Ponderings of our Spiritual Life Director 10-23-23

Creating Heritage: Sacred Conversations

This month’s theme “The Gift of Heritage” has us thinking not just about what we’ve been given from our ancestors, but also what sort of heritage we want to create for the generations that inherit this world from us. What gift will we offer them?

Yesterday’s worship service and creativity workshop were avenues for exploring this idea of creating heritage and considering how we can be good ancestors.

We were certainly blessed to have our friend Bobbie Harris come and engage us in a sacred conversation about her experiences as a Black woman and race relations in America. I am thankful for her willingness to be vulnerable with us. It is my hope that we can continue to learn how to have these deep and sacred conversations and to leave this as our legacy for the generations to come. Can you imagine a world in which we know how to listen to one another? A world in which we know how to respond with love and respect? A world in which action, rooted in the understanding of other people’s humanity, results in a beautiful thriving of life. Thank you to all of you who participated in listening and asking questions.

The creativity workshop that followed offered the opportunity to create a vision board for how we, as individuals, can create heritage. It was a good time to contemplate what we were taking away from the conversation in worship and how we would put it into action. I look forward to getting our work on the sanctuary wall so that you all can imagine with us!

Let us continue to do the good work of Unitarian Universalism together– the work that our 8th Principle calls us to do. Yesterday was only the beginning of how sacred conversations can transform us. Remember the words of hymn #1017 that we sang together yesterday: We are building a new way!

The 8th Principle reads: “We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote: journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.”