Sermon: "Can I Pray for You?" (Rev. Danielle)

Many of you know that my call to ministry came mid-life and I was not religious as a young person. I was adamant in my atheism and found it unbearably embarrassing when my grandparents would make us pray before a meal in a restaurant. It felt, as the kids say these days, extremely cringe. We all have our own brand of religious baggage and associations depending on where we grew up and I grew up in the south in the 90s, in the age of What Would Jesus Do bracelets, brightly colored Teen Bibles, and christian clubs with hip sounding names that met in the cafeteria before school. Those were the people I know who talked openly about their faith, wondered about how they could get closer to Jesus and who would offer to pray for me (always with a hunt of judgement in the offer). And teenage Danielle wanted nothing to do with that.

Even as my faith evolved and I discovered Unitarian Universalism, it was easy to avoid extemporaneous prayer or overtly public displays of faith. Sure, I was happy to go to a protest and talk about how my values called me to act in the world. But no one asked me who or what I thought God was and if I talked to God or what I thought happened when I did. Community, social justice, putting faith in action all felt fine but talking about religious belief, or prayer, or my relationship to the divine still felt embarrassing at best and offensive at worst.

So it was unexpected when I found myself as a chaplain in a hospital room, holding the hands of a woman I had just met and praying “Lord Jesus we ask that you lower gas prices.” She was the only visitor for a friend of hers who was dying. She was not especially well off and lived quite a ways away and the regular drives there were a financial burden. I did not believe, in the literal post-enlightenment sense of that word, that Jesus is sitting up in the sky at some kind of cosmic control board regulating the international oil market. But I knew this was not the time to say to this person in pain, “ I believe in praying with our feet. Here are the most politically effective ways to impact economic policy.” She had both deep faith and deep need, so I prayed with surprising earnestness, for Jesus to ease her burden. I can’t say if it actually did anything. I honestly can’t remember what happened to gas prices that summer. But I saw how her request was one borne of deep love for a dying friend,I saw her love for her God and the truth the Christian story held in her life, and I wanted to hold and honor all of that with her in the most sacred space we could possibly create in that hospital room. Prayer was the scaffolding for that space.

The chaplaincy work all ministers are required to do is ostensibly to sharpen our pastoral care skills, but I think one of the great gifts that it gave me was that it forced me to take other people’s faith seriously. Not to pick it apart academically or poke holes in the theology but to sit with them in the depths of it, the strength it gave them, the language it provided when words were hard to find, and the questions and doubts that are its regular companions. So often it took the form of prayer. I came to see prayer as a kind of sacred vessel for holding all of that. A way of saying, these questions and hopes and longings, this relationship you have with the divine, these things are so very precious, let us place them here in this place of safety and reverence. I realized that what made prayer so powerful wasn’t its utility but the way it honored that part of a person’s life. The way it made space for the questions the doctor’s didn’t have an answer for, the hopes that were too fragile to speak aloud, the truths that can’t be proven scientifically. To pray with someone was to let them know their soul deserved care in the same way their mind and body did. I begin to understand “Can I pray for you,” not as a condescending judgement but as a tender offer to help someone hold something very precious. UU minister of worship arts, Erika Hewitt writes. “Prayer is a way to connect and reconnect to ourselves and to that which is life-giving; the mechanics don’t matter as much as the intention: remembering ourselves as magnificent, fragile vessels of love, sometimes with intimates and sometimes with strangers, and affirming our choice to remain connected so that we’re not lost in the vastness of space and time.”

Two years after I prayed for Jesus to lower gas prices, I let down my guard enough to pray for myself. Not meditate or contemplate a poem or read a devotional, but pray in a child-like, petitionary, ask God for something kind of way. I had just returned, exhausted from a cross country trip for a family member’s funeral. And I was on the way to church to preach what I knew would be a difficult sermon in the life of that congregation. As I drove over the drawbridge crossing the Willamette River, I prayed simply, “God, give me a steady voice today.” It was a small ask and spontaneous. The prayer over before I even reached the other side of the river. But it was a vulnerable moment, an admission that I needed support from something greater than myself, a recognition of my own human limitations, and a way of honoring that what I was carrying that morning was precious enough to hold in sacred space. It was, as a recovering atheist, still, deeply embarrassing. But beautifully, powerfully effective.

Now, I am not just trying to convince you to start praying—for yourself or others. Not exactly. Although I wouldn’t be sad if that was the outcome. What I am trying to do is convince you to treat that piece of yourself and others, that we honor in prayer, with care and attention. To recognize that just like our bodies and minds, our souls also deserve tending. I want to normalize prioritizing our spiritual lives and spiritual growth, normalize supporting each other on that journey, and normalize talking about it with one another. Because our faith matters. What we believe matters. And how we stay in touch with and nurture those things matters. Always, but especially right now.

It’s only been two months since ICE agents murdered two unarmed American citizens in Minneapolis. It probably seems like longer because since then the news cycle keeps bringing us increasingly upsetting, major stories like the release of some of the Epstein Files, and a war with Iran that some conservative leaders are framing in Biblical and apocalyptic language. Meanwhile, we’re grappling with things like the ethics of emerging technology and AI, having conversations that make us question our definition of truth and reality and what it means to be human. We live in times that ask with new urgency old questions about who we are and whose we are, where we come from and where we’re going, and what moral obligations we have while we’re here. And we live in times that weigh heavily on some deep part of our souls, times that threaten to disconnect and isolate us from one another and our inner voice. Wrestling with those questions while staying tethered to both our humanity and to what’s transcendent is spiritual work. It’s soul work. And it needs space separate from the other facets of our lives. Prayer, silence, reading sacred texts, deep discussions like soul matters or the anti-fascist theology reading group here at the church.

So often when I counsel people, and ask them about their spiritual lives, they will admit to letting their spiritual practices be one of the first things that slips when life gets busy. And when I say people, I mean me. Or they’ll double or triple up for maximum efficiency. Well, I’ve heard meditation is good for your productivity and health so that’s my spiritual practice. I was in a recent training with other Unitarian ministers where the leaders shared that families consistently rank church low in their list of obligations, skipping church before they skip sports, school clubs, and music lessons. I once taught an adult class at church on building your own theology and one of the participants was stationed there in the military. They were supposed to be on duty the night of one of our classes and asked for a religious exemption. You should have seen the rest of the classes faces when they heard that. It had never occurred to them that anything related to Unitarian Universalism would carry that kind of religious or spiritual weight!

Raise your hand if, in the past let’s say 6 months, you’ve asked someone else in the congregation how they are feeling physically maybe after an illness or surgery? Have you asked someone in the congregation how they’re job is going? In the last six months have you asked anyone, “how’s your spiritual life?” Even in church we don’t do a great job of prioritizing prioritizing the spiritual life.

