Minister's Message: Everything is Holy Now

When I lead a pilgrimage trip, as I did earlier this month with the congregation from the Unitarian church in Annapolis, MD, there is an arc to our spiritual journey. On our first day of walking, as we enter the liminal space of the pilgrim, I invite participants to pick up a small stone to carry with them. Mid-week, I invite them to lay the stone down as a representation of something they want to let go of on the trip. Then, I ask them not to rush to fill the space. Rather, I invite them to enjoy walking the rest of this road a little lighter, with more space in their hearts and spirits to receive the gifts and lessons that are theirs to carry homeward. Then, on our last evening together, we share those gifts and lessons.

Rev. John Crestwell, the senior minister of Annapolis church who was journeying with his congregation, shared his answer in song. He played Peter Meyer’s “Holy Now” for the group. The lyrics include:

This morning outside I stood
I saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
And singing like a scripture verse

It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now

It used to be a world half there
Heaven's second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
'Cause everything is holy now

When I talk to people who have left behind the religious traditions of their childhood, there is often a sense of relief and freedom, but also often deep grief. There is a sense of loss for the miracles and visions of heaven that had once been a comfort. But one of the great gifts of our UU faith is how, over time, it can help us see the miracles that are all around us in this present moment. Our expansive theology, appreciation for curiosity, and reverence for the earth and all who inhabit it, help us to see how everything is holy. Unitarian ancestor Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.”

After that last pilgrim gathering, I took time by myself to walk around the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, listening to the Peter Meyer song. It felt magical. Everything I saw—the sparrows, seals, and roe deer, the sunset peaking through the rain clouds, the receding tide, the fellow pilgrims walking with reverence—felt imbued with the holy.

That feeling lasted as I made my way back to Edinburgh to fly home. I peaked inside an Episcopal church while I was there to see the stained glass, and felt myself moved by the children’s corner in the back of the sanctuary. The books and crafts and advertisement for midweek children’s worship told me on Sundays this was a place that welcomed families and that viewed people of all ages as sacred.

That is what I’m bringing home with me from my pilgrimage: a renewed vision of the holy all around me, not least of all, here at church. I am noticing the holy in the creative artistry of our stained class, the playfulness and precociousness of our children, the love and care in a homemade treat placed on the fellowship table on a Sunday morning, the care when a member of community is in need, the tender prayer requests, the eager Sunday morning announcements, and even the curiosity of tourists poking their heads through our front doors.

Our community is so full of ordinary miracles when we make space to notice them. That’s the spirit with which I’m approaching the end of this church year. I hope to see you Sunday for RE Sunday and our End of Year Picnic. What a blessing to be able to journey through this beautiful bewildering world together.

In faith,
Rev. Danielle

Sermon: "Ours is No Caravan of Despair" (Rev. Danielle)

As most of you know, I just got back from 10 days away, leading a group from the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis on a pilgrimage along the St. Cuthbert’s Way, a 62.5 trek along the Scottish/English border. Now, generally on a walking pilgrimage, there is no wheeled transportation involved. Medieval pilgrims would have walked from town to town, carrying very little and relying on the hospitality of strangers. Modern pilgrims walk from town to town relying on booking.com reservations at local hotels. But with a group of 19, like I had, sometimes that’s not even a possibility in these small Scottish towns. So, at the end of some days of walking, we relied on a bus driver named Gary who would pick us up from the trail and transport us to a slightly bigger nearby town with room to accommodate our full group.

It is not the traditional pilgrim experience, but what we lose in authenticity we make up for in the unique and particular pleasure of a group bus ride as adults. In my experience, nothing brings out the inner child like having to count off for a group leader while you wait to be driven to your destination. It feels like a field trip. We resort to our middle school bus behavior and there’s often giggling and singing and a general air of mischief. Sometimes light ribbing of the stressed out “adult” in charge, in this case me.

