Minister’s Message
Poet T. S. Eliot tells us that “April is the cruelest month,” and here we are at the beginning of it again. Is spring actually here, or will winter return in a blizzardy blast like last year? Will the stone roll away once more from our dark tombs of self-regard and guardedness, from our murky reserve and self-protection? Will we achieve a resurrection of hope at a time of relentless political and ecological crisis? Will we feel free to live and love with openness, welcoming the vibrant and imperfect world as it is rather than as we wish it were?

Our Soul Matters theme this month is Wholeness, and the movement toward wholeness for any of us requires a bit more than the “either-or” type of thinking in the paragraph above. In the words of Parker Palmer, “Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness — mine, yours, ours — need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.” Perhaps the snows and the crises will end someday. And what might I do, what might YOU do, to inscribe the pain and loss, the sadness and rejection within a circle of self-understanding redolent as well with joy and pleasure and abundance of your life?

May you be safe and at ease with all that you are, with all that life holds, as you remember, today and every day, you are loved, you are worthy, you are welcome, and you are needed. May you feel it so.

Blessings and best wishes, Rev. Rita