1162: Wednesday, May 24, 2023

even the burglar failed to steal the moonlight

what a peaceful evening this

Reminder

Choir Practice tomorrow at 5:30 at the Unitarian Universalist church in preparation for the Gay Pride Interfaith liturgy on June 4th at 7:00PM. The excellent choir director from the Unitarian church, Gage Purdy, welcomed us warmly and led us in two simple songs (I've also added YouTube links for the melodies). It was so much fun and I encourage anyone who wants to participate to attend tomorrow May 25th. The practice starts at 5:30 and lasts an hour. There are participants from several different congregations including our friends from Knox/Thanksgiving. So come along dear friends and let's sing!

If you have any questions please feel free to contact

Reverend Dave (UU) at revdave@uusantarosa.org

or call him at: 216-333-8055

Song 10: I Lift My Voice The YouTube link to I Lift My Voice:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=i+lift+my+voice

Song 18 Love Is Love

YouTube link to the song: Love Is Love Is Love Is Love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPPdnZO0DBo

Daily Reflection by Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries

My spiritual director is a homie I've known for 20 years. Every morning at 4 a.m.

He emails me and he prays and then he writes his reflection. I’ve known him for a long time. He was a gang member, addicted for very many years and now he’s just this luminous spirit. And every day he sends me something that I find so helpful in my own spiritual path.

The other day he wrote me and said “you know I think I'm starting to have one of those hearts -- you know, the kind of heart that isn’t bothered by stuff.”

So I mentioned it to one of the homegirls and she said “ how do I get one of those hearts?”

And I said certainly part of it is cultivating that heart in prayer; a lot of it has to do with grace but a lot of it has to do with decision you just decide to have one of those hearts that isn't bothered by stuff.

I was thinking about a story about this Buddhist monk who was a poet as well as a.monk and one night a burglar came in and robbed the whole little humble abode and walked out with everything. The monk was asleep and then he woke up and he saw that his whole a whole little humble home had been robbed blind. But the thief left the door open and the moonlight was spilling through the door and filling his room. And he wrote this little poem:

even the burglar failed to steal the moonlight

what a peaceful evening this

That poem is the sound of somebody who had the heart that's not

bothered by very much.

In 2010 we had to lay off 300 people and a woman sent me this card that says

The barn burned down now I can see the moon.

It's about freedom and it's about generosity and it's about knowing that God says there is enough to go around and we shouldn’t be fearful of scarcity because you're just being bombarded with abundance and it leads you to that place for where you can say “why not?”

I was at a graduation for the Learning Works the other night I remember that the very first thing that our community of the Mission did in response to the gang thing was we started a school and that was because we had so many junior high age gang members who had been given the boot from their schools and nobody wanted them so they were wreaking havoc in the projects and acting violent selling drugs.

In those days there were alternative High Schools - very few - but there were. But there were no alternative Junior High Schools so I would walk out to them in the project and I kind of a cornered them and asked if I found a school at your level would you go and to my surprise every single one said “I would” and then I couldn't quite find a school that would take them.

I had an idea. Right across the street from Dolores Mission Church was the Dolores mission elementary school, our parochial school, occupying the first two floors of grades K to 8 but the entire third floor was the convent where the nuns lived. There were six Belgian nuns in their community community and their convent had been theirs for a very long time. And they worked in the projects and had very thick accents and brilliant hearts and I remember visiting them in their living room one evening and I asked them if they would mind moving out and explained our plan was to turn the convent into a school for gang members.

I'll never forget that moment. They looked at each other and they all went “sure.” That was the extent of their discernment process and I thought “Wow who does that? Who doesn’t fret about what are we going to do. What comes next? What will we do? What will become of us and where will we go?”

They just went “sure.” Their generosity and belief in the abundance says:

Yeah the barn burned down but I can see the moon

part of having a heart that isn't bothered by stuff is deciding to have one.

even the burglar failed to steal the moonlight

what a peaceful evening this