But there is also something profound in the bus rides. Pilgrimage is a journey and often used as a metaphor for our larger journey through life. But so often on a pilgrimage, one finds themself walking alone. But when you are all on the bus, it’s impossible to forget that we’re on this journey together. That we’re getting there as a group or not at all. One day, I got the text I dread as a group leader on these trips, a group member was struggling along the trail, tired and injured and unable to make it the last few miles. Before I could begin to formulate a plan on my own, Gary was in the driver's seat, heading down the road to look for our struggling comrade. One of our fellow pilgrims who happened to be a doctor sat next to him in the front seat, messaging about symptoms and ready to help if needed.

Once we had all 19 of us on the bus, safe and more or less, sound- laughing, joking, sharing candy bars and cheering for Gary and his heroism, I was reminded of the lyrics from our opening hymn.

“Ours is no caravan of despair.”

I’ve preached about the “who” of these famous lines from Rumi. The wanderers, worshipers, and lovers of leaving. Those who have broken their vows a thousand times. I’ve preached about the message it offers of grace and forgiveness and radical welcome.

But it occurred to me I hadn’t given much thought to the where and the how- to that line that rang through my head on the bus. “Ours is no caravan of despair.” Where is this caravan headed? When we tell people to come, come, where is it we’re asking them to journey with us? And how do we get there?

I will not lie to you. There are plenty of reasons for despair in our world today. Despite advancements in science and medicine, average life expectancy in the US has fallen back to the level it was at nearly 20 years ago. Scientists predict temperatures and sea levels will continue to rise. Almost 14% of children in the US live in poverty. And those are just the big picture things, I won’t even begin listing the 27 horrible stories from this week's news cycle. In a world that gives us every reason to despair, what does it mean to invite people to join a caravan of hope? Are we being delusional when we sing, “our is no caravan of despair?”

I don’t think that we are. And I’ll get to why in a minute. But first we’re going to take an interlude for a little theological education.

Does anyone know the word, “eschatology?” I’m guessing you either took a theology glass or grew up in a tradition that read The Book of Revelation a lot? So eschatology is the theology of final things. Where does this all end up? What’s our human destiny? It is our ultimate vision of the universe. It gets a bad rap because it’s so often associated with end times theology- cults that try to predict the exact date of the end of the world, or the Left Behind books about the rapture that traumatized generations of evangelical children.

But that’s such a small sliver of eschatological theologies. Our own tradition has been deeply shaped by eschatology. Our Universalist ancestors wrestled with the concept, arriving at the idea that a loving God wouldn’t let people face an eternity of torment. We talked a few weeks ago about the cyclical nature of Buddhism. The idea that there are endless cycles of creation rather than a single line with an apocalyptic end point is a very different kind of eschatology than what we’re used to, but an eschatology none the less. And then there are lots of eschatologies that believe our destiny is human flourishing, justice, or reconciliation with the sacred. The Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam is an eschatological commitment. It holds that our broken world can ultimately be repaired to wholeness, but humans must do the work, even though we will not see it complete in our lifetime.

And in some ways, we all have an eschatology, whether it is explicit or implicit. We’re all operating with certain ideas about the future and those ideas impact how we behave in the present. Religious scholars would say that our eschatology informs our ethics.

Let’s take a modern, non-religious example to help demonstrate this idea: Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman and other silicon valley billionaires invested in artificial intelligence. Sociologist Liz Bucar wrote recently about how their eschatology was made blatantly clear in court filings related to Musk’s lawsuit against Altman and Open AI. Those court documents spoke explicitly about the inevitable dominance of AI. Their eschatology, she says, is that AI will surpass human intelligence, and humans will become obsolete as a species. And this is the eschatology that informs their ethics. Remember how Musk once called empathy the fundamental weakness of our civilization?

Bucar writes, “If you genuinely believe that human extinction is coming, why would you feel any obligation to the people around you right now? Why invest in public health, housing, schools, or anything that requires imagining a collective human future? The tech bros’ eschatology doesn’t just fail to motivate ethical behavior, it actively authorizes its absence.”

