So, did you take a moment last week? Did you pause to consider how an ordinary moment can suddenly unfold and offer a chance to consider deeper meaning? Or is everything just too busy—with shopping and wrapping, with re-calculating the costs and fretting the outcomes? Are you living amid grief, rather than joy, re-visiting the first Christmas or experiencing it for the first time without a loved one, lost to death or failed relationship? As the stock market fluctuates and the president tweets and the climate talks slowly make progress on policies that may come too late, we are in the midst of an unsettled time. How can you take a pause? What good will it do?

Attributed to many, the following saying is reflective of where I am this time of year: “Every morning I pray for an hour. On really difficult or busy days, I pray for two.” I know that sounds counter-intuitive. But taking the extra time (well, maybe not a whole other hour!) enables me to sit and hear the mystery speaking all around and through me. The mystery that is the unknowable bottom of everything. So, in case you can take a pause, here’s that link again.

I can often answer the “how” questions—How does gravity work? How come it is that the Arctic ice shelf is melting? How did I lose touch with my best buddy from high school? There are definitive “How” answers for all of these questions. But the ultimate “Why,” why does it happen this way—those answers remain shrouded in mystery, unknowable though not unthinkable and unfeelable. The universe, the world, our lives unfold within the ultimate mystery of where all comes from and toward which all is going. Our living reveals itself within a matrix of complexity that we cannot fully recognize or explain. So much of our energy, taxing to expend even when done within purpose and joy, is a drop in the bucket of the vast and unknowable reality.

Do not be disheartened. We are small but never insignificant. Yet it is up to us to imbue our living with meaning and significance, to revel in the mystery that we are vital and alive through no effort of our own. Being small, however, is too difficult without companionship. So in this season, in the midst of the mystery of living, let us remind ourselves of the bonds that bind us each to each other. May you all remember, each and everyone, that you are loved, you are worthy, you are welcome, and you are needed. May you feel it so, today and every day.

Blessings and best wishes, Rev. Rita