As I sit down to write this month’s column, I’m feeling a little jet-lagged as I’ve just returned from a week-long trip to Ottawa, Ontario for the UUMA Convocation—an event that only happens every seven years.  I’d been anticipating this trip for several years now and it proved to be well worth the wait: a week of intensive study, worship, and reconnecting with old friends (along with a brief side trip to the marvelous National Gallery of Canada).  The closer the time came to go, the more excited I got—and then I was there and the week went by in a blur.  Years of anticipation, over in a week, and now here I am, home again and getting ready for the holidays (here at church and with my family).  If I hadn’t been paying attention, if I hadn’t been present to the moments, the week would have just passed me by, unremarked—another fuzzy memory in my mental scrapbook.  Instead, I made a conscious effort to be present and attentive.  As a result, I’ve come home with a lot to continue to ponder and work on.  All sorts of unexpected gifts come your way when you can be present.

Presence.  The desire to remain present at this time of year always presents a challenge for me and for many others, I’m sure.  So much activity jammed into a six-week span: shopping and parties, family gatherings—big meals that take hours to prepare and are polished off the plates in minutes.  This is a time of year when stress can rise and patience can stretch thin.  Perhaps the economy has us worried about giving.  Perhaps our family dynamics can make holiday gatherings something less than merry.  Perhaps, if you’re an introvert like me, the sheer sensory overload of the season makes you want to hibernate until February.  Often, this season feels like something to be survived rather than to be enjoyed.  Often, even the enjoyment can be superficial—full of artificial sugar highs and empty calories, like a plate full of Christmas cookies.

And yet, through all the activity and joy and stress—and in spite of our impulse to simply get through—there is something about this season that affords us the opportunity for all sorts of small miracles in our lives.  Joy can be discovered and rediscovered; family connections can be renewed and strengthened.  Opportunities for love and compassion abound.  These are quiet moments.  They are easily lost amid the noise and chaos of the season.  Often, we’ll not even be aware that they’ve happened until long after they’ve happened.  They require our presence to the moment.

The presence calls to mind, for me, the images of the nativity—that first family holiday gathering.  A new child has arrived, his mother exhausted from travel and childbirth.  They live in cramped quarters, filled to bursting with shepherds and astrologers, and a noisy, smelly menagerie of barnyard animals.  There’s a choir on the roof singing Christmas carols at the top of their lungs and a precocious toddler standing next to the makeshift crib who won’t stop beating on his little toy drum.  Every last one of them making wild, ridiculous predictions about the newborn.  Everything around the new family is noise and chaos.  In other words, a typical Christmas morning.

Now, if I were the mother, I couldn’t wait for all this to be over—for the guests to go away, for the animals to be led out to pasture, for the chance at some rest.  But, in Luke’s gospel story, we are told, instead that “Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.”  Now, that’s not a line that gets highlighted in the Christmas story very often, but it’s one that’s stuck with me, lately.  It’s a throwaway line, practically, and it points to the very thing I’m writing about, here. Presence.

Now, the gospel never really says what Mary comes to know through her pondering.  It’s enough to know that she’s present to the wild weirdness of those moments, and that she didn’t shut down the possibility to find meaning in all the static.

Now, here we are, entering into another season of joy and chaos, wildness and weirdness, stress and wonder.  If I have one wish for all of us this season, it is that we can all find this sense of presence, living in the now and treasuring the moments as they come, pondering them in our hearts from this moment on until there are no more moments.  Imagine what gifts might enter our lives if we could only remain present.

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Next month brings us at last to our “Searching for the Future” weekend with Mary Gleason.  Over the last several months, we’ve previewed the questions that the congregation will be asked to consider as we prepare to name our vision for the church over the next several years, especially as we look to our future building plans.  This month, we look at the last of our four visioning questions, and it is possibly the most difficult to answer:

“What are our greatest possibilities for making a spiritual difference in our world?”

In our covenant groups, and often in pastoral counseling, we begin with the question, “How is it with your soul?”  In exploring where we might make a spiritual difference in the world, we might well begin with the question, “How is it with the world’s soul?”  If we were to take the pulse of the world’s spirit, to paint a realistic picture of how the whole of humanity is relating to “all that is,” what might we see?  Where is the world broken, and how are its people (including ourselves) suffering as a result?  Now, what is it that Unitarian Universalism offers in the way of healing a wounded world?  And how does our own particular iteration of Unitarian Universalism here in Los Alamos offer healing?  What does a healed world look like, and what part can the Unitarian Universalist Church of Los Alamos play in making that image a reality?

In the end, this is the core of our vision, the heart and soul of who we are together and what we are meant to do.  I hope that everyone has taken some time to consider all of these questions, but most of all this one.  In the coming weeks, you’ll be called on to take part in the small group discussions that will lead to our statement of vision and mission.  It is my fondest hope that everyone who cares about this community and who has felt cared for by this community will make their voices heard in the discussion.  We are searching for our future, and we cannot move forward with integrity if your voice is not a part of that future.  Please set aside the time to participate and to speak your vision of our community’s future.

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Mark your calendars for Saturday, January 16^th, when singer-songwriter Peter Mulvey will join us for a fundraising concert in Robinson Hall at 8 p.m.  Tickets are $10. You can learn more about Peter and his music at <www.petermulvey.com>.

Peace,
John

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