Unitarian Universalists of Sterling

Each night a child is born is a holy night. A time for singing, a time for wondering, a time for worshipping. —Sophia Lyon Fahs

I write this article after a week of planning programs for children of all ages and being around groups of high school students playing in a soccer tournament and preparing for a musical. In the midst of all of this activity, I appreciate what an incredible gift each and every child and youth is, no matter the circumstances of their birth or their life. It is a wonder that there are human beings living and interacting with the world and with each other at all. This is a great time of year to recognize that wonder. As many of us celebrate the hope brought by one special birth, we can also celebrate the miracle and the spark of divine brought into the world by each child. This is one of the greatest hopes and joys of the season.

I heard a story years ago that life is like a long trough of cement. Whatever is behind you is the past and is solid and unchangeable. No use spending time worrying about what you said, should have said, did, or didn’t do. On the other hand, the cement that is ahead of you is still wet and able to be formed. Here’s where hope comes in! You get to create your past.

Next year when you are standing a little further along in the trough, with more solid cement behind you, will you have merely arrived at that point or will you have deliberately created your past? If the past has been dreary to that point, maybe it is hard to have hope that things can be better, that you can effect a change in your life that you will benefit from or that you will be satisfied with one year down the trough.

I have read and heard that only in having an awareness of death can life have meaning. We have all probably heard the expression, “Live with the end in mind.” Can we have an appreciation of how precious life is on a day to day basis only if we are cognizant of the immediacy of our days, whether we have 90 days left or 90 years?

My parents had very different approaches to death. To my mother and her family, death was a sad but inevitable part of life. When someone died, everyone in the community attended the funeral. All ages of close family friends and mere acquaintances were there. In my father’s family, children did not attend funerals and he seemed very uncomfortable with most aspects of death and funerals.