Pastor's Weekly Message
WHERE IS YOUR ATTENTION?
April 12, 2012
“Where focus goes, energy flows.” – Tony Robbins
In a world of distractions, it’s easy to overlook our attention. We often think of our lives in terms of major decisions or the external events that happen. In practice, our lives are more directly shaped by something quieter: the steady direction of our attention.
Attention is not just what we notice, as in passing. It is what we return to. It’s what we dwell on, what we focus on, what we rehearse, what we allow to occupy our inner space. Over time, the patterns of our attention, our focus, organize how we interpret the world and how we understand others and ourselves.
Attention has a kind of magnetism, a kind of gravity. Wherever it settles, it begins to pull our experience in that direction. If our attention is constantly drawn to what is uncertain or lacking, life begins to feel unstable or unfulfilled, even when circumstances are manageable. If we consciously direct our attention toward what is present and what we can control, life becomes more grounded, even when our circumstances are difficult.
I’m not suggesting denial or forced optimism. I’m talking about placement. Where attention goes, posture follows. A person who repeatedly attends to their fear will eventually stand in a fearful way and allow fear to govern their life. For a person who trains attention toward clarity, toward steadiness, toward compassion, and away from the things in life over which they have no control, such a person will begin to stand differently over time.
Jesus is recorded as saying, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34). This is an astute observation. What we treat as significant, what we return to again and again, becomes central to our lives. Attention and value reinforce each other. We attend to what we value, and we come to value what we repeatedly attend to.
That raises a more practical question than what it is we believe. The better question may be this: “What do you actually give your attention to, day after day?” Because that is where our lives are being formed and the place from which we grow.
If attention is constantly scattered by distraction, futile comparison, and outrage, life becomes reactive and unfocused. If attention, though, can be brought back, deliberately and repeatedly, to what is real and actionable, life becomes more coherent and purposeful. I’m not saying it becomes easier, but maybe it becomes clearer.
This is not a one-time decision. It is a practice, a discipline. As attention drifts, we must consciously return it. It will drift again, and we must return it again. Over time, this repetition becomes a habit and shapes something stable and resilient within us.
We do not control everything that happens around us. But we do have some influence over how we look at our circumstances, and how we respond to them. We certainly have influence over what we return to, what we focus on, and what we allow to take root within ourselves. That is how a life takes shape.
Rev. Dr. Brian J. Kelley
Executive Pastor, Unitarian Christian Church of America (UCCA)
ANASTASIS
April 5, 2026
“For I remember it is Easter morn, and life and love and peace are all new born.” – Alice Freeman Palmer, first female college president
Today is Easter Sunday; happy Easter everyone!
Easter has long been told as a story about something extraordinary that happened to one person long ago. But there is another way to approach it, one that involves all of us, one that speaks to something deeply human and immediately relevant.
At the center of the traditional Easter story is this idea of resurrection. When Jesus is recounted as speaking about “resurrection” in the Gospels, the Greek word used is anastasis. It comes from two parts: ana, meaning “up” or “again,” and stasis, meaning “standing” or “one’s position.” At its most basic, it means “to stand up again,” or perhaps to take on a new way of standing.
That’s a simple idea, but not a shallow one, and not the one traditionally presented when this idea is relayed in a religious context. There are moments in life when we are brought low by loss, by fear, by doubt, by failure, or by the weight of the world around us. I know I experience this almost chronically! Something in us collapses. Our footing gives way. We are no longer standing in the same way we once were.
But people do stand again.
Not always quickly, not always easily, and not always on the first try, but they can and they do. Often, they do not return to the way of standing they once had before. There is a shift, a new stance, a different perspective, a deepening. A different kind of posture emerges, one that is more flexible and living and able to withstand, as Shakespeare put it, “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”
Maybe before we were less full of life, instead embodying something of a brittleness, like a fallen tree branch that has lost its green-ness and elasticity: its life. When our footing gave way, we broke instead of bent. But with a new posture, a new stance, we are full of life, like a living green plant that does not break but bends and returns to its posture.
This is how I understand resurrection on this Easter Sunday, as a transformation within nature. To “rise” is to find a new way of standing in the midst of a world in which it is easy to be kept down. This “new life” can move us from fear to trust, from resentment to release, from fragmentation into a more grounded and integrated way of being. We become connected to all life around us rather than cut off like the dead branch. Resurrection, anastasis, is not about escaping this life, but about inhabiting it differently, more fully.
Easter, then, can be something we all participate in. It can be something we recognize right now, in the present. It is not even contained in a single Sunday. It is a pattern that repeats wherever life is renewed, wherever a person finds the strength to stand again, and to stand differently.
This isn’t to say that life will become easy, or that we won’t be affected by loss, fear, uncertainty. These are natural parts of the human experience, of human life. But they do not need to have the final say in how we live. A person who learns how to “stand again” carries a different kind of stability, a resilience that allows them to eschew rigidity and fragility, becoming more alive and responsive. You will not be untouched by hardship, but you needn’t be defined by it.
