“Living with Intention”

Life has always been at its heart, unpredictable. With the changing seasons, new variants, new losses, and yes, new hopes, it is important to have a touchstone as we collectively approach the year 2022. The meaning of a touchstone is something tangible, something we can touch that reminds us what really matters, who we really are. Love is a pretty word, but it has little power as a word. When love becomes tangible, something we can touch, it can transform our lives. I believe our mission as a church is to make that love tangible, to show that love is more than a pretty word: it is a lifeline.

Our church is committed to a hybrid model, with increasing in-person services and activities as conditions allow and seem wise. The innovation of our congregation is unceasing. During our Winter Solstice service, I was impressed by the use of outdoor patio heaters, a fire, ways to keep warm and in community together. I always look forward to Christmas Eve, especially when we light one another’s candle during “Silent Night.” Jeff Crouse, our guitarist/musician, reminded me that Silent Night was originally played on guitar because it was the only instrument available to a small congregation in Germany. Indeed our churches are a testament to the spirit’s will to music, beauty, and praise, all within the limitation of time and context. In our context there is much limitation and much opportunity, and both of these depend completely on one another. Limitations show us our real character as individuals and as a community. Limitations show us that the time is always ticking to seize opportunity. On a most fundamental level the limitation which each of us will face at one time or another is our own mortality. WIth each passing year, some of us come to the keen realization that we have precious few moments to waste. This sense can inspire us to live with more intention, to surrender our life not just to our circumstances, but their values and ideals.

This is my intention this year: to surrender to my values and ideals. I will not just surrender to the winds of chance, the tide of the political climate, the rise or fall of disease. I seek to find an intention which can guide the traversing of these great changes, an intention which is both timeless and completely of this time. We have those intentions at UUYO: peace, justice, respect for diversity, religious freedom. These values are both timeless and completely necessary and vital during this time. As communities we help these values to take root in our environment, and to transform how we live. Our church has the capacity to transform how we live, if we let it. We have to desire to live not out of reaction, but out of proactive, practiced intention. This is possible, and it becomes increasingly possible by sharing and living these intentions together as a church community.

So I have a request of each one of you this year: Please don’t keep your intentions private. Share and live them openly: articulate them to others, be excited to share how you intend to live. This kind of sharing itself is transformative. For one it holds us accountable. Second, if we deviate from our intentions (which is expected), we have others to help us live more true to what we intended. This kind of open sharing deepens our sense of resilience and it fortifies us in times of difficulty. It also helps us to grow more humble, forgiving, and generous toward others. We know firsthand the challenges of living an intentional life, and we learn to do what we can to encourage others when they forget or stray from what truly matters most to them. We learn to see that even straying from intention is a path of wisdom and grace. Sometimes we need to forget, sometimes we get discouraged, sometimes we need to know the

feeling of wanting to give up: all of this is earned wisdom which we can pass on to each other in living a life of intention, not perfectly but faithfully.