UUSLO

Parker Palmer defines the tragic gap as "the gap between the hard realities around us and what we know is possible — not because we wish it were so, but because we’ve seen it with our own eyes."

More and more, we are becoming aware that there can be a distance between intention and impact. How do we bring those closer together, as we move into this new year with the best intentions?

There is a saying: “After ecstasy, the laundry.” After those peak experiences, those moments of joy…then what? How do we carry enlightenment into the everyday?

For some, this is the season of 3G: the glad, the good, and the great. What do these phrases mean? And what form might they take in our individual and communal lives?

It’s right there in our mission statement: we will deepen connections by (among other things) inspiring joy. So how, exactly, do we do that?

Happiness, I have heard, is a choice. If we assume that is so, does that apply also to joy? And, if not, what is the difference?

We are living through a time that history--whatever forms it may take in the future--will record. What will you remember about this time? What stories and reflections will we pass along to future generations?

It's the phrase--the practice--many of us learned as children. As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving, this is an opportunity to look at the first word in that phrase: please.

George Santayana is purported to have said something like: "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it." But is the problem that we don't remember? Or is it how we remember?

The poet Seamus Heaney once wrote: “History says / Don’t hope on this side of the grave / But then, once in a lifetime / The longed-for tidal wave / Of justice can rise up / And hope and history rhyme.”