How does your congregation share joys and concerns? In UU communities large and small, I have seen our hopes and lamentations lifted up from the pulpit, or popcorn-style from a roving microphone, or silently carried up with tealight smoke. As children in Religious Education we would share in a circle, the Big Milestones and Big Worries nestled right up next to the “small” milestones and “frivolous” joys.
Our July 2022 newsletter is full of joys and sorrows. Our news, our reality (always, but especially undeniably now) is full of joys and sorrows, big and small, all nestled right up next to each other. This past month especially, many of us have been feeling our rights, our safety and our environment threatened. And many of us have been feeling acutely reminded of the ways our rights, our safety and our environment were not protected in the first place.
We want to acknowledge where we are—hope and fear and lament and thanksgiving all talking over each other—and to remind you that we are here together.
Gather with us (and here I mean the big-tent “us,” all of us). Gather with us at your summer services and in your neighborhood and at your vigils and protests and fellowship hours. We need each other. The work of building justice and compassion in a broken world has always been a foolhardy undertaking. I am glad for my caravan of hardy “fools” and our many hard-won victories.
Sincerely,
Emily Parker
Communications Coordinator and fool on no caravan of despair