Beloveds,
The church year is well underway with exciting programs and plenty of opportunities to collaborate, build meaningful connections, and reaffirm our mission: To Practice Love, Explore Spirituality, Build Community, and Promote Justice.
On September 1st we celebrated Labor Day with a service filled with music and poetry to honor the labor activists who risked their lives so that we could have the eight hour work day and safer working conditions. Our children listened to the story “Before We Eat” a book that lifts up all the people who work very hard―planting grain, catching fish, tending farm animals, and filling crates of vegetables – and reminding us of what must happen before food gets to our tables to nourish our bodies and spirits. During the service, we made special mention of the Triangle Shirt Factory fire of 1911 where146 workers died. Most victims were women and girls, recent Italian and Jewish immigrants. The youngest were 14 year old Kate Leone and Rosaria Maltese. We honored their memory by singing in unison:
“As we go marching, marching
In the beauty of the day
A million darkened kitchens
A thousand mill lofts grey
Are touched with all the radiance
That a sudden sun discloses
For the people hear us singing
Bread and roses, bread and roses
Our lives shall not be sweated
From birth until life closes
Hearts starve as well as bodies
Give us Bread and give us roses!
On September 8th we joyfully congregated to celebrate our traditional In-Gathering with a Water Communion. This ritual was created by Carolyn McDade and Lucile Schuck Longview for a worship service called “Coming Home Like Rivers to the Sea” during the Women and Religion Continental Convocation of Unitarian Universalists in 1980.
As they shaped that service, they included a new, inclusive symbol of women’s spirituality: Water.
“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 choose water as our symbol of our empowerment…Water deepens in meaning for us, just as water deepens during its long and winding journey to the sea.”
This year, in the spirit of community, we included “The Vessel of Compassion” , a ceremony led by Milly Mullarky, Cecilia and Julia Hayes, and Jessica Belmont. Each carried a pitcher of water embedded with the stories and emotions of their life and community. They congregated around an empty vessel, united in the desire to listen to the stories and hearts of one another. As they poured the water, they also poured something precious and holy of themselves into the vessel of compassion: drops of liquid joy and laughter, the sweat from their brow, and tears of sadness and joy.
“Mingled together in harmony and blessed by the women through their reverence and love for each other, the empty vessel of water was now a full Vessel of Compassion. They had filled it with water to share the spirit of understanding and compassion with their community.”
On September 15th our Women’s Perspective Social Justice Ministry Team invited Megan Duncan, Volunteer and Engagement Coordinator for our community partner organization: The Sophia Way. Our share-the-plate raised over $3,000 to support their vital work. In my sermon I introduced the biblical Sophia: Wisdom. Once venerated she was presented as a dimension of the actual presence of God. The early church lifted up that wisdom, that beauty, that divinity by praying to her and making her presence felt in worship and all aspects of the liturgy. But gradually that devotion began to be discouraged and Sophia was ultimately deemed heretical by the patriarchy and women in general ceased to be celebrated as sources of wisdom and power. We were left with a distorted image and in its place women as obedient servants, sacrificial lambs, silent, considered holy only when she denies herself, when she keeps quiet, when she endures, when she obeys and sacrifices herself for her husband and children. Her value was reduced to her capacity to reproduce. I want to rage and grieve at the feminine face of God with scars, black eyes, burnt flesh, without a voice. I want to rage at the reality of how women’s bodies have been desecrated, colonized, abused, policed, controlled by laws by both the state and the church. I want to tenderly remember how long it took me to love my body. To recognize that this society teaches us to hate our bodies. I want to take a moment to breathe with you as you think about your own or your loved ones’ experiences at the hands of the patriarchy, at the hands of an abusive partner, at the hands of lawmakers who would deny your existence as a trans woman. I want to breathe with you as we honor that feminist face of the divine with so many scars. I want to breathe with you as we remember all the sages and warriors who were silenced. And I want to breathe with you as we recall our own stories and our own scars. Our bodies have ancestral memories. Our bodies are battlegrounds, our bodies are desecrated temples, our bodies are also sacred ground, scarred yet healing, as we decolonize ourselves with every breath. I then offered a blessing: “Because our bodies are constant targets of systemic oppression…we constantly need healing, renewal, a loving touch… we ache to be seen, to be heard, to be held…in the spirit of creating a communal healing circle right here in this our clearing…I invite us now to honor and bless our bodies, as they are and as you imagine them in the process of becoming…I invite you to receive a blessing, to feel the energy of our collective body anointing you, keeping in mind that we are all part of one body, cuerpo y alma, body and soul without borders…”
On September 22nd we welcomed Vivien Hao, UU congregational leader for three decades, co-conspirator, member of Diverse Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries, author of a grant for the first full-time BIPOC outreach/religious education position in a UU congregation, and producer of the documentary “Invisible No More” highlighting Asian Pacific Islander contributions within the Unitarian Universalist faith and the general community. “Although Asian Pacific Islanders (API) are the fastest growing racial group in the U.S., their numbers in Unitarian Universalism have not kept pace. Today, few Unitarian Universalist congregations count more than a handful of APIs in their midst, even in cities where APIs make up 30-60 percent of the general population. API UUs remained virtually invisible in the Unitarian Universalism denomination, even as the alarming increase in API hate crimes during and after the COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the physical, psychological, and social harm endured by a community that is often viewed monolithically as “the model minority.” APIs are in fact, extremely diverse. By illuminating this diversity and simultaneously celebrating our common Unitarian Universalist faith, we join other communities of color and LGBTQ brothers and sisters in building the world we dream about.” [Vivien Hao]
On September 29th we joined hundreds of UU congregations in a national Climate Justice Revival. Led by our amazing Earth and Climate Action Ministry Team, we learned about the intersectionality of climate change, poverty, racism, homophobia, and transphobia. We were encouraged not to succumb to despair by joining others and experiencing the power of community in making a difference. The revival was an opportunity to renew our Unitarian Universalist commitment to the planet. We were reminded that our UU faith calls on us to act for love. Together we can unite in loving our planet and making a difference for our communities.
UUA President Sofia Betancourt identifies this work, this calling, this shared leadership as central to her hopes and dreams for us as Unitarian Universalists,” She says: “Let me remind us that the work of climate justice is the work of disability rights. It’s the work of racial justice. It is gender justice and immigrant rights. It is the work of animal rights, of reproductive justice. It is central to our democratic organizing and to our work together to live into our values in the world.”
“As climate change rocks our world, there is a spirit at work in the congregations and movements committed to justice. As we make the connections between climate and justice, we are called to re-imagine what it means to do this urgent work in community.”
With Gratitude and Love,
Rev. Maria Cristina