Our beloved sanctuary and the community it holds has cycled through spring many times. I have fond
memories of many of our volunteer gardeners preparing for Spring, arriving before service or stopping by during the week to monitor the health of all flowers and plants as well as keeping our green space clear.
We are renewed by so many things: nature, spring flowers, each other, longer days, solitude, silence. Written around 1864 but not published until 1896 (as with many of Dickinson’s poems), “A Light Exists in Spring” beautifully captures the way that spring slowly appears in our consciousness, like a light in the distance:
Emily Dickinson, “A Light Exists in Spring”
A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period –When March is scarcely here
A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels…
Lately, I am feeling that light in the distance, a shift in energy, inspired by the wonderful speakers the assiduous Sunday Service Ministry has introduced us to. Our commitment to each other and the causes we care so deeply about feel even stronger. Through our community, worship, caring for one another, small group ministry, our faith breathes new life into us.
Our congregation has always grappled with social issues we can all support. Most recently we came together and supported the Asylum Seekers in Newburgh with our contributions of clothes and monetary donations, organized by board members Nancy Sears and Nan Dempster.
I am hearing interest in reviving our involvement with the local Green Faith (and/or UU Green Ganctuary), anxiety around the upcoming election and the threat of losing our democracy, and
condemning our government’s complicity in the crisis in Gaza.
If anyone has any interest in these social justice issues (or different) please see either myself, or anyone on the board. We give thanks and gratitude for the sweetness of renewal so that it may linger
in us, be amplified and multiplied, towards healing and wholeness.
Namaste,
Rev. Diane