Where we think we’re going impacts how we act now. So you can get a pretty good idea of where someone thinks this caravan is headed by paying attention to their current actions. That’s true of Musk and Altman and Theil. But it’s also true of us.

And Ours, well, ours is no caravan of despair. Ours is a caravan of hope.

I know this to be true because we’re acting like it.

We are still in the process of shaping our mission and vision as a congregation, but I can see the shape your vision is taking based on how you’ve shown up this year.

You are open to new ideas in worship and willing to engage with me in real conversations about what worship means to you. That tells me you have a vision of worship that both embraces pluralism and honors tradition. That both welcomes and challenges. That enriches our imaginations and spirits.

You reinvigorated our social justice ministry and are weekly inviting one another into small, concrete actions to protect our neighbors, our democracy, our earth. That’s not something you spend time doing if you don’t believe another world is possible.

You ran an unprecedented stewardship campaign and put so much time and energy into the tour and parking fundraisers. That tells me you believe this is a community that’s worth growing and sustaining into the future. When news articles and pundits try to tell us that the church is dying and religion is becoming obsolete, it tells me you believe in a future where communities of radical belonging, mutual support and spiritual nourishment are cornerstones of our shared life.

You’ve cared for our children and youth, encouraging their leadership and answering their questions and welcoming them so fully and joyfully into the life of this congregation. That tells me you believe in a future where they will grow and thrive, inherit what we’ve built, hopefully improve on it and become stewards of this church, this community, our world.

You’ve provided meal trains, and rides to doctors appointments for members of our community. You’ve assisted at memorial services of departed beloveds and held one another in grief and fear and loss. Just this week you rallied around Billy in his time of need. That tells me that unlike the silicone valley billionaires we talked about earlier, you believe in a future where every human being is valued and cared for and holy.

Ours is no caravan of despair.

An eschatological vision of justice, equity, wholeness, and flourishing for all creatures is a hard sell these days. It seems improbable to many, a naively optimistic vision nearly impossible to achieve. But see, I don’t think we have to sell such a grand vision. When eschatology feels too hard, too impossible, too big to grasp, we can lead with our ethics. Because this caravan of hope is as much about how we get there as where we’re headed. Through small, everyday acts of kindness and goodness we can show, concretely, that we haven’t given up on that future vision. Every time we drive the bus down the road to get a struggling pilgrim back onboard the caravan, we show that we’re headed to a destination where everyone matters, everyone is valued, and no one gets left behind.

Liz Bucar writes, “We do not know what the future looks like. And yet, we have to act as if there is some version of us that endures, don’t we? As if what we do today will matter to people we will never meet? As if the world is worth repairing even though we won’t finish the job? Because if we don’t, the machines deserve to take over.”

Every time we write a poem, or plant a tree, care for our neighbor, teach our children we are showing that we are invested in a beautiful future, full of unrealized possibilities.

That’s what it means to be a people of hope. To behave, even in the face of uncertainty, like there’s a better future ahead of us. Like there will be a world worthy of our children’s inheritance.

And you are already doing it, fondly and locally, regularly and profoundly right here at First Church in Salem. I’ve witnessed it all church year and I’m so glad to be on this caravan with you.

Next week, we will wrap up our official church year with a service led by our children and youth and a celebratory picnic. Then our pace will slow, committees will take a break, we’ll head off on vacations and rest up for the year ahead. But let us commit now to returning, again and again, to this caravan of hope, where with every small act of kindness, justice, and love, we travel one mile closer to the future we believe is possible.

May it be so.
Amen.

