Yesterday morning, I attended yoga class where our wonderful teacher reminded us that we all have three things with us always that we can rely on even when the world out there is hard, and it is very hard right now. Those three things are our breath, coming in, going out, connecting us with the elements and the world, keeping us alive; the ground beneath our feet holding us up and supporting us; the light and spirit that we carry within us that is always there shining even if we don’t recognize it.

Last night, with others in my community of Middlebury, Vermont, I attended a candlelight vigil for Renee Nicole Good, who was killed by an ICE agent on January 7th in Minneapolis for wanting to protect her neighbors.. We all relied on our breath, the earth supporting us, the light that we carry inside us, and the candlelight and lanterns that we carried with us in the dark. I was heartened to see so many vigils, more than 1000, all over the country.

Candlelight Vigil for Renee Nicole Good, Middlebury, Vermont

I think of the monks who are part of Walk for Peace, the 120-day, 2,300-mile journey by Buddhist monks — with loyal dog, Aloka — walking from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C. to raise awareness of peace, loving kindness, and compassion across America and the world. In a world often filled with division, the monks' simple act of walking with purpose serves as a powerful reminder to cultivate peace within oneself, demonstrating that quiet presence and compassion are potent forces for positive change.

Recently I read a Substack piece by Helen Wybrow, a neighbor over the Green Mountains who is a sheep farmer and writer. She wrote The Salt Stones, a beautiful memoir about sheep farming and life that I highly recommend .

In this piece entitled The Monk of Tembo: A New Years Rant and Ramble, Helen grumbles a little about all the prompts and forms and invitations to reflect on the past year and look to the future one with goals. She writes:

You can trust yourself. Trust that you will have assimilated into your cells all the wisdom you were given this year, or that you will, in time. Trust that you had too many joys and sorrows to name, and that people held you up. If I do anything, it will be to write letters to those people. People who truly held me up through a wonderful and difficult year. And I will remind myself to practice gratitude in any small moment forever forward.

I did fill out one of those forms called Compass, one that my son, Chris sent me and that I did last year. He recommended it and I wanted to join him. The word that popped into my head when asked for a word to guide me for the year was beam. Beam as in a beam of light.

Maybe because of the dark times we are in; maybe because I want to practice finding the light within and beam it out more in my life; maybe because we all need light right now in a world that seems so very dark and scary and not the country we grew up in and have come to count on.

I love Helen’s resolve to send letters of gratitude to those who hold us up. I have started to do that and it feels like a wonderful practice…to write a letter and put a stamp on it, and to tell someone how much we appreciate their support and love…”and to practice gratitude in any small moment forever forward.”

This morning Ashley and I contributed to Unitarian service here in Middlebury as two of a group of founders of this church that began 40 years ago this month, when our sons were two and five. And now, just like that, they are 42 and 45.

Dorothy Mamen, also a founder, led us in a meditation that she called Punctuated Equiliibrium.

Among other things, I am a scientist. I tend toward analytical thinking, I look for patterns. As we've developed this service, I've been reminded of a pattern called Punctuated Equilibrium. Punctuated equilibrium is a pattern in which there is a period of equilibrium, where things are in balance, possibly changing incrementally over time, but staying more or less in balance. This equilibrium is then interrupted – punctuated – by some kind of upheaval, from within or without, a major or catastrophic event, or spiraling out of control, that may last for some time, until things settle down again, different than they were before. This pattern has shown itself in the history of this congregation, which you've heard today. It is seen in the history of life on earth, such as when mass extinctions have interrupted long periods of incremental evolutionary change. It's a pattern that may occur in our lives, in our relationships, in organizations, in economies ... in countries. An upheaval – a period of enormous change -- is a time of great uncertainty. But having seen this pattern in complex systems, again and again, we can also have hope, hope for the nature of the new equilibrium that we know will come, in time, on the other side.

In conclusion I share the anthem, Amani Utupe by Patsy Ford Simms that the choir sang this morning. Amani Utupe means grant us peace, give us courage in Swahili. You can listen to a Youth Honor Choir based in my home town of St. Louis, MO, sing it here.

I pass this wish and prayer on to all of you, to all of us.

Grounding and Gratitude

Painting Joy