The audio player above plays the audio podcast of the sermon only. The YouTube player below plays the video of the entire service with copyrighted and private information redacted.
How do we move forward together as such a divided nation? How do we proceed "with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right," in Abraham Lincoln's words, while also striving for unity? The Braver Angels organization, which spins its name from another of Lincoln's phrases, urges us to imagine and create a nation that does not let its deep differences tear it apart. Our own Healing the Divide group strives for the same, using some of Braver Angels' resources. And yet there are voices within our own Unitarian Universalist communities that question whether unity is even compatible with the freedom, equality and justice we faithfully seek.
In advance of the service, Amy invites you to consider carefully the "With Malice Toward None" pledge proposed by Braver Angels, and sign it if your conscience calls you to do so.
Worship leader: Rev. Amy Zucker Morgenstern
Worship Associate: Mary Grebenkemper
Special music: Veronika Agranov-Dafoe, piano
Follow along in the order of service: bit.ly/uucpa_oos_20201108
Photo by Joshua Ness on Unsplash
Chalice Lighting by the Rev. Christian Schmidt
This is a call to worship for the joyful, the brokenhearted, the fearful, the exhausted.
For whatever you are feeling right now, may this be a place for you to find what you need. You are welcome here, in this gathering where we come to feed our souls, heal our hurts, and just be together.
For too long now, we have experienced the things that divide us: poverty and oppression, unjust laws and policies, violence and imprisonment.
We cannot fix these in a day, or even a year, but we can fix them and we must. Because we know that despite divisions, despite the triumphs or defeats of candidates and parties, our destinies, all of them, remain deeply intertwined.
Liberation must be for all people if it is truly liberation. As long as one soul suffers needlessly, we cannot rest. As long as our planet screams out in pain, so will all who live on her.
So for all the feelings, the emotions, the pains and hurts, the joy and celebration, you have in your heart and body and mind today, you are welcome here.
Here may you find rest and renewal, partners for the journey, time to contemplate and energy for action.
Let us worship.
Creating beloved community is messy, gritty, fearsome, and hard.
This is the time we have been practicing for.
The only faithful response to this moment of extraordinary division is to show ourselves and our communities that another way is possible. The antidote to polarizing fear is love. The antidote to alienating isolation is connection.
My friends, we were made for this work. And now we have to actually do it.
Reading by Bruce Olstad
My father and I had a difficult relationship from the time I was a child through his passing in 2011. I don’t think either of us ever understood the other. I do know we loved each other, each in the way that was possible for us. But for a time in my adulthood, and for a good number of the years...
