Dear Friends,

I am preparing for a week in the Southwest, time with family and chosen family. And my timing is perfect, isn’t it, as long as the planes are flying on Friday. I’m going to trust that it will be so. Well, I am going to hope it will be so, and I am going to trust that however things work out, I will find a way to be open and satisfied. Life has so many surprises for us, despite our planning, despite our best efforts at control, despite our expectations. And so, I am choosing to trust, choosing to keep my equilibrium, whether the planes fly or not, whether or not my plans and efforts and expectations unfold just as I want them to.

American philosopher Martha Nussbaum reminds us that “To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very important about the condition of the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a willingness to be exposed; it’s based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from that fragility.”

Our fragility—in the face of the extremes of the weather, the vagaries of human demands and desires, our lack of control over so much in our lives—ought not make us brittle. Rather, our fragile and tender being requires our trust in each other to hold us in care and to support us as we develop resilience. Tender grasses split concrete and asphalt. The fragile and the tender have a special strength, especially when we hold together in love, trusting that we will be able to make our way together.

This week, I pray you open yourself to the uncertainty of life and trust that, in company and in your own hearts, you remember, today and every day: you are loved, you are worthy, you are welcome, and you are needed. May you feel it so. May it be so. And amen.

Blessings, Rev. Rita