Archive for category: Congregation

Easter: Wild Uncertainty

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The resurrection of Jesus from the Gospel of Mark

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.

They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back.

As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”

So, they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Wild Uncertainty

Jesus is offstage for his own resurrection. And we experience this moment with the women who have come to tend the dead body of their loved one.

First, they are worried about the stone. It’s a large stone, large enough to keep wild animals and casual bandits away from the body. They saw it put in place, and they don’t think that the three of them will be able to move it. But they go anyway. The task they anticipate is emotional, anointing the body of their friend and leader, and likely unpleasant, since he died violently and was put away over a day ago. It’s also dangerous. Would caring for Jesus’ body mark them as rebels too? Would someone else be anointing their bodies tomorrow? They don’t wait to collect more people to help them move the stone–they just go as soon as they can. Maybe following Jesus has taught them to expect miracles.

But they didn’t expect this one. The stone was already rolled away. I can imagine that for the last 36 hours they’ve been trying to figure out how to move the stone, when they weren’t simply grieving. They were trying to figure out how they might move the stone without getting anyone else in trouble. And the obstacle they showed up dreading was already taken care of.

But then, another surprise. The tomb is empty. Not totally empty–there’s this guy in a white robe who narrates what they’re seeing, or not seeing in this case. How many of us are feeling burnt out, running on fumes, or just plain empty? What is the empty tomb to us, when we are so energetically empty?

Well, what was it to Mary, Mary, and Salome? I imagine they’re empty, too. In the last few days, they’ve seen their loved one and leader arrested, tortured, and executed. The other members of their group have scattered in fear–the same could happen to them. This is terrible trauma. And the three of them are the only ones who are daring enough, or heartbroken enough, to stay, watch the whole ordeal, and risk their lives caring for Jesus’ dead body.

Suddenly, they’ve put everything on the line for a body that’s not even there. They’ve given everything they have, they’re empty, the tomb is empty.

This stranger tells them not to be alarmed, but they are. They didn’t know what would happen before, but now they don’t even know what is happening. The text describes their terror, dread, and fear.

They leave the tomb. What they came to do is not possible–they can’t anoint a body that isn’t there–so they leave not knowing what to say.

And there it ends. Not just our reading, but the earliest gospel, the first narrative account of the ministry and miracles of Jesus of Nazareth just stops when Mary, Mary, and Salome leave the tomb. Later editors tacked on endings to make more sense of the moment. Later gospel authors give us time with post-resurrection Jesus. But the gospel of Mark originally ended when the women, Jesus’ would-be mourners, leave the tomb.

I hear a message in that moment for now. We’re on empty, coming from empty, shaped by trauma, and heading out into a future we don’t understand yet.

We don’t know what’s outside the tomb, any more than we could have predicted what was inside. When we don’t know, we can go back to what we do know.

What’s your stone? What obstacles are you dreading right now? What’s the thing that is in your way, preventing you from doing the thing you most need to do?

I can’t speak to your personal answer, but collectively we’re living in a time that might look shockingly familiar to the author of the gospel of Mark, which was written in the Roman empire around the year 70. The Roman empire depended on religious nationalism, on the cult of devotion to the emperor, to stabilize its expanding borders. And here we are watching our government lean into imperialism, Christian nationalism, and senseless authoritarianism. We’re at war in the Middle East, and we remember that for some of us it’s not so remote people in this congregation have loved ones in Israel, in Palestine, in Lebanon, in Iran. We remember that governments go to war but it’s the people who live with the violence and loss.

Mary, Mary, and Salome faced the terror of having to undermine the most powerful empire, which occupied their land, to grieve and tend their dead. We live within the American empire, founded on colonialism, occupation, and exploitation, and it underscores every act of care we try to offer the world. For some reason, call it stubbornness or integrity or even faith, we haven’t given up. We still care for one another. We still try to make the world a better place, even when people in power try to claim the world for themselves.

Being willing to face the obstacle makes it moveable.

So, we arrive already depleted at this tomb, find out that the problem was not what we expected, and now must go back out and figure out how to live in a world turned upside-down. Like Mary, Mary, and Salome, we have each other. We don’t have to do it alone. You have people who will help you through the strangest and most confusing situations. Maybe in other parts of your life, but certainly right here, in this congregation.

We need one another, so we’re there for one another. Universalism comes from the idea that we are all children of God, that God loves everyone so much that of course we’re all saved. So, what are we going to do if we’re not busy trying to get into heaven? We take care of each other. We look for suffering and find ways to help. We cry out for justice in the face of oppression. We try over and over again to learn that us means all of us, not just people like us. We try to put children and disabled people and outcasts at the center of our community, just like Jesus. We fight for the rights of those who suffer and die at the hands of the state, like Jesus did. And we pray. We open to what is larger than ourselves and let it change us.

