Dearly Beloved,
I am feeling beloved and grateful today -- it's my 39th birthday! I am grateful for my mom who carried me in her womb and then has mothered me for these last 39 years. And my dad who has been by her side (and mine) that whole time. I'm grateful for the doctors at McCord's Zulu hospital who allowed a white American woman to birth her daughter under their care. I'm grateful for the doctor who performed a C-section because I was still breach and refused to come out right way down.
I'm grateful for this last year, and all of the reflecting I've been able to do on who I am and my own journey and growing. I feel that I've been able to claim for myself the southern African concept of Ubuntu -- I am because I belong; I am because we belong together. Ubuntu is essentially about what it means to be part of community and how we choose to be together. In many ways, Jesus' great commandments to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbor as/and ourselves and ubuntu are wrapped up together for me -- ubuntu is how we live that love of God, neighbor and self.
I'm also grateful for all the work I've done around embracing my full self -- it's a labor of liberation. I believe it is a labor that is profoundly bound up in our congregation's commitment to being Open and Affirming. Over the coming year, I think you'll notice numerous opportunities to collaborate with other congregations and our wider community to deepen in our Open and Affirming identity, to learn, to be stretched, to step out of your comfort zone, and to grow in who you are authentically and for us to grow as a community that welcomes all people as who they are authentically whatever their race, gender, sexual orientation, class, age, family make-up; socio-economic, housing and immigration status.
In that vein, I want to invite you to join me at Loveland's Pride March this year. It will be THIS Saturday, June 10th. Gather at noon at Foote Lagoon, Walk at 12:30 to Backyard Tap and then celebrate from 1-3 pm at Backyard Tap. Why not represent our congregation's expansive welcome in your First Congregational T-shirt?
In a time when the LGBTQ+ Community (some of us and some of our beloveds) are under attack in many ways, let us stand together in love and hope! I am because we belong together!
Love and peace,
Thandiwe