For those of you who are a bit more utilitarian, who maybe have a harder time justifying tending to the spiritual life for it’s own sake, I’ll close with an interesting conversation between journalist and comedian Trevor Noah and NY mayor Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani was talking giving his diagnosis for the failure of the political left in America, which he ascribes to a lack of imagination, saying, “we are robbing ourselves of ambition and imagination, and we’re telling people that their choice is between settling or sacrifice. And neither of these are enough. You have to have an affirmative vision of how life can be better than this, because this life already is suffocating people.”

Trever Noah responded, “I sometimes think it’s because of the decline of religion on the left.” He continues, “One of the things that faith requires of you is the ability to believe that this current state that you are in is not the end. There is a possibility that something can be greater. And even though you cannot see it, you believe that it can happen.”

Viewed in this light, someone asking me to pray for lower gas prices isn’t just an amusing or touching anecdote about my faith evolution. That prayer was her affirmative vision of a better life. It represents the possibility that something can be greater. It was a powerful vision of equity and ease and the ability to care for one another. A vision of a society that values being present with the dying and doesn’t erect barriers that would prevent such an act of love. For Noah and Mamdani, faith is necessary to the political work of sustaining a vibrant democracy, of building the beloved community, of imagining a world centered on love and liberation.

Our spiritual lives are worth tending to. Our faith is worth being taken seriously. So lean into your role as spiritual companions to one another. Be accountability partners and help one another stick to spiritual practices or show up to church events that are important to you. Talk about what you believe and what you aren’t sure about. Talk about who or what God or goddess is for you. Read sacred texts together. Talk about why you pray or don’t and what it means to you. Ask each other to pray with you and for you. Ask me. I know you’re New Englanders and I know it might feel awkward or embarrassing but this is how we tend our soil so the sowers’ seeds take root. There’s no short cut.

This is how we deepen our faith and we live in times that require a deep faith: a faith that helps us hold one another’s pain and tender hopes, a faith that buoys us in trying times, a faith that brings us moral clarity in the face of injustice, and a faith that allows us to imagine a better world.

May we never consider time spent tending to our souls, to one another’s souls, time wasted.

May it be so. Amen.

© Rev. Danielle Garrett, 2026

Sermon: “The Fast Before the Feast” (Rev. Danielle)

Friends, for the first time in weeks, I wrote this sermon without wondering whether or not we were going to have to cancel in-person church service. It has not been an easy winter and I know we are all looking for signs of spring in the air. We are waiting for the ground to thaw. I always feel like I see the light at the end of the tunnel when pitchers and catchers report. So my mind has been drifting towards dreams of ballpark hotdogs, but as a reminder that we don’t always get we want, but sometimes what we need, this week in the liturgical calendar of two religious traditions, we enter a season of fasting. This Wednesday marks the beginning of the Muslim observance of Ramadan, as well as Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian liturgical season of Lent. They are very different observances, of course. Ramadan, which honors the revelation of the Quran and all holy scripture, has a more celebratory nature, with communal pre-dawn and evening meals bookmarking the daily fasts. Lent, the 40 days in the Christian calendar leading up to Easter is more solemn, focused on prayer, sacrifice, and almsgiving as observers prepare their hearts to hear the story of Jesus’s death and resurrection. But both call for practices of self-reflection, fasting and restraint. Both ask observers to give something up in order to make room for the holy.

As an atheist teenager, I was terribly judgy of my friends who observed Lent. The giving up of sugar and junk food felt like a way to reinforce diet culture and cloak it in piety, which was an affront to my feminist values. I am embarrassed now to remember how, full of teenage bravado and scorn, I declared, “I don’t think Jesus cares if you drink diet coke.” As I matured and my relationship with religion changed, I discovered Lenten traditions that weren’t based on sacrifice. Lent became a season for focusing on practices that brought me closer to the sacred and sometimes those practices can be additive; for example, a new spiritual practice, a new book of devotional readings, doing one act of justice/resistance a day, posting an inspirational photo or quote on social media daily, etc.

This made me more comfortable with the season for a while, but this year, I’m not sure comfort should be the goal. I don’t know about you, but I could use some help figuring out how to give things up. Because I can think of so many recent examples of when I’ve refused to sacrifice my comfort for the collective good. The Amazon boycotts that lasted until an “emergency” requiring overnight delivery. The Disney+ boycott that lasted until my desire to see the Taylor Swift eras tour documentary won out. The single use plastics, and red meat, and international flights that are increasing carbon emissions. And heck, forget the collective good for a minute, there are so many times where I’ve refused to give something up for my own good. Scrolling on facebook and instagram even when I can feel it ruining my attention span, making me angry, dissatisfied, and numb to name just one example.

We humans are not good at giving things up. We are not good at choosing discomfort and inconvenience, even when it might be in our best interest. We are hard-wired to want to have our cake and eat it too. Ask any minister what church attendance is like on Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday or Good Friday versus Easter morning. We want the joy of resurrection and new life without the loss and death. We want the health benefits of meditation without the hard hours of practice and boredom and learning proper posture. We want the solace of community without the discomfort of conflict. We want better schools but we don’t want to pay higher taxes. We want to save the earth, but at the end of the day, aren’t we all kind of hoping someone invents a machine that will magically reverse climate change without us having to drink out of paper straws?

But friends, the stakes these days are too high to rely on magical thinking. The truth is, living our values, really putting our faith into action, might mean giving things up. It might mean sacrificing some temporary comfort, and abandoning old habits and old ways of living that aren’t centered on love, that don’t serve our neighbor or our planet, that don’t serve collective liberation. Shopping habits that exploit workers, convenience products that destroy the earth, tech platforms that threaten democracy and further enrich the powerful.

This is what feminist eco-theologian Sally McFague argued. Towards the end of her life, McFague made a move unusual for a liberal theologian. She began writing passionately about the Christian concept of “kenosis,” or self-emptying. The act of letting go of ego and power and like Jesus committing to acts of self-sacrificial love. You don’t hear a lot of feminist theologians talk about self-sacrifice. For good reason! But McFague cared deeply about creation care and economic inequality and she worried our habits of overconsumption were killing one another and the earth. The only way forward was to practice radical restraint and humility. To give things up. McFague writes, “This ‘crisis’ has to do with how we live on a daily basis—the food we eat, the transportation we use, the size of the house we live in, the consumer goods we buy, the luxuries we allow ourselves, the amount of long-distance air travel we permit ourselves, and so forth. The enemy is the very ordinary life we ourselves are leading as well-off North Americans.” The kenotic paradigm, she says…includes the recognition that life’s flourishing on earth demands certain limitations and sacrifices at physical and emotional levels. The realities of our time mean that the vocabulary and sensibility of self-limitation, egolessness, sharing, giving space to others, and limiting our energy use no longer sound like a special language for the saints, but rather, like an ethic for all of us.” Pope Francis echoed this call in his 2019 Ash Wednesday address when he said, “We need to free ourselves from the clutches of consumerism and the snares of selfishness, from always wanting more, from never being satisfied, and from a heart closed to the needs of the poor,”

I hear them. I do. But then I remember my many failed attempts at an Amazon boycott. It’s hard! Our brains can be frighteningly simple sometimes, wired to desire instant gratification and to avoid discomfort. Sometimes self-denial feels like trying to overcome our very nature.