Oh beloveds, we’re coming out of the tomb, just like Mary, Mary, and Salome did. We’re coming out of the tomb, and there’s so much to do.

Please join me in prayer.

Spirit of life and death, love and belonging, who has spoken to us in many traditions and speaks to us still, we are empty. We are empty and coming from more emptiness. Help us to remember that emptiness is a state of possibility, not just lack. Sound an echo through our empty soul that the vessel itself might sing an alleluia.

In the holiest of names and the sweetest of silences, we pray.

Amen. Alleluia.

We’ve got siding!

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The Background
In the spring of 2022 the UUSA received information that our meetinghouse required immediate, professional attention. The siding on the old part of the building had failed, putting at risk the integrity of the whole building.

Our course of action was clear. We had to vet and hire a contractor, purchase materials, and complete the work in the fall of 2022.

The building project itself was completed without a hitch — thanks, in large part, to the considerable efforts of UUSA volunteers. Work was completed on time and under budget. The building  looks better than ever.

If you want to see how our beloved meetinghouse has changed over the past 130 years, see:

Our Meetinghouse History

The Siding Loan

We used over $46,000 of our cash reserves as a down payment to get the project started, but we had no option other than to finance the rest. We explored several possible grant opportunities but found we were not eligible. So, we secured the financing through careful consultation with our long-time financial partner at Florence Savings Bank. We borrowed $173,942 and were making monthly loan payments of $1,188.37 from financial reserves for the first year.

During our Shingle Mingle in the fall of 2023, we raised $42,000. We will apply $32,000 that has been received to date (Feb-24) to pay down the principle. The UUSA Finance Committee has recommended that we commit an additional $50,000 from our financial reserves towards the loan, bringing the total to $82,000 to pay down the loan.

The payments enable us to restructure the loan and reduce our monthly payments to approximately $645 per month, which will come out of our annual budget.

Thank You!

We are greatly appreciate all of the people who helped arrange for the necessary repair work. We appreciate the contributions from the congregation toward paying down the loan so that the monthly payments are manageable. This has been a community effort in response to an urgent situation.








Water Knows No Boundaries

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Sermon from the September 10, 2023 service

During the summer, I travel to Kentucky to spend time with my family. The drive is an old familiar friend by now. My GPS navigation welcomes me to New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and at last Kentucky. If I pay attention I see more revealing signs along the way, the ones that let me know that I have entered a new watershed. 

States are human business, colonial divisions to organize humans by laws, mere hundreds of years old, arbitrary in many cases, only sometimes related to a geologic reality. Watersheds are real. The water we pour to the earth in the Connecticut river valley flows to the interconnected ocean via the trough of that river, as it has for hundreds of millions of years, a rift valley gathering water from 148 tributaries. 

In comparison with the states and European colonies, the native people of the Connecticut River valley have lived and traveled by its waters for thousands of years, including the Norwottuck, Pocumtuck, and Nipmuck people who were and continue to be the stewards of the land I preach from today. 

Not all the waters stitching the land together are as old as the Connecticut. The lower Hudson River is somewhere between 13,000 and 26,000 years, a relative baby–but its power as a watershed is no less real. 

When we look at maps, borders divide us, but water connects us. Water creates communities, economies, families. And by us, I mean not just humans, but all beings. What is an ecosystem if not an economy of the natural world? The migrations and life cycles of fish and birds, guided by bodies of water, just as much as the humans who observe them.

Maps are full of lines, of course, but pay attention to which lines are designed to keep us apart and which trace eons of tangible reality. 

Understanding our place in the world only by the divisions we draw upon it, by these borders of towns and cities, counties, states, nations, we miss so much of the picture. We are not separate from nature, and going back to the paths of water, real beyond all human divisions, reminds us to look for what’s really happening beyond our anthropocentric assumptions.

It grows harder each year for this planet to sustain us in the ways we are accustomed. We break record numbers of weather-related records at an accelerating pace. We know the patterns of climate grief. To make it through the crisis of the coming years, we will need the strength of our interconnections more than we need our external classifications of your problem, not mine, of red states and blue states, of winners and losers.

Our Universalist ancestors knew that there was a single destiny for all people – that God loves everyone, and no one is damned. It’s our business to do what we can to heal this world now. 

To do that, we need one another. We flow together, we pool our strength, we catch one another’s tears, and we flow on, opening our hearts to the wider world, past shifting sands. We find reality in our interconnection, and whatever comes, we face it together. 

Our combined waters are like our covenant, each one of us bringing our whole selves to this community, affirming that this connection matters. There is power in our coming together. Power shared, held with intention and love, is a force for healing and sustaining life, and power out of balance can harm or even destroy.

At the beginning of our year, we come back to one another, come back to this covenant we have chosen together, to create together our stock of ritual water that will bless us this year. 

