This Sunday during service, before the eagerly anticipated annual Christmas pageant, Theo and I will have the great joy of leading a child dedication ceremony for two of the youngest members of our community. At Christmas time! In front of the manger set!

This will be my first child dedication as an ordained minister and it’s a rite of passage I have been looking forward to. I first felt a call to ministry on August 27, 2017. The call was sudden and clear, seeming to come from somewhere deep inside and far beyond at the same time. It was during a Sunday service at All Souls in Washington DC, but it did not happen during a rousing sermon, a moving piece of choral music, or a moment of prayer. It came during a child dedication. It came to me in the midst of a ritual rooted in community, where we recognize our interdependence and promise to help care for one another. It came in the moments the congregation read these words of promise from our hymnal, written by Rev. Rob Eller-Isaacs: “May we be worthy guardians of this young life. May we build a community in which they will grow old surrounded by beauty, embraced by love, and cradled in the arms of peace.”

I get choked up every time I read those words. What a sacred responsibility! What a precious gift! I can not imagine more meaningful work than that. It’s a lifetime’s work. It’s life-giving, life-saving, life-sustaining work. If it’s the only work we commit ourselves to during our time on this earth, it is enough. It’s work I have witnessed you all doing with an uncommon kind of commitment and joy. Truly, I have not been in another church community where the young people were so welcome, respected, cherished, engaged, and loved. It is a beautiful thing to behold.

It feels especially urgent and hopeful to make these promises to our youngest members, but really, as a faith community, this is what we strive to do for one another every day, and for each and every person who walks through our doors, regardless of age. Because, in the words of Ram Dass, “We are all just walking each other home.” I could imagine it as a kind of quiet prayer we whisper each time we step through the threshold into our church building: “May we be worthy guardians of one another.”

For me, this is the power of rituals and rites-of-passage ceremonies in church. They call us back to our deepest values and to our sacred center in a way that a sermon or intellectual discussion usually can’t. Native American botanist, author, and educator Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “Ceremony can bring the quiescent back to life; it can open your mind and heart to what you once knew but have forgotten.” When we make promises to our children, to our beloved, to our ancestors, to our new church members, or when we witness others make those promises, we are both recommitting ourselves to our life’s sacred purpose and reawakening our souls to an awareness of that purpose. There is a reason many of us cry at weddings and funerals, even of those we don’t know well.

If there is a moment of transition, commitment, or dedication you would like to mark in your own life, know that this is a community that makes space for that. I hope you’ll reach out if you’re considering a child dedication, wedding, vow renewal, name change ceremony, etc. I hope you will all join us in the meeting house or on zoom Sunday to witness and participate in our child dedication ceremony. And I hope in making these promises to our young people, it will give you a chance to reflect on the promises we make to one another. May we be worthy guardians indeed.

In faith,
Rev. Danielle