But this, this is what religion is good for. Some scholars say all theology is really anthropology. Religious traditions understand the best and worst of human nature and offer us stories and tools and frameworks for dealing with all the limits and possibilities of our humanness. There are ancient spiritual technologies that help us grapple with the idea that sometimes we need to let go of something, go without, give something up for our own good or for the good of our shared life together. Observances like Lent and Ramadan that give us a chance to practice this hard work. Now, I know these practices have caused a lot of harm for folks, and I do not want anyone to engage in a practice that might be physically or emotionally damaging. If you remember from our second reading, a fast can take many forms that aren’t just about food. So my goal isn’t to convince you to observe fast or ramadan, but to contemplate some of the ways these practices can be informative or instructive as we figure out how to live our lives in ways that lead to collective flourishing.

And there are three things about these practices that I want to lift up. First, they remind us, in Omid Safi’s words, that “Our Bodies Are Means by Which We Live Out Our Faith.” There is a materiality—and embodied quality to both Lent and Ramadan that reminds us that our bodies and souls are deeply connected. We can’t just think our faith, we have to live it, in the real world with the flesh and bones and earthy resources we’ve been given. Fasting or giving something up for 40 days helps remind us of the agency and power we have to express our faith in tangible, embodied ways. We might think it’s silly when our friends give up diet coke or chocolate for Lent, but that practice serves as a reminder that what we consume, when, and how is an expression of our faith values. These practices help strengthen that soul, body connection for us. They create short cuts in our brain that remind us that what we eat and how we travel and where we spend our money and how we spend our time are not disconnected from what we hold most sacred.

Second, these practices bring us deeper into community. They remind us we don’t and can’t do this alone. Whether it’s reducing our consumption and changing our habits to combat climate change, boycotting a business that’s supporting harmful policies, or better distributing our wealth and resources to care for the least of these, it’s going to take a critical mass to be successful. One person reducing single use plastics or refusing to shop at Target until they stop cooperating with ICE won’t have much of an impact. We need all of us. Lent and Ramadan invite us to practice fasting as a communal endeavor. We enter these seasons knowing generations of ancestors have already tread these spiritual paths. We know we have companions for the journey to hold us accountable and provide us encouragement, and we get to remember that the feast is that much more delicious when we’ve shared in the fast together. I love Omid Safi’s warm memory of his Arabic professor taking a group of students to Waffle House for the pre-dawn meal. The experience of living our embodied faith collectively is powerful.

And finally, and most importantly, these observances help reframe practices of self-restraint or sacrifice, seeing them not as pious acts of willpower done for their own sake, but as steps towards greater joy and wholeness. Sally McFague writes that we are called to “restraint, not for the sake of ascetic denial of the world, but in order that “abundant life” might be possible for all.” The work of achieving abundant life for all should be joyful work! If we’re going to stick in the fights for justice and equity for the long haul, we need to find pleasure and meaning in making decisions that serve our neighbor and care for the earth.

Ramadan and Lent remind us that there can be joy, richness, and spiritual fruits in practices of restraint. After all, Lent comes from an Old English word meaning “spring season.” It ends on Easter, with the promise of resurrection, of new and abundant life. Ramadan is a celebratory month, with each day’s fast ending in an iftar, a communal meal. Many people who celebrate these sacred practices will tell you that what is gained is far more than was given up. A deeper relationship with God or the sacred, a better understanding of what’s most important in their lives, a new sense of spaciousness when they let go of something that is no longer serving them.

Ramadan and Lent are reminders that restraint, denial, and sacrifice do not always look like loss. They are reminders that sometimes in giving something up, we can gain something more beautiful, more lasting, more worthwhile, more holy. And I don’t know about you, but I need those reminders. Because they will help give me the courage to let go of things that are no longer serving me, to give up the things that are no longer serving my community or the planet, even when it’s hard and uncomfortable and inconvenient.

During this season of fasting, this season of embodied, communal, joyful, faithful restraint, may we, in the words of Walter Bruggemenn, find ways to depart from the greedy, anxious anti-neighborliness of our economy, departure from our exclusionary politics that fears the other, depart from self-indulgent consumerism that devours creation. And arrive in a new neighborhood.

May it be so. Amen.

© Rev. Danielle Garrett, 2026

Sermon: “Put Your Money Where Your Faith Is” (Rev. Danielle)

First Reading: 1 Timothy 6: 2-10

Second Reading: “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” by Wendell Berry

“… Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant…”

Sermon:

As a child, apparently disappointed in the going rate for lost teeth in the early 90s, I decided to hang on to one of my teeth for a while before putting it under my pillow. When my parents inquired as to why I wasn’t cashing in right away, I told them I thought I’d get more money for an antique.

I love that I thought this magical flying fairy, who travels the globe sneaking into children’s rooms unseen and leaving coins behind in exchange for lost teeth operated under our earthly economic system. That she would have had the same definition of what’s valuable as I did. I’ve talked to some parents recently and it does seem like the tooth fairy is keeping up with inflation, so you know, I wasn’t entirely wrong.

And I was, as it turns out, in good company. I joined in a long line of humans throughout history who have tried to financially transact with divine beings. In the ancient Greco-Roman world, the spheres of religion and economics were deeply intertwined. Temples housed banks and deities had their own bank accounts, managed by religious officials. People leased lands that belonged to gods and the gods were parties to those lease contracts. Statutes of gods and goddesses were used as weight standards in the marketplace. You would buy 10 zeus’s worth of grain. If you want a fun academic word to throw around at cocktail parties, New Testament scholar Jennifer Quigly calls this entanglement “Theo-economics.”

