Over the past few weeks, I have listened to many of you share your joys and sorrows during this time of transition.  Some are energized by the changes and others are deeply anxious.  With this in mind, I am doing my best to hear and respond to the many different expressions of Covenant members.

I think the best thing we can model together is a gentle spirit, an openness to each other, and a willingness to name what we need.  Some have needed the creativity we’ve been trying; some need more familiar structure upon which to lean.  So in the weeks to come, I’d like to adjust in the hope that it will be helpful to all (a familiar feeling after ten years in this wildly diverse community).

With regard to the forms and symbols of our ritual life together, I will steer us back toward the familiar in an acknowledgment that much of what is dear to us has not changed now and will not change come April.  With regard to the earnest sharing of our human life together, I will move the creativity into the pastoral prayer in an attempt to name the complexities of saying goodbye and setting out on separate (even if kindred) paths.

Next week I’ll blog about the power of naming, and I will invite conversation about naming where we are as a way of preparing for the path ahead.  This Sunday my prayer will be a spontaneous one, made of a month’s worth of laughter and tears, so many conversations with so many dear ones.  March is our month to grieve, to questions, to bless, and to begin trusting in an unscripted future.  March is our month to hold hands with the past and the future, feeling the tug of each as we try to keep our feet on the ground.  March is our moment is our moment for the taking, a time to name our loves as clearly as we are able.

With eyes open.  And with aloha,

J