SUNDAY MORNING SERVICE

January 1, 2006

"One Wild and Precious Life"

   Rev. Alicia Forde, led our annual "Decades" service on this first Sunday of a new year.  We sang together, shared our joys and concerns, and listened to inspirational readings.  Then Rev. Forde said that she had invited several members of the congregation, each from a different decade of life, to respond to the question: "What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"  Here are their responses:

               Front: Starr C., Mim Neal, Jenifer Cline, Marcia Lewis.  Back: Douglas Dennis, Tom Fleming, Ben Kidder.

Starr C.:

I have many things I want to do with my life.  Also I have many important dreams.  I am going to be a famous rock star, and I am going to work hard at it.  I am going to be on American Idol with my best friend Alyssa.  I want to be a good ice skater with my best friend Sarah and a good horse rider.

I will be going to CSU and getting a degree.  I will get married and have kids.  I want go to Italy and do more traveling with my family and friends.  I am going to have a big house with land so I can have horses.  I want an aqua or blue VW beetle bug (a new one) and an aqua or blue Ford Mustang convertible with horse graphic on the sides.

I am getting a girl Pomeranian named Asana and going to buy her a pink furry bed, a shirt that says "Drama Queen," two pairs of cute little doggie booties, a rain coat, rain hat and little rain boots, and a sweater.

Ben Kidder:

I grew up in Fort Collins at Foothills Unitarian and I now live in Washington, DC. I’ve been told that I’m “on loan” for this service because Namaqua doesn’t have enough twenty-somethings!

The twenties can be a difficult decade, and mine is no exception.  Finding myself out of school for the first time since I was three, I have spent the last  months trying my hand at real life.  It’s not much like school!

The goal is to preserve a dream, born during the previous decade of life, to build a career as a public policy practitioner.  I would work toward creating an America – and a world – in which all people have the economic base to enjoy life, exercise liberty, and pursue happiness. What I have discovered is that in Washington, a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard qualifies one to wait tables, answer phones, and put files in alphabetical order.  I currently enjoy a position as an administrative assistant’s assistant!

Now, I’ve only been at this a few months, so I don’t think there is any reason to give up on my dream yet.  The point is that there may be a moments in life when, like turning a corner in the mountains, you can see your whole life laid out before you.  Even if the view is hazy, you still get a good sense of the direction you are going.  For me, and for many others my age, the twenties are not one of these moments, but rather a deep valley surrounded by cliffs.  If I caught a glimpse of the rest of my life in my teens, the path now is unclear and at times looks impassable.  So to answer the question: what do I plan to do with my one wild and precious life?  Perhaps I’ll see when I come to the next pass.

Douglas Dennis:

At my age of 37, I have most of my goals and dreams. I have the wife that I want and a lovely kid, and friendship and love from many.  But I still have many dreams and goals to complete. I want:

• To start my own businesses. The Audio/Video and Web service is started but needs to grow. A crafts and hobbies store is still a dream.

• To help my wife start her home daycare,  This is not my dream, but I share her dream as now one of mine.

• To buy a house for the family. 

• To be in love with my wife for a very long time. 

• To see my kids grow up and get married and have their own kids.

• To be able to tell my grandkids about my life. 

• To see my kids graduate from college and have successful lives.

I want to fulfill some of my other dreams. One is to do a "tuner car."  I'd also like to travel to South America and Europe.  To continue to learn something every day.  To keep growing as a person.  To not lose the child in me. To see the love and care of relatives and friends continue and keep growing.

I think the most important thing is to keep enjoying my life.

Jenifer Cline:

I’m not done yet.  I am at the point of my life when my sons are emerging into the world and thankfully, yes, thankfully leaving me behind. One thing I want them to hear upon leaving is, “I’m not done yet”; please do not keep me boxed up in your memory as the person I am right now.  Let me continue to grow and change – I’m not done yet.

I have developed an Artist-in-Residence program for schools in which I incorporate science, math, research, planning, imaging and yes, creating, into producing a piece of art. In developing this program, I follow the way my mind explores, learns and incorporates the world around me.  Inevitably, a student asks, “How (or when) did you know you wanted to be an artist?”  I find that I answer differently each time.  For one thing, I tend to avoid labeling myself as an artist as I struggle to avoid using labels for myself as well as others.  If you use labels, you limit how you perceive something or someone, limit how you describe them, limit how you would portray them with brush or words.

However, for this assignment today, I let my mind wander on that how or when question, and recorded a few of the most indelible images. 

• The first time I found a trilobite and needed to know how the fossil was created. 

• My magical skirted evergreen in the woods behind our home where I could open the back of my Narnian wardrobe and really believe that here, fairies could dance. 

• Washington D.C., the Lincoln Memorial – I can still capture the feeling that not only did the sculpture’s hand seem to be pulsing with life, so too did the elements of the marble. 

• The wonder and joy of the moment when, during my third c-section, the anesthesiologist held my glasses so that I could actually see that little someone before he was whisked away.

• Reading that conservators had found the fingerprint of Michelangelo on one of his sculptures and wondering how many fingerprints have been imparted on how many creations; watching my own fingerprints become a part of one of my pieces. 

• And Van Gogh.  I spent years not particularly liking his work – until I stood in front of it.  I could physically feel him painting and sculpting it – emotion and paint blazing at the canvas.

