‘Twas the week before Christmas…and I must confess to feeling a bit like one of the elves in the mythical St. Nick’s workshop as we prepare for the holidays at First Unitarian. I guess Santa would be my role in that imagination.  We are working on all of the seasonal holiday services and the post-Christmas services as well. The winter holidays are always a busy time in the life of the church. In addition to that normal busyness, we are having to re-invent so much of how we celebrate while we are at a distance. It is a busy time.  The differences in how we will celebrate pale in…

The eight days of Hanukkah begin tonight. This Jewish celebration is one of the many ways that people of faith pause and witness during this season of long nights. The Solstice, Diwali, Kwanzaa, Christmas… all ways that communities mark this season of the turning year.  Hanukkah means “dedication” in Hebrew and the holiday commemorates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem during the second century Before the Common Era (BCE). Syria, the empire then dominating Palestine, outlawed the practice of Judaism. Syrian soldiers occupied Jerusalem and desecrated the Temple by erecting an altar to Zeus and sacrificing pigs within the Temple compound.  Led by a priest…

Women’s March, Pretoria, South Africa, 1956   This Sunday is the second Sunday of Advent in the Christian liturgical calendar. In that tradition, Advent is a time of waiting and personal preparation to receive the mystery and the miracle of the birth of Jesus.   Mystery is our spiritual theme for December and I am looking forward to exploring it from the pulpit. Our religious tradition(s) have a complicated relationship to the idea of miracles and our experience of mystery. But like many of you, I find myself waiting for miraculous changes…for vaccines to end the pandemic, for a new administration to end the lies and mean-spiritedness, for a New Year to…

This is not my first attempt to write a “Thanksgiving” message. You all expect me to offer one and I understand offering a word of gratitude in this season to be a responsibility of my ministry, part of my job. But I have had a hard time staying in the space of gratitude.   One of my first efforts centered on the Native American understanding of this holiday as a Day of Mourning. I used the poetry of Joy Harjo to bring the Trail of Tears into the present in the caging of children on our border. I wrote of the need for a new story that does not paper over the violence and the exclusion that is a through line…

I want to thank the many members of the congregation who wrote to me after last Sunday’s service. You wrote of being inspired and of needing the message that an epidemic of love could be both powerful and possible. You shared stories of how the service seemed to open a long-closed door in your spirits, allowing you to reclaim a remembered hope. Running through most of the messages was your knowing that we all need that rebirth of hope.  I preached of leaning into love, allowing love to lean back. And I asked, as a final question, “What have we got to lose?” There is much specific repair that calls out to be done, but…

“I did not realize how much anxiety I was carrying.”   “I can finally let my shoulders down.”  “I don’t have to be afraid to wake up anymore.”  I heard each of these statements from congregants in the last couple of days. And many more similar sentiments.  Many of us have been carrying too much anxiety in our bodies, for too long. The results of the election, for most of us, mean that we can put some of that anxiety down, that we can relax at least a bit. Perhaps we can even begin to discover questions and yearnings that the depth of the…

As I write, election results are becoming clearer. Despite early returns, the Democratic challengers will likely secure an electoral college victory. The drama that seems always to be generated by our current President continues to swirl. He declared himself the winner late Tuesday night and his campaign has filed suit in three states to stop the counting of ballots (a truly bizarre demand in a nation that claims to be a democracy and an even more bizarre demand in at least one state where the President is currently behind). The final counts are promised within days and we will learn…

Have you noticed people around you getting more nervous or less patient, responses a little sharper in the last few days? Have you noticed yourself getting more “antsy” or anxious?  I know some of us have intentionally limited the information we take in about the election and the pandemic and the economy. Some of us have even had success at that. But as the din of the election rises toward its crescendo, many of us are feeling the pressure in our lives. I know I am.  Remember, as I try to, that these are in fact trying times. It can help…

With the election just days away, with infections spreading here in Oregon and in almost every state, with the US Senate moving a  problematic new appointment to the Supreme Court forward with no bipartisan support, with the recession deepening and a new relief bill still “in discussion,” and with violence on our streets continuing… This morning my attention was captured by reports that mouthwash might help save us from the pandemic. Yes, mouthwash. The stories sprang from a recent study that found that a coronavirus that causes common colds…not the one that causes Covid-19…could be incapacitated in a laboratory setting…

Our ballots arrived at the house yesterday. I’ve been looking for them, anxious to actually have them in hand. I have needed this election, which is somehow different, more dangerous and more fraught, to get concrete. Even those of us, and there are many when we are honest, who have seen self-interest, greed and cavalier disregard for justice and basic human rights fueling virtually every political decision…for so long… Whether you believe that view is deeply cynical or simply honest, it is clear to me that we have passed, or are in danger of passing into new territory in which…