Read the full issue of this week’s newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal March 14

In this week’s Liberal, Rev. Jen Crow writes:

“We all have a limited number of choices in our lifetime, so choose carefully.”

Several years ago, I was talking with a friend and she said something that has stuck with me ever since. “We all have a limited number of choices in our lifetime, so choose carefully,” she said. In that moment, this statement elicited two simultaneous feelings in me: “duh, of course,” and “holy cow, this changes everything!” When these two feelings come up together, I know I need to pay attention.

As a person in my early 30s at the time, the future felt pretty expansive. I didn’t think much about the fact that my lifespan was (and is) actually limited, and I rarely took that knowledge one position further to acknowledge that the number of choices I had in front of me were limited. I knew that the big choices mattered – things like what job to go for and whether I got married or not and to whom – but this statement made me look at all of my choices differently. It meant that every choice mattered. It meant that it mattered if I gave my attention in those five minutes to my child or my iphone. It meant that it mattered if I called my mother today or tomorrow or next week. It meant that it mattered if I spoke up in that clothing store or at that PTA meeting when I saw racism in action. It meant that it mattered if I put my money toward supporting the institutions and efforts that were important to me. Each choice was part of a larger pattern that made up my life, and each choice was happening within a time-limited framework. My mother wasn’t going to be alive forever, my kids weren’t going to want to hang out with me forever, centuries old patterns of racism and white supremacy weren’t going to change without me, and the institutions and efforts I cared about actually needed me if they were going to thrive. Each of my choices mattered.

This realization comes and goes for me as I get caught up in the swirl of my daily life and responsibilities – but that statement from my friend has stuck with me. We all have a limited number of choices in our lifetime, so choose carefully. It reminds me to be active in my choices – to be animated in our faith, as Rev. Hutt asked us to be last Sunday in her sermon. It tells me that this is the time, this is the moment, to make the choices that shape me and my life and this world into the larger pattern I long for.

As we consider the question of what sacrifice means to us this month as Unitarian Universalists, I wonder what choices we might make to lean even more fully into our faith and our core belief that each and every person belongs in the circle of humanity? I’d love to hear your answers.

In faith,
Rev. Jen