First Unitarian Universalist Society Burlington
November 24, 2024
Dear Ones, let us quiet our minds, open our hearts, and release our fears to the Love always available to us. Spirit of Life & Love, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart reflect Love at the Center.
[chime]
In this hallowed hall, we have sung and spoke the truth that we are all swimming to the other side. We recognize as the song lyrics tell us that some of us do so in power, some of us in pain.
Just last week we spoke the words of a poet who reminded us that “ultimately, we are small living things awakened in the stream, not gods who carve out rivers.”
This month of November, our Earth Teacher River is helping remind us that we are part and particle of a great current that moves through all, through us, around us, of us.
We raise up as worthy, the concept, articulated by countless voices over centuries of time: No one ever steps in the same river twice. With movement and current, with time and transformation, it can never be the same river; neither are we ever the same person.
As true as that is, I return to the same words from a prayer I offered just shy of a year ago, for tomorrow marks one year on the calendar since the horrific shooting of Hisham, Kinnan, and Tahseen on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
We prayed then. We pray now:
Spirit of Life and Love, we want to be part of the stream that generates healing. We raise our voices that the three young men shot in our community [………] know healing of body, healing of mind, healing of spirit, and ultimately, healing of a sense of safety and trust, though we know that will be a long road. We give thanks to all who are working towards that healing and towards the return of trust and a possible sense of safety.
We prayed then and pray now:
Let us recognize that in the midst of the happenings […], we have our own healing to do, as individuals and as a congregation. Let us do what is ours to do to support the healing of all who need it, and on this day, today, the healing especially of Tahseen, Kinnan, and Hisham and their families, as well as the whole Vermont Palestinian community, and all those neighbors and friends who speak Arabic and yet, are now afraid to do so, for fear of being targeted and harmed.
At that time, I said that we here in Burlington were now and ever bound to these three young men. And that we here at First UU were choicelessly and particularly bound because the one who shot them was known to us, had spent time among us.
Ground of All That Is, Deepest Moral Compass, Truest Ethical Center, Source of Compassion and Clarity: what have we done to acknowledge, to act on, to embody that bond? What has each of us done? What have we done as a community? What have we done as a congregation? My heart aches, because I am not sure of the answer.I lean toward trust that such heart ache is holy.
How have we taken as our own, this connection to the Palestinian struggle for survival, for this act of violence that threatened those three took place in a larger context of a much larger violence that has deepened and widened and become more horrifying in the year since? In a place where too many are starved for withheld food, too many thirst for lack of water…My heart aches, because I am not sure of the answer. I lean toward trust that such heart ache is holy.
How have we taken as our own the rigorous demands of our own Universalist faith that aspires to collective liberation, even in the most complex situations? My heart aches, because I am not sure of the answer. And I lean toward trust that such heart ache is holy.
How have we taken as our own the demanding presence of our own Unitarian Universalist faith that proclaims each is inherently worthy and none are defined by the worst thing we have done, including the one who shot the gun? My heart aches, because I am not sure of the answer. I lean toward trust that such heart ache is holy.
May the discomfort I feel be a stone in my shoe, compelling me to move in the worldin a way that brings more courage, more justice, more compassion, more equity, more transformation, more love.
Let us spend the next few moments together in shared stillness, connecting with the yearning within our hearts, which is a kind of prayer, until the chime rings again.
[chime]
Amen.