Labor Day

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Learn more about our Religious Education Programs for children and youth here!

If you don’t have a chalice, but want to light one, check out our Making a Chalice at Home page.

In person services are followed by coffee hour.

Children’s Story

Sermon Audio

Sermon Text

Today we commemorate Labor Day. We remember and honor the workers. The people whose sweat built railroads and bridges, the miners who seldom saw the sun as they toiled endless hours in the bowels of the mines. The women and children who worked in the textile mills. The migrant farmworkers who broke their backs to feed us and never got paid. The workers who risked everything, including their lives, by marching and striking for their rights. Those who made it possible for us to have an 8 hour workday and time off. Time to rest, time to play, time to sing: Bread and roses. Mother Jones, Peter McGuire, César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, Eugene Debs, Joe Hill, Philip Randolph, and so many more. And the singers whose music told the stories:  Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Victor Jara, Violeta Parra, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Odetta, Harry Belafonte, Bernice Johnson Reagon and Sweet Honey in the Rock, to name a few. I grew up reading the Communist Manifesto along with the Diary of Ché Guevara, Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, and the poetry of Pablo Neruda. 

I grew up listening to songs and stories around the kitchen table: Si tuviera un martillo/If I had a hammer… de que lado estás?/which side are you on? Solidarity forever…Te Recuerdo Amanda…Here’s to you Nicola and Bart…Storytelling and singing was our ritual. It is how I learned to listen to my elders, to the sounds of birds in the toothless whistling of my grandmother, to the sound of the wind as the uncles made circles with their arms, stirring the air as they breathed “wissshhhh/wisssshhhh/wisssshhhh, imitating the birds flying over the Atacama desert. Stories about good people who dedicated their lives to  fighting for the rights of the workers: the miners, the railroad workers, the factory workers, the garbage collectors, the farmworkers, and all the workers who deserved to be treated with dignity and to receive fair wages.  I learned that there is strength in numbers and that community is our lifeline. I learned that unions make us strong. I learned that our individual voices are important and our collective voices essential to transforming ourselves and bringing about social change. El Pueblo unido jamás será vencido!/ the people united shall never be defeated!

And when we were silenced, we learned to resist in many different ways. In Chile, we learned to sew tiny arpilleras – appliqued quilts – made of flour sacks and scraps of fabric which told our stories, embroidered memories of kids flying kites over the dunes, of the Irish priest who risked his life by opening the church to the widows of the disappeared, of women sitting around the kitchen table making stone soup, of empty streets and walls papered with posters asking Dónde están? Where are they? … Seeing our lives stitched on those arpilleras taught me that stories have many textures, that threads are broken over the years, and that there is always pain piercing the heart like the needle through the cloth, when we remember those who are gone… The arpillera is often made collectively, with as many hands as visions, like a quilting bee, bringing people together, sometimes sharing laughter and gossip, sometimes stitched in silence, and sometimes abandoned, lost, left behind for many reasons, or put away for years without being finished. Between voice and silence there is a place to hold both grief and joy, hope and despair. No matter how we tell our stories, in how many different ways, the ritual of storytelling brings us back to ourselves, to our authentic voice, reaffirming that we matter, and that we are willing to bear witness to one another’s lives, willing to stitch together the fragments of our lives when we fall apart. I believe that storytelling in community has saved my life more than once. Sharing our stories in a safe and brave space can be healing. Telling our stories can be a way of remapping our emotional and spiritual cartographies. Stitch by stitch, we can reclaim our place in the world, and redefine our sense of self. 

Collective storytelling, like an arpillera, weaves in and out of time, shows different textures, becomes frayed with time, is collectively made, multivocal, and can be “read” from different directions. Stories transcend definitions and categorical labels. They are not a singular, uniform, perfectly framed snapshot of one particular moment. Our collective stories can also become frayed, fuzzy, torn, put away, forgotten, lost in translation, broken pieces left behind when it’s too painful to remember. 

Like unfinished arpilleras, our collective stories can also redirect our steps away from the illusion of certainty, of perfection and linear chronology. Sharing stories, stitching memories together, can also allow us to see our shared communal experiences from different perspectives, to honor those who came before us, and to offer our unconditional love to the new generations. What will those future generations see when they try to find out who we were? How will the color and texture of our values  show them what we treasured? 

If we were to make our East Shore arpillera, our own storytelling quilt, What story would you like to share? I’d like to tell the story of our many ministries: How we care for each other, our families, and the environment. How we learn from and support our indigenous neighbors. How we believe that Black Lives Matter. I’d like to show us making sandwiches for the unhoused, marching and singing with Pride, teaching OWL, hiking and gardening, gathering on Sundays to nourish our spirits and share joys & sorrows. Our arpillera would offer us another opportunity to look back, to remember, perhaps even to restitch and repair those places where the fabric is frayed and the stitches have become undone. And it would offer us an opportunity to add new colors and textures as we continue to create our shared journey stitch by stitch.

I have brought today some pieces of fabric to get us started on making our own ESUC arpillera. Some of these pieces have been recut and repurposed. They are leftovers from when some of my former congregants, my mom, and I made masks during the first weeks of the pandemic, for our community as well as for indigenous  communities that did not have access to masks. I also brought some blue pieces with water designs to remind us that we are on Coast Salish people’s territory. There are pieces with musical notes because our choir and our music director are inspirational and just awesome! And there are green pieces for our garden, our hikers, the trees on our beautiful campus, and all the moss and cedar and pine trees that bless us with their presence. There are pieces of fabric from Chile, representing our shared ministry and  shiny purple squares with whimsical spirals and stars that celebrate our playfulness and remind us that we are all made of stardust. There are rainbow colored flowers that celebrate with Pride our LGBTQIA+ selves, friends, families, and communities for we are a Welcoming congregation! There are pieces of kente cloth, to reaffirm that Black Lives Matter and in honor of the African American members who are no longer part of our community. We remember them. They are not forgotten. And there are pieces with monarch butterflies, a symbol of transformation in honor of our ancestors.  I invite you now to bless this fabric. Take a deep breath, place the fabric in your hands or near your heart, and think about what this community means to you. Remember. How has this community touched your heart? Kept you together when all else seemed to be falling apart? How has this community been a source of strength, hope, and beauty in the midst of uncertainty and fear? If you are new to East Shore, who and what do you hope to find here? And as you bless these pieces of fabric that will become our communal stories, I offer you a blessing: May your hands be blessed for all the meals you have prepared, all the seeds you have planted, all the babies you have held, all the beautiful art you have created, all the heavy loads you have lifted, and all the paper you have shuffled. May your hands be blessed for all the bridges they have built and all the walls they have taken down brick by brick. May your hands be blessed for knowing when to hold on and when to let go. May your hands be blessed for all the pages they have turned, all the picket signs they’ve held and all the peace banners they’ve waved. May your hands be blessed for all the music they have written and all the instruments that made the music that saved our lives. May your hands be blessed for all the gardens they have yet to tend and all the loved ones you will embrace.  

We will collect the pieces of fabric and throughout the year, we will stitch them together as we share our stories. Whether you consider yourself a quilter or not, theé important thing is to get together to share our stories and create a brave and safe space for community building and healing. May our arpillera reflect our beauty, our hopes, and our beautiful true colors: Our labor of love.  Amen!