I believe every inch of America is sacred, from sea to shining sea. I believe we make it holy by who we welcome and by how we relate to each other.
Eboo Patel
It is so good to return to these West Coast shores after a summer of deepening study, spiritual exercise, cookouts, rafting trips, and extended visits with family and friends in the Midwest. I worked my way through a tall pile of books that included Octavia Butler’s Earthseed Series, multiple books on the latest biblical scholarship like How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee by Bart Ehrman, and a new book of exceptional poetry recently published by a friend–to name but a few. I had more time to pray, meditate, practice my Sanskrit, and think about the complexities of these dire times we’re living through as a people.
I find it so helpful to spend some time with my communities of origin each year. I get to experience spaces that are unlike the places I’ve made home over the past two decades and get a sense of how people are thriving or surviving through the midst of it all. It is a grounding and broadening experience that provides me with perspective, balance, and renewal. I missed you and our beloved community and this geographic oasis of pluralism, progressivism, and culture while I was away. As this will be my last congregational year with you, it is my intention to cherish you, this historic place, and our shared tradition ever more deeply in these remaining months we have together.
Our spiritual theme this month is “Building Belonging” and this is something this nation desperately needs in this time of escalating division, exclusion, bigotry, and violence. Religious communities are the original incubators of building belonging. In this country our spiritual ancestors had congregations before they had established colonies or a nation. While some religious movements taught exclusion, our lineages offered an alternative that strove to include everyone though not without its own exclusivity, imperfections, and failings.
It is no wonder that the social fabric of our common life is so tattered and frayed as people have moved away from the institutions that are intended to hold people together, provide socialization, pass on the wisdom of the generations, and create intentional community. So we have something to offer our world as a sanctuary for this kind of living, loving, and relating to one another.
Brené Brown writes, “I was so shocked to learn that the opposite of belonging is fitting in. Because fitting in is assessing a group of people and changing who you are. But true belonging never asks us to change who we are. It demands we be who we are.” This is the vision beloved community holds for our society. Pluralism invites us to delight in our differences, to make and hold space for them, and to appreciate the diversity of cultures, religions, and ways of life that are present to us. It also asks us to create justice and equity when others are treated less than, told to conform, excluded, or even forcibly deported. Building Belonging is deeply spiritual work we accomplish in many ways as a congregation.
Please join us for our annual Water Communion and Ingathering Service on Sunday, September 7th, at 10:30am as we kickoff our 98th congregational year and continue to expand our community of belonging!
Soul Matters invited us back to our monthly theme-based practice of reflecting together in services, small groups, and committee meetings with these wonderfully stimulating questions:
- What is your favorite memory of childhood belonging? How does that moment still live in you today?
- Do you remember the moment when you knew for certain that you no longer belonged to childhood, the moment when you knew your childhood was over and that you were now, without doubt, a grown-up? How did the uniqueness of that moment shape who you are?
- Of all the communities you have belonged to, which is your favorite? If you could say thank you to it, what would you say?
- What aspect of your personality do you need to do a better job of embracing and welcoming in? Your judgmental self? Your lazy self? Your vulnerable self? Your bitter self? Your easily frightened self? Your quick-to-anger self? Your jealous self? Your petty self? Your selfish self?
- What long hoped-for life do you need to let go of in order for you to belong to the life right in front of you?
- Has loneliness ever tried to protect you?
- Do you know what it is like to be in a community or relationship that requires you to remove or deny parts of yourself to belong?
- What gift did your “chosen family” give you that your family of origin didn’t or couldn’t?
- What is the greatest lie that our culture tells us about belonging?
- Some of us live in a place and others of us belong to a place. How does the place you belong to carry your stories, make room for your pain and keep you in touch with your longings?
- Self-belonging is about self-love. So…what if you are the love of your life?
- What failure are you glad you belong to?
- Have you settled for belonging to people who include you when your heart longs to be surrounded by people who adore you?
Pastoral Care is available to all members of the congregation. Please email pastoralcare@uusm.org to be put in touch with a Pastoral Associate who is trained to provide short-term spiritual care that is sensitive, compassionate, and confidential.
If you have a Joy, Sorrow, or Milestone to share with the congregation, please emails joysandsorrows@uusm.org to have it included in our weekly announcements and shared from the pulpit on a Sunday morning.
It is so good to be back!
Yours in love and ministry,
Jeremiah
Rev. Jeremiah Lal Shahbaz Kalendae
Developmental Minister
