Sunday Service

I wonder how the moonflower feels

about its sweet sister, the morning glory.

What it must be to know that world longingly awaits another

while you must seek solace hidden under a night sky.

When the world has told you to hide,

it is only the shadows that welcome you in.

And while blooming in the dark has its beauty,

it’s also a lonely way to live.

And who can blame this moon-drenched cousin for wanting to hide.

After all, we too know what happens out there in the light of day.

We are parsed and picked over,

told who and what we need to be,

so that we will finally be loved,

finally let in.

And so we shape shift

until our own original curvature is no longer remembered,

until our masks become indistinguishable from our face,

until the pieces of us allowed out in the sun

forget the parts buried deep in the cold earthen layers of time.

Maybe that is what the moonflower

is doing out there in the dark.

Maybe it’s not hiding after all

but instead trying to remember

who it once was.

Or maybe it knows who it is

and its blooming is a way of saying

“Come find me. I’m still here.”

Which, of course, means that maybe this month

is not just about making it safe for others to come out of the shadows

but also a reminder that we all have pieces and parts buried in the dark.

So friends, what do you say?

Let’s go find them.

Let’s put ourselves back together again.

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2024 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Pluralism’)

Ask Them About Pluralism

One of the best ways to explore our monthly themes is to have conversations about them with people who are close to you. It not only deepens our conversations but also our relationships. Below is a list of “pluralism questions” to help you on your way.

Be sure to let your conversation partner know in advance that this won’t be a typical conversation. Telling them a bit about Soul Matters will help set the stage. Come to your group ready to share what surprised you about the conversation(s) and what gift or insight it gave you.

Pluralism Questions

• What were you taught in your family of origin about pluralism and welcoming difference? How does that still impact you today?

• Has an experience of being included permanently left a mark on you?

• If you weren’t afraid of being judged or rejected, what part of yourself would you let out into the world?

• If you could go back and change a moment of being excluded or excluding someone else, what would it be?

• What part of your pluralistic self do you have the hardest time acknowledging or embracing with compassion? Your judgmental self? Your lazy self? Your vulnerable self? Your bitter self? Your easily frightened self? Your quick-to-anger self? Your jealous self? Your petty self? Your selfish self?

• When it comes to age, our society is not as pluralistic as it thinks. Have you been ignored or cast out because of your age? Was it more emotionally challenging to accept than you expected?

• Our friends and family each carry/believe/tell a different story about who we are. Whose version of you most closely matches your authentic self? Whose version do you disagree with most strongly? Whose version challenges you to be your best self? Whose do you hope to someday become?

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2024 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Pluralism’)

The Many Views from Your Many Windows

We talk a lot about how our different perspectives help us understand this life of ours more fully. But might it also be true that those different views help us appreciate this life more fully as well? That is the idea behind the “View From My Window” movement that came into being during Covid. The effort simply asked people to take a picture from their window and share it with others online. Doing so not only got everyone vicariously outside when everyone was afraid of doing that in person, but it also renewed people’s spirits by reminding them that life offers us beauty in so many forms, not just struggle in so many forms.

So for your creative project this month, play with views from a window. There are many ways to approach this. You could collect pictures from the many windows and views that make up your life, taking photos from the windows at your home, your work, your favorite dinner, your car on a favorite drive. Or you could make it a group effort and ask your family and friends to send you pictures from their favorite window.

Along the way and at the end, take some time to ask yourself what impact this has on you. What gift might life be trying to give you through it? How might it be trying to remind you that life offers us beauty in so many forms, not just struggle in so many forms. And why is that reminder so important to you right now?

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2024 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Pluralism’)

We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it's never a question of 'critical mass.' It's always about critical connections.

