This September, after almost eighteen months of offering worship online, we came back into the sanctuary for Sunday worship. For the previous year, we’d been recording worship in the sanctuary, and I’m pleased with how well that worked. And still this felt different, like crossing a threshold. It was a big deal to start gathering together again, and as good as it felt to be taking this step forward, it was also a big adjustment. I know that many of you aren’t ready yet, and I honor that, and hope that you’re finding ways to connect to our worship life and community life in these days. If I can be helpful with that, or if you just want to talk, please reach out to me!
Our worship themes this fall have been about this gradual movement from separation back into gathering. September’s theme was “The Way Home,” October’s was “The Way of Vulnerability,” and November’s theme is “The Way of Imagination.” Vulnerability and imagination have been particularly evocative for me, because this regathering has brought up all kinds of vulnerability, just as the pandemic has. After spending limited time in our building over the past year, I’ve had to reacquaint myself with that beautiful and beloved space. I’ve had to make an effort to feel at home there again. And that’s taken some time.
What about you? Are there practices that you are taking up again, places you were used to and took completely for granted, that now feel strange and even unwelcoming? It’s completely natural to feel vulnerable at a threshold time such as this. We’ve been though a long and slowly unfolding trauma, whose end is still not in sight, but we’re being invited to find new ways to live in the midst of a pandemic. What I’ve learned, or been reminded of, in recent months is that it helps me to slow down, to have practices that ground and sustain me. That feeling vulnerable is natural, and not something to be feared; that it can even be an invitation to a deeper way of living, and feeling more at home in one’s self and in the world.
In her beautiful sermon on November 7, Tori said this:
“COVID hit a pause button and as we ease up on it, it seems like there is a collective call in the air to bring some intention and thought to how we return. And, at least for me, I have grown a bit weary from hoping alone. Hoping things will get better. Hoping our recovery will hold. Hoping our world starts to find solutions to the larger social problems we face. This hope, at times, has been hard to access and sometimes feels too light a response. And, as we continue this great emergence, I wonder if imagination might be a better posture. Imagination asks us to dig in. It asks us to see into the future something not yet there. It asks us to play, and through that play, create the world as it could be. And I don’t know, there is something in this call that feels sacred, that quickens my heart and helps me to see pathways forward – just beyond the limits. And in this time and place that feels radical – prophetic even.”
That’s the invitation I’m feeling these days too—to be open to imagining new ways of being, that are life-giving and exciting, and fun even! This year your church Board of Trustees is imagining and exploring new ways of being in community together: how we belong to one another and to this congregation, and ways we can invite and include the arts and artists more into our common life and ministry.
It’s still a tentative time, but I am grateful for the stirrings of energy and imagination in our midst. Who knows what lies ahead? My spiritual companions, we have been through a lot, and so much has been lost. But we are still here, and I’m encouraged and hopeful for what lies ahead. And so grateful to be on this journey with you.
In these days, John Greenleaf Whittier's words, which became one of our hymns, help affirm and strengthen my faith:
The letter fails, the systems fall, and every symbol wanes;
The Spirit over seeing all, Eternal Love, remains.
(Listen to our congregation singing this hymn by clicking below.)