Our Extraordinary Faith Meets Extraordinary Times
Hello Friends,
Rev. Lori’s photos from the site where Joan Sebastian Guerrero was killed by an ICE officer in Biddeford, Maine
Notes from the street is an email I find myself sending out each morning this week to civic leaders, community based organizations, responding clergy, and Randa. For those who don’t know, I am involved in organizing local clergy and clinically trained chaplains on the streets to support folks visiting the memorial site, and gathering in mechanic's park. Thank you to all for your support in prayers and support of me being a little distracted for the next week or so.
I am aware that experts in many different fields are finding synchronicities of one sort and another right now. While at Bangor Theological Seminary, a writer and informal/unassuming theologian named Phylis Tickle wrote a book called The Great Emergence. Her premise was that the conditions that led to the Protestant Revolution from a religious standpoint were presenting themselves again, and therefore might be pointing towards a new Christian Reformation at this time. A practicing Episcopalian, she was liberally religious, open and affirming with traditional high church rituals. She spoke at my graduation in 2010 and I had the chance to speak with her during a seminary welcoming dinner. Her studies and vision pointed toward an opening and shift toward a more Christlike expression of Christianity. Sermon on the Mount, love thy neighbors, feed the poor, etc etc. A more inclusive and expansive Christianity if I am recalling correctly. She died in 2015. I think she would be sad to see the emergence that is actually presenting itself right now.
I understand from a friend who studies astrology, the charts are also indicating that the shifts are larger than theological. They are also geopolitical, societal, social, economic right now to name a few.Overlaying those over the religion, this time is synchronous for big change. Not very easy change either. But the call to all good people, and they truly outnumber those who support exploitive change, is to remain hopeful and centered, care for one another, and remain community focused. Here we are doing exactly that. There are always moments of despair, fear, anger. I would wonder if folks had a pulse if they didn't pick up on those things or perhaps even experience those feelings themselves.
I remember starting the new year with a service called Gird Your Loins…..well this week I am circling back to that statement and those sentiments. The ways we create safe space are tantamount right now. Art is resistance. Peaceful gathering and creating sanctuary is resistance. Supporting community based organizations and operations is resistance. Even if it is resistance to despair, it is in fact resistance that is named by spiritual leaders of all shapes and sizes as the resistance that will transform the world.
This seems like a dark time in the world and certainly for the Biddeford community! You have a call and a faith that prepares you to meet this time. And I witness you doing it every day here! Please stay connected to our community for your own sake and ours. Come to events, reach out for one another and don't hesitate to reach out to me ever! You have companions for the journey who need you as much as you need them. We need to nurture and model our principles and values, right relationships and peaceful, positive resistance. We are sanctuary as much as having a sanctuary. We are a beacon as much as the many chalices with candles and articifical votives we have. Please consider this to be a call and commissioning to deepen your faith and connection!
I offer a few extra questions this week:
How do you center yourself around love to be the beaon for yourself?
How can we/you help others center themsel(f)ves today and in this time?
With love at the center always and in all ways!
Peace and Blessings,
Rev Lori Whittemore
Unitarian Universalist Church of Saco Biddeford