© Rev. Danielle Garrett, 2026

Sermon: "Holy, Gratuitous Beauty" (Rev. Danielle)

A few years ago, when I was living in Portland, we were treated to an unusually bright and southerly appearance of the Northern Lights. You might have experienced this here too. 2024 and 2025 were years of elevated solar activity, where many of us living in the continental US were able to glimpse this phenomenon usually limited to more northern locations. This particular night, the forecast was for an intense solar storm and a particularly clear sky, so I stayed up past my bedtime and ventured out into the dark to try and catch a glimpse, for the first time, of the aurora borealis. My social media feeds were filled with people as far south as Florida posting stunning pictures of green, blue, and pink hued night skies. As we walked our neighborhood, trying to get a good view, we met neighbors equally filled with wonder. From one street over we heard hushed but excited midnight exchanges “I decided I do want to drive out somewhere darker to see it. Do you want a ride?” There was a collective joy that is rare for a suburban street past midnight. An energy that was more reverent than Halloween or a 4th of July block party. Perhaps best described as awe. “It’s so beautiful,” people whispered. It was.

And it served no practical purpose. In fact, I think it wreaked a bit of havoc on satellite and cell communications. It was difficult to monetize. Unlike the solar eclipse, the forecast was too last minute for hotels or travel agencies to create vacation packages. As far as I know, it didn’t have any immediate health benefits. It didn’t solve any of our social crises or improve productivity. We didn’t invest anything in it except for maybe a few lost minutes of sleep or a little gas to get out to a dark area. And the return on that small investment was only wonder. It seemed to sit entirely outside any of the systems we have for calculating value.

My sermon title is borrowed from essayist Annie Dillard, who says beauty is a grace, wholly gratuitous. A grace. Something entirely unearned, but with salvific power. She writes, “I think grace and beauty are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”

And that’s what me and my neighbors and maybe some of you were doing that night of the solar storm. Trying to be there. But if someone asked me why the northern lights were so beautiful, I don’t know that I'd have an answer. It just…was. Maybe someone more well versed in color theory or something could explain why it was pleasing but even that isn’t a very satisfying explanation for why we judge it beautiful.

Truth, goodness, and beauty are often grouped together by philosophers and theologians as transcendent values. And while all three are fairly lofty and nebulous, I think truth and goodness are a little easier to pin down. We can point to scientific methods of verification to help us define truth and there are whole histories of law and ethics that define good behavior. Not perfectly and not with universal agreement, but there’s at least a starting place. But beauty is more elusive. What makes something beautiful? What do the northern lights, an ocean sunset, bright purple irises, a well-crafted line of poetry, a moving piece of music, a sparrow’s song, or the face of a beloved have in common? Even neuroscientists who study brain activity of people viewing images they consider beautiful have difficulties defining the commonalities and characteristics of beauty.

And yet, for something so nebulous, something so impossible to define, beauty seems to be absolutely necessary to our surviving and thriving. It seems to be something our souls innately long for. Psychologists and medical researchers write about something called “aesthetic deprivation.” A lack of access to beauty, like natural vistas, art, music, etc. has measurable negative physical and emotional health impacts on inmates, those who are hospitalized, and those working in those facilities. In this way, access to beauty is sometimes even framed as a human rights issue and there are a number of advocacy organizations that work to improve access to green spaces, art, and music for low-income communities, unhoused populations, and those who are incarcerated. Access to green space and nature videos have been shown to reduce violence and self harm in prisons and music therapy improves health outcomes for patients after a stroke or brain injury. There are many examples, but this isn’t something we need science to prove because it’s something each of us has firsthand experience with. Imagine a life deprived of art, music, tall trees, colorful flowers, poetry. We already know this deeply, innately. Our souls long for beauty and our most eloquent poets and theologians describe our encounters with it as nearly divine.

And I think it’s these qualities of beauty, that it is both absolutely necessary for the well-being of our souls and almost impossible to define, that make it so ripe for exploitation and commodification. Think about it, if you can be the one to define it, package it, sell it for a price, you can become quite a powerful person. And that’s exactly what our social, economic, and political systems have done for centuries. We hold up beauty as an ideal and then define it in such a way that only a select few have access to it. Our modern standards of physical beauty value thin, white, able bodies. And this isn’t about aesthetic merits, it’s entirely about hoarding power. Upholding beauty standards that value whiteness is one way of upholding systems of white supremacy. And weight loss is a $90 billion industry in the U.S. That’s a lot of money riding on us believing thinness is the standard for beauty. And while physical beauty is often the most egregious example, it isn’t the only one. And I say this as a fan of home improvement shows, but Chip and Joanna Gaines were able to build a small empire in Texas by convincing us all that what our lives were lacking was shiplap in our kitchen. John O’Donohue writes about how urban planning strategies have doubly impoverished the poor, with the least aesthetically pleasing buildings and facilities being placed in the lowest income neighborhoods. Those who try to define and box in beauty can amass power and money. Idolatrous beauty standards help prop up racism, patriarchy, ableism, and capitalism.

