Unitarian Universalist Church at Washington Crossing

I was reminded yesterday, by the news of the man flying his small plane into a Federal building, how anger, frustration and despair can overwhelm and distort a persons thinking. He not only killed himself and at least one other person but severely injured others and could have killed so many more. Too often we are tempted to act out in anger toward others, the world, “them” because of our pain, frustration and despair. We may not do it through violence acts, but maybe we resort to violent words or other hurtful actions.

I ask myself, what is it that I want to do with my despair, my private pain or the public pain that I see around me? What do I want to do with the pain produced from what I have failed to say, failed to do or failed to overcome? If you let your pain open you up, it can be a pathway to hope and joy. I know from experience that my pain can also become a source of hope rising up from within to soothe my very own broken heart.

This is the time for us to remember that one of the key functions of a spiritual or a religious life is not to convince us of our rightness but to help us make some sense of our suffering, our losses and our broken hearts. This is our opportunity to stand up and create a small but powerful ripple of hope. As Anne Lamott, wrote, “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”

Let us not give up but continue to reach out to others with our loving and healing thoughts, prayers and actions.

In the words of Thandeka (in “The Legacy of Caring”)

“This common world I love anew,
as the life blood of generations
who refused to surrender their humanity
in an inhumane world,
courses through my veins.

From within this world
my despair is transformed to hope
and I begin anew
the legacy of caring.”