Easter, for me, is about noticing something: the life and renewal we see in the nature of the beginning of Spring that is all around us right now. It’s an invitation to see that renewal is possible, that new life is not something distant, abstract, or supernatural, but something that can emerge within us and around us. It asks you and me, “how will you stand in the midst of your own life?”
If Easter means anything, it may simply be this: that life has not finished with us yet.
Rev. Dr. Brian J. Kelley
MORE THAN WE CAN SEE
Mar 29, 2026
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” – Ecclesiastes 3:11
Human beings are a different people than we once were. Once people exchanged ideas to learn from one another, explore different viewpoints, and find out what we can and can’t know. Now, we seem to be an information-driven and argumentative people. When we have so much knowledge at our fingertips, it’s can be hard to accept that there might be things we don’t or can’t know. At the same time, we’ve become obsessed with “being right.” Even when presented with evidence contrary to our current understanding, we tend to “dig in” and keep arguing for our own preconceived ideas.
It’s kind of natural, though. We want things to make sense, and in the information age, we want things to make sense NOW. We want clarity about the world around us. More to the point, we want clarity about who we are, where we are, what God is doing, and how everything fits together. When clarity isn’t there, it can feel like something is wrong, as though we are not trying hard enough to learn or as though we are missing an answer we should have found by now.
But Ecclesiastes offers us a more classic view of things. It suggests that life does have a semblance of order and meaning, even when it isn’t visible to us on demand. “Beautiful in its time” is not a promise that everything will feel right in every given moment. It is a reminder that our view is shaped by our circumstances, by where we stand. We do not always stand at the precise place where things come into focus.
At the same time, this verse names something human. We ARE drawn to meaning. We look for patterns, purpose, and connection because something in us reaches beyond the immediate. We have the capacity to analyze the past and look to the future. We have the capacity to conceive of the things that are not in our immediate presence. That longing for patterns and purpose isn’t a flaw, it’s a byproduct of our human capacity. It’s often what keeps us searching, growing, and paying attention.
Yet, the verse is wise in its clarity about our limits. We are not able, nor are we meant, to see the whole of what God does throughout the whole universe from the beginning to the end of time. This isn’t a failure on our part. We haven’t tried too little. We’re just not born with the capacity to hold the entire picture at once.
Maybe faith is not about resolving that tension and trying to gain all the answers about everything so we can always be “right.” Maybe it’s about learning to live with the reality of our limitations, being honest about the tension of wanting to know but not being able to. We cannot force answers where none are available and we really should not mistake uncertainty for failure. There can be trust without full explanation, and there can be meaning without full understanding.
In the meantime, our work remains. Even in uncertainty, we can still live with integrity, treat others with care, and move in the direction of what is good. You do not have to understand everything to live a humble, faithful life. Not knowing does not place you outside of meaning, even if you don’t fully grasp it.
“I do not occupy myself with things too great and marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul.” – Psalm 131:1-2
Rev. Dr. Brian J. Kelley
SPRING BLOSSOM
March 22, 2026
“I will be like the dew to Israel;
he shall blossom like the lily;
he shall strike root like the forests of Lebanon.
His shoots shall spread out;
his beauty shall be like the olive tree
and his fragrance like that of Lebanon.
They shall again live beneath My shadow;
they shall flourish as a garden;
they shall blossom like the vine;
their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon.” – Hosea 14:5-7
What stands out to me in this famous, poetic passage from the prophet Hosea is that there is no single picture of what growth looks like.
The same source, God (here metaphorically described as dew), produces very different outcomes. Some are compared to lilies, others to deep-rooted trees, others to spreading branches, others to fruit-bearing vines. The passage doesn’t try to resolve that into one model. It simply presents a range of ways that life can take shape.
That matters, because we often assume that spiritual growth should look one certain way. We look for consistency, for recognizable patterns, for something we can measure. And when our own experience doesn’t match what we expect, it’s easy to think something is off.
But this passage suggests otherwise.
If God is the one giving life, and if that life expresses itself in multiple forms, then difference is not a problem to solve. It’s part of the design.
The other important detail is how God is described. Not as a force that directs or harshly corrects, but as dew. Dew doesn’t impose structure. It doesn’t determine what the plant will become. It simply provides what is needed for growth, and the growth follows according to the nature of the plant.
That’s a very different picture of faith than one built around pressure or comparison.
It suggests that growth is not something we force into a particular shape, and not something we measure against other people. It’s something that develops over time, in ways that are consistent with who we are.
So the question is less “Am I growing the right way?” and more “Am I actually growing?”
Because the passage doesn’t require you to be a lily, or a tree, or a vine. It assumes that whatever form your life takes, it can still be sustained, still be rooted, and still flourish.
As we enter the beginning of Spring, the season makes this easier to see, but the principle itself isn’t seasonal. Not everything grows the same way. And it doesn’t have to.
“The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the LORD; they flourish in the courts of our God.” – Psalm 92:12-13
Rev. Brian J. Kelley