From Our Minister: New Year, New Beginnings
We’ve rounded the final week of 2025 and I think many of us were happy to see it in the rearview mirror. Sadly, with the incursion into Venezuela, 2026 is not off to a great start. It’s concerning and more than a little frustrating to watch raw greed on the geopolitical stage, but it is not the whole of our lives. The world has always been a place of avarice and conflict, duplicity and oppression. But not the whole world. Not the places where we live and gather and hope and pray.
Reinhold Niebuhr’s prayer continues to be relevant as we watch so much happening in the world that goes against our values as Unitarian Universalists.
God (life, highest self, universe),
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
It’s no easy task these days, to separate out what is ours to do. I pray every day for wisdom, for the ability to parse where I should be putting my energy. Because we only have so much. And the world with all its problems is vast.
Today, begin with making sure you have the resources you need. Watch the birds outside your window – or take a walk in the warm weather. Read about an inspiring person. Listen to music that fills your heart. Then see something close at hand that needs your attention and offer it; prayerfully, intentionally. Not with angst or fear, but simply with the particular grace that you bring.
We each show up who we are and as we can. And that will be enough. The world will never be exactly what we want it to be, but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate the beauty of this life anyway.
Have a blessed New Year,
Rev Pam