Homily by Rev. Frank Clarkson, squeezed in at the start of Water Communion service, which concluded with our older children blowing bubbles from the sanctuary while we sang “Blue Boat Home.”
We move through our days, and our lives, doing what we need to do—our work, caring for those we love, showing up as we can and have to, trying to make a positive difference in the world, trying to leave the world a little better than we found it. And it is good, isn’t it, to have these vocations, these callings, this work?
But in the fullness of it all, how often do we stop, and look around, and look up, and look inside? How often do we pause to appreciate and give thanks for it all? How often to we let ourselves be overcome by wonder, stopped in our tracks by beauty, or kindness, by some poignant moment, or some suffering, when we can only be still and say “Oh my God”? How often to we stop to appreciate and give thanks for it all?
This is one of the gifts and the invitations of a faith community—to re-member (as we heard Rev. Gretchen Haley say); to go out and to come back; to find what has been lost, to reconnect what has been separated, to heal what has been broken. This is why we are here. Where we remember that we are not alone, that we have one another, and need one another. That we are part of a great and abiding love. Now and always, Amen.