UU Notes, June 1, 2016, Issue 18

Read more of our newsletter at Issue 18, June 1, 2016

Minister’s Musings…
I mentioned in my sermon this week that this was a time of “lasts,” making my departure a process and not a single event. So this is my last Minister’s Musings, my last Incidental Inspiration and Buddhist quip. There have been and will be many opportunities to say our goodbyes. (Especially on the afternoon of June 12th, please join us at 5:00 for worship and dinner at the Sanford Church.)

The finality associated with saying goodbye is challenging. Yet it’s an empowering word, enabling us to achieve closure and ultimately move on with our lives. In addition to accepting that a part of our life is now over, “goodbye” also provides us with a chance to realize just how blessed our lives have been.

Author A.A. Milne, author of Winnie-the-Pooh, once wrote:
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

This church has changed in the time we have been together and so have I. But it really has always felt like it has been a partnership and a shared ministry. We have learned from each other and we have all grown as a result. In many ways we have come into our brilliance (even though, at the same time we have learned that life is often messy and muddy). Either way we definitively know that it is better to be in this mess together than to try to do it alone….
 
We have lived through troubles: personal challenges and church challenges, and we have held each other’s hands for courage. We have stood together at gravesides saying goodbye, and we have blessed the new babies that were dedicated. We have grasped hands in lines of protest and in affirmation of equal rights. We have fasted the hands of the young as they have come of age and of the old who have discovered new wisdom, gay and straight so that they could enter into lives without loneliness…we have laughed a lot, rolled our eyes more than once, faced conflict head on and emerged on the other side.

I will leave you with two pieces from the last Sunday morning message I delivered in Sanford, first a prayer for all of you by John Gibb Millspaugh, Sarah Gibb Millspaugh that reminds us that we ALL can be the blessing and I would add the benediction!

All: As we have been blessed, so we bless one another to be a blessing. Breathe in, breathe out, this breath we share with all that breathes. Feel the love of the universe flowing through this community, into you, and out into the universe again. Let the love of all the universe—your love—flow outward, to its height, its depth, its broad extent. You are more than you know, and more beloved than you know. Take up what power is yours to create safe haven, to make of earth a heaven. Give hope to those you encounter, that they may know safety from inner and outer harm, be happy and at peace, healthy and strong, caring and joyful. Be the blessing you already are. That is enough. Blessed Be; Amen. And what sums it up for me, by Mary Oliver
To live in this world you must be able to do three things:
To love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it.
And, when the time comes to let it go, To let it go.
Blessings, Rev. Sue