The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life ... life passed through the fire of thought. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Divinity School Address, 1838
Returning to the Eildon Tree: What I’ve Learned on This Arm of the Spiral
by Rev. Lyn Cox, CER Regional Staff
Perhaps this curving, slippery nature of time at the beginning of May is why I am often reminded of the story of Thomas the Rhymer in this season. Thomas the Rhymer is a story rooted in a legend from thirteenth century Scotland, retold in manuscripts, ballads, and popular music over the centuries. In the story, Sir Thomas de Ercildoune is sleeping on a hillside under the shade of the Eildon Tree when the Queen of Elfland rides by on a beautiful horse with bells woven into its mane. She takes Thomas on a journey to her realm, where there is feasting and dancing. For Thomas, it seems like the experience lasts for three days. He is returned to the Eildon tree and finds that years have passed, and that he has earned the gift of truth-telling, which he uses to proclaim prophecies. I don’t know if the story happened exactly that way, but I believe it’s true that we can return to a place or a situation with both knowledge of how things have happened before and openness to the possibility of things happening differently this time around.
I don’t claim to have met the Queen of Elfland, but I can relate to returning to a situation and feeling that both only a short time has passed and that many years have passed. As you may know, I served in roles similar to Congregational Life Field Staff for the former Joseph Priestley District in 2006-2008. In the intervening years, I studied and did fieldwork in pastoral counseling, I facilitated workshops, and I served seven congregations in consulting and transitional roles. Attaining my current Field Staff role is like a turn of the spiral, familiar in shape yet open to something new. Returning to associational work feels in some ways as if only a few days have passed, and in some ways it has been a lifetime.
Some things haven’t changed. The dedication that my colleagues bring to supporting congregations and serving our faith is constant. It remains true that helping leaders to talk to each other across congregations and clusters yields powerful collective wisdom. The Love at the center of Unitarian Universalism endures, even as we come up with fresh ways to describe our values and our commitments.
Some things have grown and blossomed abundantly in this work. Technologies like Zoom help us to spend more time in conversation with congregational leaders and less time driving to meetings. The teamwork among regional staff gives congregations access to professionals with deep subject matter expertise in different areas. The creative collaboration among staff makes it possible to create high-quality resources for congregations that can be shared equitably. We are living into interdependence.
Having seen the relationship between congregations and Association staff from various directions and across time, I can appreciate that change feels at once too fast and too slow. If you are feeling confused or curious about how to be in closer contact with us on regional staff, please reach out. Something else that hasn’t changed in this turn of the spiral is that we want to hear from congregational leaders. We are eager to celebrate your successes with you, puzzle through your challenges with you, and elicit your dreams about the UUism of the future. Please email any of us or use a partnership activation request form to start a conversation.
Until then, the circle is open, but unbroken. Merry meet, merry part, and happy May.
Spirit of Life, we come seeking stillness.
The world is bursting with green,
with frenetic energy and a desperate need
to fill the empty spaces with life.
We are bursting, too,
our hands frantic to fill the blank slots on our calendars
and the empty spaces in our gardens.
We all have leafless branches and flat, dark soil.
There is no guarantee
that we will sprout this year as we have before.
Spirit of Life, we seek your blessing.
May your hands join ours as we tend our gardens,
coaxing life from our sleeping seeds.
May you sit with us in the quiet,
settling our hearts into a space for waiting,
taking in the sun and rain so that we, too, might bloom.
On a warm March day in Boston, UUA Publications Editor Larisa Hohenboken arrived at the State House with two bags of signs—and a shared commitment to protect the freedom to read.
Alongside UUA Publications Director Mary Benard, Larisa joined a coalition of authors, librarians, publishers, and advocates calling for legislation to safeguard the free exchange of ideas.
From meeting with legislators to listening to students and authors speak about the real impacts of book bans, the day was both urgent and hopeful.
At a time when books centering LGBTQ+ people, people of color, and honest history are being challenged across the country, this work is about more than access. It’s about the right to tell our stories—and to learn from one another.