And it works. Often. But not always. Because that’s the thing about beauty. The qualities of mystery and transcendence that make it ripe for exploitation also make it more powerful than our attempts to confine and control it. It always finds a way to break through. A flower grows through the cracks in a concrete sidewalk. A song drifts through a neighbor’s open window stopping you in your track, bringing you to tears. It’s Norbert Capek holding flower communion in a Nazi concentration camp. It’s Dan Berrigan, in prison for burning draft files during the Vietnam war, writing poems about tulips in the prison yard. Those are the moments of beauty we can’t buy and no economic or political power can take them from us. They are moments of grace.

So I think our task then, is to make a spiritual practice of noticing and relishing in as many of those moments as possible. In our reading, John O’Donohue calls this the work of “Beautifying our gaze.” Training our eye to see the grace of hidden beauty, the beauty that already exists in everything around us. And I think we can take O’Donohue’s use of the term gaze to mean more accurately and inclusively, attention, not just physical sight but whatever senses and tools you use for observing and interacting with the world. Beauty does not wait for perfection, O’Donohue tells us but is present already secretly in everything. Learning to notice that kind of beauty is both a form of resistance and a means of salvation.

First, noticing beauty in this way can be a means of resisting a culture constantly focused on productivity, monetization, shares, and likes. It is a reminder that life has meaning beyond what we can do and produce and measure and that we can find value and nourishment outside of our capitalist systems. It takes the needs and delights of the soul seriously. For example, I love when I glimpse a brightly colored hummingbird and go very still and quiet. I don’t move to take a picture for Instagram, worried my reaching for my phone will scare it off. It’s a brief moment of wonder appreciated only for its own sake. Even if just for a second it lets me escape our transactional society and just rest in the grace of the world.

I also think that making a practice of noticing beauty, especially looking for the places where it's hidden in plain sight, can help us develop an alternative vision of the kind of world we want to inhabit. We are constantly bombarded with images of war and destruction on the news, images that highlight our inhumanity, images in magazines that purport to exemplify beauty but only serve to remind us of what we lack. Journalist Krista Tippett talks about a conversation she had with a Rabbi and an Imam that turned to the topic of the salvific power of beauty. Beauty, they said, is creative, not destructive. It is of wholeness, not fractionalizing. When we make noticing beauty a spiritual practice, we counter those images of destruction with images of wholeness. This doesn’t mean entering a state of denial and turning away from the images that are unbeautiful. They are important to see. But by attending to that which is beautiful, especially making an effort to notice the beauty of the overlooked or unexpected, we can begin to expand our vision of what’s possible, deepen our love for our communities and our world, thus deepening our commitments to saving them, and grow in our appreciation for the gifts already present in our midst. It is from this place of possibility, love, and abundance that we commit to the work of transformation and justice. Theologian and anti-apartheid activist John. W. de Gruchy writes, “The beautiful serves transformation by supplying images that contradict the inhuman, and thus provide alternative transforming images to those of oppression. We are, in a profound sense, redeemed by such beauty, for art does not simply mirror reality but challenges its destructive and alienating tendencies, making up what is lacking and anticipating future possibilities.”

