Ekklesia Students

As we explore the Gifts of Welcome together, some of us may need a gentle reminder to welcome ourselves. Hear these words from poet Derek Walcott, West Indian poet and dramatist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.

Love After Love by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Creative Spirit
Words and music by Grace Lewis-McLaren, arr. John Prescott
Performed by the First UU Choir
Used with Permission

As we prepare to leave this sacred space, take a moment to breathe in deeply, to know gratitude for the presence of this gathered community and to know in the depths of your soul that you are held, by God, or Universe, or Divine Mystery, and by each one here. Allow yourself to imagine the ways that you will take some of what you received here to help sustain you this week, and how you will share your own transformation in the many circles of your lives.