As Larisa reflected, it was a powerful reminder: together, we can do big things.
First, learn to listen.
Not only for enemies around
corners in hidden places,
but for the faint footsteps
of hope and the whisper of resistance.
Hone your skills, aim your
heart toward kindness and
stockpile second chances.
Under the weight of destruction,
we will need the strong shelter
of forgiveness and the deeper wells
that give the sweet water of welcome:
“We have a place for you.”
When the world ends, we must not
add destruction to destruction,
not accept a beggar’s bargain,
to fight death with more death.
In order to survive the apocalypse—
any apocalypse at all—
we have to give up
the counterfeit currency of self-
sufficiency, the mistaken addiction
to competition, the lie that the last
to die has somehow survived.
—Rev. Sean Parker Dennison
Breaking and Blessing: Meditations
Lest we imagine beauty was only for summer, or trees for leafing; just in case we thought cold was for winter or, at best, firesides or pots of pea soup, creation gives us snow.
Creation outlines each slender twig with snow, a flake at a time. With divine patience, winter writes a character, a syllable, a word, until nature’s grace is there on every tenacious surface.
And what of you and me? Ought we to think we can do better in our building of trust that we dare hurry such a thing as friendship?
Let us write our vows slowly, knowing some of the words like snowflakes will fall away, that from time to time a misunderstanding will come like a gust of wind or a bird’s foot to a snow-covered branch, disrupting the careful gifts of love. Let us work on our manuscript, mirroring nature’s patience, until the love is whole and the drift of our days is done.
Shared with UU clergy of the Central East Region on February 4, 2025, in a program led by CER staff and made possible by contributions to the UUA's Annual Program Fund
Leave giving up for another day. You
could wrestle the words or sensation of hope
to the mat. Or you could let this moment be
enough, belonging here together be sufficient.
Feast on our irrepressible power to stay.
Excerpt from ”A Simple Hope,” from Spilling the Light by Julián Jamaica Soto
We are just past Groundhog Day, Imbolc/Brigit, and Tu BiShvat. For us in the Northern Hemisphere, this is the time of lengthening days, yet we still have the dangers and uncertainties that accompany winter. In shepherding communities, the lambs begin to arrive, and their survival requires both attentive care and luck. For some of the Earth honoring traditions of Western Europe, particularly Ireland, this is a time of setting intentions or of initiation.
Traditions of divination at this time of year pop up in modern secular culture as Groundhog Day. We try to look ahead to find some assurance in the future, and we still need to gather around sources of warmth to deal with what is.
On the Jewish calendar, Tu BiShvat is the birthday of trees, a time to give thanks for what grows, even (and especially) when we can’t perceive that growth with our plain senses. The trees are celebrated as they are, sap rising in secret, branches bare, rough tree bark calling our eyes and fingers to notice its details. The coming blossoms and leaves and fruits are not yet evident. We give thanks for what is not immediate.
All of these reminders matter in this time when everything happens so much. Neither I nor Punxsutawney Phil can say how many more weeks of which variety of current events we have in front of us. We can set an intention by the moon of Imbolc, and we also know that manifesting that intention will require a lot more trips to the well and crafting in the forge. We don’t yet know what will bloom when the time comes, but there is fierce beauty in the now.
That fierce beauty includes what is happening in your ministries, chaplaincies, communities, and congregations. You are caring for people, and that care is a bold witness to the best of what humanity can be. You are creating places for spiritual depth and UU identity that give people grounding and resilience in the storm. You are supporting organizers, or being organizers, for ICE watch, mutual aid, legislative advocacy, health care, education, and more. Strengthening neighborhoods, cultural groups, and congregations is both a practice that sustains people and a practice for resisting authoritarianism. People need to know each other in order to deploy any other kind of effective strategy, and practicing relationships with the people closest to us is an important first phase. Relationality keeps us in motion, anchored in the Love at our center, rather than frozen in isolation. Hanna Arendt argued that the root of totalitarianism is loneliness (as I was reminded recently by Garrett Bucks), and so everything you do to find connection as a neighbor, a family member, a caregiver, a community member, a minister is a strike against totalitarianism. It is heavy and it is hard and it is slow. There is no “one weird trick” for achieving perfect liberation right now, but what you are doing creates pockets of liberation, and that is beautiful.