Activist and social reformer Dorothy Day is a personal hero of mine. Day was an ardent pacifist and advocate for improved working and economic conditions for the poor. She was a co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement and spent her whole life providing food and hospitality to the most marginalized in society. Among the many wonderful books about Day is a biography written by her granddaughter entitled “The World Will be Saved by Beauty.” It’s based on a quote from Day’s favorite author, Dostoyevsky. This struck me as such an eloquent but odd title. It seemed to me more fitting for a biography of maybe Rachel Carson, Thoreau, or John Muir. Someone committed to preserving natural landscapes. Or perhaps a famous artist. Day spent her life in urban landscapes, poor neighborhoods, looking at vistas not particularly known for their beauty. But Day had, in the words of John O’Donohue, a graced eye. She saw the image of the divine, the face of God in everyone she encountered. She glimpsed a beauty in the people she served that was invisible to so many others, and that ran counter to the images of destruction, deprivation, and isolation that shaped so much of the society she was living in. It was this alternative image, this image of wholeness and blessed divine creation that drove her work and guided her life. When we learn to beautify our gaze, when we observe those we meet and the world we walk through with love, reverence and appreciation. When we train our sense and attention to see wholeness rather than lack, we participate in a kind of re-creation, a restoration. It becomes a salvific act, piecing back together a fractured world.

The theology of beauty may feel academic or esoteric but the living into it is so concrete, so simple. Putting yourself in the presence of beauty for beauty’s sake is deep spiritual work and never frivolous. So stay up past your bedtime to see the northern lights or a meteor shower. Revel in the sound of laughter. Read poetry and linger in the garden. Find value in that which can not be bought or sold. Train your senses to notice the wholeness and holiness inherent in everything. Fill your moral vision with images of creative possibility that remind you another world is both possible and already present. Let the grace of hidden beauty become your joy and your sanctuary. It just might save the world.

May it be so. Amen.

© Rev. Danielle Garrett, 2026

Minister's Message: Sign Up to Be a Tour Volunteer!

Recently, a local colleague stopped by church to pick up something from me and say a quick hello. Theo and I were chatting in my office when she got here with her toddler son in tow and we were happy to welcome them in and show them around. As a preacher’s kid, the three year old is no stranger to sanctuaries, but ours had a few things going for it that afternoon: 1. A facade that looks like, “a big castle,” 2. A fun RE director with no other kids around competing for her attention, and most importantly, 3. Stray, candy-filled Easter Eggs that remained leftover from our rained-out indoor egg hunt. Needless to say, First Church quickly became a favorite Salem landmark. 

I know that the storied history of this beloved congregation played no part in the toddler’s delight at being able to run around an empty sanctuary looking for candy. But I still left that day feeling full of warmth, joy, and pride after getting to show the place off a bit. It was special to welcome in people that I care about, share a little history with my friend and colleague, and get to experience the building as a central gathering place for our Salem community in a different way than I do on Sunday mornings. 

I don’t think I’ll ever tire of welcoming in new people, watching their faces as they take in the beauty of the stained glass, and inviting them to feel the powerful stories that live in the bones of this place. It always feels like a great gift to share our space with others.

That’s one reason why I’ve signed up for some First Church tour volunteer shifts this summer and fall. Of course I’m happy to support this important fundraising effort for the church, but I wouldn’t do it if money was the only motivating factor. It is truly great FUN and spiritually meaningful to meet new people, share our history with visitors, and learn from and laugh with the other First Church volunteers. Volunteering a few times last summer helped me feel a real sense of community and grounding in my new home here in Salem. If you’re looking for a way to feel a deeper sense of connection to this place, I can’t recommend it enough. 

All you really need to be qualified to volunteer is time and willingness (although an open-heart and sense of humor doesn’t hurt), but I know so many of you have even more gifts to offer; a welcoming presence, a love of history, a knack for hospitality, a deep well of knowledge about Salem and First Church, good conversational skills, curiosity about people you meet, fabulous costumes you don’t get to wear often enough, or undiscovered carnival barker skills. The tours are already wonderful, but think of how much more wonderful they could be if you brought all of those gifts to the table!