Quigly was my professor for “Letters of Paul,” and she was interested in this ancient entanglement because it was the context of the earliest Christian communities. Paul was writing his letters, the basis for so much modern Christian theology and doctrine, in a society that saw no separation between religious life and economic life. So, now, when you’re at home with your Bibles reading the Pauline letters for fun, as I’m sure many of you do regularly, you might start noticing how much economic language Paul uses. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul refers to the gospel “venture,” and describes the community in Philippi as being “joint-shareholders in grace.” So Paul is using the language of his context, but he does something a little transgressive. Paul, by and large, is not writing to wealthy communities. His followers make up the 99% in the Roman Empire. So he says, yes, religion and economics might be interlinked, but we’re going to use a different accounting method. Our ledger sheet looks different from the Romans. This is what he’s doing when he asserts that Christ has come to turn death into profit, writing “living is Christ, dying is gain.” We are the wealthy ones, despite what our bank accounts indicate, Paul tells the early Christian communities.

So obviously, I’m not up here to preach that Christ came to turn death into profit. So why am I telling you this? We might think it absurd today that people once set up bank accounts for Gods, but I don’t think we’re as far away from that world as we might think. If you think Paul’s letters don’t impact us, I invite you to watch house speaker Mike Johnson’s press conference where he uses Paul’s letter to the Romans to defend immigration crack-downs. So Paul’s context continues to inform our context. And I think knowing this history prompts us to starting looking for our modern theo-economic entanglements, the ones that might be a bit more hidden. Religion and economics have never been separate spheres and they still aren’t today. We can decide what we want to do with that: embrace it, transgress it, subvert it, try to sever it, but before we do any of those things, we need to see it.

So when do we invite God into our financial transactions? What are our modern equivalents of Athena’s temple bank account? It’s easy to point to all of the examples we don’t like. Televangelists embezzling money and exploiting vulnerable believers. Prosperity gospel preachers who ignore the beatitudes and promise that Jesus actually wants you to be rich and if your aren’t, you must not be praying hard enough. Or a “God Bless the USA” branded Bible that earned Donald Trump $1.3 million in royalties for his endorsement.

But religious and economic entanglements aren’t solely the domain of conservative religion and Christian nationalism. Did you know that the phrase "cleanliness is next to Godliness” is not in the Bible, it’s a phrase attributed to John Wesley that found its way into popular vernacular in the 19th century through advertisements for the brand new commercial soap industry who decided to use clergy like Henry Ward Beecher to help convince Americans it was their moral duty to buy soap.

And have any of you ever taken a yoga or meditation class at work? Or downloaded a mindfulness app as part of an employee wellness benefit? In her book, “Work, Pray, Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley,” sociologist Carolyn Chen argues that, “Work is replacing — and in some cases, even taking the form of — religion among many of America’s professionals.” She writes about how, in Silicon Valley, “tech companies have taken up pastoral and spiritual care as a way to make their employees more productive.” She shares the example of one tech start-up that implemented an employee meditation program, drawing heavily from Buddhist thought, and saw a two-dollar return on investment for every dollar spent on the program. The company concluded that “Personal conversions…translate to higher organizational returns across the board.” Talk about the-economic entanglements.

The examples I’ve given so far are pretty cynical, but this relationship isn’t always negative. It isn’t always in service of capitalism and corporate greed. As Unitarian Universalists, the way we financially structure our churches is a direct expression of our relationship to God. This is not a stewardship sermon, but I don’t think our stewardship team would mind me reminding you that your financial pledges to the church are connected to our theology. We descend from traditions that believed we needed no intermediary between us and the divine We hold as one of our values the idea that each person has a right to freely and responsibly search for truth and meaning for themselves. We are non creedal and non dogmatic. No one tells us what to believe, or tells who is allowed to preach in our churches, or what they can preach. And part of maintaining that autonomy means being financially independent. Money is power, and in our churches power rests with the congregants and no one else, so it is the congregants who fund the church. We value freely exploring and defining our own relationship with the sacred, so that means not giving up our financial control to anyone else. When the stewardship campaign rolls around this year, you can view your pledge not as a donation but as a theological commitment. That is our Unitarian theo-economics.

Once you see it, it’s hard to stop seeing it, all of the ways our economic lives are shaped by religious beliefs and values and vice-versa. And for those of us who distrust religious movements that seem too preoccupied with wealth, It’s easy to become jaded. But when I remember the sacred freedom that comes with our own tradition’s financial structure, when I look around and see all of you as joint shareholders in a common venture, I feel earnest pride and joy. And I see powerful possibilities. I wonder if, like Paul, if we can see this intersection of religion and economics, not as reason for cynicism but as a site of transgression and re-imagination. A place to redefine what we consider profit, gain, and worth in a way that aligns with our most sacred values.

Isn’t that what Wendell Berry is arguing for when he writes,

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit.

Call that profit.

I’m reminded of Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 speech at the University of Kansas where he too questions what we call profit. This is a much longer quote than I usually use in a sermon but I think it’s so powerful, so bear with me. In this famous speech, Kennedy says, “Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.” He continues, “Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

Friends, we live in an era where the fundamental values we hold as people of faith, as people living in America, are being tested. It’s becoming riskier and riskier to protect our neighbor, defend democracy, and side with love. So what we consider of ultimate worth and what price we are willing to pay for it have become questions of fierce urgency. Like the Apostle Paul, like Robert Kennedy, like Wendell Berry, we too are invited to ask, “What do we call profit?” Paul’s faith called him to proclaim the powerful paradox that “dying is gain.”Our congregationalist ancestors decided freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, freedom of the pulpit was worth paying for. They decided that the return on investment, which couldn’t be measured in dollars, was well worth the upfront costs. What is our generation’s defiant restructuring of the divine accounting ledger?

In a society that tells us our worth is tied to our economic productivity and we need to monetize our hobbies and pick up side gigs to make ends meet, can we say “Rest is gain.” In a society that glorifies individualism and wants us to fear our neighbor and build walls and fences can we say “community is gain?” In a society that wants to monetize every natural resource, clearing our forests, polluting our oceans and stripping our mountain tops, can we say “conservation is gain?” In a society that tells us immigrants are taking our American jobs and driving down wages and making it harder for us to buy groceries, can we say, “Radical welcome is gain.” Peace is gain. Humility is gain. Mercy is gain. Love is gain.

We may never be able to entirely divorce prayer from profit, but as Paul and Wendell Berry suggest, we can decide what we call profit. May we choose carefully and courageously.

May it Be So.
Amen.

© Rev. Danielle Garrett, 2026

Special Sunday Service: Pastoral Care Team

Call to Worship:
In Need of Healing by Maureen Killoran

Reflections: On Pastoral Care

Good morning. I’m Sally Millice.    The Pastoral Care team is all about service to members of our community who need help.   This may involve bringing a meal, providing a ride to a medical appointment or making a call to one of our elderly or shut in congregants.

