newsletter from the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. A couple of years ago, I was really active in church, then I ran for the board, then I served as President of the Board of Trustees, then I walked out when my term was over and I've never…quite…walked back.

I've been feeling the pull of religious worship again, but I also feel, I don't know, embarrassed to go back to the church I walked away from. I'm actually really lucky that I live around here, there's lots of UU churches. If I don't want to go home, there are others I can go to, at least for a while. And I suppose I could make an appointment with the "new" minister at my home church, if I didn't want to just walk in. Or I could do Church of the Larger Fellowship for a bit.

I guess I feel a bit like I've been ~~depressed~~ overwhelmed by life for a bit (if by bit you mean three years), and I somehow don't feel like it is ALL TOO MUCH/not enough of myself anymore? I suddenly…have more space. I don't know what's changed, except going to the gym with some regularity.

I can't wait to stop being sick so I can go back to the gym, honest. Yesterday, I didn't feel well enough to walk from my bus stop to my office (it's 0.7 miles, so it's not nothing. and I walked it on the way home, although I kept having to slow down), but today I did walk both ways (although I had to stop to catch my breath on the way to work). I am literally getting better everyday, but I also keep hauling my gym clothes with the wish that I will have the energy to do even a leisurely 30 minutes on the bike. Maybe tomorrow? More likely Friday.

I had kept my bullet journaling gathering to videos, but just today I was thinking that I might look up the credentials on my pinboard account so I could add bullet journal links there. No one's made a good video about threading or the dotcalendar yet! I need to keep track of all of these innovations that I will never, ever use. (Why the fuck is bullet journaling my new fandom? There aren't any characters! [This isn't true. There's no slash, but there are sure as fuck personalities.])

P.S. For posterity, some debate links. I didn't watch the debate, because I try not to punch myself in the face with tv. My mother did, and she screamed like she was watching the Washington football team lose a game.

NPR Politics Podcast Episode
Preeti Chibber's Leslie Knope reaction gif Twitter thread
That one time Jonathan Mahler, a NY Times reporter, watched the debate with the sound off, but was still pretty sure Clinton won

The water understands
Civilization well;
It wets my foot, but prettily,
It chills my life, but wittily,
It is not disconcerted,
It is not broken-hearted:
Well used, it decketh joy,
Adorneth, doubleth joy:
Ill used, it will destroy,
In perfect time and measure
With a face of golden pleasure
Elegantly destroy.

Source: Poets of the English Language (Viking Press, 1950)

How Do Unitarian Universalists Pray? by Rev. Jann Halloran, Prairie Unitarian Universalist Church Monday, 30 January 2006 ( Read more... )

Taking up Space by Theresa Novak
September 2004

I am a large woman
And I need some space.
The world is not big enough
Sometimes.
Sharp elbows jutting, jabbing
The smaller people
Push by with impatience.
Their looks of disgust
Try to cut me down to size.
I don’t feel crowded
By other fat people,
Even in a small space.
Our round bodies bump
Pleasantly together
With a jiggling, Jello-pudding ease.
Comfortable.
Earth mother goddess,
Welcoming, warm, and wise.
Ah.
Funny how someone so big
Can feel so invisible.
Yes, EXTRA large
Is way too small.
Really.
I don’t want to feel small
Simply because I am
What someone else thinks is
Way too big.
I am a large woman
And I need some space.
I want to grow larger still
Spirit filling my body - and more
Flowing out, around.
Free.
Divine spirit,
Larger than all imagination,
Teach us how to bump more gently
Into one another.
May our spirits flow
Around the sharp edges,
Around the rude elbows
That jab us apart.
We are large souls
And we need some space
To be
Together.

At the Unitarian Universalist ministers’ meeting I attended this Winter, the leaders of the
seminar I attended described this in terms of “intimate” and “strategic” interactions. While most committee meetings may take place in the strategic mode, where participants use both formal and informal power to accomplish specific tasks, a good check-in is an example of an intimate interaction, bringing people closer and helping them care about what each person is thinking and feeling. For those who work in the realm of human relationships, from family therapists to business consultants, it’s clear that the intimate and the strategic support one another. In a Unitarian Universalist setting, committees exist for specific purposes (strategic) but only to the extent that their activities grow the Beloved Community (intimate).

