“You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.” – Steve Jobs
“Yes, in all my research, the greatest leaders looked inward and were able to tell a good story with authenticity and passion.” – Deepak Chopra
Both the Burning and the Light by Rev. Sean Parker Dennison
The dictionary defines risk as possibility of loss or injury : PERIL
Yuri Yamamoto discusses risk in the reflection Angry Birds, which is not about the video game.
I chose this song for Risk because it was such a risk to create and produce.
According to the dictionary commitment is “the state or quality of being dedicated to a cause, activity, person, or people.”
In his reflection, “What on Earth is worth saving”, Jake Morrill discusses what is important about commitment.
In his essay “On Prayer,” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote:
“Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehood. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, and the vision.”
Our prayer this morning is “Sacred in the Ordinary” by Tamara Lebak
Today is Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday, Fasnacht Tag, and many others.
Whatever you may call it, it is the day before Lent. In the Christian tradition, Lent is a forty-day period before Easter. (Sundays are skipped in counting the forty days, because Sundays commemorate the Resurrection.)
We will be celebrating UU Lent with daily posts again this year. Here is the calendar. We hope you will join us on this spiritual journey.
“Storytelling helps us all impose order on chaos—including emotional chaos. When we’re in pain, we create a narrative to help us make sense of it. This story doesn’t have to be based on any real information. One dismissive glance from a coworker can instantly turn into I knew she didn’t like me. I responded to Steve so defensively because when I’m in doubt, the “I’m not enough” explanation is often the first thing I grab. It’s like my comfy jeans—may not be flattering, but familiar.
Our stories are also about self-protection. I told myself Steve was blaming me so I could be mad instead of admitting that I was vulnerable or afraid of feeling inadequate. I could disengage from the tougher stuff. That’s what human beings tend to do: When we’re under threat, we run. If we feel exposed or hurt, we find someone to blame, or blame ourselves before anyone else can, or pretend we don’t care.
But this unconscious storytelling leaves us stuck. We keep tripping over the same issues, and after we fall, we find it hard to get back up again. But in my research on shame and vulnerability, I’ve also learned a lot about resilience. For my book Rising Strong, I spent time with many amazing people—from Fortune 500 leaders to long-married couples—who are skilled at recovering from setbacks, and they have one common characteristic: They can recognize their own confabulations and challenge them. The good news is that we can rewrite these stories. We just have to be brave enough to reckon with our deepest emotions.” – for the whole excerpt click here
Even four years later, the election of 2016 is difficult to deal with. In her article, a range of reflections on resilience , adrienne maree brown discusses how she was able to be resilient through it.
‘The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.’ – camus…documenting my liberation
Heartbreak and Trauma are two different things, but both affect us in our daily lives. Learning to work with ourselves can create greater resilience in the future.
Below is a sweet video from Soul Pancake and a Podcast from On Being.
West Fork Unitarian Universalists 