Come, come, whoever you are,
wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
Ours is no caravan of despair.
Come, yet again come!
-Hz. Mevlana Rumi
We are gathering together again, as we have for nearly a century, to inaugurate our congregational year. We are returning from a summer that was perhaps more eventful than many in recent memory in our larger world. Beyond the troubling and hopeful events of the summer, many in our community were able to find some time for travel and adventure as well as rest and relaxation in the sunlight and warmth of these more spacious months. I spent most of the summer with family and friends back home in Ohio. There was river rafting and birthday parties and cookouts and time for spiritual study and soulful restoration. Now students are returnings to schools and universities, families are returning from vacations, the seasons are beginning to shift, and we are invited to gather for our annual Ingathering and Water Communion Service. You are invited to bring water from your travels or a sacred space closer to home and offer it into our communal reservoir where we pour our libations and offer hopes, dreams, and prayers for the new congregational year.
Invitation is our spiritual theme for the month of September. It follows the related summer themes of grace and hospitality and it asks us to imagine what it might be invite more hope, love, and joy into our lives through greater connection to community and making a positive impact on our world. Invitation is defined as “a written or verbal request inviting someone to go somewhere or to do something.” Spiritually, we know it is deeply related to our values of inclusion and pluralism. It is one of the Eight Characteristics of Highly Effective Ministries which we’ve been studying in various ways over the past few years. Invitational communities are always extending their reach and broadening their embrace by being engaged with the larger community and being open to new people, ideas, and ways of doing things in the day-to-day activities of congregational life. Our commitments to anti-racism and countering oppressions and building a diverse and multicultural community can only truly be realized when we engage deeply with this work.
Our friends at Soul Matters–our theme-based learning partner–poses the following questions to guide our reflection upon this important topic this month:
- What is the most beautiful invitation you ever received?
- What relationship invited you to grow up the most?
- What is regularly on your to do list that was invited there by someone else, not by you?
- We all inspire and influence people with our way of being in the world. What is your way of being in the world inviting people to do or become?
- What question do you need to invite into your life in order to enter the next phase of your becoming?
- How are you being invited to know fear? i.e., to travel with fear, rather than fight to eliminate it from your life?
- Jungian analyst, James Hollis, writes, “Something within us knows us better than we know ourselves…It speaks by silently withdrawing energy from things that are not for us. It doesn’t care about our comfort; it cares about our growth.” So, how is your inner wisdom withdrawing energy from your life? And how is that withdrawal of energy inviting you to growth?
- This year, we’re exploring practices that help us embody our new UU core value liberating love. Who’s “act of invitation” has taught you the most about what it means to love?
- Have you grown more from what you’ve invited into your life or what you’ve disinvited from your life?
- How has your life partner invited beauty into your life?
- How has parenting invited you to be more courageous?
- What have you unwittingly invited into your life in the past year? What snuck in without an invitation?
- If you could only invite two new things into your life in the coming year, what would they be?
- How are you being invited to return home?
I want to offer a special thank you to Rev. Dr. Kikanza Nuri-Robins and all of our guest summer worship leaders and the whole worship team which provided for an inspiring and caring summer of services! Thank you to the many who cared for our church in ways known and unknown over these summer months.
Our Pastoral Care Team is available if you are celebrating a high moment of life or find yourself in a difficult place and in need of some confidential support. You can request the support of a Pastoral Associate by emailing pastoralcare@uusm.org or by calling the church office.
If you have a joy, sorrow, or achievement to share with the community in our weekly announcements and on a Sunday mornings, please email joysandsorrows@uusm.org or call the church office.
With abiding hope, love, and joy,
Jeremiah
Rev. Jeremiah Lal Shahbaz Kalendae
Developmental Minister
