Week of August 11

Where is your querencia?  

Do you know this word? It comes from the Spanish verb “querer” which means to desire or to want deeply. A metaphysical concept, querencia was first used in bullfighting, to describe the particular spot in the ring the bull would stake out where it felt strongest and safest during the fight.  It has since come to be understood as the place where one’s strength is drawn from; the place where one feels most at home and most authentically oneself.  In English, we might describe this as our “happy place,” but I don’t think that phrase does justice to the concept the way “querencia” does.

Where is your querencia? Where do you feel most authentic and safe, from where do you draw your strength?

Perhaps your querenciais not one particular place at all, but a person, or a series of places, or an act of doing. My husband said his querenciais on the soccer field—any soccer field in the world—playing his heart out. A friend of mine said it is when he sits down to play his guitar, wherever that is. Another said for her it is the happy work of toiling in her gardens.

I just returned from several weeks at our cottage on the shores of Lake Michigan, a place I have gone nearly every summer since I was born. It is where I connect with friends, have a chance to pause and draw breath, and check in with myself. In many way, this summer community in northern Michigan is as much a “querencia” for me as any earthly place can be— but even there I always feel a restless longing and vulnerability.  

Maybe that’s because, ultimately, no earthly place, no matter how safe or beloved, can totally remove us from the world, and all the challenges life brings. Maybe, in the end, our only true “querencia” is God, who is, paradoxically, both everywhere and place-less, totally intimate and utterly transcendent.  

We need our earthly “querencias”—thank goodness for them!--  but what a joy to know that in God we have an immovable Querencia from whom we can always draw our strength and breath, where we are always home and with whom we can always be authentically ourselves. 

Yours on the Journey,

Jennifer

Meditation

“On the surface, we are all different. We ascribe to a variety of belief systems, attain our identity from various stories, get our customs from diverse cultures, and so on. And, rightly or wrongly, we generally define ourselves by these differences—there is no denying that. However, when we look beneath the surface, we discover an equally valuable truth – our shared humanity and the universal elements of the human experience."

--Gudjon Bergmann

Week of June 2

Dear Friends:

 This Sunday June 2nd at the 10:30 a.m. service we are delighted to be joined by Rabbi/Cantor Shira Sklar in worship. Shira is the Cantor at Temple Shalom in Norwalk. If you are unfamiliar with the role of a cantor, typically the cantor is an ordained clergy member and trained vocalist who leads the congregation in song and prayer throughout the service, and presides over the religious life ceremonies including weddings, funerals, bar/bat mitzvahs. Cantors are also professional educators-- teaching and preparing the congregation, and often running the synagogue's music programs.

It will be a gift to have Shira in worship, and I encourage you to attend the 10:30 am service if you are able. (I heard Shira singing the other day, and her voice is utterly transporting.) In word and song, Shira “will share the message that so beautifully and powerfully guide the identity of her community. In faith, hope and love, we will hear how the Jewish tradition remembers God’s salvation and redemption, and how each generation prepares to receive the divine gifts of law and love so that they can be share in the world around us.” (check out our Instagram post…)

As Christians, our faith is grounded on and built upon our Jewish roots.  When we forget that Judaism is our mother religion, we miss out on one of the richest aspects of our faith, and lose sight of who Jesus really was.  When asked in Mark what the great commandment is, Jesus answered with that which is at the very heart of Judaism: " Hear, O Isreal the Lord our God, the Lord is One; you shall love the Lord your God with all thy heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength’… and you shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Hope to see you in worship on Sunday!

 Yours on the Journey,

Jennifer

Meditation

“If you don't know history, then you don't know anything.

You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree.” 
― Michael Crichton

 “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”

― Marcus Tullius Cicero

Week of May 19

Dear Friends:

Connecting, exploring and discovering.  

This past Wednesday a group of sixteen Talmadge Hill folks joined Danny Martin at the Mercy Center in Madison, CT for a full day retreat to delve more deeply into the topic of Mindfulness Dialogue.  It was a rich and productive day of learning how to engage in dialogue with those in our lives, and with the wider culture, in ways that foster a deeper, more attentive and fruitful connection. 

On an individual level, our lives can be transformed as we engage more intentionally and thoughtfully with those we encounter day-to-day. Lisa Michalski beautifully wrote: “We are each getting glimpses of the possibilities offered by a new awareness, ever-renewing ways of seeing, and new ways of listening and relating.”  

But there is urgency, too, that we allow this kind of mindful engagement to move beyond our individual worlds, and into the wider culture.  Danny reflected on why this work of mindful dialogue is so vitally necessary: “We desperately—and urgently—need a new culture that reflects our global circumstances and provides expanded values, principles, beliefs, and structures, and a new high culturethat would deep and refine these values and beliefs…  It was my privilege to walk a little of the way with you as you explore how to take the Talmadge Hill community (as well as your own personal lives) to a new level. This will surely include finding ways of addressing the challenges we all face today and doing so on behalf of a culture that is itself struggling to do so, and perhaps thereby contributing to the development of a new and adequate culture for today’s world: an awesome - but completely real – challenge.”

As Christians, all that we learn and absorb as a faith community is neverintended to stay within the walls of our church.  We are always meant to take our deepest convictions and most precious gifts into the wider, waiting, hungry world.  While it is not easy work, when we bring the skills of deep and generous listening, a willingness to examine one’s assumptions, and an empathic presence to our conversations, we begin to build connections characterized by creativity and love. More than ever, our culture needs people to model interactions defined by empathy, attentiveness and openness.  This is, in fact, the very work Jesus did, and exhorts us to do.  May we be open to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, however challenging. 

Yours on the Journey,

Jennifer