We all need help once in a while.  This committee is currently made up of me, Pat Small and Debbie Sylvester.   There is a team of over 20 care volunteers who provide the services.  If you want to be part of this ministry, let us know.  We’ll put you on a list of those to be contacted when needs arise.  If someone needs a ride, we’ll contact you with the details and you can let us know if you can volunteer.    When meals are needed, you’ll see a link in the order of service  or online news and you can sign up on the meal train website.

Let’s hear from one of our congregants who received meals this past year…

During the past year, our congregation provided 40 or so meals and gift cards to those in need through the Meal Train program.  

DEBBIE:    Taking care of our elderly and shut ins is part of our Pastoral Care ministry.  Each holiday, a group of crafters prepares gift bags for these folks.  Nancy Peluso coordinates this effort.  One of the crafters is Penny Bigmore, who will explain how it works…

When we deliver these bags, they are a source of joy and surprise.  The act of someone remembering them brings joy.  Sometimes the person making the delivery does not know the receiver and may feel awkward.  But there’s the opportunity  to expand our circle and feel the connection.    

PAT:  In this New Year, we are beginning a new mission and vision for our congregation as we move forward.  Now is a great time to expand our circle of friends and activities, to try something new.  First Church offer many opportunities to keep learning and growing.

Research in Positive Psychology reveals that 80% of all people interviewed say that helping someone gives them joy.  And studies in community effectiveness show that the happiest, most connected communities are those where members care for one another. Providing help to each other is a win-win.  It benefits both and the giver and the receiver.

On the other hand, asking for help is very difficult for a lot of people, especially those of us who take pride in their own independence.  Yet I have learned that however humbling it is to ask for help when needed, becoming vulnerable in that way shows me that people are, indeed good and are quite cheerful about helping out.  In asking for help, we are giving someone else the opportunity to find joy in giving.

We are looking for more people to engage with us in this shared ministry.  We want to make more calls to our elders, send card and make more visits.  If you have interest in volunteering, please stop by our table at coffee hour.  Give us your contact information or call one of us.

If you have provided a meal or a ride or participated in any care activity this past year please raise your hand.

Thank you for doing your part. We are deeply grateful.

See us at coffee hour if you want to be added to the volunteer list.  May we continue this important ministry.  Thank you.

Reflection: What does it take to make a community?
by Tiffany Magnolia

Faith — Trust -- Vulnerability

There is a now famous Mr. Rogers quotation that shows up when we are facing unimaginable tragedy: “Look for the helpers. There’s always someone willing to help.” And I think that when we think of community, when we think of what the Pastoral Care team or the Religious Education Committee, or maybe even the Church itself does, we focus on the helpers; we see ourselves as the “helpers” that Mr. Rogers told us to look for, to focus on. But what I want to offer in my reflection this morning is the flip side of the helpers, and it is this other part of community that is just as essential, and one which we don’t often discuss: the vulnerable. Because there are no helpers without folks who need help, which means these two are inextricably linked.

You see, faith and community have something very fundamental in common: they require the vulnerability of not “knowing.” When folks find themselves on the “helping” side of the community equation, yes, they don’t know how their help will be received, but they know their own capacity to bake a lasagna or to drive to Danvers. They know their capacity, and there is a kind of power in being able to “deliver” for someone else, in short, there is little vulnerability in doing these actions. For the person asking for the help, though, there is only vulnerability. Will I get the help I need? Am I asking for too much? Will the help be there when I need it? What will happen if I don’t get it? For the vulnerable, there is no certainty. For the vulnerable, there is only faith.

I have a good friend who is quite high up in a branch of government in DC. She is as close as it gets to DC royalty, having grown up with an ambassador as a father and a famous senator as a step father. She has moved in the kinds of political circles that most of us could never imagine. And, she hides the fact that she is deeply involved in the Episcopalian church in DC. You see, if her colleagues found out that she teaches Sunday school, that she never misses a service, they would ridicule her as a person of faith. She guards that vulnerability because she recognizes that those of us with faith, with strong faith, are not always in the mainstream. We are “quaint” to folks who are confident in their Atheism or Agnosticism. Something about the vulnerability of “faith” doesn’t sit well with others, so in claiming it, we are performing an act of resistance.

And this is the confluence of community and faith that I want to leave all of you with today. There is an inherent vulnerability in how we define our faith community. We are living at a time where religion is used as a blunt instrument. To declare ourselves part of a religious tradition is in many ways to draw a line in the sand that connects how we help with a recognition of faith at its core. It is vulnerable because it exposes how we move through the world in ways not often understood or valued by those outside our community. In turn, though, it cements us as a community, it reveals how we are interdependent–just like the care I mentioned at the opening, there are no helpers without the vulnerable. There is no faith community without seeing in one another the foundation of this place, this service, this history, this connection we all share as one of mutual dependency, as one of vulnerability. Let us value it for all its complexity, its mystery, and let us nurture it whatever side of the equation we find ourselves in at any moment. Blessed are the helpers and the vulnerable, for they shall find community with one another.

© Tiffany Magnolia, 2026

Sermon: "Guided by Love, Tethered to Truth" (Rev. Danielle)

Call to Worship:
Friends, I call us to worship this morning with these words which have been on my heart this week. They come from WH Auden’s poem September 1, 1939:

”All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie…”

First Reading:
Proverbs 12: 17-22
Amos 5, 10-15; 24

Pastoral Prayer:
Dear ones, this has been a heavy week in our country, and I know many of you bring your own personal worries, losses, and fears. Let us take a moment to just be together in silence. To hold space for the memory of Renee Good who was killed by an ICE officer in Minneapolis this week and to feel the presence of the sacred and this gathered community holding us in love.

Will you pray with me?

Spirit of life, God we know by many names, hear our prayers this hour

Some days we come before you with prayers composed of nothing but calm, clear silence, content to listen for your voice and to the wisdom that comes in the quiet

Some days we come with prayers of joyful song, like the prophetess Miriam, lifting up our praise with tambourines and ecstatic dance

Some days we come with prayers like poetry, words carefully chosen, flowery and intricate, crafted for the pleasure of hearing them roll off the tongue

Some days we come requesting detailed intercessions, feeling attuned most clearly to our individual wants and needs

And some days, like today, we come with simple words and deep longings

We pray for an end to violence

We pray for mercy

We pray for justice

We pray for answers

We pray for healing

We pray for peace

We pray for courage

We pray for love to prevail.


Dear God, we pray.

Amen. 

Will you join me in reciting the Lord’s prayer, this week using a Latin-American paraphrase. The prayer is associated with communities committed to Latin American liberation theology although I have not been able to find a single author. 

