The President's Perspective (Page 6)

“No one is going to stand up and hand you a plate of progress in life. You must make progress by your own sheer will, discipline, and efforts every day.” Brendon Burchard “Start small, start now” Seth Godin “I can guarantee you that whatever it is you decide to build, you will lose some people.  And understand that if you don’t do a building project, you’re going to lose some folks as well.” Dr. Wayne Clark, UUA I am aware…

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” Leonardo da Vinci “Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground.” Theodore Roosevelt I had great difficulty starting this month’s column as “I couldn’t find inspiration,”  a situation I’m sure all of you can relate to. I am so convinced that there is a clear path from here to building and occupying a new…

WHAT IS YOUR VISION FOR ORANGE COAST UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH? . “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” Carl Jung  . “Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” Jonathan Swift  . The OCUUC Board of Trustees has recently taken on a vision-developing process at each monthly meeting. My own personal vision statement for OCUUC is as follows: “The vision for Orange…

“The chief beauty about time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your life. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.” ― Arnold Bennett “Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture…

“And now let us welcome the new year, full of things that never were.” —Rainer Maria Rilke “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.” —Joseph Campbell So here we are – beginning a new church year at Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church. We’ve got a newly instituted Board of Trustees, a…

“Stories don’t end,” he says. “They just turn into new beginnings.”  – Lindsay Eagar   “I must finish what I’ve started, even if, inevitably, what I finish turns out not to be what I began.” – Salman Rushdie Well, it’s the end of OCUUC Fiscal Year 2016/2017 and the beginning of Fiscal Year 2017/2018 (not something that slips easily into iambic pentameter.) This month’s blog is about the changes in leadership of our church, Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church. As of…

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” Henry Ford As we wind up our fiscal year I’d like us to reflect on the many successes we’ve had in the past twelve months. We put together two highly successful auctions, Fall and Spring, and made record amounts of income promised to OCUUC and helped in the process to continue our getting to know each other in the ensuing dinners, plays, games, and other social delights…

Caring for OCUUC Financially “The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration but its donation.” —Corrie Ten Boom “I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.” —C.S. Lewis “Ambitious people climb, but faithful people build.” —Julia Ward Howe 2017/2018 CANVASS As I write this we are not certain of receiving pledges to total the goal amount set…

“Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see takes time – like to have a friend takes time. I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.” Georgia O’Keeffe “The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another’s, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me…

“Men have never done much when the heart has been cold; and what have they not done, what have they not subdued, when the heart has been quickened to generous emotions?” William Ellery Channing “We are often called to do the difficult, if not the seemingly impossible, and it is vital to our spiritual growth that we not ignore these challenges.” Janice Marie Johnson “To attain happiness in another world we need only to believe something, while to secure it…

“We build on foundations we did not lay We warm ourselves by fires we did not light  We sit in the shade of trees we did not plant  We drink from wells we did not dig  We profit from persons we did not know  This is as it should be.  Together we are more than any one person could be.  Together we can build across the generations.  Together we can renew our hope and faith in the  life that is…

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”  ― Ralph Waldo Emerson I assume that you are grateful, as am I, for all the goodness that the winter season brings to us from religious renewal rituals to material presents to a realization that the coldest of seasons is limited and we will…