Minister’s Musings

by Rev. Julie Lombard

June brings us a new worship theme: Compassion. It is a sympathetic consciousness of others' distress

together with a desire to alleviate it. Jesus comes to mind when we think of this definition, yet we know that

compassion is human condition and no religion tradition has a corner market on this idea. The Dalai Lama said,

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.”

Arthur Schopenhauer said, “Compassion is the basis of morality.” Schopenhauer was a 19th century

philosopher to contend that the universe is not a rational place. A contemporary of Lord Byron, he was

inspired by Plato and Kant, whom regarded the world as being more amenable to reason. Schopenhauer

developed their viewpoints into an instinct-recognizing and ultimately ascetic stance, emphasizing that in the

face of a world filled with strife, we ought to minimize our natural desires for the sake of achieving a more

tranquil frame of mind and a disposition towards universal beneficence.

Compassion has become a buzz word today. With over use, the word seems to have lost its power. We

will use it to introduce some old and new ideas. Pentecost and Trinity Sundays are as familiar as the hills here

while Juneteenth and the Flower Communion are newer ways to explore compassion within our community.

You may know plenty about Pentecost or Trinity Sundays, but did you know that Juneteenth is the

oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States? From its Galveston,

TX origin in 1865, the observance of it as the African American Emancipation Day has spread across America.

Today it commemorates for POC freedom and emphasizes education and achievement. The Flower

Communion is an annual UU ritual that celebrates beauty, uniqueness, diversity, and community. Created in

1923 by Unitarian minister Norbert Capek of Prague, Czechoslovakia, the Flower Ceremony was introduced to

America by Rev. Maya Capek, his widow. In this celebration, everyone brings a flower and places a flower on

the altar. The congregation and minister bless the flowers, and they're redistributed. Everyone brings home a

different flower than the one they brought.

Whether you agree with Hawn or Einstein, compassion is a concept we’ll explore all month long.

Goldie Hawn said, “The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in

the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud --- the obstacles of life and its

suffering. ... The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. ...

Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness,

dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more

compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one. ” Albert Einstein

said, “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He

experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of

his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection

for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of

compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

The time has come to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion in all that we do as we

worship and live out this faith we share. We may need to navigate the muck and mud as we go, but I am

certain we will find beauty if it is indeed what we seek.