Dear Friends,
Last Sunday I preached on the diversity of the prairie and the requirement to love ourselves so that we can better love the earth and all our neighbors. Unless we know love within, it is almost impossible to sustain lasting love of and robust healing engagement with a hurting world. And as we love, so we fill our own bucket with love and are ourselves refreshed. As the Facebook meme reminds us in many forms: “Love is not pie. When you give love, you do not end up with less love.” Within this frame, love is a lot more like pi or π—irrational and endless. May you feel it so. May it be so.

On Friday, July 12, Indivisible of St. Peter/Mankato is participating in a national vigil called “Lights of Liberty,” a demonstration intended to protest the inhumane conditions at the southern border of the United States and to show solidarity with the suffering people—adults, children, the sick, and the persecuted—seeking asylum from oppression and violence. I have been asked by UUFM member Keri Johnson to speak, and I am honored to participate, especially knowing that thousands of people across this country will be participating as well, many of them also Unitarian Universalists. The vigil is from 8:00-9:30 p.m. in Gorman Park in St. Peter.

To learn more about Friday’s Vigil in St. Peter and about the many groups participating in “Lights of Liberty” nationally, click here [ https://www.lightsforliberty.org/ ]. What you will see, in part, is a list of many organizations and associations, with diverse agendas, purposes, and constituencies. Regardless of their differences in approach or vision, they are uniting over the injustices and the suffering perpetrated by our government upon the asylum seekers on the southern border. United across differences, for the purpose of justice, love in action. I pray I will see you there on Friday, too.

Looking forward to seeing you in my short window of presence, before I am away again.
Blessings and best wishes, Rev. Rita