Church of the Larger Fellowship UU Worship

Arundhati Roy, in her novel The God of Small Things, describes trauma, grief, and loss as leaving holes in the universe--shaped like the things we have lost. When we sew up those holes, we leave a mark behind even as we restore our fabric to wholeness. How do we honor those marks and help each other sew up our holes of grief?

Lamentation is a ritualized approach to grief. It creates opportunities for us to acknowledge, reflect upon and say goodbye to the piles of rubble we leave behind; our many unmet expectations, dreams and desires.

How do progressive religious folks maintain their faith in a time of monsters? This was the question posed during a symposium in Seattle recently. I will share my own reflections and learning on how we keep the faith in a time of monsters.

Can lament over the suffering all around us be our hope? Can we express lament without getting stuck there? We seek to build a religious community where that lament is welcome as part of a cycle of healing, growth, and action.

So much talk about accountability focuses on our accountability to others but how are we accountable to ourselves. . .our values. . . our flaws. . . our visions. . .our desires? How do we honor the “sound of the genuine” in us, our embodied knowing that is beyond words? Rev. Donté's questions to think about: Why are you on this path of life ? What are your patterns of dissatisfaction with the path ? What is Missing on this path? What are you going to do about it ?

When we center the needs and care of the most vulnerable among us, we help all of us. When we reject the idea that anyone is unworthy, we refuse to let systems of oppression flourish. We are faced with a moment in time right now. Humanity can center each other, the planet, life and love or we can ignore the reality that our destinies are intertwined at our peril.

We see the atrocities everywhere--starving children, bombed cities, concentration camps. People take to social media and the news talking about "toxic empathy," as if there could be such a thing. It feels like we are losing our humanity in real time. How do we turn the tide?

“The Circle Is Still Open” is a message about grief, covenant, and accountability as sacred practices rooted in love, truth-telling, and community. Through personal story and collective memory, it calls us to reject silence and systems of harm, and to stay in the work of justice by holding one another with care, courage, and integrity. Reflection Question: How might your understanding of accountability change if you see it not as judgment, but as a practice of love and healing?

The beginning of August is celebrated in European paganism as the beginning of the harvest season, known as Lammas or Lughnasadh. We will celebrate the ways in which the Earth sustains our lives, and ponder what accountability means in this context.