Much Gratitude...

A whispered prayer and a deep sense of gratitude… I am filled with gratitude for all the work that went into my Ordination service and celebration on October 29 - what a blessed day. Thank you to everyone who created a lovely and memorable service and celebration. Your food, your voice, your presence in the church meant a lot. You helped to create the experience we had. The voices of the members of First Universalist Parish and the Walpole Unitarian Church rang throughout that sanctuary and ordained me into Unitarian Universalist ministry. I am grateful.

Someone shared with me that your ordination is supposed to be a service where you listen as others talk to you, as people give you advice and offer you the “charge”, as they extend the right hand of fellowship and welcome you formally into the ministry. It is a service where the voices of your congregation ordain you. So that even though the service is about you, your voice shouldn’t dominate. Well, that's exactly what happened! As I sat in the pew at the beginning of the service, I realized with a start and a feeling of panic that I had no voice left. My voice had completely disappeared. Someone told me later that it was perfect. Well, and it is what happened. I had to use my hands to sing the closing hymn, “This Little Light of Mine” instead of my voice. I had to whisper the closing prayer…I am grateful to be able to serve with my heart, mind and spirit and usually my voice!

Writer and Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast helped to found A Network for Grateful Living (ANG*L), a member-supported, non-profit organization with a vision for “worldwide community dedicated to gratefulness as the core inspiration for personal change, international cooperation, and sustainable activism in areas of universal concern.” What a great and needed vision. He writes about how fear and negative experiences can close us off our sense of being connected and our ability to experience gratitude. “After all, what breaks when our heart breaks? Only a narrow fear which deludes us into believing that love comes solely from a limited source. When we let go of this anxiety, we tumble into an expansive truth: We have always belonged to something infinitely greater than our small selves. Each sorrow and each joy gratefully accepted opens our heart further, until we come to know that we are fully loved at all times and in all places, and even beyond time and space. Gratitude then knows no bounds.” [http://www.gratefulness.org/]