Message by Colleen Appel

Moment of Perspective – How Brigit Got Lands for the Poor – AJ Fox

The opening words are This Act of Faith by Rev. Gretchen Haley.

What’s going to happen?
Will everything be ok?
What can I do?
In these days we find ourselves
too often
Stuck with these questions on repeat
What’s going to happen? / Will everything be ok? /What can I do?
We grasp at signs and markers, articles of news and analysis
Facebook memes and forwarded emails
As if the new zodiacCapable of forecasting all that life may yet bring our way
As if we could prepare
As if life had ever made any promises of making sense, or turning out the way we’d thought
As if we are not also actors in this still unfolding story
For this hour we gather
To surrender to the mystery
To release ourselves from the needing to know
The yearning to have it all already figured out
And also the burden of believing we either have all the control, or none
Here in our song and our silence
Our stories and our sharing
We make space for a new breath, a new healing, a new possibility
To take root
That is courage
forged in the fire of our coming together
and
felt in the spirit that comes alive in this act of faith:
that we believe still, a new world is possible
That we are creating it, already, here, and now
Come, let us worship together.

We Will Not Stop Singing
By The Chapin Sisters (Lily & Abigail). Song copyright The Chapin Sisters, published by sad pony music and foggy mountain music (ASCAP)
Arranged by Adam Podd
Performed by the First Unitarian Brooklyn Choir
Used with Permission

Reel Irish Blessing
Words: Traditional
Music: Drowsy Maggie (traditional), arranged by John Prescott
Dance choreographed by Lauren Ashley, performed by Lily Prescott
Performed by the First UU Choir
Used with Permission

The closing words are A First Step Faith, by Rev. Scott Tayler. They are based on these words of Martin Luther King, Jr: “Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.”

Go with faith,
not the kind that is called to move mountains,
but the quieter sort
that calls us to take the first step
even when the whole staircase sits beyond our view.
And as we stride toward the unseen
may we notice that the way unfolds only as we risk walking it
and may we remember and trust
that none of these steps are ones we take alone.
Amen.