REFLECTIONS

Let us give thanks:
For generous friends... with hearts as big as hubbards
and smiles as bright as their blossoms
For feisty friends as tart as apples,
For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers,
keep reminding us that we've had them,
For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible,
For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants
and as elegant as a row of corn,
And the others, as plain as potatoes and so good for you,
For funny friends, who are as silly as brussel sprouts
and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes,
And serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers
and as intricate as onions.
For friends as unpretentious as cabbages,
As subtle as summer squash,
As persistent as parsley,
As delightful as dill,
As endless as zucchini,
And who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you through the
winter,
For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time
And young friends coming on as fast as radishes,
For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us,
despite our blights, wilts, and witherings,
And, finally, for those friends now gone,
like gardens past that have been harvested,
but who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter.
For all these, we give thanks. Amen."

Written by Max Coots
Minister Emeritus of the Canton, New York
Unitarian Universalist Church

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living
to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by
children to adults.
-- Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin (1973) "Emotions"

We Give Thanks This Day

For the expanding grandeur of Creation, worlds known and unknown,
galaxies beyond galaxies, filling us with awe and challenging our
imaginations.

We Give Thanks This Day.

For this fragile planet earth, its times and tides, its sunsets and
seasons:

We Give Thanks This Day.

For the joy of human life, its wonders and surprises, its hopes and
achievements;

We Give Thanks This Day.

For our human community, our common past and future hope, our oneness
transcending all separation, our capacity to work for peace and justice
in the midst of hostility and opppression:

We Give Thanks This Day.

For high hopes and noble causes, for faith without fanaticism, for
understanding of views not shared:

We Give Thanks This Day.

For all who have labored and suffered for a fairer world, who have
lived so that others might live in dignity and freedom:

We Give Thanks This Day.

For human liberty and sacred rites; for opportunities to change and
grow, to affirm and choose:

We give thanks this day. We pray that we may live not by our fears but
by our hopes, not by our words but by our deeds.

O. Eugene Pickett
(responsive reading #512, from Singing the Living Tradition):

Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by
faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits.

-- Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith", 1992

"There can be no progress if people have no faith in tomorrow."

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

UNDERSTANDING

O Wisdom of the Most High, whose word is both
strength and truth,
Teach us to be firm in our opinions without being
harsh in our spirit;
Teach us to disagree about grave matters without
becoming disagreeable about everything;
Teach us to be sorry for the troubles of others
without quenching the flame of happiness within
ourselves;
Teach us to work with all seriousness without
losing our power to stand aside and smile;
So lead us on the road which is both straight and
beautiful, and bring us at last to the Holy City.

- Vivian T. Pomeroy
Hidden Fire: A Second Book of Prayers (1938)

I slept and dreamt that life was joy;
I awoke and saw that life was service;
I acted and behold, service was joy.

Rabindranath Tagore

Our World


The Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida has put up a very
interesting Java applet on their site. It begins as a view of the Milky
Way Galaxy viewed from a distance of 10 million light years and then
zooms into towards Earth in powers of ten of distance. 10 million, to one
million, to
100,000 light years and so on and then when it finally reaches a large
Oak tree leaf. But that is not all it zooms into the leaf until it
reaches to the level of the quarks viewed at 100 attometers.


http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index.html

This is a fantastic representation of how magnificent the Universe is
and how vastly infinite it is both in the macroscopic and the
microscopic level.

"A little learning is a dangerous thing, but drinking deeply at the
perennial spring sobers us again."
Robert Burns

Favorite Blogs:


http://matthewgatheringwater.blogspot.com/


http://philocrites.com/

Heather Janules wrote:

Our prophets died for the freedom of faith;
We are here in their spirit.

We are here to practice and sustain a living tradition;
To light a chalice,
Claiming for justice
The heat and power of fire.

In our free faith,
We are here,
Seeking freedom from despair,
The freedom to be loved as ourselves,
And the freedom to grow beyond imagination.

We are here,
Gathered in the name of all that is holy.
Let us give thanks for the gift of gathering here.
Amen.

"It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go
away, I'm looking for the truth.' and so it goes away. Puzzling." -
Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their
tastes may not be the same.
-- George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903), Maxims for Revolutionists

******************

Felix Adler, founder of the Ethical Culture group, said it something
like
this:

Work to bring out the best in others and
thereby bring out the best in yourself.

Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself.
-- Jane Wagner

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
-- Robert Heinlein, "Job", 1984

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?"
Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."
-- Charles M. Schulz, Charlie Brown in "Peanuts"

The truth is a rabbit in a bramble patch. All you can do is circle
around and
say it's somewhere in there.

-- Charles Seeger