Making the World Come Alive ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
March 15, 2026
Most years I dread the month of March. It’s not really winter, and not quite spring. The clean brightness of the snow recedes and leaves mud and dead leaves and gray fallen branches and trash in its wake, images I find completely uninspiring. I am waiting impatiently for spring. But this March is feeling a little different for me.
I have started a month-long spiritual practice based on a practice known in Christian traditions as Visio Divina. There’s that Latin again. We’re familiar with Lectio Divina, which some of us are practicing by reading and meditating over a poem together. Visio Divina means to meditate or pray while studying a piece of art. Of course, as a good Unitarian Universalist, I am not following those rules. Rather, now that the snow is mostly melted, I am going outside each day and slowly walking around looking among the dead leaves and in the mud puddles for signs of emerging growth, for tiny green shoots, or little clumps of moss. Just yesterday, only a week after the snow began to melt in earnest, I saw new sprouts and a snowdrop flower for the first time. The earth is coming alive.
This practice of carefully watching each day, of walking around bent over and paying close attention is changing my relationship to March. From a window, or from five feet above ground even, everything looks brown, dead, flattened by the weight of the snow, and ugly. From a foot or two above ground, you see things differently. And it starts to feel just the tiniest bit exciting. There’s wonder: a sense of “Oh, look!” I tend to greet the little shoots, and smile. It’s been a long, cold, and lifeless winter. But I can feel myself beginning to turn, to feel more alive again with each green or yellow sprout that I see.
As our poet said in our reading just now:
“In the aftermath of cold and dark,
they come. And something green in me responds,
pungent and powerful, eager. Ready
to flourish. Ready to meet the world,
though the cold is far from over.” (A Lesson in Resilience, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)
Because of this, I understood what Victoria Loorz was talking about when she spoke about having a conversation with non-human beings.
In her book, Church of the Wild, Victoria Loorz told the story of attending a retreat in Colorado that included daily time to simply wander around and listen for an invitation to either follow a path, or sit, or study a particular tree. And each day, Victoria found that she would encounter a deer, and the deer would lead her to a spot where they would stand and gaze at each other, and then the deer would lay down. Victoria would respond by sitting nearby. They would study each other, and just feel each other’s presence. It felt like a conversation.
I might have had a hard time believing this story, except something similar has happened to me. In fact, living on the edge of woods as I do, interesting encounters have happened more than once. I’ve learned that some birds are friendly, and quite curious. I would notice that as I moved around the yard, a catbird or two would seem to follow, chattering away and calling. Wrens approach if I sit still long enough on the deck. And one day, I was kneeling down, probably yanking up some sort of invasive plant, and heard an odd buzzing sound. Startled, I glanced up, and a hummingbird was inches from my face, suspended in mid-air, staring at me. I couldn’t be sure what he was asking, so I just offered a surprised, “Hello!” He probably was trying to tell me that the feeder was empty.
But the most surprising encounter I’ve had to date involved a young deer, much like it did for Victoria Loorz. I walked the dog out behind my house one morning and two deer were browsing in the woods. One turned and approached us, and came to within a few feet. Amazingly, my extremely skittish dog was so stunned that she just stood there. We probably stood and looked at each other for 10 minutes, her with her beautiful unblinking brown eyes. Eventually the shyer deer stomped a warning, and that seemed to break the spell for my dog, who barked. The two deer turned and bounded away. I’ve never forgotten it. When something like that happens, you are left pondering, asking yourself, “What just happened here?” While we might not have words to explain it, we are left with clarity; a strong sense of an encounter, something that makes no logical sense, something quite mystical.
Victoria Loorz uses more traditional religious language than I do. Her response to her connections with the deer was to hear two quotes from the Bible as she stood there: “Surely, God is in this place and I did not know it,”(Genesis 28:16) and then, “I will never leave you.” (Hebrews 13:5)
Mystical moments can trigger deep religious responses. Victoria noted that she responds to such moments with tears. It’s her tears, she wrote, that lets her know that she is in the presence of the Holy.