I know you know this. I might be unintentionally quoting the sermon you have preached in various forms about 52 times in the last year. But I don’t know if anyone has said it to you. In these days when it seems like the winter may last forever, when the days lengthen minute by minute but we don’t know what the next season may bring, it is hard to keep going. You may not feel like what you are doing counts, or that it is enough. Being here to connect with others and with our faith is already something. There is beauty in you and among you, as clear as the contrast between the rough bark of a black walnut tree against the frozen snow.
My wish for us is that we “leave giving up for another day.” May the love all around us be enough in this moment. I don’t say that because I have guarantees or assurances of what will be, but because of the people who are “stay[ing] with the doubt and fear.” Staying with the work is its own prayer. The beauty of a cold moon shines from all of your stubborn commitment to the Spirit of Life. Let us persist without knowing how things will turn out. Let us give thanks for what endures, and may we be some of the hands, hearts, and voices that give rise to endurance.
It is with great joy that I share that we have welcomed the Rev. Lyn Cox to the team. With their addition, your primary contact team is now
The news is out about my next professional adventure! I have joined the Unitarian Universalist Association Congregational Life field staff team in the Central East Region. I'll be supporting congregations around the mid-Atlantic in their health, mission, and celebration of the Love at the center of Unitarian Universalism.
This blog continues to be an expression of my individual thoughts and not a representation or reflection of my employer. However, since a lot of my work will be behind the scenes, I won't be spending as much time creating content.
There is no competition between this light
and the darkness which holds it.
Both the light and the darkness are holy.
We light our chalice not to defeat the darkness,
but because, for a time, we need the gifts of flame:
warmth and light to guide and help us in our endeavors.
And when the time comes, we will embrace
again the gentle dark which allows us rest.
And so, we kindle this light with awareness and gratitude
for light and dark and all that lies in-between.
Each with its gifts, each with its beauty,
each part of a sacred and necessary whole.
—Rev. Sean Parker Dennison
Breaking and Blessing: Meditations
First, learn to listen.
Not only for enemies around
corners in hidden places,
but for the faint footsteps
of hope and the whisper of resistance.
Hone your skills, aim your
heart toward kindness and
stockpile second chances.
Under the weight of destruction,
we will need the strong shelter
of forgiveness and the deeper wells
that give the sweet water of welcome:
“We have a place for you.”
When the world ends, we must not
add destruction to destruction,
not accept a beggar’s bargain,
to fight death with more death.
In order to survive the apocalypse—
any apocalypse at all—
we have to give up
the counterfeit currency of self-
sufficiency, the mistaken addiction
to competition, the lie that the last
to die has somehow survived.
—Rev. Sean Parker Dennison
Breaking and Blessing: Meditations
I invite you to join me in a moment of contemplation. If it helps you to focus, you can close your eyes or soften your gaze. Notice something about this moment. Without changing anything, you might bring attention to your breathing, or focus on some part of your body that doesn’t hurt right now, or listen to the sounds that reach us in this room. We treasure being present.
Now that we are here together in this very moment, let us hold gratitude in our minds and hearts for the dark and for the light. Seeds sprout in the darkness. Dreams often come to us in the darkness. Darkness can bring a sense of peace and reflection.
Having acknowledged the gifts of the darkness, we turn toward the growing light. As we move through the Winter Solstice, we await earlier sunrises and later sunsets. We await the warmth that will coax the seeds that have sprouted in darkness above the soil. We anticipate the clarity that comes in the morning, the learning and growing that we have yet to do.
May the serenity of darkness and the hope of light bring us closer to compassion, peace, and justice—in the world and in our own lives. Every time of day, every season of the year, every chapter of our lives brings its challenges and its gifts. We give thanks for the love we have known, the love that will grow in the future, and the love at our center now and always.
