Dearly Beloved,
Well, it feels like summer! This is the first year that I've had a child off for the summer -- it definitely marks the time in a different way.
This summer, our worship theme centers around rest as resistance. We'll explore how rest connects us to our bodies, minds, spirits, and the sacred in community. Rest opens us to creativity and dreaming. Rest actively resists dominant narratives of unworthiness (how our society so ties our value to our productivity), of isolation and individualism (we will practice resting in our relationships with one another and God), and of scarcity (societal ideas that there is not enough resources, love, and time and that we ourselves are not enough).
You'll notice that our sanctuary is set up to evoke a feeling of home and restfulness. We'll have time during our worship services where we will practice breathing, resting and being in silence together. This may be the first time that you're actually encouraged to lie down in a pew and take a nap during worship. But really! You have my permission!
June is also Pride Month, and we are approaching this celebration with an expansiveness that reflects our Open and Affirming welcome statement.
June 2 -- Rest & Pride -- The necessity for rest as we exist as diverse beings with various identities, backgrounds, needs and gifts. We'll talk a little bit about the ways in which exhaustion is felt particularly acutely by minoritized, marginalized and oppressed communities. How we all need collective rest in order to envision and imagine God's beloved community where ALL are truly welcome. Maybe even read our Open & Affirming Welcome Statement
June 9 -- Rest & Pride -- Ability, looking particularly towards aging and mental and physical health and the ways in which we can be inclusive of a diversity of abilities.
June 16 -- Rest & Pride -- Juneteenth & Racial Justice (the ways in which our grind culture is based on the plantation system that was the foundation of our nation and how this has particularly harmed black and brown bodied people)
June 23 -- Rest & Pride -- celebrating the full inclusion and welcome of our LGBTQIA+ siblings and looking at the history and movement that has been made around inclusion of LGBTQIA+ community.
I hope you'll join us for each of those Sundays in June. AND I hope that you find yourself included in one or more of our PRIDE celebrations this year. And I hope that you will feel invited, encouraged, even challenged to explore rest as part of your spiritual practice this summer.
With much love,
Thandiwe
