Last Sunday during worship, I was distracted. I sit in a corner of a second-floor room, with windows facing both north and west, a large locust tree to my left. I look out toward St. Peter, toward a triangle of space created by the roof lines of my house and the neighbor’s, with ash trees, oaks and pines softening the edges of the vista. Last Sunday morning flying things—robins, crows, hawks, hummers, wasps, beetles, and mosquitoes—they all decide to enter my visual range—in the distance, in the eaves, against the window, in the locust tree.

Truth is, I wasn’t really distracted. I was captivated. Such moments feel sacred to me, the way that I want to feel often and especially when I am with you on a Sunday morning. It is much like I am captivated by some play of light through the stained glass of the Fellowship sanctuary, by a tear sliding down someone’s cheek, by a smile or a smirk, by a child’s babble or complaint. All such moments remind me of our earthy connections—breath and bone, light and matter, airy and precipitated—and earthy moments are for me the most luminous. They are fleeting and can be hard to hold on to. And so they are precious and special, because as they are so ordinary and mundane.

Such moments are the reason I raise little altars at home, like the Fellowship chancel and pulpit (or stage and lectern, if you prefer)—purposefully ordered and maintained with an aim toward beauty and meaning. I have altars all over my house—little areas of ordered objects that are both ordinary and special. Altars remind me that our lives are both mundane and luminous, if we care to see them in that way.

I know that Sunday morning Zoom does not feel special the way in-person worship does. I wish it could be different, but it can’t be yet. In the meantime, I encourage you to create an altar for yourself in the place where you might look at a screen come Sunday. Perhaps you will feel that our worship is sacred and meaningful, value-creating and beautiful, no matter the format. But no matter how you stay connected to UUFM, you are the reason for our community’s existence. I pray this you remember, today and every day, as you remember also that you are loved, you are worthy, you are welcome, and you are needed. May you feel it so, and may it be so.

Blessings, Rev. Rita