Unitarian Universalist Church of Ellsworth, ME

In Praise of Laze
May 4, 2008 (Beltane service)
Ellsworth, Maine
Leela Sinha

Sometimes
everything happens at once.
Sometimes births and deaths
beginnings and endings
get entangled on their paths
and arrive at once
anxious and busy and full–
or perhaps it is we
who are anxious and busy and full–
and we watch it happen
and we know it will happen
but no matter what we do
the moment of impact is still stunning
because force is force.
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Saying Yes
April 27, 2008 (New Member Sunday)
Ellsworth, Maine
Leela Sinha

There is a cliff in Matheran, a hill station outside of Mumbai, in India. At the edge you can look straight down, not even a railing between earth and sky. Some people stay back; some walk right up until the staining red clay crumbles beneath their sandals. All they see are tops of trees and clouds sunk low in the valley and dust under their toes. About half of the people on any given day look like they’re going to vomit; the other half look like they are about to fly. They are twins, the seduction and the fear, the gift and the crisis of height.
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Leela Sinha

Becoming A Beacon

April 13, 2008 Ellsworth, ME

in my mind’s eye the image is fuzzy, like failing TV screens and old newspaper photographs–the kind where every dot is black or white and your brain has to fill in the blanks.  There’s never any audio in my memory, never any ambient noise or even-handed newscaster commentary, or any explanation at all, which may be because there was nothing anyone could say.  The picture is almost too small to be believed, always shot from behind the lone figure, always shot toward the advancing tank.  There are things that we always remember; every generation has a few.  That anonymous man in Tian’anman Square made indelible once again what is embedded in the history of the world: sometimes it is worth facing death for what we believe in. Continue reading »

Leela Sinha

Another Sunrise
March 23, 2008 (Easter)
Ellsworth, Maine

He never really expected to see another sunrise, not after the crucifixion and such.  –there’s only so much a body can endure before it gives up the ghost.  Besides, he wasn’t sure what kind of terms he’d be on with god, not after the weeping and gnashing of teeth in the garden, and then the fear and the cold of being so very alone, right there at the end between the two others, the rude one and the nice one.  It wasn’t much to make you believe in miracles, even though he knew he should, even though he knew he was supposed to, but by the last few hours he was really just tired and cold, really cold, waiting for it to be over like the 40 days in the desert. It hadn’t even been that long between the beginning and the end, just a few years or so, a few years of talking and walking and hoping and dreaming between the visions in the desert and the night on the cross.  A few years to tell people what he believed, and in the end he wasn’t even sure what he believed anymore. Continue reading »

Living In Balance
Leela Sinha (delivered with Sara Hayman)
March 16, 2008
Ellsworth, Maine

reading: retelling of The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

That story,
the one about the boy?
This is not how we want our lives to go,
the persistent discontent
but too often we learn that giving
until we are nothing but stumps
is the only way to be;
too often we learn that to be truly useful
we must be used up,
and so we try to give
until we are empty.
There is no balance in that,
except the giant balance that is the relatively closed system
of this planet of ours,
where almost nothing is created or destroyed,
but where transformation is the word of the day
every day
and has been for nearly 5 billion years,
and where occasionally visitors from outer space
drop something we can use
(like amino acids. or water.)
But our daily balance is not served by our extermination;
we are not like the insect females who
eat their partners
recycle the now-spent parts
into the next generation.
Parents should not be consumed by their children,
nor children by their parents,
nor friends or relatives or perfect strangers
by each other.
We are not meant to be cannibals,
but you couldn’t tell it by the way we often are with each other,
our desperation overriding our sense of community and our sense of self
until we have completely absorbed each other.
What a way to live!
We have choices,
we know we have choices,
the wheeling of life and of time through eternity takes the shape of balance
and we know we have choices.
And this week the equinox comes again
to remind us again
of our choices,
that we are not meant to suck each other dry,
that morning and evening are two equal parts
of one day,
the unity of time from Aristotle’s dramas
and from our own sleeping and waking. Continue reading »

For the Greater Good
Leela Sinha
Feb 17, 2008
Ellsworth, Maine

The fine art of working for the greater good involves a paradox.
A lot about our religion involves a paradox, so this should come as no surprise.  We live a rich life, caught between one thing and another, in the energy of active potential, objects falling, bonds breaking, fire burning.  It’s not a simple life, not an easy life, and certainly not a stable life—not stable in moments, anyway.  It is stable in the big picture, stable like a waterfall—and just as hard, just as dangerous, just as powerful.  I think this may qualify us as the most timid daredevils of the religious world.  We don’t sun dance, we don’t fast for a month, we don’t collectively sit for days of silence, we don’t do much with our bodies—but we play fast and loose with our minds and our hearts.  Timid daredevils.  –another paradox.

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