October 3, 2024

Beloveds,

I look forward to being with you this weekend. This has been a heavy week. Hurricane Helene with devastating impacts in Appalachia, another wave of people fleeing the expanding violence in the Middle East, a Vice Presidential debate, and the Transforming Hearts Collective discussion with so much beauty, community, impact and pain, grief, and loss. Beloveds, that is a lot. That is a lot to grieve, to inspire tension, a lot of gloom as we face the pain of the world. I find myself holding Cole Arthur Riley’s reflection on our capacity to hold together the extraordinary and the ordinary in her book Black Liturgies. Inviting the sacred pause and the beauty in the ordinary moments.

“God of every beautiful thing,

Make us people of wonder. Show us how to hold on to nuance and vision when our souls become addicted to pain, to the unlovely. It is far easier to see the gloom and decay; so often it sings a louder song. Attune our hearts to the good still stirring in our midst, not that we would give ourselves to toxic positivity or neglect the pain of the world, but that we would be people capable of existing in the tension. Grant us habits of sacred pause. Let us marvel not just at the grand or majestic, but beauty’s name etched into every ordinary moment. Let the mundane swell with a mystery that makes us breathe deeper still. And by this, may we be sustained and kept from despair. Amen.”

Beloveds, let us bring our joy to each other and share it—growing our community in love and living our values. Let us bring our griefs and sorrows to each other to be divided as we make meaning of the events of our world. Let us breathe and embrace the mystery of life in each and every ordinary moment while holding our extraordinary times.

Rev. Kathryn