I’m gonna walk the streets of glory. I’m gonna see that Holy City…one of these days.
One of these days…
On this day, looking out at all of your faces…for the first time in so long…this feels like a Holy City…
Filling this Square with our music…even muffled through our masks…
Speaking our word of hope into this public space…
Bringing these flowers into a downtown that has seen more windows boarded up than displays of blossoms…
We speak of making this space holy by our presence…
Because we gather for the simple joy of being together again…we have missed that so much…
But we also gather with intention…
To make clear our commitments…
And to give voice to the hope that we still hold…after all these months…
Hope…that the power of love really can be stronger than the love of power…
Faith…that every one of us…and all those who can hear my voice…and all those that cannot hear my voice…
Faith…that every one of us is lovable and already loved…each of us worthy, with a dignity that deserves affirmation…
Faith…that there is power in our pluralism…and destiny in our diversity…
We gather, here, to proclaim that the Beloved Community is not an idle dream…
But a future we can build…in this city…on these streets…
With these hands…
We gather with love.
It is so good to be together here today…
And we know that we are joined by so many who cannot be here in person but join with us in spirit…
It is such a blessing to gather once again.
Such a blessing.
My text this morning is that famous Irish blessing…
May the road Rise Up to Meet You…
Do you know it?
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face
The rains fall soft upon your fields)
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of [their] hand.
May the road rise up to meet you.
Doesn’t it feel like we are on a hopeful path…
The pandemic receding…
That the road ahead is clearing…
That we have the wind at our backs…
We are not there yet…we can barely glimpse the Holy City…
The Beloved Community is not just around the corner…
We know that…oh, how we know that…
But the forced isolation for many of us
And the sense of fear…of danger…that I think
We have all lived with…
Fear of the virus…yes…but we had to live as if
We feared one another…
I can sense that fear beginning to ease…
I was out just a day or two ago and met a congregant…
Who held out his hand to shake…
And I felt myself reacting…because I haven’t shaken a hand
Or hugged anyone other than my immediate family in so long…
But we were both vaccinated and I was able to take his hand and give it a long overdue shake…hand to hand…human contact…embodied…once again.
Such a simple thing…these changes.
Yet so important.
The restrictions that we have lived with are easing…we are going to get to something that looks a lot like what normal used to be…
Something that looks like normal…
But how will it feel?…Will that be a different matter?…
How long will it take before our sense of safety expands again…
Expands to include all of us?
How long will it take for the fear to abate?
Or will our circle of safety remain smaller?
Will trust be harder to discover?
Will we become more tribal…for a time…more skeptical of other persons…less willing to cross borders of difference…finding safety in sameness?
Will it more difficult to believe in the interconnections that bind us?
We don’t even glimpse the Holy City yet…
What we see are the boarded up windows…
And the debris…
And the houseless folks who camp wherever they can find a spot that might be safe for a few nights.
We need to face into the challenges that have gotten worse during these Covid Days…
And face into the challenges that we knew were present long before Covid….
Because the path to the Beloved Community, to that Holy City… runs with these neighbors of ours. Our path and their path…there is only one path….only one destiny on this small blue planet…one destiny in this River City that prides itself on being progressive…
As we emerge from Covid, we need not just an economic upturn…
We need a human upturn…
A human upturn…in which this city is not so driven by development, where the quality of life is not a theoretical value but a practical guide to decision-making…
A human upturn in a city where Black Lives do matter,,,and the lives of houseless folks,,,and undocumented folks…and folks dealing with mental illness…
A human unturn in a city where gentrification does not crowd out our neighbors and reparation…repair of past wrongs…is an explicit goal ..and restitution is high on our to do list…
A human upturn in a city where public safety…the safety of all of the public…is the goal and the legacy of occupation by militarized police is relegated to a history that we teach so that we do not repeat it…
A human upturn in this city…
Here, in this downtown, we need to be about the work of creating a world and a Portland that does not yet exist…a Portland and a world that might begin to live up to its billing…
That means that our protests about policing here in Portland cannot be over…whether those protests are on the streets or in council chambers…
The over-policing of the community of color and the sweeps of houseless folks…these are symptoms of a system that privileges some of us at the expense of so many of us…
It is time, we held our government…accountable to the values we claim to hold…
And it is time we held ourselves accountable to those values as well.