Trembling, Danger, and Courage in the Nativity Stories
Sermon delivered to the Unitarian Universalists of Collington December 18, 2025
By Rev. Lyn Cox
In stories about the birth of Jesus, the people who choose to side with the infant show courage in response to terrifying Divine visitors, the unreasonable demands of a dictator, and the wrath of a jealous politician. In retelling these stories and singing the songs of Advent and Christmas, we remember that the power and resilience of the people are rooted in love. Let's gather up glad tidings to guide us through the season.
A reading from the book of Luke, Chapter 2, verses 8-10:
In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. Then an angel of God stood before them, and the Divine glory shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see–I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.”
The shepherds were petrified. They were stunned into silence. And if one angel was enough to scare them stiff, imagine their reaction to a multitude of the heavenly host. I suspect that, in the first century near east, it was actually pretty difficult to frighten a shepherd. It was their job to be exposed to the elements and to defend the sheep. They lived in occupied territory under an oppressive regime. They had to have been brave to begin with.
Nevertheless, it took them a moment to overcome their fear. It was only after the angels left that the shepherds were able to speak and move and make choices. They said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that the Eternal has made known to us.”
Not every prophet accepts Divine instruction right away. The shepherds could have gone back to their routine and pretended that the whole thing never happened. I would like to think that the ability of the shepherds in this story to find their courage is partly about love and compassion. “To YOU a savior is born,” said the angel. A baby is here and needs us to be brave.
In this community, there is room to hold a range of opinions about the stories related to the birth of Jesus. I believe there are those among us who hold the stories as sacred and literal; those who hear the stories as related to historical events but not strictly eyewitness accounts; and those who find the stories inspiring or at least interesting, regardless of the narrative’s relationship to historic events. We can approach sacred texts from a variety of perspectives, while remaining united in yearning for a world of justice and peace.
The need for courage is another thing that unites us. These are difficult times in our world, and for many of us in our personal lives. We are sore afraid. We worry for our family, our friends, and ourselves when factors like gender, race, and immigration status put so many people at risk. We worry for people all over the world, refugees and migrants and those living under the conditions of war and famine. We worry for our planet. We worry for loved ones whose health and access to care is uncertain.
And therefore we seek inspiration and solidarity and companionship so that we can face the future. We seek reminders about our values and the powers already among us so that we can care for each other and our neighbors to the best of our ability. We seek models for practicing resilience and resistance in frightening times. Nativity stories can offer us those models and reminders, and telling those stories together can strengthen the community of practice. In particular, we are drawn together to remember the power of love.
One of the things love can do for us is to cut through the overwhelm of generalized fear. We remember our specific relationships, the people and places that call us to our best selves. Perhaps we are called to love someone we don’t yet know, yet with whose inherent worth speaks to our inherent worth. Love brings us back to compassion, back to generosity, back to our place in the interdependent family of things. Love draws us forward to the next, right action and accompanies us through the path of transformation.
The shepherds heard, “To YOU a child is born.” Not only is a child born to their parents, but we are all responsible for the community and the world that children are born into. We are interdependent. The shepherds heard that the child was poor like them, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Love recognizes the common humanity of the stranger. The shepherds heard that this child would grow up to become an anointed leader, that there would be hope for a people who were occupied by an empire. The story teaches that hope arrives in this world enfleshed in vulnerability. Human beings and the hope that we provide to one another require love and care.
This love inspired the shepherds with courage. They traveled out of their way to visit the child. They shared their story, first with Mary and Joseph, and then generally proclaimed it until all who heard the story were amazed. Remember, this is a situation with multiple levels of despotic rulers. Speaking up loudly about the possibility of hope, the possibility of another way of life beyond empire, is not necessarily a safe thing to do. As far as the story tells us, the shepherds returned to their lives without further incident, changed internally as they awaited the larger changes they hoped for in the world.