Our Father, Mother, Creator,
     who is in us here on earth
     and in heaven,
Holy is your name
     in the hungry
     who share their bread and their song.
Your Kingdom come,
     which is a generous land
     flowing with milk and honey.
Let us do your will,
     standing up when the rest are sitting down,
     and raising our voices
     when the rest are silent.
You give us our daily bread
     in the song of the bird and the miracle of the corn.
Forgive us
     for keeping silent in the face of injustice,
     and for burying our dreams;
     for not sharing bread and wine,
     love and the land
     among us now.
Do not let us fall into the temptation
     of not loving our neighbors,
     of shutting the door through fear,
     of resigning ourselves to hunger and injustice,
     of taking up the same arms as the enemy.
But deliver us from evil.
Give us the perseverance and the solidarity
     to look for love,
     even if the path has not yet been trodden,
     even if we fail,
So we shall know your Kingdom,
which is being built forever and ever.

Amen.

Second Reading:
Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars) by Muriel Rukeyser

Sermon:

Friends, I will be preaching today about the events this week in Minneapolis, striving to tell the truth about what happened there. I think it’s important for us to hear, even when it’s hard. But if you have little ones who have stayed in the sanctuary today or you aren’t in a safe space, mentally or emotionally to hear about violence, know that it’s okay if you need to step out.

I’ve talked before about the moment I first felt called to ministry, but in reality, my journey to ministry began in earnest the day after the 2016 election, when I didn’t know what to do, so I got some friends to meet me at a bar and then convinced them to go to church. My home congregation in DC was having an evening vespers prayer service. There were no calls to action and no fiery sermon, just prayer, music, simple chants, candles, and silence. That was the first time I sought religious community as the answer, when I didn’t know what else to do. And it unlocked something inside me that eventually led me here, to this pulpit with all of you.

And now I find myself again at a loss—for words, for understanding, for the clear next steps, and for any idea of what the future might hold for our nation. This Wednesday, an agent from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement shot and killed 37 year old mother of three Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis and then denied her immediate medical care. The agent involved was one of 2,000 agents deployed to Minnesota in what the agency called the “largest immigration operation” ever, focused mainly on the state’s large Somali community. While the full details of what happened are still emerging, and might never be fully known given the FBI takeover of the investigation and the refusal to include state and local officials, it appears Renee Good and her wife were joining with other community members to warn their immigrant neighbors of ICE’s presence and document their conduct. 

Almost immediately, white house officials began painting a picture of the incident that is directly contradicted by video evidence and analysis by a variety of legal and law enforcement experts, labeling Good a domestic terrorist, claiming she “violently ran over” the officer, and attacking her character, with Vice President JD Vance calling her deranged and labeling her death as “a tragedy of her own making.”

A decade later, heartbroken, full of grief and righteous anger, and once again unsure of what to do with it and my response is the same. Go to church. Go be with my people. This time around, try to preach a good word, yes, but mostly just go be with you all. Sit. Pray. Lament. Worship together.

A decade ago, I worried that my response was akin to retreat—that I was seeking the safety of a candle lit sanctuary as a way of avoiding what was happening outside. 

I am not worried about that today. Our work doesn’t end in these pews, but it’s got to start here. Especially right now. Because the power of this place in this upside down world we’re living in is that it gives us a space, away from all the noise, to remember our humanity, to recalibrate our moral compass, to stay in relationships with the holy and with one another, and to stay tethered to deep, eternal truths that temporal powers would rather us forget. 

This place is a sanctuary, yes, but that doesn’t mean a site of escape or avoidance. It doesn’t exist to protect us from hearing about and confronting difficult things. It exists to protect our souls and spirits from being degraded, from being worn down by a constant stream of lies, dehumanization, and fear-mongering that makes us distrust our neighbors and distrust ourselves. It exists to ensure our souls have space to hear the call of the sacred, so we can respond with discernment, moral clarity and courage.

In this space, together, we can resist efforts to disconnect us from our humanity. I’ve been thinking about how the language coming from Trump, Vance, and Kristi Noem immediately after the shooting was so blatantly false and upsettingly dehumanizing. There was no show of thoughts and prayers, no hedging, no “let’s wait and see what the facts reveal.” The falsehoods were extreme and immediate. It was hard not to think about Geroge Orwell’s famous quote from 1984,“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

They know they’re lying and they know we know they’re lying. But in an effort to disprove their lies, we immediately start analyzing the evidence. We get drawn into a political debate before we’ve had time to process the full moral and spiritual weight of what happened—before we’ve had time to grieve and mourn the loss of life. As we watch experts and talking heads zoom in on the video, slow it down, freeze the frame and circle key areas in red, it becomes easy to forget what the videos actually show. They show the death of Renee Good, a person with a name and a family and friends and a whole life ahead of her cut violently short. Whatever angle you look at it from, whatever other conclusions you draw, the basic fact is that the videos show a human being shot by a US agent at point blank range. And most of us have watched it multiple times at this point. That is not normal. It shouldn’t feel normal. So even if we don’t believe their lies, engaging with them is still doing damage to our souls. They are serving to desensitize us to violence and disconnect us from fully feeling and comprehending the tragic loss of life. 

Here we can resist that. We let ourselves take a break from frame by frame analysis and lean into the human response: grief and lament. We can make space to mourn and honor the dead. We can remember that as Unitarian Universalists, one of our core beliefs is that each and every person has inherent worth and dignity and anytime a life, any life, is cut short by violence, that is a tragedy that leaves a tear in the moral fabric of the universe. We don’t need a forensics expert to tell us that. 

Here we resist efforts to disconnect us from our humanity and, we resist efforts to disconnect us from our ethical commitments and our moral centers. One thing that has been so alarming to me this week are the moments I’ve found myself doubting my own moral compass—my own capacity to differentiate right from wrong, justice from injustice. As I read the news, listen to various pundits and try to understand different perspectives, I’ve found myself starting to ask things like “Was she actually interfering with operations?” rather than the question I should be asking: “are those operations worthy of interference?"I find myself beginning to wonder “why didn’t she just comply with orders,” without asking whether those orders were morally legitimate, rather than asking “should the price of non-compliance with an unjust system really be death?” I see the ways those in power are shifting the terms of the moral debate to make me question my own sense of right and wrong, to make me forget my commitments to my immigrant neighbors, to democratic principles, and to non-violent resistance. 

So I need to come here to recalibrate my moral compass, to this place where we don’t have to accept their terms of debate. Where we can draw on deeper sources, and try to access more lasting truths about the nature of goodness, and justice, and respect for human life. Where we can ask different questions, like the one inspired by journalist Peter Birkenhead, not “did this officer have cause to fire his gun,” but rather “did he have moral authority to carry one and be on that street in the first place?”