We just adopted an 8th Principle at First Unitarian…overwhelmingly adopted an 8th Principle…95%..
That Principle speaks of building Beloved Community…accountably…it speaks of embodying our too-often unspoken commitment to becoming anti-racist and embracing the work to dismantle all of the oppressions that push us down…and that push our neighbors down.
Our work is not just out in the world and may not even be first out in the world. We need to ask with open hearts…what would it look like to take that 8th Principle seriously? The inner work of racial justice has to move together with our work in the world.
We are being called to become more than a liberal faith…called to become a liberating faith.
It is time, as we emerge…it is time to take what we learned during Covid, and what we knew before Covid…time to start making the Beloved Community much more real for us and for all of our neighbors.
And doing that will benefit it us all…you know it and I know it…because your thriving is bound up with my thriving…because our thriving is bound up with all of us thriving…and knowing that is in our religious and spiritual DNA.
We are Universalists after all.
That knowing is deep in us…though it gets covered over…though we may at times lose sight of it…
We know what is right…in our hearts.
May the road rise up to meet you…
That is usually understood as a prayer for ease…
But we have work to do…
And in our faith, we are not promised ease…that is not the way God works…
But the Spirit of Life…the Spirit of Love…is waiting to support us, to conspire with us…to open a way out of no way…if only we will make that first move toward Beloved Community…toward justice…toward equity…toward inclusion…toward hope.
The Spirit of Love is there to be the wind at our backs…
The Spirit of Life is there to help bring the Holy City of our dreams into focus.
If we will make that first move…
And so the seed
Becomes a flower
And so it is
With those who make
Of life a flower,
A tree, a dream
Reproducing…
Its beauty and its life
In you and me.
The seed becomes a flower.
Make the first move as we re-emerge…
Because that seed will blossom.
If we were back in our sanctuary, as we hope to be in September…we would be celebrating the UU Flower Communion.
Each of us would have brought real flowers with us to share.
We would hear the words of Norbert Capek, from WWII, when he found hope in the ritual of the flower communion, even as the Nazis were occupying his city.
If we were back in our sanctuary, we might be dancing down the aisles to pick a bloom to take with us and remind us to hope.
Or we might have found some other ritual to celebrate our return.
Some of you found the flowers that you pressed last year. Thank you for bringing them today. We hope to make them into a piece of art to memorialize this service and this year apart.
But we do have flowers here for you. So after the service, those of you who wish…please come forward to take a flower from one of the vases… and receive a greeting…if you are comfortable (…just take care of the cords on the ground)…we will be masked after the service…
There is reason to hope…
This service is a sign…that the days of forced isolation are coming to an end…will come to an end…
This service is also a stake in the ground…a statement of commitment…
A promise that our faith and hope and love still abide.
A promise that we are coming back…committed to making the Beloved Community more than an idle dream…
And that we know we will be held in the hollow of those hands…
And in the hands and hearts of this community…
As together we make love real….in our lives and in our world.
Amen.
Prayer
Will you pray with me now?
Spirit of Life known by many names and no name at all.
Spirit of Love that has held us through these Covid Days
And will not let us go as we emerge into this wounded world.
Be with us. Here in this place that we call home.
Move within us as we come together here
Let the relief and the joy we feel at being together again once more
Let our joy remind us of our dreams
As we awake and emerge into a post-Covid world…
Help us hold fast to our dreams and to our vision of
A world that can be…
Because we are called to create a world that does not yet exist…
A world in which all of us are welcome and all of us are known as worthy…all of us are seen as blessings.
It is the vision given voice by saints and prophets in every religious tradition…
And the hope the lives in every heart…
Be with us, Great Spirit…
Help us remember that a day can come when we can walk and sing in that Holy City
With the spirit of love in our hearts and our neighbors…all of our neighbors…by our side.
Amen
Topics: Blessing