This is a sanctuary for what’s real, and what is yet possible.

If I’m honest with you, I am heartbroken today. Tears are living just behind my eyelids and I feel a heaviness in my chest and my body that is making it feel like I’m moving through mud. My spirit is asking for slowness, for comfort and care. And in this season of growing darkness, in this cycle of history where hate and cruelty are taking center stage, in this time of transition in our congregation—I am slowing down to listen, to tend, and to care for myself and all of you. 

Grief is not something to be breezed by. Despair is not something to dust off and move along, though sometimes we have to do just that to survive. Sadness has lessons to teach us, if only we can carve out the space to listen and learn. 

On every level, grief is with us. Nationally, the proclamation of racism and the glorification of violence and persecution as a solution from the highest levels of government turns our stomachs and breaks our hearts. In our communities, we are witnessing our neighbors being targeted for torture, trauma, and disappearance all because of the color of their skin or the language they speak, the country they came from, or the courage they show as they live into their full humanity. 

In our congregation, we are grieving as we say goodbye to Dr. Glen Thomas Rideout as Director of Worship Arts Ministries. Grieving the change in our relationship with him, grieving the loss of his extraordinary gifts among us, grieving the comfort his presence offered us, and grieving the symbol of progress his presence signified for others of us in our journey to practice being a Beloved Community free of racism, poverty, and violence. We are not yet the people or the institution our faith calls us to be. There is grief here. 

Individually, many of us are struggling. Struggling to make ends meet, struggling to keep our heads up, struggling to live not only in despair, but with joy and presence and connection. 

It is in this moment that we arrive in December to our worship theme of Honest Hope, Lament, and Sanctuary: We move through darkness with honest hope—not by turning away from grief, but by holding it together. This is a sanctuary for what’s real, and what is yet possible.

This month, we will not shy away from the grief that is real. We will lament, and we will hold on to honest hope, together. Honest hope that reminds us that we are one part of a longer line of history and possibility. Honest hope that shows us to acts of solidarity and kindness right next to the daily doses of horror the news brings. Honest hope that asks us to choose it as an orientation, a posture, a way of being that allows us access to joy, vision beyond our lifetimes, and to act with compassion in the here and now regardless of the outcome. 

A quote from Vaclav Havel hangs on my wall above my desk at home: “Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.”

Join us for Sundays and special services this month as we anchor ourselves beyond the horizon in the cycle of the seasons and the stories of the generations. It will be so good to be together. 

In gratitude,

Rev. Jen