Dear Friends,

It’s that time in our program year where things really begin to slow down, mostly because you are occupied with gardens, picnics, and, finally once again, summer adventures with family and friends. Please remember to practice precautions so that plans for gathering at the Fellowship come September may be fulfilled!

I am easing into the fallow period, taking a long weekend at our camp in Pennsylvania as a prelude to my longer break June 28-August 1. I’m thinking of this time as the reverse of the winter crop farmers are being encouraged to plant, crop that preserves nutrients and keeps anything toxic out of the water. My summer crop includes more quiet for readings and planning, with less activity and more resting. I’m reading Anne LaMott and Resmaa Menakem, James McBride and Octavia Butler. My book pile is high, and I am a bit vague on the details after this challenging year.

And I am watching horror movies and TV series created by Black Americans. That may not sound to restful to you, but I like a good horror story, a controlled terror, one that I can take a break from and analyze for underlying content. Horror is always about what we fear most at a primal level, fear that that which we desire—unregulated sex, contact with an extraterrestrial, the return of our dearly departed, oblivion—might just get us killed, or come to kill us. Horror shows me that the profoundly ordinary is, in fact, dangerous, providing a fictional account so that I am not overwhelmed with fear and paralysis when I think of the real dangers confronting actual people I love and care for. Horror is to me practice for reality.

May you all rest in your own ways, ways good and healing for you, 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