Discovering UUA Principles in Alaska

Last updated on: July 28, 2015 at 5:30 am by Peter Dybing

Discovering UUA Principles in Alaska 2015-07-28T05:30:53+00:00 Peter Dybing

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Being in Alaska is disorienting, living with 22 hours of sunlight brings one to appreciate what feels like a relentless Solstice. Surrounded by boundless expanses of green it feels as if Gaia herself is holding onto the light; letting summer continue to hold sway upon the land in a never ending dance of joyous divinity.

All that grows stands at the foundation of mighty glaciers that remind those that behold the sight of a basic truth of nature, that the darkness arrives before the light in perpetuity. Here the divine expressions of nature wash over the observer in powerful undulations that nourish ones understanding of the sacred.

This land holds her people as minor expressions of creation upon a landscape of powerful spirits that exist within its’ herds and wonderers of extraordinary size and power. Here the bear is not simply a wild animal but the acknowledged master of a sacred expanse that stretches beyond the inner vision of even the most gifted shaman.

Rivers teem with water spirits ever engaged in an annual journey that ultimately nourishes all the expressions of the Goddess that walk the land. To journey by water is to reach back to a time when this earth existed as divinity intended to manifest it. Mountains stand century upon seashores that have existed since long before humans started to worship the achievement in grandeur that surrounds bountiful seas.

There is humility here for humanity. One is overcome with a sense that it is we who have distorted nature: repurposed it for our own destructive and immoral benefit. It is in standing among the dense forests of green that humans can truly grasp our small place as a single thread in the cloth of diversity that the Goddess has woven.

Here one can stand in full awe and awareness of one of the purposes of the UU community. “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life”

Upon this landscape one understands that the *“forces, which create and uphold life”*are so expansive that a right relationship with nature includes an understanding of how humans must return to their intended place as just one of Gaia’s creatures.

I am Blessed

Unitarian Universalism

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