Dearly Beloved,
On this September 11th, I want to invite each of us to pause. There is a beautiful reflection and invitation to that pause written by Rev. Karen Tirabassi towards the end of this email. I invite you into the prayerfulness and the pause of her words.
What a beautiful and joyful worship service we had this last week, bringing and blessing water from our summers, welcoming seven new members to our congregation, getting back into the swing of Sunday School (2nd and 4th Sundays with Dana and Kim!), and kicking off youth group with 9 (count them: 9!) youth in attendance! We are so very blessed!
I don't regularly point to this, but the reality is not so rosy, so joyful, so full of life for many congregations of our size in our post-shut-down (we are certainly not post-COVID) era of church. Many congregations our size (and bigger!) found themselves half, a third, even a quarter of their previous size as they turned from worshiping exclusively online to a hybrid version of worship. Our congregation held steady and has even grown! We have new children and youth regularly participating in Sunday morning worship. We have elders finding their way to us with longings for a congregation that lives a truly extravagant welcome. We have Gen Z-ers recovering from church trauma and millennials looking for a place where the music is good, and the heart is whole, authentic, and honest.
One of the reasons that we continue to thrive, that we continue to be a relevant congregation is because we are willing to change. Now change is hard. With change (even the best of change!) comes grief, sadness to watch something old come to an end, sadness to acknowledge that the world, our communities, and we ourselves are changing. With change come conflict (yes, we usually don't all agree on what should change, how, and how fast) and anxiety. We often worry that there will not be a place for us as things change, that our voices will no longer matter, that the traditions of times gone by will be left behind. Now, sometimes traditions do get left behind as new needs emerge and new traditions are formed, but I want you to hear loudly and clearly that there will always be a place for each of you as our congregation continues to change. Your voice matters. Whether your grandparents helped dig the foundation of the church or you joined just this last Sunday. You matter. We are a changed and enriched community because of you.
And we celebrate both the voices that have been here longer than most of us can remember and those that are brand new. We celebrate the voices we hear over Zoom, voices from the balcony, voices from children who were not even a twinkle in their parents' eye a decade ago, voices with experiences and opinions and wisdom that differ from our own, voices that can tell us the history of the congregation and voices that can call us to a new vision. And our voices, our song is more beautiful when we sing together. The richness of a harmony depends on the diversity of voices singing. We are stronger, more beautiful, wiser, and more resilient TOGETHER.
And I am grateful for the ways in which we are continuing to change and grow.
I am grateful for the ways in which we are continuing to discern how God is calling us to love God, love neighbor, love creation and love self more fully and more faithfully.
I want to encourage each of you to make an additional effort this fall to strengthen the connections among us and between us. Sit somewhere different on Sunday morning. Why not don a mask and sit in the balcony? Come early (8:55 am) and sing with the choir. Join Karen Jazowski in her book study as we deepen our understanding of what it means to be Open and Affirming. Attend a Third Wednesday Supper Social (the next one is September 18). Shop at or volunteer with Thrifts and Gifts. Attend Lectio Divina on Zoom some Tuesday morning. Volunteer at Community Kitchen. Reach out to each other on a Sunday morning or by phone during the week. We are the body of Christ, and every time we invest in our relationships with each other, we strengthen that body in love.
Definitely plan to attend our Mission Sunday worship on September 22nd that our youth will be leading and our combined worship followed by Congregational Meeting on September 29th. Oh! And don't miss worship this Sunday when we get to enjoy the gift of special music with Lucas Gardner on drums, Ted McCabe on guitar and Nicoletta Glantz on piano.
I'm so grateful to get to journey with you.
With love, Thandiwe
Pausing for September Words by Rev. Maren Tirabassi
Don’t say – remember.
Some of our remembers are complicated
by what was happening to us
and some of us do not remember
because we are too young.
Pause for September 11.
Don’t say – pray.
Some of us want to pray about
the war in Ukraine and genocide in Gaza,
about fires and floods,
about the terrible losses of the coronavirus pandemic,
and some of us want to assign God a personal agenda
of the first two amendments, immigration, or masks.
Pause for September 11.
Don’t say – be a patriot.
That has too many meanings,
mostly full of this-is-the-right-way and the rest of you are wrong
and it might also be confused with a football team,
a TV show, or surface-to-air missiles.
Just pause for September 11.
In 2001 particular people died.
People who helped continue to die.
People died in acts of response or retaliation.
People who live still grieve.
People who live try to make the world better because of that day.
Pause.
And so we pause.
For those who remember,
for those who cannot remember and for those who cannot forget.
We pause for the particular people who died.
We pause for the people who helped and are continuing to die.
We pause for the people who died in acts of response or retaliation.
We pause for all the people who live and still grieve.
We pause for all of us --
that we who live may work every day to make the world better.
More forgiving.
More gentle.
More compassionate.
More loving.
We pause.