~ Grace Lee Boggs

I wish the knowledge were easier to come by, that individualism is just a scam, that you are always the butterfly wings. You are always a flap of the storm…

You must not believe the lying lie that you do not matter, that whatever change you can organize is so insufficient as to not be worth your time…

~ Rev. Julián Jamaica Soto

Here is the question we must at last confront: Is land merely a source of belongings, or is it the source of our most profound sense of belonging? We can choose… You, right now, can choose to set aside the mindset of the colonizer and become native to place, you can choose to belong.

~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

~ Wendell Berry

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

In some Native languages the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us.”

~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

If you find yourself… hearing, again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says… all you love will turn to dust… Do not raise your small voice against it… Instead, curl your toes into the grass… Walk through the garden's dormant splendor.

Say only, thank you.

~ Ross Gay

I’ve come to believe… we already know our oneness with each other, so the process of coming to consciousness… is a process of recollecting. When we awake… We will understand that we have never been alone.

~ Rob Spielgel

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2024 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Transformation')

A human being is a part of the whole called by us ‘the universe’... [But we] experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

~ Albert Einstein

And if it’s true we are alone,

we are alone together,

the way blades of grass

are alone, but exist as a field.

Sometimes I feel it,

the green fuse that ignites us,

the wild thrum that unites us…

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

You are not IN the universe, you ARE the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately, you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle.

~ Eckhart Tolle

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

~ Anais Nin

Each experience of love nudges us toward the Story of Interbeing, because it only fits into that story and defies the logic of Separation.

~ Charles Eisenstein

We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt... The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways [others have] suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connects us.

~ Bryan Stevenson

When members of the Native American Blackfoot tribe meet each other, they don’t ask “How are you?” Instead, they ask “How are the connections?”

~ Jeremy Lent

If you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together.

~ African Proverb

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2024 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Interdependence')

April 4, 2024

This list of questions is an aid for deep reflection. They are not meant to be answered as much as to take you on a journey.

Read through the list of questions 2-3 times until one question sticks out for you and captures your attention, or as some faith traditions say, until one of the questions “shimmers.”

Then reflect on that question using one or all of these questions:

~ What is going on in my life right now that makes this question so pronounced for me?

~ How might my inner voice be trying to speak to me through it?

~ How might Life or my inner voice be trying to offer me a word of comfort or challenge through this question?

Writing out your thoughts often enables you to go deeper. It also sometimes helps to read the list of questions to a friend or loved one and ask them which question they think is the question you need to wrestle with.

A note about self-care: Often these questions take us to a vulnerable space. It is OKAY to ignore the questions that may be triggering – or lean in if that feels safe.

~ What aspect of nature did you connect with most meaningfully as a child? A dog? A horse? A tree? The ocean? Lightning bugs? The rain? A path in the woods?

~ Do you think age impacts the way we care for the interdependent web?

~ Do you think age impacts the way we connect with the interdependent web?

~ Has a beloved young person ever altered the way you think about your relationship with nature or the planet?

~ Where do you feel your connection to nature in your body? What happens to you when that place of connection is stirred? What has that feeling of connection communicated to you most recently?

~ Do you feel that “sacrifice” has a central role to play in addressing the climate crisis?

~ When was the last time you became thoroughly absorbed in the curiosity of understanding another creature's life?

~ How has the place where you live shaped the way you understand and approach life? And yourself?

~ Some of us live in a place and others of us belong to a place. Have you found a place you belong to yet?

~ What time of day do you feel most like “yourself”?

~ Has a tree ever spoken to you? How about a river? Or the ocean? Or the moon? What about a weed?

~ Has your commitment to community been tripped up by the trap of self-improvement?

~ We are glad to support and bear the burdens of others. But many of us wouldn’t dare “burden” those same people with our troubles. What has tricked you into thinking that your grief, worry or struggle is unwanted by or too heavy for others? Who or what taught you that the weight of your worries must be carried by yourself alone?

~ Have you ever had a friend that “birthed a new world in you”?

~ What’s your question? Your question may not be listed above. As always, if the above questions don't include what life is asking from you, spend the month listening to your days to find it.

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2024 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Interdependence')