Dear Friends,
The daylight is once more returning. The waiting is almost over. The New Year is nearly upon us. Everything is happening again. Everything is new again. Our seasonal and holiday milestones enable us to pause and reflect on how life has changed, how the world has changed, how we have each in large and small ways changed. As we circle ‘round again to the familiar, we notice as well that change is the only constant. Whether we celebrate or lament, this is certainly true.
Our climate is changing—warming and drying and burning and melting and flooding. These processes are accelerated, and many of our siblings already suffer the effects of livelihoods and homelands destroyed. Even the United States military is preparing for the crisis to change its operations.
Our societies are changing—pressured and fractious and unjust and tested. Cultural and political claims to land and resources are contested and taxed. Humans and animals, even plants, are migrating, and rising segregation and violence are too often the response to changes in the planetary systems. And the United States responds with its physical and cultural barriers to those forced to migrate.
Our politics are changing—divided and partisan and merciless and toxic. We are living in a heightened binary of “Us against Them,” “You against Me,” the “righteous” and the “damned.” We are being called to disparage each other, to mock each other, to reject each other. “Our United States” is more separated than it has been in a hundred years, and many fear or invite violence as a solution to the splitting.
But let our values not change, and let the only change be our increased commitment to live those values fully in a changed and changing planetary, social, and political landscape. May those of us who need to acknowledge and then leverage our privilege do so. May those of us who need the courage to live as their authentic selves do so. May we all love abundantly—our family and friends, as well as our neighbors new and longstanding. May we act on our convictions—in the public square, through engagement with public officials, at the ballot box, while assisting others to exercise their rights as citizens. May we practice mercy for the most vulnerable among us—those imprisoned; those unhoused; those suffering from insecurity in health, housing, food, or companionship; those feeling loss, feeling unworthy, feeling unloved. May we hold justice-making as our highest value—questioning oppressive systems and authorities, tending to the needs of the defenseless, listening to the voices who experience injustice intimately. May we live and love and work in the spirit of Beloved Community—when all barriers are brought down, when all differences of gender and sexuality and history and experience are held reverently, when conflict is merely a means to fuller understanding, acceptance, and love.
I will see you again in 2020, my friends. Until then, remember, always, that you are loved, you are worthy, you are welcome, and you are needed. May you feel it so. And Amen.
Blessings, Rev. Rita