Message by Rev. Michelle Scott-Huffman

This month, we’ve talked a lot about change and that can be unsettling. This morning we offer our gratitude for the community that faces all of that change with us. Katie Kandarian-Morris writes:

Here we have come into this sacred space—
quieter now with our readiness
Hushed voices, hoping, trusting for so many things:
For connection, for communion
For inspiration, for information
For healing, for wholeness,
For words, for music,
For celebration and consolation,
Here we have come into this space bringing all of who we are,
Let us be willing… however we are changed.

What Wondrous Love
Congregational Hymn
Words: American Folk Hymn, New Words by Connie Campbell Hart (UUA)
Music: Melody from The Southern Harmony
Public Domain
Accompanied by Eva Riebold

Come and Go With Me
Words and Music: African-American Spiritual, Slavery Period
Arr: Kenny Smith
Public Domain/Permission Granted
Performed by Eva Riebold

Let us listen to: “The Purpose of This Community is to Help Its People Grow”

By Erik Walker Wikstrom

If you are who you were,
and if the person next to you is who he or she was,
if none of us has changed
since the day we came in here—
we have failed.

The purpose of this community—
of any church, temple, zendo, mosque—
is to help its people grow.

We do this through encounters with the unknown—in ourselves,
in one another,
in “The Other”—whoever that might be for us,
however hard that might be—
because these encounters have many gifts to offer.

So may you go forth from here this morning
not who you were,
but who you could be.

So may we all.