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Who am I to have these dreams
Gretchen Haley’s garden is a place where you “have to be tough to make it here.”
There can be no pride here, no attachment,
no clinging to expectation, only endurance,
which is to give everything away,
except your roots, and the earth
which holds you, and everything else,
in what cannot be seen, or undone
forgetting even grief, though well-earned,
to know the struggle itself worthy, and to go on
inhaling, and exhaling
equal, and enough. (Another Possibility, July 25)
Laura Solomon writes that “We’re all poems waiting to be written.”
you (and me)
and the person in front of you you’ll never touch
who is also blinking back tears of self-doubt
go through life
saving worms or
recycling bottles or
smiling at strangers
as though we are ordinary
ignorant to our own worth and even
daring to think
we might be broken or
cracked or
unworthy. (Facebook, July 25)
Alix Klingenberg dares to speak her dreams out loud.
The images I see feel as if they already are—I live in the future looking back and figuring out how I got there. Speaking them out loud is a different kind of alchemy, it brings them closer usually and it feels incredibly vulnerable. Because who I am to have these dreams? But who is anyone to, really? (Highly Sensitive Extrovert, July 25)
Channel your anger into determination
Doug Muder reminds us that consistent determination will help defeat Trump in 2020.
I grant you: None of that will strike the decisive blow immediately. But what we need isn’t to lash out. It’s to be determined. Figure out what kind of determined mindset you can hold for the next 16 months, and get there as soon as you can. Battles like this aren’t won with flashes of anger. They’re won with day-in, day-out effort. . . .
We’ll get through this, as long as we don’t panic, don’t get intimidated, and don’t lash out. Channel your anger into determination. (The Weekly Sift, July 22)
Adam Dyer rejects Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s vision of religious freedom.
[Tolerance] is a problematic goal, particularly in a world shrunken and made potentially more lethal by technology. We must enter into an entirely new relationship with our differences that acknowledges and creates space for both Mike Pompeo and me (a gay, black minister who believes in open borders) to be in relationship. Mike Pompeo has every right in his personal world (and small mind) to believe that I am a Godless abomination. I don’t need him to like me, but I need him to acknowledge and in no way obstruct the fact that I exist. Moreover, he does not have any right to present his personal beliefs as the blueprint for an international policy agenda in my name. (spirituwellness, July 23)
Dan Harper remembers being enthralled by the moon landing.
These days I am far more cynical. Before I get excited about moon travel, I want to know where the energy is going to come from, and what the carbon footprint of moon travel will be. These days, I’m more interested in how we might reduce carbon in the atmosphere, to lessen the impact of global climate change. . . . I guess you could say that self interest has prompted a greater interest in ecological science than in astronomy or astrophysics. (Yet Another Unitarian Universalist, July 20)
Sierra-Marie Gerfao points out that accommodations required by law are often dodged in UU settings.
When we, as a religious body, decide to provide fewer civil rights protections than what would be required if we were subject to the law to which other employers are subject (especially on the grounds of ‘it would be too hard’) we really ought to question our basis for claiming any moral authority at all. (Facebook, July 22)