We are graced by the beauty of the earth, the glory of the skies, and another week of journeying with those dear to us. We regret our weaknesses, missteps, and misfortunes even as we rejoice in our successes and the gifts which fall our way. We gather as an evolving religious community, partners in creation. Together we seek meaning in our lives, fulfill our promise, and strive to become blessings upon the world.
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We gather in the warmth of one another’s company, to share news of the week and opinions of the day, to share coffee, conversation, music, wisdom. We do these things in manners predictable and unpredictable. This sharing of the best of who we are is a social, spiritual, religious, and physical process. It transpires in the real world and requires resources that are also social, spiritual, religious, and physical.
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To endure through the ages we must be strong and generous, like hardy trees growing in a dry place: renewing, enriching, taking sustenance from the soil, but giving back as well. We make our season in the face of the Universe by standing, sharing, receiving–but also by tilling, planting, and tending. Long after we depart, may others continue to build houses and rear children on the land we have irrigated.
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Religious community is a gathering of living hearts, and life is an active business. We eat, we sleep, we work and ponder and love and are loved. Where plants passively draw nutrients from air and soil, human beings strive to comprehend and make meaning. We draw from the world around us, yes, but we also impact and change the world as we pass through it.
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Each season brings different work and different rewards. Winter nips our noses, taxes our resilience, and fosters hardiness. With the rising spring, the sun speeds north and fills us with the rich aromas of life. Summer will soak our clothes with sweat and fill the evenings with insects we’d forgotten we disliked until they returned. Through all these seasons of change, this church remains a treasury and a sanctuary in an ever-changing world.
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This is the nature of faith: That every religion struggles to breathe life into belief by giving it a body which moves through the world. It is the labor of each to resolve the tension between faith and works. Only through action in the world do we make our spiritual real. Only through action in the world does religious belief become relevant.