Dear Beloved Congregation,

I am grateful to be in worship with you again this coming Sunday. I know how weary you must be of Zoom and physical distancing, how you long for our building and coffee hour and greeting one another with handshakes and back slaps, with hugs and kisses. I miss all of that, too. Very much.

And I am tired of stepping away from other people, of thinking about what six feet of distance looks like, and more if someone is not wearing a mask. Speaking of masks, I am tired of them, too, though I have such a lovely variety of them. Some of them are itchy. There is always the effort to position it so my glasses do not fog up. There is the wondering about if it is really doing its job of keeping us and others safe from an infection we may not even realize we have.

And despite all of that, all this changed reality that is very much our new normal, I am grateful and joyful that we will be worshiping together in our very own Zoom Room. Our religion, our faith tradition, our community within Unitarian Universalism—it is more meaningful to me now than it has ever been.

Life is chockful of things I wish would end—divisiveness, viciousness, hatred, war, injustice, and more. Life overflows with ordinary experiences that challenge me more than a little bit—lack of certainty, lethargy, fear, sorrow, ailments, and more. Life abounds with glory—in conversations with beloveds, in trees and sunsets, in the antics of animals, in sustaining labor, in the rising sensations of mysterious connection and elation, and more. My religion, our faith tradition, provides me with thoughts, feelings, and actions, not only to cope with all the plenitude of joy and woe, but to live and thrive within this world, our only certain reality. To live and to thrive, and also to work that all people may live and thrive as abundantly as I can.

May it be so for you, as you remember, today and every day, 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