Dear Friends:
I hope that you’re excited about pizza and games tonight! Asa and I are looking forward to it. We’re bringing a few of our favorite games and one of Asa’s friends. It should be a lovely time in the fellowship hall. Our religious community doesn’t just exist on Sunday morning and gathering to share food and fun is just as important as worshipping together. It is a wonderful way to exercise one of the primary purposes of the church: bringing people together to share our lives. And what is more central to our lives than food and fun?
This month I am leading two worship services. The first is tomorrow and is titled “Intangible Dreams.” In this service we will consider how Unitarian Universalist congregations are places where we are free to imagine how the future might be different from the present. And we will ask: What shall we dream? What must we do to make those dreams a reality?
My second service for the month is on the 18th. In honor of Black History month, “A Black Christ” will prompt to us to ask: What would it mean if Christ and other images of the divine were imagined as black?
The texts for both of my sermons from last month are now online. You can read “You and I” and “Two Bodies, One Heart” on my blog.
I know that the national debate over immigration has been a concern for many of us over the last months. After the Trump administration announced that it would cancel Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Salvadoran immigrants I posted a reflection I wrote on life in El Salvador after taking part in a human rights delegation in 2014. It is worth a read, especially if you would like to know more about why so many people from Central America come to the United States. You can read my piece “Fleeing a Culture of Violence” here.
Finally, I close with a poem from the poet Nikki Giovanni. We will be using it in worship tomorrow.
Revolutionary Dreams
i used to dream militant
dreams of taking
over america to show
these white folks how it should be
done
i used to dream radical dreams
of blowing everyone away with my perceptive powers
of correct analysis
i even used to think i’d be the one
to stop the riot and negotiate the peace
then i awoke and dug
that if i dreamed natural
dreams of being a natural
woman doing what a woman
does when she’s natural
i would have a revolution
I look forward to seeing you soon!
love,
Colin
