The Other You
Author Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “The wisdom of the Desert Fathers (early Christian mystics and hermits) includes the wisdom that the hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self – to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it. All you have to do is recognize another you ‘out there’ – your other self in the world – for whom you may care as instinctively as you care for yourself. To become that person, even for a moment, is to understand what it means to die to your self. This can be as frightening as it is liberating. It may be the only real spiritual discipline there is.” As we explore this theme of “Wholeness,” we’ll explore how our wholeness is intimately and irrevocably tied to the neighbors all around us.
Order of Service: March 20 Order of Service
Offering Plate Recipient: The Veteran Resilience Project (give here)
Special Music: First Universalist Folk Band
March worship theme: Wholeness
Wholeness is not perfection. Wholeness is not static. Wholeness is more akin to the push and pull of right relationship, alive and available at any given moment. Our Jewish cousins call wholeness, shalom. Although we often translate shalom as peace, a more fitting understanding might be patterns of right relationship, just and true, that render every life healthy and whole. This month we explore patterns of wholeness.
Image: “Moonlight” by Alice Popkorn CC BY-ND 2.0
Call to Worship & Sermon:
