We arrive here out of many walks of life. We wear clothing of different patterns and our feet go in boots or shoes or sandals. Some read magazines, others read novels, still others read technical works or works of history. But gathered in community our hearts beat together, we laugh together, our tears are of the same substance. We create meaning precisely by sharing all these things: our differences and our likenesses.
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We gather beneath a rainbow of doubts and possibilities. Some of us bear weights of infirmity, fear, or concern for loved ones. Some feel the uplift of aspiration, triumph, or the simple joy of being with kindred spirits. Our time together is a special time and each moment we share is special in the sharing.
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The way of religious community blesses us through creation and in chaos, through the journey and in repose, through struggle and in triumph. In all cases, let us gather warmth and nourishment from one another, because human nature flourishes neither in unaided struggle nor in unshared triumph.
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This free church is not held together by common religious belief. We do not come all from the same social station, nor do we all recognize one great law, directing us down identical paths. What holds us together–what makes our time together valuable–is the robustness with which we form ourselves into a community of caring. For all our real differences and admitted errors, redemption lies in the sincere aspiration to infuse mutuality into a cloven world.
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In a real way, each of us walks through life alone. Each of us understands our life in a way the rest of the world cannot. We experience pain in our own way and each trial or triumph, also, in our own unique way. In the end, inevitably, our dying is our own.
Yet in thoughtful togetherness, comforted and sustained by one another, personal circumstance expands toward the divine. Pain becomes bearable, trials endurable, and triumph all the sweeter in the sharing. In religious community we transcend life as biology and enter life as celebration.
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