Dearly Beloved,
On Sunday, we will celebrate All Saints Day -- the people who have gone before us. You're invited to bring photographs of the saints in your life (especially those who have died) to place on our communion table during Sunday worship. If you worship with us virtually, please have photographs or mementos from your saints with you in your home. As we celebrate our saints, we give thanks for those who have taught us about love, about justice, about faithfulness and integrity, about generosity, about hope. In many ways, we are the bearers now of their love and their hope. We are the embodiment of their love -- still living -- in the world. And we are the carriers of their hope for the future -- for our families, for our church, for our communities, for our country, for our world.
What do you think their hopes were?
I know that my grandparents, on both sides of my family, were deeply committed to racial integration and justice. There is a story of my paternal grandmother quitting her Presbyterian Church because the pastor failed to say anything about the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the day after it happened. That's when that side of my family became UCC. My grandparents hoped and actively worked for a tomorrow when the racial and cultural diversity of our nation was something to be acknowledged and celebrated, not denigrated or erased.
All of my grandparents also deeply valued church. Each of them held a strong faith in God. My maternal grandfather was a methodist minister and my mother and both of her siblings became pastors (two of them married ministers!). My grandparents hoped for each of us grandchildren that we would carry with us a strong sense of that bigger picture -- of God's beloved community, of love and peace and justice for our world, guided by the example of Jesus Christ.
What hopes did your grandparents and parents or mentors hold for you and for our world?
What about you? What are your hopes?
On my most hopeful days, I see the possibility of our country being a nation where the foreigner is welcomed and able to make a meaningful life for themselves and their families (as many of our European ancestors were able to do). I hope for this country to be place where love is love -- where each of us can love honestly and authentically and where that love is cherished and celebrated. I hope for our children and grandchildren to be free to be their truest and most authentic selves -- they're still figuring out who that is, and I cherish and celebrate the ways that we get to love them through that and walk alongside them on that journey of self discovery.
I hope for a nation where everyone has enough to eat.
Where housing and healthcare for all of God's beloved children are valued higher than profit or power.
I hope for communities where our children are safe at school. And we are safe at the grocery store, at concerts, in movie theaters, churches and clubs.
I hope for recovery programs instead of prisons.
For more places like our church where people -- whoever they are and wherever they are on life's journey -- are truly welcome and included.
I hope for a culture that values our elders, our history (as complicated and messy as it is), the wisdom held in wrinkled hands and long memories.
I hope for a culture that gives our youth a sense of belonging and purpose -- a sense that they are part of something bigger than themselves, that who they are, what they do, how they interact with others matters.
I hope for a home and a caring adult for every child, for safety nets for our communities' unaccompanied youth.
I hope for our nation to make choices that prioritize the health and wholeness of the earth over quick conveniences.
I hope for every single person to know that they are a beloved child of God.
I hope that for you. That you know that you are beloved. That you belong. That you matter. That you are fearfully and wonderfully made.
And I believe that all of this is possible. My faith tells me that it is possible -- it shows me that it is possible. And history does too -- as we look to the wisdom, lives, and legacies of Dr. King, Dorothy Day, Richard Rohr, James Baldwin, Cole Arthur Riley, Mahatma Gandhi. As we learn of the ends of genocides and apartheid and violence.
What do you hope for?
Let us dream that world into being.
We are the ones our world has been waiting for.
Let us be the change we want to see.
Let us love. And let us love and let us love some more.
For this is the center of our gospel. This is the truth which we seek and follow and hold to be true. God is love. May it be so amen.
With love and so much hope,
Thandiwe
As we approach the election next Tuesday, I wanted to share this prayer written by Rev. Richenda Fairhurst of the United Methodist Church Creation Justice Movement.
Prayer at the ballot box
Creator, Deliverer, Light of lights. As I post/submit my ballot, let there be hope! Bless this ballot and the ballots of my neighbors. Let our choices rise with justice, kindness, and peace. Let us bring joy to this nation. Let our neighborhoods, our families, and the whole community of creation be blessed. In this public space, in this public act, let my ballot and my faithful citizenship be a mark of hope. For I am rooted in the good of this Earth and the love of God. Amen.