May we be part of the blessing and healing of this world.

The Water Ritual

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As drops of water come together.
From the sky.
Run across land.
Run together.
Form puddles, streams, rivers
Ponds, lakes, seas
Watersheds
Oceans
We come together.
Pay tribute as tributaries.
Map the rivers of our hearts.
For we are greater when together.
We come to connect to our power like a mighty flood.
We come to be refreshed like a cool drink.
We come to find comfort like a hot bath.
We come to be part of something bigger like the capillary hydration of the tallest trees.
We come to know our deepest nature.
To know and be known in this place
Coming together
Called by hope for the future.
Called by love for this life and our fellow travelers.
Called by our own worthiness and the worthiness of all people.

If we trace the water ritual that we celebrate today back to its original source, we go back to 1980, to the Women and Religion Continental Convocation of Unitarian Universalists. Carolyn McDade–the composer who wrote some of our congregation’s most beloved hymns–and Lucile Shuck Longview–a powerful feminist lay leader–devised a ritual where eight women from around this continent brought water from their distant places to the convocation in East Lansing, Michigan, called “Coming Home Like Rivers to the Sea.”

They write, “Water is more than simply a metaphor. It is elemental and primary, calling forth feelings of awe and reverence. Acknowledging that the ocean is considered by many to be the place from which all life on our planet came—it is the womb of life—and that amniotic waters surround each of us prenatally. We now realize that [this worship service] was for us a new story of creation. We choose water as our symbol of our empowerment.”

Congregations recognized the power in this ritual of the many waters and experiences poured into a common bowl. They began to use the convocation’s water ritual to celebrate their fall ingathering.

We celebrate the water ritual, almost 43 years after the convocation, to celebrate our own coming together. If you brought water from a place in your life, hold it in your hands. When you pour water into our common bowl, call to mind a time that water has touched your life in the last year. Imagine the place that the water comes from. What is meaningful to you about that place? Was anyone there with you? Do you remember sounds or smells or things someone said? Do any feelings come up in connection with this water? Take a breath, and when you’re ready, let it go.

If the water comes from a place of strength, share some of that strength with the congregation. If the water comes from hardship and struggle, allow the congregation to hold part of the burden. If the water comes from wellsprings of tradition, deepen our streams with this continuity. If the water comes from rains of change, share this fluidity with us. If the water comes from a clean start, share some of its freshness.

Many Unitarian Universalist congregations are celebrating this ritual today, across the continent and around the world. We know that all the planet’s waters are connected in the water cycle. Let us share our water.

Join us for the UUA Common Read – “On Repentance and Repair”

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“A must-read for anyone navigating the work of justice and healing. Rabbi Ruttenberg weaves together stories and insights that prompt big questions for every person who aspires to build bridges and help shape a more just and inclusive nation and world.” —Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley

Please join us for an engaged discussion on this important and challenging book….

Register Here

The first meeting of our book group examined repentance and repair at the personal level. Rabbi Ruttenberg reminded us that we have all experienced harm, we have all done harm, and we have all observed harm done to others. The second session of our book group will focus on repentance and repair at the level of the congregation. If you missed the first session, you are welcome to join us for the second and/or third meetings on zoom.

Summary:

On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World taps 12th century writings from the Jewish physician and scholar, Maimonides, for a fresh perspective on how we make ourselves accountable to others. Rabbi Ruttenberg applies Maimonides’ five-step process to a variety of modern circumstances. As a UU Common Read selection, this book gives a glimpse into Judaism, one of Unitarian Universalism’s foundational sources, and invites us to follow our own faith into practices of transformative atonement.    

At a time when Unitarian Universalists are striving to widen our circles, to improve our relationships across the interconnected web of life, and to become better builders of Beloved Community, On Repentance and Repair by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (Beacon Press, 2022) is a powerful choice for our next UU Common Read.

Please plan on joining Reverend Rachael, Jeff Clark, and John Gerber for a discussion of the topics presented in this book for:

Session One – Sunday, October 15 from 12:00 noon to 3:00pm in the Meetinghouse (in person)

Session Two – an evening session on Zoom on November 14; 7:00 pm to 9:00pm

The second session will focus on the Covenant and repentance and repair at the congregational level.

Session Three – an evening session on Zoom on December 5; 7:00pm to 9:00pm

The third session will focus on repentance and repair at the societal level. This will be particularly relevant to those interested in the Eighth Principle and reparations for injustices done to Indigenous Peoples in New England.

You are welcome to join us for any or all of these conversations.

You can purchase the paperback version of the book now.

If you have not done so yet, please register. REGISTER HERE

“The work of repentance, all the way through, is the work of transformation… It’s about ownership – owning who we have been and what we have done, and also owning the person that we are capable of becoming.” ~ Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg