The UUCW Nugget

May 18, 2016

Office Hours

(Sept 1, 2015 -

June 30, 2016):

Mon, Tues, Wed:

9 am - 3 pm

Thur. 9 am - 2 pm

(Closed 2nd Wed.

Oct - May)

Congregational Mission Statement

"The members and friends of the Unitarian Universalist

Church of Worcester covenant to be a congregation of love, hope and justice inspiring people to take on the challenges of a changing world."

Welcoming Church

Mission Statement

The LGBTQI and Allies of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Worcester strives to further the affirmation and celebration of LGBTQI individuals in all aspects of the church community. We also seek to increase the visibility of UUCW as a Welcoming Congregation within the greater community.

Star Trek, Shoes, and the Psalms

Laura K. Secor

Star Trek, Shoes and the Psalms. That's the answer to a riddle. What, you ask, is the riddle? Well, I won't leave you in suspense. The riddle is - what do you get when you type "365 Art" into Amazon's multifaceted search engine? If I am longing for a daily dose of art to elevate my leisure time, Amazon offers me a unique Star Trek moment each and every day, or almost 400 new shoes, all presumably stylish, or the Psalms (coloring book format).

I think the modern world offers too many choices.

Two hundred years ago the Psalms would have been the only elevation on offer. We would have spent Sunday studying the psalms, or the begats, or the prophets, or the gospels, or Corinthians. Who studies the Bible any more? Not when we have shoes and Star Trek, fashion and television. Media everywhere - who sets foot out of the house without a smart phone clutched firmly in hand?

Recently I've felt out of touch with my spirituality, and I am hunting for a way back in through art. Not the psalms. I am not advocating a return to that particular simpler time. The multiplicity of the modern world is well out of Pandora's box, and there's no stuffing it back in.

Now there's an image - the smart phone as the box into which all the world's media has been stuffed. It's in the box, but the box lives inside our brain. We are never free of Pandora's box.

But I digress. I find my thoughts come in advertizing-sized snippets these days.

So how does a person find her way back to spirituality? I've been looking at the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe. Those wide open spaces ground me. Those pelvic bones against the desert sky, the reaches of an infinity of time and space. Simple lines, simple colors, a palette of bone and blue.

When I do my own painting, my palate is nothing like the simplicity of hers. I am a riot of modern colors, pyrroles and quinacridones, colors created for car manufacturers, the vivid hues of Daytona. I take her simple lines and complicate them. I take her muted southwestern colors and multiply, multiply. I turn up the pixelation.

How then to reach back down to fundamentals? When art has worked me into a frenzy of options, I put the lids back on the jars, rinse the brushes and retreat to my poetry collection. But you know how it is, when something is on your mind, you find it everywhere. I pull up a favorite Rilke poem, and am captivated by his palette.

Rilke's Sunset (translator unknown)

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors

which it passes to a row of ancient trees.

You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you

one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth.

leaving you, not really belonging to either,

not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,

not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing

that turns to a star each night and climbs--

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)

your own life, timid and standing high and growing,

so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,

one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

Ah!

The sketchbook comes back out, and the pigments, and the brushes, all back on the dining table in a glorious profusion. Next thing you know, I am doing sunsets and twilights, dark houses and stars, people timid and people reaching out. I write the poem onto the twilit pages in silver ink. It is not simplicity, but it is beautiful.

Contact Information

Phone:	508-853-1942	Email:	office@uucworcester.org
Fax:	508-853-2065	Website:	www.uucworcester.org
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