Dearly Beloved,
What a beautiful celebration we had on Sunday holding sacred space with and for our mothering ancestors -- mothers, grandmothers, teachers, elders, aunties and so on! Thank you so much to everyone who participated in our beautiful Mother's Day litany and to my parents who wrote and helped preach Sunday's service.
My time away was so restful and restorative! I went with the questions and thinking about ubuntu belonging with and to each other. I focused this last week on reflecting on how I belong in and to my body. I feel that belonging most strongly when I'm out in nature: hiking in the mountains or playing in the sea. And this trip, in between reading, practicing yoga, having deep conversation, and resting, I played in the ocean. I bobbed in the rise and fall of the swells. I skimmed along the surface of the water as I caught a wave body surfing. I high five hidden sea urchins (I don't recommend that), and swam out to hidden rock ledges. The water washed me, like the waters of baptism, birthing me again and again and again out into the air, out into life and the reality that I belong to the earth, I belong to the water, I belong to the universe. In many ways, I am an insignificant blip on the larger universal timeline. And that blip can be filled with joy and love, work for justice and equity. What a gift to have this time of being grounded in my body as I prepare for the next 11 weeks of my sabbatical.
I hope you'll join us in worship on Sunday as we celebrate with some of our youth and young adults as they make life transitions (some of them are graduating). I hope you'll stay afterwards for our congregational meeting where you'll get one last sabbatical update before it actually begins. I hope you'll join us as we hear from the Vision & Ministry Discernment Committee about the purpose statements that came out of the surveys you all filled out and that you help us vote on new Identity, Mission & Vision Statements.
We belong to God.
We belong to each other.
My good is inextricably linked with yours.
I am because we are together.
We belong to this earth.
And our bodies are part of that belonging.
I hope you can explore this week the ways in which you belong in and to your body. That you are your body. And the ways in which your body gives you an experience of interconnection with and to others, the earth, and the divine.
Sending you love and blessings,
Thandiwe
