  Beloveds, This is the time of Advent in the Christian tradition. It is a time of waiting - Christians wait for the birth of Jesus, a brown skin Palestinian Jew who taught love and justice for all and who defied empire. We light a candle each week, three purple ones and the last is pink. Perhaps you’ll join me in lighting candles each week. It is also a time of waiting in earth centered traditions. Waiting for the birth of the new sun. And, we are all waiting now, aren’t we? Waiting for the pandemic to slow and eventually to end. Waiting for a new administration to begin to undo the damage of the past four years. Waiting for justice and for healing - for way more than four years. I resonate with Advent on all these levels. So, I invite you to journey with me through Advent this year. Each week in my blog I will touch upon the themes of Advent -HOPE LOVE JOY PEACE. This coming Sunday marks the first Sunday of Advent The theme is HOPE Advent may be the season of waiting but it is not passive. Hope is not passive - it is not wishing or optimism. It is an existential condition, a disposition if you will. Now we are not all always disposed toward hope. Certainly our hope has been tested, but we live in hope toward an uncertain future. In fact, for me hope means I don’t know the future. Yet, there is that in life that lures us to creatively imagine possibilities for what might arise in us and around us. And that is the ground of our hope. This means that we remain present to the possibilities in each moment…we stay open in the process, even in incertitude.. Biologist and theologian Charles Birch wrote: “…In the business of living one must live not by certainties but by visions, risks and passion. Visions: to see the future in hope and expect change in people and situations. Risks: to venture forth in faith and not to count the cost. Passion: to feel with all one’s heart, to show emotions, to share one’s deepest experience. This is to be saved by hope.” Charles Birch This advent let us be saved by hope. Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune – without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never in extremity, It asked a crumb of me. Emily Dickinson  LOVE Beloveds, We are approaching the second week of Advent in which the theme is Love. Really the order of the themes varies in case you know them a different way. I actually agonized over which order to use, but settled on this Back to love. I love love. I think about love, I feel love, I live in Love… My Universalist faith is grounded in love It is an inclusive love that says no one is excluded from God’s love Everybody in. Nobody out. It is a love that is indwelling and the outside of us. Just today in a meeting of colleagues, the Rev Tom Owen-Towle described love as “the Sustainer, Nurturer, Nudger.” That spoke so deeply to me. It is the love that will not let us go, will not let us down, will not let us off. ~~~~ Love, the Sustainer This is the love that will not let us go. I do not believe that we can be separated from love. This is the love that is the beginning and the end, that is found in and through the cosmos and creation and you and me. In my most difficult times of tragedy and loss, it was the love that I felt for the beloved one who died, the compassion of friends, and the felt experience of being held in love and mystery that sustained me. How do you feel love? How has love sustained you? ~~~~ Love, the Nurturer This is the love that will not let us down. I think at times we can not feel love, not see it, feel separated from it, but it is the reality within which we are held. Sometimes I have to trust that this love is holding me. Sometimes I have to be still and silent to remember, and for me, all I have to do is look around. At the rest of nature - how it provides us with everything that we need, including beauty that feeds our soul. I remember... “There is a love holding me… There is a Love by Rebecca Parker Love, the Nudger This is the love that will not let us off. In my first church we held a conversation about right relations – an intentional decision to act in respectful and open ways toward one another. A member of the group, Hal, made the comment that even when it is not evident, even when it is difficult “love is looking in all the windows.” This was it! With that simple statement Hal captured my imagination and verbalized the sense of the ever-present, pervasiveness of love in and through reality. Whether we know it or not, love is present to us as a possibility in each and every moment. Love is looking in all the windows, knocking on all the doors – is seeking entry into our hearts at each and every moment. Love is looking in all the windows. A theologian Daniel Day Williams helps us understand this risk. “Love,” he says, “does not put everything at rest; it puts everything in motion. Love does not end all risk, it accepts every risk which is necessary for its work. Love does not resolve every conflict; it accepts conflict as the arena in which the work of love is to be done.” In the world as it is, love is nudging us to do justice, love mercy, and live love’s call and claim on our lives. Beloveds, in this time of Advent - let us wait on love, let us live in love, let us testify to the love that will not let us go, will not let us down and will not let us off. For as long as I live, I will testify to love Testify to Love  JOY - DECEMBER11, 2020 There is a brokenness Out of which comes the unbroken, A shatteredness out Of which blooms the unshatterable. There is sorrow Beyond all grief which leads to joy And a fragility Out of whose depths emerges strength There is a hollow space Too vast for words Through which we pass with each loss, Out of whose darkness We are sanctioned into being. There is a cry deeper than all sound Whose serrated edges cut the heart as we Break open to the place inside which is Unbreakable and whole, While learning to sing. Rashani Beloveds, We are approaching the third week of Advent - the time of active waiting and preparing. The theme for the third week of Advent is JOY. I think a lot about joy. I think about and I experience it - so the thinking about it is really me theorizing my experience. One could ask, “Why analyze joy? Doesn’t that take the, well, joy, out of it?” In these times, in all times I think, we need joy and it can seem elusive, or even perverse to claim it. How can I be joyful when there is so much suffering, so much evil? In this time of pandemics and chaos how can there be joy? Am I out of touch? What I’ve come to is distinguishing between “joy as happiness” and “joy as wholeness.” Similar to hope, joy as wholeness is a state of being that is not dependent upon external circumstances. And we can’t think our way into it - it is a disposition, much like hope. It arises. My mentor, philosopher David Ray Griffin, wrote of a spirituality that lifts up the power of connection for those who practice it. “[t]hey feel at home in the world, and feel a sense of kinship with other species, which are viewed as having