Elsewhere in the book of Luke, Mary shows courage as she prepares to welcome the child. Mary responds to the angel Gabriel’s visit by actively accepting the role of Jesus’ mother (Luke 1:38), then making the journey alone to her cousin Elizabeth. So, if you have heard the modern Christmas song asking Mary if she knew, she most certainly did. In conversation with Elizabeth, Mary shares a powerful prayer that is a foundational text for liberation theology. This text is based on Hannah’s prayer from first Samuel. Among other things, Mary says:
[God] has shown strength with [God’s] arm;
[God] has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
[God] has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
And lifted up the lowly;
[God] has filled the hungry with good things,
And sent the rich away empty. (Luke 1:51-53)
Again, these are not safe things to say when you live in an occupied country where the emperor can demand that every person must make a journey to be officially registered. The line that Christmas Eve readers stumble over every year, “When Quirinius was governor of Syria” (Luke 2:2) gives us a clue that this was a military dictatorship; historians (according to the New Oxford Annotated Bible) tell us that Quirinius was a special commissioner of the emperor sent to put down a rebellion, not a civil administrator. This is not a situation where one assumes the freedom of speech.
Mary does not care what the emperor’s soldiers think she should say. Mary not only declares that it is good and in God’s interests to elevate the poor and cast down the mighty, she speaks as if these things are already in motion, even if they are not yet evident to the observer. Mary’s love for her son, for her community, and for the Source of Blessing as she understands it to be lead her to accept the call to a larger mission, to go on a journey, and to raise her voice in prophetic witness.
There are additional examples of courage in Matthew’s version of the Nativity story. Where Luke mentioned Caesar Augustus, Matthew has more to say about King Herod. Herod was a complicated figure historically, and not all of that complexity is evident in the Christian scriptures, but it is true that Herod was generally regarded as ruthless, violent, and more loyal to Rome than he was dedicated to the wellbeing of the people of his own country. He was also responsible for a lot of construction projects, some that remain tourist attractions to this day; he had a particular fondness for gleaming white marble and gold. It is important to remember that Herod was a client-king, he was part of a multi-layered structure of empire, occupation, and tyranny.
In Matthew, when the Magi arrive in Jerusalem and ask about the child, Herod is frightened, and he channels his fear into plans for violence. Herod consults with his staff and figures out that the child would probably be in Bethlehem. He meets secretly with the Magi and tells them to go find the child, then bring him word, “So that I may also go and pay him homage.” (Matthew 2:8) Of course, Herod is not planning to pay the child homage, he wants to eliminate any competition for his throne. The Magi find Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. They present their royal gifts. “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.” (Matthew 2:12)
Meanwhile, Joseph gets a warning in a dream to take his family and flee to Egypt to escape from Herod and his jealous wrath. Within the story, the fate that Joseph’s family escapes is the slaughter of every child under two years old in and around Bethlehem. The king in this story is so mad for power, so unable to see the humanity in his fellow citizens, so heartless toward children, that he chose a wave of death at the merest hint of a threat against his wealth and authority. Herod’s way of responding to his own fear is destructive.
Courage, for Mary and Joseph and the Magi, is the courage to survive. It takes courage to resist a dictator who says that your life and the lives of the people you love should be forfeited to consolidate his power. It takes courage to realize that you were very nearly complicit in the whims of a destructive tyrant, to admit that you were wrong to trust him, and to go home by another road. It takes courage to flee with your family across a border, even when certain death is right behind you. Love for this child, love for this family, and perhaps love for the spark of human worth and dignity that defies oppression gave courage to the Magi and to Joseph and Mary as they made haste on their journeys.
The Nativity stories are filled with people from different levels of society exhibiting courage in the face of terrifying events: celestial beings beyond comprehension, unfamiliar journeys, the machinations of an empire, and state-sponsored violence. The courage of people in the stories, bravery that is inspired by love, is among the reasons why these stories are of enduring value to us. They continue to teach us, and we continue to need encouragement to put love at the center when the world is terrifying.
