By AJ Fox

How to Survive the Apocalypse by Rev. Sean Parker Dennison from their collection “Breaking and Blessing”.

First, learn to listen.
Not for enemies around
corners in hidden places,
but for the faint footsteps
of hope and the whisper of resistance.
Hone your skills, aim your
heart toward kindness and
stockpile second chances.
Under the weight of destruction,
we will need the strong shelter
of forgiveness and the deeper wells
that give the sweet water of welcome:
“We have a place for you.”
When the world ends, we must not
add destruction to destruction,
not accept a beggars’ bargain,
to fight death with more death.
In order to survive the apocalypse–
any apocalypse at all–
we have to give up
the counterfeit currency of self-
sufficiency, the mistaken addiction
to competition, the lie that the last
to die has somehow survived.

How Could Anyone
Congregational Hymn
Words and Music by Libby Roderick
Publisher does not enforce copyright

O Liberating Rose
Congregational Hymn
Words by Mark L Belletini (UUA)
Music by Larry Phillips; he and David Lloyd Brown have the copyright; permission given with credit

The Final Reading is Love is Calling by Unitarian Universalist writer Jess Reynolds

Love is calling for liberation.
love is hoarse from calling,
her voice raw from the decades
she has spent chanting at protests
and speaking from pulpits
and singing the songs of freedom.

Love is weeping into a white candle
she cups in her hands at a vigil
for one more Black life lost,
ripped away, gunned down, forgotten.
She is holding the hands of a grieving mother
and praying aloud for peace.

This is where Love shows up,
where Love has always shown up.
She is tugging at our hands and our sleeves,
begging us to lay down our egos
and take up our courage
and dedicate our lives to justice.