Some Images I’m Carrying From This Season at the Church:
Last Sunday we were back in Eliot Chapel for Sunday worship. Not exactly by plan but because the elevator in our Sanctuary was not working. I was taken back to a time when the Chapel was our main worship place, when most Sundays we were invited to squeeze together to make room for more people. It was a kind of ritual that happened most every week. That was not a sustainable plan for the church with three worship services and three religious education programs every Sunday. Our present Sanctuary building was enlarged to make a space that would allow fewer services. But there was something about being crowded together in the Chapel that gave made us all aware we were a community, all squished in together.
After the service was the Alliance treasures sale. The ritual of items no longer needed in one household finding a new home somewhere else. The items carefully displayed. Sales people ready to help. Both children and adults excited about something they had found. And not far away the tree in the Atrium full of gloves and mittens—so full they were falling off into piles. The generosity and abundance from these items symbolizing warmth and comfort.
What is now the weekly ritual of people returning in person for the first time since the pandemic began. Some excited, some a little nervous, some seeming a little lost. All looking for what is familiar, for what is known. An awareness every Sunday that we are still a church in transition—still not quite sure what all of this will look like in the future. What was and what is becoming very much there in the present moment together.
This season can come with such a range of emotions. For some it is the best season of all. For others a time to make it through. I’m reminded of that is conversations, in messages, in the expressions we all wear. Hopefully the space—the community—we all hold together can hold all of that. There is a paradox with all of this. Amid the busyness and the bustle hopefully there is that quiet space we are able to find. Hopefully there is joy that emerges out of the ordinary everyday moments.
I recently came across a poem I found some years ago and had forgotten about. I think it speaks to some of what is in the air in these days, to a sense of what is possible.
May there be an alchemy in our coming together. And may you know peace and joy where ever you are.
Blessings in this season.
Tom
An Old Man Performs Alchemy on His Doorstep at Christmastime by Anna George Meek
Cream of Tartar, commonly used to lift meringue and
angel food cake, is actually made from crystallized fine wine.
After they stopped singing for him,
the carolers became transparent in the dark,
and he stepped into their emptiness to say
he lost his wife last week, please
sing again. Their voices filled with gold.
Last week, his fedora nodded hello to me
on the sidewalk, and the fragile breath
of kindness that passed between us
made something sweet of a morning
that had frightened me for no earthly reason.
Surely, you know this by another name:
the mysteries we intake, exhale, could be
sitting on our shelves, left on the bus seat
beside us. Don’t wash your hands.
You fingered them at the supermarket,
gave them to the cashier; intoxicated tonight,
she’ll sing in the streets. Think of the old man.
Who knew he kept the secret of levitation,
transference, and lightness filling a winter night?
— an effortless, crystalline powder
That could almost seem transfigured from loss.
Rev. Thomas Disrud he/him
Associate Minister
First Unitarian Church of Portland