A note from Dr. Glen Thomas Rideout, Director of Worship Arts Ministries:

I know her as Aunt LaVerne—one of my family’s rare extroverts, a queen of a woman with a noticeably vibrant way about her, and a laugh you can hear from Baltimore. The colors and flow of everything she wears reminds instantly of autumn. My aunt is also the reverend—a decorated minister, and one of my first teachers in the art of ministry. 

When I was 15, my very first year as a student-preacher, Aunt LaVerne was adamant to teach me how to take a compliment well. It took me years to know why. 

“When someone offers you a good word, you take it” she insisted to my very shy self. “Receive with grace and gratitude. There are blessings for both of you there.” 

This memory resurfaced for me at the First Universalist staff’s annual Halloween potluck on Wednesday. I’m not typically the biggest fan of holiday parties, but this one is something different to me. It’s taken me a year to know why. 

The central tradition of this particular shindig is to offer the most delicious tasting, most-bizarre-looking foodstuff imaginable. My go-to example is Rev. Jen’s legendary meatloaf baked in the mold of a human foot. If you can say “feetloaf” without bursting into laughter and delight, you’re steeler than I! 

Just outside, the orange and reds of countless tiny leaves flew off the trees wilder than usual, hundreds upon hundreds in a wind-swept choreography. I kept thinking it was snowing! I watched enchanted as the trees gave their leaves to the earth beneath so freely, and the earth made room—both knowing well how leaves become the earth and, in time, the tree, again and again.

Around the potluck table, we danced the steps of our own tradition steeped in a similar wisdom, a lesson I am learning more deeply now. This willingness to feed each other nourishes our common life and rustles up our laughter; and this willingness to eat well together, too, is a work of nourishment, a feast of human grace.

This month in worship, our theme is “Giving and Receiving” as love shows us how. We are often taught to give generously, and indeed giving is an art to learn and constantly to improve; yet giving alone is not enough to nurture the health of ourselves or our communities. So much of life seems to teach us to retreat from the charity of others; yet it is the very illusion of separateness which rends the heart of our work together. 

What will it mean for us to give well and meet the needs of our community? What will it mean for us to be willing enough to acknowledge the presence of others, to receive in the places the community can be a gift to us? Join us in worship to dance with these questions in song, in word, in company shared. “There is a blessing for all of us there,” Aunt LaVerne would say. If we are willing, the journey can feed us all.