Dearly Beloved,
As I look out over the sunny parking lot, the tall tree naked of its leaves, branches reaching up into the Colorado blue sky, I don't quite feel like it's already December, already Advent. I'm not quite sure what happened to November, actually. It seems like we just celebrated Halloween, just carved our pumpkins. And yet, here we are. Time marches ever forward, and we are here on the second day of this season of waiting and expectation.
What a beautiful worship service we had yesterday, with amazing music (so much amazing music -- thank you Nicoletta, choir and musicians!), a beautifully decorated sanctuary, and familiar stories and words inviting us to consider that we are a blessing -- YOU are a blessing!
One of the things I failed to mention in our worship yesterday was that December 1 is World AIDS Day. Here in the United States, our LGBTQIA+ siblings have been most severely impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. For years, it was almost considered a gay person's disease, and so the stigma around this virus was multi-layered, compounded on those already considered outcast within our larger social structure. Throughout the 1980s, our LGBTQIA+ siblings watched their beloveds, their siblings, their neighbors and friends within the queer community fall away, many having already been cast away by their biological families. The particular pain of this disease to our LGBTQIA+ beloveds is acute and particular. And so, as we remember the impacts of HIV/AIDS in this country, we hold the particularity of this pain for our queer siblings.
And in different parts of the world, this illness looks so very different. When I moved to Zimbabwe in 1995 (at age 10), AIDS had already begun to spread like wildfire. Many rural community members traveled to cities near and far for work and returned with money to support their families but also with a hidden and deadly disease. All of my sex education in school was AIDS based education. In 2000, our friends and neighbors Wanani and Dominic (ages 16 and 14) lost two of their older siblings within 12 months to AIDS. People simply vanished, Tuberculosis written on their death certificates, empty places at their tables at home.
While we now know so much more about HIV and AIDS, while an HIV diagnosis is no longer a death sentence (at least here in the United States), AIDS is still around. And its impacts continue to reverberate around the world and within the queer community here in the United States.
This disease showed us (in horrific ways that devastated entire communities) what our scripture readings for Sunday (Ruth 1 | Ecclesiastes 4:9-12) remind us: that we can't go alone. Our former church moderator Paul Heintzleman would often say to me: "If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." In God's beloved community, quickly is never the goal -- it is always far, it is always together, and you can't go alone.
How and with whom is God calling us to journey in this season?
How does going together inspire and sustain us?
What joy do we find in going together?
How does going together ground us in hope and peace and invite us to love and justice?
I look forward to holding these questions with you as we gather for worship on Sunday. Included in this coming Sunday's service will be either prayer or liturgy honoring World AIDS Day (though it be a week late).
As a side note, we will have Sunday School this Sunday and next (December 8 & 15) this Advent season so that our children can participate in our walk-on Christmas pageant on December 22.
Holding each of you in love and blessing,
Thandiwe