I will continue to learn, watch and see my world.  Gary and I find ourselves wanting so many things - very few of them material. Over the last year, I have been attempting to find time to learn to paint.  Recently, Gary mentioned that when I felt I had learned enough about portraying with paint, would I teach him how to render the winter light?  I love that man.

On our schedule today, there is a slot for a speaker in the 90 – 100 year range.  My hope and plan for myself is that one day, I will be able to stand up to fill that slot by beginning my talk with – I’m not done yet.

Marcia Lewis:

To tell you the truth I really don’t know what I will be doing with the rest of my one wild and precious life. There is enough uncertainty and serendipity in life that I think one of the important things I can do is face whatever the future holds with openness, enthusiasm and flexibility. I hope I can grab a hold of the positive possibilities and weather the not-so positive alternatives with dignity.

With that said, here are a few specifics: the reality is that I will probably continue working at the library because I enjoy my work but also because at my age we need health insurance and I don’t see universal health care available any time soon.

I want to continue to travel. We have tickets to World Cup soccer matches in Germany this summer and I hope to be able to do lots of other travel here and abroad in the future.  We are members of Servas, an international organization that promotes understanding, tolerance and world peace, and I look forward to meeting other Servas members as a host and as a traveler.

I hope to find time to do more reading and relaxing and maybe even go fishing with John.

I don’t want to be afraid of trying new things. We will try llama packing next summer and I want to be willing to get out of my comfort zone once in awhile. I strive to be a lifelong learner but I’m not sure why I have to figure out how to use my new digital kitchen timer when just turning the dial on the old kind worked fine too.

I’ve always considered myself as a doer more than a visionary planner. I certainly hope I can do more meaningful things that will make a difference in myself, in my family, my community, and the larger world. While John might say I should say “no” more often, I hope I can stay active and work toward goals that are so appropriately stated in the UU Seven Principles.

Some of you may not know I was able to attend a weeklong UUA training in Boston five years ago that helped us start this congregation. I am proud of where we have come in five years and am certainly vested in the future of this congregation. 

To conclude I would like to share a quote from Margaret Mead that means a great deal to me. I might add my mother’s name is Margaret Meade and I have certainly learned much from her but the more famous sociologist said: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”  One of my greatest hopes for the future is being a member of that small committed group with you, members and friends of Namaqua UU.

Mim Neal:

On July 27th, 2006, I will have been divorced for 30 years. It may well be time to start dating.

On August 12th, I will become 65. With Medicare/Medicaid, my health insurance costs will go down. And I will start getting both my pension and social security. These are good things.

I am already aware of my own mortality. This is another good thing.  This awareness tends to sharpen my ability to savor, to appreciate, and to be grateful. This, certainly, is the beginning of wisdom.  It is just the beginning . . .   I am a slow learner.

Even slow learners know the importance of relationships. When I moved out here from Chicago to, among other things, work on my writing, I left a golden web of really good friends. It takes a bit of doing to sustain those friendships while cultivating new friends, primarily from this community. So far, I’m doing it. In May, I’ll travel to Scotland with four of my Chicago friends. Just one of many new adventures I plan to have before I die.

I will keep writing, and try harder to get published. My memoir is finished and deserves attention. I’ve started a new work about my ancestors and the nature of time. It’s a bit complicated so it will take a while. I’m actually pretty good about the writing discipline. I’ll keep at it. When that’s done, I will write something else, because writing is part of who I am.

Somehow or other, I have retained my sense of wonder. I will never lose that. I will follow my heart to places of beauty, holy places, and they will sustain my soul. I will try to go often into the profound silences where truth resides and where, sometimes, I can glimpse what some people call god.

I still have a lot to work on. I need to be a little less careful, a little more wild, a little louder. Simultaneously, I hope to speak less and do more. 

And I hope to do better at forgiving. There are things in my past that I must forgive if I am to shatter the barrier that seems to prevent a new romance. So I have motivation. And maybe I can teach my sons forgiveness and our relationships will be restored.

So far, I have had splendid times and have learned much. And I intend to have more splendid times and learn more. 

Tom Fleming:

High on my list of goals for my 70s is helping Namaqua grow, which includes helping us to find our spiritual core as a focus for this congregation. Because I believe music helps us grow spiritually and makes worship more meaningful, that also means growing our choir to 15 or 20 members, with all four parts, so we can sing some of the great sacred choral works: J.S. Bach, Brahms, Mozart and Mendelssohn to name a few.

I’d like to work toward establishing a serious building fund so we can afford to rent full-time and eventually build our own building.

Beyond Namaqua, I will continue to talk about the coming fossil fuel crisis to help others become more aware of it and to fight pollution and global warming. Later this month, I will begin my second class on renewable energy through the Front Range Forum, an educational program at the Fort Collins senior center.

On a personal level, I plan to continue to maintain my health and lose some weight, so Barbara and I can better enjoy our retirement, and I would like to find a way to replace my 18-year-old Mazda truck.

While these are my highest priorities, I know that other goals and dreams will fill the weeks and months to come. As each day unfolds, I will do my best to make it rich and meaningful.

                  As the service closed, members of the congregation joined hands and sang:

                                                 "May we have safe passage."