And we have generations of ancestors—activists and prophets and theologians—to help us answer those questions and find our moral center again. From biblical teachings that implore us to welcome the stranger to the example of abolitionist Unitarian ministers like Theodore Parker who funded John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. One I’ve been returning to this week is Henry David Thoreau who wrote:

“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil…Why does it not cherish its wise minority?...Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults…? Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?” Thoreau says if the law “is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”

Here, when we worship together we can reconnect with the sacred, drawing on our own direct experience of transcendence and wonder to guide us in knowing what is right. We can enter into a centuries-long conversation about our moral obligations in the face of unjust powers. We can ask ethical questions together that feel too big to confront on our own. And when we find that our sacred values compel us to transgress civic orders, we can take courage in knowing we aren’t alone. 

When we come here to worship together, we resist efforts to disconnect us from our humanity, we resist efforts to disconnect us from our moral compass, and we resist efforts to disconnect us from one another. These violent tactics, and the government’s endorsement of them are meant to force us back inside, to stop us from showing up for our communities, from acting in solidarity with our neighbors. And the dehumanizing language, against Renee Good and immigrant communities, is meant to further divide us, to make us distrust and fear one another. This is why, several months ago, I reminded you all of Hannah Arendt’s assertion that totalitarianism is “organized loneliness.” In the face of these isolationist tactics, communal worship is a direct expression of the power of gathered community. The word liturgy means “the work of the people.” Jesus told his disciples, “where two or more or gathered, there I am.” To continue to gather voluntarily, collectively in the name of love and justice is a powerful thing. As long as we keep coming together, we can keep the presence of righteousness and the light of truth alive among us. When we sit next to each other on Sundays and share in our joys and our pain, we are reminded we are each others keeper. 

And in doing all of this, in resisting their efforts to disconnect us from our own humanity, from our moral compass, from one another, we resist efforts to disconnect us from God—from the sacred power of love and justice that is the very ground of our being, guiding our feet and lighting our way. 

This is why, when we don’t know what else to do, we show up to worship. And this is why showing up here is never a waste of time. It keeps us connected with what is most holy and maintaining the connection is an urgent and radical act right now. Every hymn we sing, every word we pray, every moment of silence we hold, everything we do here in this sanctuary should be done with the intention of tethering us to truth and goodness and to our shared human obligations. 


I was talking to a friend and teacher about these events and one thing she noted that deeply moved me was the fact that Renee Good was in her neighborhood when she was killed. A neighborhood she had recently moved to in order to find home and welcoming community. ICE was disrupting the home life of her and her neighbors. Blocking the roads they used to go about their daily tasks, targeting schools where their children were learning, enacting violence in their streets and front yards. Following these events, JD Vance promised that ICE would begin extensive door-to-door operations, violating the sanctity of people’s homes with tactics terrifyingly reminiscent of 1930s Germany. 

It served as a reminder that there are fewer and fewer places left that lie beyond the control of this administration’s lies, violence, and fear-mongering. But, so help me God, this church, this sanctuary will remain one of them. 

Here we will tell the truth and we will speak truth to power. We will confront reality and bear witness to all the beauty and brokenness of the world. We will not become desensitized to violence. We will keep our hearts open and tender. We will not fear our neighbor. Here we will revere life as sacred and recognize love as our highest law. And it is from that place that we will move out into the world and work for peace and justice.

May it be so.
May we make it so through our living.

Amen.

Now let us rise in body or in spirit and sing Hymn #318: We would be one. 


© Rev. Danielle Garrett, 2026

Sermon: "What Winter Reveals" (Rev. Danielle)

Pastoral Prayer:

Spirit of Life, God of peace and justice, hear our prayers this morning
It is a new year and even the most cynical among us harbor some glimmer of hope that it will be better than the last

and yet this turning of the calendar brings not of a dawn of peace, but news of war and we are reminded anew of the work we must do to enact the kingdom of heaven here on earth.

We know prayers for peace and justice are not enough on their own, but we hope they may serve as a beginning, a way to open our hearts and orient our spirits towards love

For the people of Venezuela we pray, we pray for safety, comfort, and justice, for self-determination and fair elections and the ability to flourish free from oppressive leaders at home and control and violence from abroad

For the members of our armed forces who are deployed and their loved ones we pray, we pray that they be held in love, kept safe from physical and spiritual harm and asked only to obey just and legal orders

For our leaders at home we pray, may they learn to lead with wisdom, love and compassion. May they be guided not by greed and lust for power but by the better angels of their nature. 

And for ourselves we pray, we pray for courage to speak out against violence and injustice, we pray for wisdom and patience as we discern our responses in a complex world, we pray that we may be guided by peace and love in this new year.

For this and for so much more left unspoken this morning, we pray.

Amen.

Sermon:

Friends, let me begin by saying I will, for the most part, be delivering the new years/winter themed sermon I planned today. I know yesterday’s United States military operation in Venezuela is on many of your minds, and this news brings many complex feelings and responses. I contemplated pivoting towards a sermon about peace, democracy, and unchecked power. And then I remembered German theologian Karl Barth’s declaration during the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany that the task was “to do theology and nothing but theology as though nothing had happened.” This was a strange statement coming from a Theologian who was instrumental in the formation of the confessing church that defied Hitler, was prohibited from writing and speaking in Germany, and eventually forced to flee the country. But Barth’s point was that in a world where an unjust regime was attempting to control so much of public life, we must resist their control over our spiritual life. This doesn’t mean we ignore what’s happening in the world and it doesn’t mean we don’t act on it. But it does mean that we do what we can to protect some sacred piece of autonomy. If the Trump administration controls what I preach every week, even if it’s preaching in defiance, that’s a lot of power we’re abdicating from this supposedly free pulpit. Theologian Hanna Reichel reminds us that they don’t need our love as long as they have our attention and our fear. So yes, let’s talk about if/how we as a community want to raise our voices for peace and justice. Let’s process how our faith calls us to respond in this moment. But let’s also tend to our souls for the long-term. Let’s find some spiritual fruits to nourish us for the new year and in doing so, remember that this administration and the news cycle don’t get to control what ideas we take the time to consider or how we grow spiritually. They don’t get to limit our imaginations and hijack our attention all the time. 

And before I was thinking about war, I was spending my New Years thinking about discernment. About how we find clarity and direction. And I was actually thinking about how I’ve managed to learn my way around the three new cities I’ve lived in in just  five years. In the age of GPS where we never have to navigate unassisted, this is no easy task. Portland in particular was hard for me. I think maybe it’s because the ocean was on the wrong side. I’m a child of the Atlantic. The water’s supposed to be to the east. And I never got used to the singular volcanic mountain peaks rising up seemingly out of nowhere. They were useless to me as navigational aids. Nashville didn’t offer quite the same level of geological confusion, but there was a park we walked in almost daily, with a massive tangle of side trails that left me regularly lost. 

