[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I so enjoyed our first “Throwback Sunday” this past week, with Sean engaging Rev. Walter “Roy” Jones, Jr.’s sermon from 1983, “Faith for the Long Haul; Faith for Right Now.” If you missed any of the three services, you can check out the podcast recordings in the links below.
This Sunday, we’re turning to the past again to help us illuminate the future — as we look back at 1965 and the call Martin Luther King Jr. put out to interfaith clergy to join him in Selma. Many Unitarian Universalists responded (including Roy Jones), and one UU minister, James Reeb, was killed by a group of white men angry at his allegiance with the civil rights movement.
The NPR podcast, White Lies, took an extensive look at Reeb’s murder and the people and events that led to it remaining unsolved for decades. The service this Sunday will be delving into their discoveries, as well as considering how the lessons of that time speak into both our present and our call for the future. Eleanor and Sean have imagined another creative and engaging all-ages service for this year’s MLK service, and I hope you’ll join us.
Maybe it’s surprising that in a series exploring questions and tensions related to the future that we’d look once again to the past — but I think it makes sense. As we try to connect with that longer arc of history, we need to find those threads that run across decades and even centuries, the questions and lessons that remind us of a larger story we’re a part of. A story that we are being shaped by, and that we can shape.
Looking forward to seeing you this Sunday. 8:30, 10, or 11:30.
In partnership,
Rev. Gretchen[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Notes from Future Tense: Week 2 – Faith for the Long Haul; Faith for Right Now
Listen to the 8:30 original sermon
Listen to the 10:00 remix of the sermon
Listen to the 11:30 exegesis of the sermon
Text
I read David Whyte’s poem Sweet Darkness at 8:30
I read Jan Richardson’s poem When We Breathe Together at 11:30
Music
We sang our series theme song People Get Ready
We sang Love Has Already Won, Gonna Lay Down My Sword and Shield, and De Noche
Practice
At 11:30 we practiced again with our labyrinth – the big full canvass labyrinth or finger labyrinth. We have a few more options to take advantage of the labyrinth coming up – be sure to check them out.
Remember
Faith is that posture of trust which opens access to whatever real reinforcements for meaning, or sources of initiative or direction, there are. Faith is the trust that opens these things to us.
What is worthy of your faith? What creates that trust in you? [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]