Living Mindfully
This service was prepared jointly by Dana Wilson-Li and Janice Meighan. While the service was not recorded, nevertheless a transcript has been posted here. Dana & Janice note the busyness of life and speak to the importance of silence. Then they introduce the practice of mindfulness, a meditative habit which promotes an attentiveness to the world which, far from helping us retreat from it, gives us tools to engage it. They conclude by leading the congregation in a meditative exercise.
A Progressive Shares her Story
Judy Sullivan, a member of the West Hill UC community, leads the service this morning. She speaks about more conservative points of view and cautions that those of us who claim a progressive perspective must resist the temptation to belittle our more conservative brothers and sisters as this merely diminishes us. She elaborates upon the conservative experience by sharing her own story growing up as a Seventh Day Adventist who turned to the most stringent threads of that denomination as a way to cope with the “problem” of her own sexual identity. Part way through, Judy introduces the trailer for the documentary, Jesus Camp.
Sowing Seeds; Taking Credit
During this morning’s “Children’s Time,” Gretta asked the children if it matters where flowers and plants come from. Not surprisingly, the children expressed more interest in the fact of flowers than in the account of how flowers end up in one place rather than another. In the meditation, she continues this theme with the parable of the sower (Matt 13:1-9). How important is it that we take credit for sowing seeds? In the case of GM seeds developed by Monsanto, patents create a proprietary interest in seeds. Here, taking credit = making money. But the same desire to take credit also arises in non-monetary efforts. For example, a dispute arose between the founder of the Boy Scouts of America, Lord Baden-Powell, and founder of “The Woodcraft Indians,” Ernest Thompson Seton. Seton alleged that Baden-Powell had taken his ideas in developing the BSA manual. Now, decades after the fact, how important is it that we acknowledge the source of this particular idea when measured against the benefits that we reap from it? Does it matter that we don’t receive the recognition that seems due? Is it not enough simply to sit back and acknowledge that each one of us does, in fact, make an important contribution? And each one of us deserves to be celebrated?