Transitioning With Gratitude

Transitioning with Gratitude
My internship has begun and I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve and learn with the South Valley Unitarian Universalist Society over the next ten months. As I made the transition from Berkeley, California to Salt Lake City, my belongings in a truck packed full that would arrive at some point and just a few things in the car, I drove across the great salt flats that seemed to just go on forever. I felt like I was in another world, a foreign country – a stranger in a strange land. Coming to a city where the several people I did know were out of town, I had to place my faith in the daily, in the present moment. The first night I arrived, the sun was setting and turning the glorious Wasatch Mountains a deep pink, and I remembered a story from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. In the book, the boy decides to strike out on his own and have an adventure, and basically loses everything he owns on the first day of his trip. He realizes with a terrible, sinking feeling that he has trusted someone who is a thief and now he has nothing, and is in a strange city where he knows no one and is completely alone. An “angel” comes into his life and gives him advice. He learns to follow the signs of the universe and to rely on his intuition. Although thankfully I have not encountered any thieves here, and have been warmly embraced in this city that really feels like a big town to me, I appreciate the faith that the boy in The Alchemist has to develop. He has no other choice. He basically has nothing but his faith to rely on. It did take faith for me to decide to come here to South Valley. This is not where I expected to be on internship, and I may not be the person you expected to have. Funny how these things work out! But it does feel like the right place for me and the doors of SVUUS have opened wide to welcome me in. Thank you. To a year of learning and relying on each other, our faith, the vibrant history of this congregation and to embracing what lies ahead.