Christian author Frederick Buechner also experienced this. He wrote, “You never know what may cause them. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you’ve never seen before… You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention.” (from Whistling in the Dark, https://www.frederickbuechner.com/quote-of-the-day/2017/9/4/tears)
In last week’s sermon I asked you what makes tears come to your eyes. And I suggested that the practice of paying attention leads us, orients us, toward a life of gratitude. For, as I asked, how can we be grateful for anything if we don’t notice it?
But there is another orientation of the heart that is equally important to gratitude, and that is reverence.
Reverence isn’t always a word that we Unitarian Universalists are comfortable with. It can feel a lot like ‘worship’, which is also a word that many of us are suspicious about. So let’s think about it for a moment.
Reverence, according to philosophy professor Paul Woodruff, is a virtue from ancient cultures that arose out of a ‘deep understanding of human limitations.’ (Reverence, by Paul Woodruff, p. 3.). If we understand our limitations, we can be capable of being aware of all that lies outside of our control, and then to feel awe when we encounter those things – nature, love, beauty, or God. (Ibid.)
People who are capable of sensing limitations are able to experience the kinds of mystical encounters we’ve been describing: to become deeply attached to a tree, or a particular view of the ocean, or perhaps a mountain or a wild animal. We know that we are not all-powerful, and so we can relate to the essence of another being that is wholly Other than ourselves. Reverence removes the barrier of a hierarchy, of feeling superior. A hummingbird can fly, but I cannot.
Standing out in the woods near my house, I know that the deer is much more at home than I am. It is her home, not mine. I admit I wish she would not eat all my plants.
Ultimately this sense of our limits helps to establish relationship across species, to nurture a sense of connection with all that is. From a basic understanding of the worth of others, we don’t have to travel far to believe that they have an equal right to life and a place here on our shared planet.
Finding true relationship by paying close attention is a great gift. It can open not just our eyes, but our hearts, can help bring the world to life for us, can help us to sense the presence of the holy in everything around us. In relationship we learn to be reverent.
“My blood doth rise in the roots of yon oak,
Her sap doth run in my veins…” (Rising Green, Singing the Journey, #1068)
Reverence offers us a chance to look completely differently at the world.
Right now, we are being battered by a vision of a world of winners and losers, with violent conflict springing up, with incidents of violence taking place almost daily. The language is violent – officials speaking of offering no quarter to the enemy, officials who are prepared to see just about anyone as an enemy, or as less valuable, less important, less human. We are fighting a pointless war that is fouling our air and our water, threatening innocent life caught in the wrong place. It is a vision utterly without reverence.
According to Paul Woodruff, the ancient Greeks “thought that tyranny was the height of irreverence.” “They gave the…name of hubris to the crimes of tyrants. He continued, “An irreverent soul is arrogant and shameless, unable to feel awe in the face of things higher than itself. As a result, an irreverent soul is unable to feel respect for people it sees as lower than itself – ordinary people, prisoners, children.” (Ibid., p.4.)
People who see one skin color as superior, who have no regard for people who speak other languages, who cannot feel compassion for the more vulnerable, including other species, are lacking in reverence. We have made the mistake of allowing people like this into power in our country. We can see the result.
Reverence, then, is a gift, to a reverent person, and to everyone connected to that person. Imagine the emptiness of being unable to experience awe, unable to feel your heart turn over, to have your eyes fill with tears. Imagine if that has never happened for you. You would lead only half of a life.
My friends, we are watching daily as the world around us returns to life. It is a perfect time to observe carefully, and to remind ourselves what a gift we are given to hear nature speaking to us, to see nature’s offerings growing every day. May we remember to take the time to speak back, to say ‘thank you’, to sense the power that is not ours but that offers itself to us. May we remember, and may our response be awe, and joy, and reverence.
Blessed Be.
