Dear Friends,

I am getting set for a vacation, and I really need it. This has been a tough year—more uncertain, more tumultuous, more painful than the average one. I feel the losses of our congregation—Hal Walberg and Jan Klages. I feel the losses of our larger world—millions died of COVID, and the pandemic is still not fully contained. I feel the loss of my father, which makes me both feel closer to all of you in your losses of family and friends as well as long for the companionship of my own family and friends. And so, I head East to do some healing.

I won’t be “cured” of these feelings of loss, neither by time nor by taking a break. The feelings of loss will not go away or lessen. I won’t toughen my skin to battle away any further hurt. I don’t wish to be cured. I can’t imagine wanting to feel less grief for all the unnecessary deaths, for all the injustice and oppression uncovered, for facing the reality of no more conversations or football games with my dad. I don’t want to feel less grief, because grief tells me that I care, that I am engaged in the reality of our living, with all of its pain. Grief tells me that I love and I feel and I am an embodied being connected to all that is.

Grief reminds me that I am tender and willing to risk the suffering that relationship brings. And, I will seek a space of calm and reflection in environments where I am safe and secure. I will heal as I remain aware not only of the grief but of the joy and mystery of living as well. I will practice awareness, release much of the busy-ness of work, and take the time I rarely grant myself while serving our congregation. I know many of you do not have the luxury of time and spaciousness you grant me. I am grateful to you, to this congregation, for its generosity.

May you give yourself time, even small and brief moments, just to gaze into the middle space and relax your muscles so your mind can follow, your heart connecting you to me and to all, as you remember, today and every day, that you are loved, you are worthy, we are welcome, and you are needed. May you feel it so, and may it be so.

Blessings, Rev. Rita