Sian's Shenanigans

Delight is a word I often use in describing how I feel when someone does something wonderful for someone else. The word comes from the Latin, “delectare” meaning “to charm.” I feel delight when I see this congregation reaching out and helping one another. I feel delight when I find the perfect match for my foster puppies. I feel delight when someone takes the time to give kudos where they are due. I feel delight when I see our RE…

You all know how excited I get when we talk about “love.” For me, it’s the way I experience the holy and how I see it act in the world. And of course, different cultures around the world often note that there are different kinds of love and have different words for it. The most common are words coined by the Catholic church: Philia, Eros, and Agape. Philia is meant to express the type of love between friends or from…

Welcome to the new year! Each year, people around the globe find a spurt of motivation to make a new year’s resolution – to diet, get in shape, expand their mind, see family more – the list goes on and on. We try year after year to change and grow. I think it’s a rather beautiful tradition even if it tends to fade away within a few weeks. It’s so wonderfully human to try! Recently I was talking to one…

There is a lovely story I read recently about the history of the Christmas tree. Christmas trees were brought over to the US by German immigrants, but they were made famous by Harriet Martineau, a writer and abolitionist, who had been invited to the family of Rev. Charles Follen, a Unitarian, to stay with them over Christmas. Charles and his wife had secretly brought a tree into the house (usually Christmas trees were outside) unbeknownst to their three young children…

There are some forms of change that come easy for me. For example, I’ve probably lived in 50-60 different places in my life; I’m used to moving around and while I don’t always enjoy the journey, I always enjoy the destination. I haven’t yet found a place that I don’t like. And I love to learn – you all know I’ve always got some new hobby on my plate, and I try to make the services diverse and intellectually stimulating…

A friend of mine once told me that he thought I was a courageous person. I was confused. I hadn’t done anything to my mind that seemed in any way courageous. When I asked him why he said that, he re-plied, “Well, you went off and lived in Australia. You’ve moved around a lot, even overseas.” I was rather stunned that he considered that “courageous.” I had moved around all my life – my parents were inveterate travelers. Moving was…

I can’t believe it: I’m entering my 10th year with OCUUC! How cool is that!? For those of you who have been a part of the church for much longer, you might think that’s not that long. But for me, it’s quite the milestone. I grew up moving almost every year or so. The longest I had ever lived in one place until age 16 was 1.5 years. Since then, as an adult, the most I’ve been at any job…

Years ago, I read a book called “The Carmina Gaedelica.” It’s a collection of Celtic Christian prayers, enchantments and blessings from the 19th Century from the Outer Hebrides of the Scottish Isles, a place that had preserved much of its original pagan roots. When you read the prayers and poems (and, yes, spells/enchantments!) you can tell they are unique immediately; they were all once from the druidic/pagan tradition. When Christianity came along, they just added in Jesus and Mary. What…

I’ve mentioned this before, but I have a really cool gift: I sense the beauty in people. It doesn’t matter who they are or what they do, just about everyone has this inner spark of beauty. You can call it a soul if you like. I’m sure it’s connected to empathy and compassion, but it’s something I’ve been aware of since I was probably a teenager. Often I can tell that this inner beauty in them is covered up by…

About 20 years ago, I was going through a rather stressful time. And every morning my alarm would go off and jar me awake with its insistent noise. After all an “alarm” is meant to raise your anxiety level, almost to the point of panic, so that you get out of bed. I decided that this was not a good way to start my day, so now I have an alarm that wakes me up with a light that slowly…

Faith is sometimes a difficult concept for Unitarian Universalists. We want to trust only the concrete, the science, the numbers. But Faith is about trusting in yourself, in humanity and in the future. It’s not an easy thing to do and the reality is that sometimes even having faith doesn’t mean that the future you want will come true. But faith isn’t always about everything going your way. It’s about trusting that the work you do now will have an…

He drew a circle that shut me out—Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.But Love and I had the wit to win:We drew a circle that took him in!Edwin Markham, poet laureate of Oregon from 1923-1931 Gender pronouns notwithstanding, I love this quote. I think it often gets at the heart of why so many communities don’t expand to include those that are different. We draw circles about who is in and who is out. So many communities ask people who…