In both places, things only begin to click into place with the coming of winter. As the leaves fall away, it becomes easier to see. On the side trails at that Nashville park, I suddenly had a sightline through the branches to the main walk and bike path. In Portland, the bare oak tree in front of my window allowed me to glimpse the intersections connecting my street to the rest of the neighborhood, letting me see the layout of the city more clearly. As much as I mourned the loss of the beautiful leafy views, the winter months helped me to, quite literally, find my bearings. And now I’m having that experience here in Salem. 

Almost every year in January, there are conversations about how it doesn’t feel right to start a new year in the winter. How we shouldn’t be making resolutions about fitness routines and bullet journals when most mammals are hibernating. Why don’t we start the new year in the fall we wonder, at harvest time, when school is back in session and summer vacations are winding down. This is when the Jewish New Year begins. Or in the spring, with new growth and new life blooming around us. This is when some Buddhist and Hindu traditions celebrate the new year. Often, I make peace with the Gregorian calendar’s winter new year by leaning into metaphors about how all life begins in the dark, whether in the womb or deep within the soil of the earth. I talk about the dormant period that is necessary before something new can grow.

But this year, it feels like we’ve been in the dark for more than just a season and it’s getting harder to make peace with it. This year, not even a week into 2026 and already on the brink of war, hibernating, while still necessary, feels impossible or irresponsible. So instead of reaching for the metaphors of winter’s long nights, I’m looking to the lessons of the short, but crystal clear days. Those unobstructed sightlines. The bare trees that provide us with an up close view of the earth’s scaffolding and allow us to see further into the distance than we could before. As I’ve learned in my attempts at navigating new cities, The leafless landscapes of these barren months provide us a chance to orient ourselves in an increasingly disorienting world. And that seems like a good way to start the new year. 

Writer Madeline L’Engle tells us that winter reveals the structure of things. Isn’t that such a great image? When the deciduous trees and plants are unadorned with leaves and blossoms, the trunk and branches are exposed. Although we might use words like empty, skeletal or bare to describe these trees, they are in reality quite magnificent. What we are glimpsing is the structure that carries, supports, and nourishes the colorful beauty through the rest of the seasons. This is the source from which so much bounty and joy blooms. In winter, things are laid bare and we can see how strong, how healthy the underlying structures really are. 

And so it is with our own lives as well. During times of loss or hardship, when we feel almost stripped bare, we are given a clearer view of the scaffolding that holds up our own lives. When fleeting things fall away, what remains at the center of your existence? Perhaps it’s your sense of self, your family and community, whether inherited or chosen, or maybe even your faith and spiritual life, your values system, your sense of belovedness as a child of God.

Winter can be a time to tend to these deep structures, to care for their health or to see them with new appreciative eyes. It can be a time of re-grounding in what is most important and ensuring that we are deeply rooted and able to support the weight of spring and summer’s fruits. I’ve often found winter a rich time to discover or deepen a spiritual practice, to spend time journaling, or in prayer or study. Perhaps, as we prepare to respond to the political realities in our country right now, winter is a good time to revisit the core values that drive our social activism. I’m contemplating launching an anti-fascist theology reading group this spring if there’s interest. Maybe you want to return to thinkers who write about non-violent resistance or radical hospitality. Maybe you want to go for long walks that help reconnect you with the earth, or volunteer at a direct service organization to reconnect you with your fellow humans. Do something to tend to the heartwood, the solid core of your soul that will hold you up and keep you in the work through failure, distraction, set-backs, and frustrations. 

We’re doing this as a church community too, as we hold conversations about our church’s mission and begin work on a right relations process, and bylaws revision. These are all part of asking who we are at our core? What is essential to the identity of this place. What are our roots, and trunk and branches? Perhaps some things we thought were branches are actually leaves, and they can fall away for a time without damaging the structure. Or maybe we’ll discover things we thought were merely decorative blooms actually help support the whole tree. I hope you’ll consider being part of some of these conversations. I know it’s not as fun as classes and protests and potlucks, but we need to tend to the structures for any of those other pieces to be successful. It’s the important winter work that keeps a church healthy. 

This kind of tending may seem really inward looking, but the thing about the winter landscape is at the same time it allows us to see more clearly the structure of things, it also allows us to see further. Winter is also a time for visioning. Without the leaves blocking our view, there is a spaciousness and clarity to the landscape that feels well suited to imaging new possibilities, for ourselves, our church, and our world. 

Maybe this winter is inviting you to ask what leaves in your life you need to let fall so you can see more clearly. It will look different for each of us, but I would guess we all have something in our life that is taking up too much space, obstructing our view, or preventing something new and beautiful from unfurling in its place. Can we let it go of whatever it is we’re so desperately clinging to? If we can, maybe in the clearing, we’ll be able see a new path for ourselves, like Annie Dillard’s assertion that in winter she could walk to the Gulf of Mexico in a straight line. Can you see a new vocation emerging, or maybe a way through a challenge that until now had seemed like an impasse. Can you see what our church might look like in five or ten years? How we could grow spiritually and the good work we could be doing in the world? Can you imagine what another world might look like if we stay committed to the work of love and justice? For in the winter, Dillard tells us, walls become windows and doors open. Paths unclog. All that summer conceals she said, winter reveals. I am reminded of Martha Postlethwaite’s poem “Clearing,” where she offers this invitation:

create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is yours alone to sing
falls into your open cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to the world
so worthy of rescue.

I love this concept of winter that Madeleine L’ENgle and Annie Dillard offer us. Winter as the time to tend to the structure of things, to make sure the bones are good while also looking towards distant horizons. Winter as a time to focus on both the bare essentials of the present and the wide open possibilities of the future. I love this because, for me, it hits a sweet spot between the winter urge to just hibernate and the social pressure to set really intense, productivity obsessed New Year's resolutions. It provides me with work to do in the New Year that is meaningful but gentle. Earnest but unrushed. I begin 2026 asking. How are the structures of my life holding up? What basics need tending?  And what kind of future can I see when I clear away the clutter? How am I making space for new possibilities to emerge?

And if I forget that those are my questions this season, if I get bogged down at work, distracted by the daily stressors of life, lost in the mess of 24 hours news networks and social media alerts, I can simply go outside for a winter walk on a clear day and find my bearings again.  

I hope 2026 brings us moments of joy, wonder, growth, and celebration. But I know it will likely also bring hard questions to answer, injustices to confront, and losses to grieve. All of those things will be easier if we do this winter work of assessing our structures and looking through the clearings towards new horizons. So this new year I invite you to embrace the spiritual gifts of this season. Let the winter landscape, in all it’s beautiful sparseness, guide you through this threshold.

May it be so. Happy New Year, dear ones. Amen. 


© Rev. Danielle Garrett, 2026