(An excerpt of the 12/02/12 sermon delivered at the UU Church of Santa Clarita)

December can be tough for many of us:  highlighting the chaos around us as well as the disorder within.  Highlighting the discordance between what we’re told we should be wanting and buying and what’s actually in the bank account.  Highlighting the geographical or emotional fragmentation of families. As well as the chaos and violence, the poverty, that at this very moment is shattering lives (as it has done for millennia).

December is the Season of Peace!  And yet one of the things it draws attention to (at least for some of us, at least on some level) is a very real lack of peace.  The place within us, within our homes, within our cities and nations where peace is “NOT”.

Where, instead, chaos swirls around blinding our vision, making it nigh-unto-impossible to connect viscerally with joy and love, with generosity and hope…nigh unto impossible to nurture the presence of and critical relationship between peace in our hearts and peace in the world.

So today, in service of PEACE as an ideal, as a goal, as an imperative, in this season and in every season of our lives (in ourselves and in the world) I feel called to first take a closer look at CHAOS – knowing full well that the study of peace can take a lifetime, and that there are many layers of theory on how to create it or to enforce it between nations.  That subject will have to be saved for another day. First things first.  A focus on Peace in the heart, by way of Chaos Theory.