Why Checking In Matters by Andrew Millard

From UU World: We should be more countercultural

The Flaming Chalice

A sermon by Rev. Bill Gupton
Sunday, June 8, 2003
Heritage Universalist Unitarian Church
Cincinnati, Ohio

I feel like I've made real progress with my body prayer practice. I don't get to it every day, but I do most days, and more importantly, I go back to it.

I why to expand my practice to something more...intellectual? wordy? thoughtful?

Anyway, I've been reading this book on spiritual practice, and one of the practices described is a reading practice:

1) Read aloud
2) Memorize the text
3) Meditate on the text

I don't know if I'm really the sort of person who memorizes and reads aloud, but the idea of wrestling with a text appeals to me greatly. I have the idea that I would maybe copy, by hand, into a notebook, the text and my meditations. Either that, or just journal here about what I was thinking, but in a close reading, page by page way.

I don't think it would work in my life to make it a daily practice, not the writing party, but a weekly practice, something I did on Saturday while the laundry was running, I could see that.

The question becomes, of course, 'what should I read?' We don't have a single text, as Unitarian Universalists. We claim by name the Christian bible, but I don't know if we have any texts on understanding the books through our contemporary philosophy/theology. And there's many more texts I could imagine as appropriate, but I have no idea where to start.

+ Rumi
+ Thoreau and the transcendentalists
+ Qur'an
+ Dao te ching
+ Singing the Living Tradition (grey hymnal)
+ Confucius
+ Martin Luther King
+ Gandhi
+ Augustine
+ Dickinson
+ Plath
+ Dorothy Parker
+ bell hooks
+ Cambridge Platform
+ Humanist Manifestos

If one can learn from anyone and everything, picking a starting place is so hard. I don't know what to do with myself.

Last summer, I led a class on Spiritual Practice, a survey course of stuff like mediation, art, movement practices, etc. It was a really good class, and I thought it had some great ideas. I really enjoyed it, but then I didn't adopt any new practices. I haven't even been able to finish any of the theological books I've bought.

But a couple of weeks ago, I decided that it was better to stop something for five minutes than to do nothing. (Although, it isn't 100% accurate to say I've done nothing, I've been working on the Adult Religious Education committee and I'm on the Board of Trustees, and that work is religious work, too, but it isn't that feeling of spiritual expansion and sublimation of self that I sometimes think of when I think of 'practice'.)

So, I found a couple of body prayers online, and I put practice in Remember the Milk as a daily to do. It makes me feel more connected and religious, for lack of a better word. (Spiritual makes me more uncomfortable than God, so not a better word.)

I want something of the same with regard to writing. I don't want to do exclusively religious writing, but I want to do some. I also want to write some more fiction and some journal entries. I feel like it's been hard to think because I haven't made time to write for ages.

So, now that I have a really good tool for it (a tablet with Swype), I'm going to use my evening commute for writing. I may not make it every day (I almost didn't write anything today, because I am tired), but what putting practice in my to do list has pointed out to me is that I have to make time for the things I want to do but which aren't as fast and easy as reading more fanfiction.

Tl;dr: expect more from me more frequently.

I cut my hair, so I re-did my icon.

I also took the opportunity to replace the cross in the background of this icon with a flaming chalice.

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Page Summary

some ramblings about myself
Water by Ralph Waldo Emerson
How Do Unitarian Universalists Pray?
Taking up Space
those long damn meetings are a religious practice
Countercultural Living
A Sermon on The Flaming Chalice
Practice
(no subject)
GIP: New self-portrait icon

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zvi likes tv

and books, and writing, and girls, and...

Entries tagged with uu

some ramblings about myself

Water by Ralph Waldo Emerson

How Do Unitarian Universalists Pray?

Taking up Space

those long damn meetings are a religious practice

Countercultural Living

A Sermon on The Flaming Chalice

Practice

no subject

GIP: New self-portrait icon