Joy of Returning

Joy of Returning

I don’t know about you, but in recent months, as I have slowly returned to public life, I am grateful to be getting past our long period of pandemic confinement. I am hearing from family and friends, and experiencing myself, this Rip Van Winkle waking up from the long sleep. I am hearing about the unanticipated pleasure of returning to church activities we once took for granted – entering our beautiful sanctuary for a vesper service, reuniting to say good bye to our intern, Sophia, under the tree in the beautiful yard next to Calvary Baptist, reconvening small groups like the meditation group on Tuesday evenings. These moments are infused with a sense of wonder and gratitude. I feel myself reentering with some tentativeness, a dip the toe in the water movement, and then at some point a bolder plunge into the waters of our wonderful and wise community.

Peace in Ordinary Places

Peace in Ordinary Places

There’s a passage from the novel Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, that I’ve shared with you before. It evokes in me the same feeling that I got the other day, listening to the music we just heard for our offertory. The speaker in this novel is an aging pastor, looking back and reflecting on his life and ministry, and I love how he describes the blessing and peace of an ordinary Sunday in church; he says,

Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday.
It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain.
You can feel the silent and invisible life.
All it needs from you
is that you take care not to trample on it.

The Cost of Freedom

The Cost of Freedom

“Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?”

The Sufi mystic Rumi asked this question almost 800 years ago. And it is piercing questions like this, coupled with Rumi’s playfulness and love of life, and Coleman Barks’ accessible translations of work, that make Rumi the most popular poet in the United States today.

Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?

Why do we impose so many restrictions on ourselves, when there are so many possibilities available? Why do we hold back from joy, from daring, from deeper faith, from greater pleasure?

Keeping Home

Keeping Home

Hestia is not the best known of the Greek gods. As goddess of the home and hearth, she had no place in the Iliad or the Odyssey. She took part in no wars. Modern Americans might know her Roman name, Vesta, in reference to the Vestal Virgins, the priestesses who tended her sacred fire, but most of us know little beyond that.

Hers was the domestic sphere, the keeping of the house and its central flame, which gave heat and light to the family, cooked its food and served as a gathering place. Her story lacked the glory and pathos, the power and poetry, of the other Greek and Roman gods; and so she is little more than a footnote in books of mythology.

And yet, in her time, she was perhaps the most ubiquitous goddess in Ancient Greece and Rome. She had a place in every home hearth, a central fire in every village; hers was the first bit of every offering, the last word of every prayer.

Easter People

Easter People

Even in a normal year, I find the transition from Good Friday to Easter to be rather abrupt. It happens so fast! So I appreciate the invitation of Holy Week to enter the story, to travel with Jesus as he and his friends take their itinerant ministry from Galilee to the big city of Jerusalem, where the Roman army is in charge; where things don’t go well, and by the end of the week Jesus is arrested and put to death.

But this year, with this virus ravaging our world, it’s like Holy Week on steroids! Death and suffering isn’t symbolic, isn’t a metaphor—people are dying, and frontline workers are at risk because they don’t have the right protective gear. The virus seems to be disproportionally hurting those who are already at the margins. We’ve all lost things, and had our lives curtailed. One loss is the future we’d been imagining and looking forward to. Because none of us know, right now, what the future will bring, what our lives will look like, in the coming months. We just don’t know.

From Here to There

From Here to There

Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand,
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn;
through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light,
take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home…

That hymn, it was Martin Luther King Jr.’s favorite. And there’s a reason for that. He talked about it in sermon once, about a night when he felt tired and weak and worn. It was in the early days of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and around midnight Dr. King received a threatening phone call. The caller said if he didn’t leave Montgomery Dr. King and his family would be killed.

Grounded

Grounded

The other night at Vespers Clare shared Anne Lamott’s wisdom that prayer can be divided into three basic categories; that our prayers tend to be one of three words: help, thanks, or wow. And Clare rightly observed that now is a good time to be saying “Help!”

Worthy of Being Redeemed

Worthy of Being Redeemed

Just over a week ago, a number of us went across the street to Calvary Baptist Church for what they called “Prayer and a Movie.” The movie was the documentary “Emanuel,” about the murder of 9 people meeting in a prayer group, including their pastor, by a white supremacist. It was a powerful and moving experience. Especially to watch it with our neighbors, in their sanctuary. I am so grateful for that gathering, and for all of you who were able to be there, and for the connections that began that night. I am more hopeful than I was before that night.

WELCOMing. Caring. Faith. Community.

Universalist Unitarian Church of Haverhill
15 Kenoza Avenue, Haverhill, MA • 978-372-5173 • office@uuhaverhill.org
Mailing & office address: 16 Ashland Street, Haverhill, MA 01830

The land now called Haverhill sits on the original homelands of the Pennacook and Pentucket Nations, Algonquian-speaking peoples of the Wabanaki Confederacy.