"Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning."

So I went to a UU church service today; it was about the 5th week in a row I have attended this particular church. It was, as always, an amazing, authentic, uplifting experience. I find this congregation has everything I have been searching for in a spiritual home. It is large, vibrant, genuinely diverse and inclusive, progressive, liberal, and focused on social justice. And they have great music. In a large beautiful 90 year old building that is mostly full every week. The head pastor is young, and very charismatic. The sermons quote the Upanishads, Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard, Mary Oliver, Rumi... The people are genuinely friendly. I always leave feeling energized. In short, I feel I have found a home.

I was raised w/o any religion at all by an atheist father and an agnostic mother (lapsed Protestants both), in a Jewish neighborhood. I found my way to Taoism then Buddhism in my 20s, with a foray through the Druids and Pagans and although I consider myself a 'Buddhist' (that's the box I would check, I suppose) because I do take refuge in the '3 Jewels', and I meditate every day. However, for me Buddhism is mind training, not really religion, and my forays to various local sanghas always have disappointed me a bit. I never found what I was looking for there--joy, communion, fellowship, and yes please, good music. I hate to say it, but us Western Buddhists can be kind of a cerebral, uptight bunch. Lots of talk about compassion, but not a whole lot of genuine warmth. That may be an unfair extreme statement, but I speak as I find...

Anyway, I invited my mother to attend with me this morning, and she had what she described as a religious experience. Tears rolled down her cheeks during the final rousing song. Raised southern Baptist, she has had no use for organized religion for most of her adult life, associating it w/ dogmatic beliefs she cannot agree with, and with narrow-minded, judgmental, hypocritical people (this is the attitude towards religion I was raised with too) some of whom we are related to. But I know she misses the fellowship of a congregation; she speaks of enjoying that when she visits her sister down south (who is a church goer). So the experience this morning was a bit of a revelation for her--to feel that sincere joyous warmth of community w/o any of the oppressive judgment or fairytale beliefs. My mother carries a lot of sorrow and anxiety inside of her, so I hope this may be the beginning of something good for her, a way to break out of her passivity and begin to take responsibility for her own happiness. A lesson each of us has to learn for ourselves, I think.

Wow, I did not plan to write all this when I sat down. I only planned to mention the Rumi quote the pastor shared in his sermon, a long time favorite of mine: "Let the beauty you love be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground." As well as the line from the Psalms that he built his sermon around, which is the title of this post. He spoke of the idea of resurrection as being something that can come to each of us, every day, in the here and now. Every morning, specifically. That how we choose to start our morning can have a profound effect on the mindset we carry throughout the day, and how resilient we are in meeting the inevitable griefs and struggles. He's certainly right. I find now that on the rare morning I do not make time to meditate, I am less centered and more easily irritated throughout the day.

Happy Easter to you all.
Namaste.
:-)