their own experiences, values, and purposes. Through this sense of at-homeness and kinship, the modern desire to master and possess is replaced in postmodern spirituality with a joy in communion and a desire for letting-be.” This is the sixteenth anniversary of the death of my dearest beloved soulmate, Lil. An eight pound orange tabby through whom I learned “joy in communion.” When she died I was shattered. New to our congregation I hadn’t yet fully disclosed my connection and commitment to other animals. I grieved deeply, privately - a disenfranchised grief they call it. I couldn’t imagine life without her, and yet...life went on all around me. So many of you have experienced this kind of loss and grief...maybe right now. How dare I posit joy? The poet William Blake wrote a truth echoed through the ages: “Joy and woe are woven fine…” To hold both joy and sorrow does not diminish the sorrow, but provides a container for it. In joy-as-wholeness we recognize that in the depths of our sorrow there is joy – not joy promised or to come, but a joy that is deep and abiding – ever-present… In joy-as-wholeness we recognize that in the depths of our brokenness, our shatteredness, our fragility there is joy, a song that emerges from the cry of our depths …there is a sense in which no matter what the circumstances there is place – a deep well from which we draw and which sustains us. In joy-as-wholeness we are living from our connectedness with all of life. The poet Rumi wrote, “When you do things from your soul you feel a river of joy moving through you.” I see this joy as wholeness is about living authentically as who we are and apprehending our oneness with all that is. A while back I came across the phrase, “uncaused joy.” Uncaused joy…the joy that is not dependent upon external circumstances. This joy as wholeness is about authenticity in our connectedness. In joy-as-wholeness we recognize that in the depths of our sorrow there is joy – not joy promised or to come, but a joy that is deep and abiding – ever-present… In joy-as-wholeness we recognize that in the depths of our brokenness, our shatteredness, our fragility there is joy, a song that emerges from the cry of our depths …there is a sense in which no matter what the circumstances there is place – a deep well from which we draw and which sustains us...from which we sing… In joy-as-wholeness we are living from our connectedness with all of life. The poet Rumi wrote, “When you do things from your soul you feel a river of joy moving through you.” I see this joy as wholeness is about living authentically as who you are and apprehending our oneness with all that is. A while back I came across the phrase, “uncaused joy.” Uncaused joy…the joy that is not dependent upon external circumstances. This joy as wholeness is about authenticity in our connectedness. When we live our connection with all that is we find our call to act on behalf of others deepens this abiding joy… This is the joy that struggles for justice, that works for peace, that raises in us an endless song… How Can I Keep From Singing?  PEACE 12/18/20
Beloveds, The fourth Sunday of Advent is upon us. We have been actively waiting, preparing for the coming of Love into the world. Of course, I believe that Love, the Holy, is always present, but in these times we hope for a unique and powerful reminder of Love’s presence in, through and around us. The theme for this week is Peace. It just so happens that my inspiration word for the year is peace. So, I’ve been praying about, meditating on, and exploring peace for this year. It is not a new endeavor for me. My earliest activism was as a peace activist, so it has preoccupied me for a very long time. We all also long for inner peace...that sometimes elusive, but oh so welcome, state where we feel a settledness, a centered groundedness, even while all around there may be chaos and struggle. We are not all always in that state, but we know there are practices that can bring it in closer. Prayer. Meditation. Music. Animals. You have a list of your own I’m sure. In these times, when peace seems remote beyond what we experience in our inner lives, we know that living from peace can contribute to peace in the world - it is good and worthy to bring that forth in our lives. And, peace also needs to be actively sought and brought about. With the violence perpetrated upon black, brown, indigenous and people of color in this country, we assert “No Justice! No Peace!” There can be no peace until worth and dignity is granted to all. There can be no peace as long as there is a worldwide culture of dominance and control. This is why we work for peace. What I call an active peace. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it.” Rev Dr Martin Luther King said, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.” Nelson Mandela - “Peace is not just the absence of conflict; peace is the creation of an environment where all can flourish regardless of race, color, creed, religion, gender, class, caste or any other social markers of difference.”So it is that we anticipate peace and the coming of Love to guide us. In times of war and unrest poets have written of hope and peace. One of my favorites is “Christmas Bells.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), a Unitarian and Transcendentalist, wrote the poem, “Christmas Bells,” on December 25th 1864. which was set to music and became the hymn "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" on December 25th 1864. Two years earlier Longfellow had lost his wife of 18 years in a tragic accidental fire. Then during the American Civil War, Longfellow's oldest son Charles Appleton Longfellow joined the Union army as a soldier without his father's knowledge. Longfellow was informed by a letter dated March 14, 1863, after Charles had left. "I have tried hard to resist the temptation of going without your leave but I cannot any longer," he wrote. "I feel it to be my first duty to do what I can for my country and I would willingly lay down my life for it if it would be of any good". Charles soon got an appointment as a lieutenant but, in November, he was severely wounded and it was thought that he would be paralyzed for life, but he recovered more than expected. While the civil war raged, deep in grief, Longfellow was inspired to write "Christmas Bells". It was set to music and became the beloved hymn "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." Beloveds, in this season, amidst violence and hate and pandemics, we anticipate the birth of Love and Light into the world, and we anticipate the birth of our brother, Jesus, who subverted norms, defied empire, and calls us to free the prisoner, care for the sick and the poor, the widow, and the oppressed. Let us now and always work for peace with justice. I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day Join us for our Christmas Eve Candlelight service at 8pm We will sing carols, hear the story, and light candles of Hope, Love, Joy and Peace
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