In just a few days we will begin a new church year at First Unitarian. We will also pass an anniversary. Sunday, September 11, 2016, will mark 15 years since the attacks that changed so much in our life as a nation and in our lives as individuals.
We will mark the anniversary, remembering those who lost their lives that day and the many who still grieve those losses. And we also need to mark the many ways in which those attacks ushered in a period of extraordinary divisiveness, a period in which the question of who we mean when we say “We the people…” has taken center stage in our national politics.
We need to mark the compromises to our privacy we have been forced to accept: the Patriot Act, the huge new “Homeland Security” bureaucracy and the routine gathering of unprecedented amounts of information about us.
We need to mark the reality that we have been at war in the Middle East ever since, with no sign that the bombs will stop falling any time soon.
And we need to mark the emergence of fear, and the encouragement to fear, as a constant presence. We debate only the extent of a wall on our southern border. We argue about how extreme our vetting of refugees from the states we helped fail should be.
You are all as mindful of this litany as am I. It would be so easy to allow ourselves to slip into despair or simply withdraw into whatever safety we can imagine in our private worlds.
But our task as liberal religious people is to find the strength…or the courage…or the stubbornness to choose hope. We need to remain naïve enough not to give up. It is no simple task.
As we look toward this anniversary, I offer these words by Lisa Friedman that may help ground us as we come together once again this Sunday:
We live in a fragmented world that tempts us to despair. We would put it back together, piece by piece, if it were ours to choose.
But sometimes the fragments are enough.
In a world of cruelty, there is still power in every act of kindness.
In a time of doubt, there is still power in every act of hope.
In an age of division, there is still power in every act of unity.
May we remember that sometimes the fragments of meaning we make are just the right size to hold in our hands.
Sunday morning we will renew our covenant and remind ourselves of the power that is ours to help love live.
Sunday afternoon, from 4-5 PM, I will be joining interfaith religious leaders in a service to remember the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, at First Congregational Church. Some of you may want to join me. A pot luck meal will follow.
I look forward to this Homecoming Sunday. I believe we need our liberal religious community now more than ever.
Blessings,
Bill