In this season, what is love calling us to do? How will we show courage? Perhaps, like the shepherds, we will open our minds and hearts to a new perspective, or we will try something unfamiliar. Perhaps, like Mary, we will use our prophetic voices on behalf of uplifting the people and filling the hungry with good things. The Magi suggest that we can have the courage to change our course. Joseph shows us that we can have the courage to survive, and to help beloveds who are under the threat of state violence to survive. Whatever we choose, let us side with the rebirth of hope, the promise of transformation, and the power of love.
In Breaking and Blessing, the 2020 volume of the inSpirit Poetry Series, Rev. Sean Parker Dennison imagines letters from angels, draws on the natural world, and reflects on love and calling. They chart a path, moving here and there, as if across a constellation—connecting mathematics to love, stars to saplings, and breaking to blessing. Rev. Dennison’s striking debut will serve as both solace and flame to readers looking for them in equal measure.
Rev. Sean Parker Dennison is the minister at Rogue Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Ashland, Oregon. Ordained in 2000, Rev. Dennison has served congregations in California, Utah, and Illinois and cofounded TRUUsT, an organization for transgender UU religious leaders, in 2004. They are also an artist, parent, poet, and grandparent.
Available from inSpirit: The UU Book and Gift Shop.
This month, the Philippines has been struck by some of the most destructive typhoons in recent memory. Unitarian Universalists may be aware that we have religious kinfolk there. Look for updates from the UUA Director of Global Connections, and please consider a gift to the UUA Disaster Relief Fund:
Your donation allows the UUA to respond flexibly to current disaster needs as well as to new emergency situations as they arise.
Here you are.
Here, in this holy space,
on this ground that is holy
because you are here.
Here you are, in flesh and bone,
filling up this body that belongs to you alone.
Your pumping heart is a wonder
because it keeps you alive.
Your loving heart is a blessing
because it keeps all of us alive.
The Spirit of Love has a home in you.
May we all see that love in you
and let our hearts become mirrors
for the compassion at your core.
The Spirit of Justice has a home in you.
May we light our wicks
from one another until we are all aflame,
until we burn out every prejudice
we carry in these bones.
Offered to the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg, November 2, 2025
Spirit of Life and Love, known by many names, and yet fully known by none, be with us now. Be with us in this time of peril and possibility, this time of devastation and daring, this time of remembrance and recommitment.
Open our hearts to the transformative power of inclusive community. Give us the courage to live as our whole selves, and to support and encourage others as they live as their whole selves. Move us to create shelters of peace and justice for learning, for growth, for rest, and for beauty. Lead us onward until the whole world can be such a place.
Ground of our being, our hearts are heavy with the awareness of illness, suffering, and disappointment in our own lives and in the lives of our loved ones and neighbors near and far. Humans are imperfect and beautiful people in an imperfect and beautiful world. Move us to make the repairs that are ours to make. May those who are grieving find comfort. May those who are hungry be fed. May those in need of care receive it in abundance. May relationships that have been stretched find new shapes that open pathways to truth, resilience, and thriving. May the rough places where there is violence, coercion, and intimidation be made into fields of justice and peace. Let there be joy in the morning. And may we be some of the hands, hearts, and voices to help make it so.
Breath of the chorus of creation, these times call us to collaboration. Let the give and take of abundant, fallible, surprising, and precious human life create a base from which we can build movements and even symphonies of love in the world. In the chants for justice, the songs of peace, and the presence of silence, we give thanks for our companions and for the eternal resonance of Love.
"Dinosaur by the Highway" was a service delivered to The Unitarian Society in East Brunswick on January 26, 2025, by Rev. Lyn Cox.
The stories we develop and carry through our lives can affect how we interpret new experiences and how we respond to them. We can’t change the past, but we can reinterpret the meaning we gain from our experiences. This is true for our personal stories as individuals as well as for our collective stories as families and communities. The poignant, the joyful, and the bizarre events we encounter are threads in weaving together a new way forward.