So are you convinced? Good! Then go sign up here!  Tours are weekends in August, September, and October. No experience or training is necessary. Contact Alicia Diozzi with questions. Thanks to everyone who has already signed up and the dedicated volunteers working hard to ensure we have another successful tour year.

In faith,
Rev. Danielle 

First Church Tours - Webpage (public-facing)

First Church Tours - Volunteer Sign-up Genius

Minister's Message: Happy May Day!

Happy May Day everyone!

This Sunday, we will gather together to mark Beltane, a holiday rooted in ancient Gaelic and Celtic traditions that celebrate renewal, abundance, and the coming of summer. It is one of the eight festivals on the Wheel of The Year, observed by modern Pagans who look to the earth’s seasons and cycles for meaning and ritual. Sunday will be a joyful celebration of community—full of music, flowers, reflections, poetry and dancing.

May 1st is also International Workers Day, another day rooted in the solidarity of community and the hope for an abundant life for all. It is a day that honors the efforts of the labor movement and celebrates workers around the world. May 1st was chosen to commemorate the beginning of the 1886 general strike for an eight-hour work day (which led to the pivotal Haymarket affair in Chicago).

We don’t talk about work in church very often. Many of us see Sunday as a day for rest, community, and contemplation where we can leave our work concerns behind at the office. In reality though, our understanding of labor is deeply tied to our religious values. The very existence of a day for rest is tied to both religious practices and the advocacy of the labor movement! Just as there are well-developed theologies of rest (as I explained last week), there are also theologies of labor. Our faith tradition calls us to engage with matters of economic justice and fair labor practices.

As Unitarian Universalists, we hold a set of shared values, including equity, generosity, and interdependence. The language associated with equity reads, “we declare that every person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love, and compassion.” This calls us to work for economic policies where all labor is dignified and paid fairly, and where all people have a chance to flourish. We also proclaim respect for the interdependent web of all existence. This value calls us to name the ways that greed and love-of-profit lead to working conditions that harm both our fellow humans and the planet we inhabit. These are just a few of the reasons why the Unitarian Universalist Association is a partner of May Day Strong, a campaign of worker solidarity calling on our leaders to center the needs of the working class rather than the needs of the wealthiest few. 

And we are not alone. Many faith traditions have long been engaged in the struggle for economic justice and workers’ rights. In the Catholic Church, May 1st is the Feast Day of St. Joseph the Worker. It is also the anniversary of the founding of the Catholic Worker Movement, the newspaper and network of communities founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933 focused on care for the poor and the rights of workers. Dorothy Day wrote, "By fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute... we can, to a certain extent, change the world."

Modern practitioners of engaged Buddhism interpret the Buddhist precept, “Do not steal,” to have broader connotations, related to economic systems and social conditions. Mushim Ikeda-Nash, of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship’s International Advisory Council, writes, “we may not be robbing banks, or breaking and entering other people’s homes, but are we supporting exploitation of workers through the clothing, shoes, and food we buy?” Thich Nhat Hanh interprets the precept this way, “Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing, and oppression, I vow to cultivate loving kindness and learn ways to work for the well-being of people, animals, plants, and minerals.”

And Jewish traditions often tie their commitments to workers’ rights to the Exodus story. This narrative from the Hebrew Bible, recounting how God helped the Israelites escape slavery in Egypt, shows God rejecting systems that exploit labor and choosing to side with the poor and oppressed in their struggles for liberation.

So this May Day, in addition to joining us for our Beltane service, I invite you to live out your faith by finding one small way to promote workers rights and economic justice. Maybe it’s participating in a UU Side with Love action, learning more about the intersection between faith and labor, advocating for a more equitable policy at your workplace, or trying out a sabbath practice that reminds you our worth isn’t tied to our productivity. This weekend, may you find moments of community, solidarity, and abundance.

In faith,
Rev. Danielle

Minister's Message: Rest for our Souls

It’s hard to believe that we are approaching the end of the church year! As I begin planning for spring rituals and preparing reports ahead of our annual meeting, I find myself reflecting on how hard you all have been working. I arrived on the heels of three busy years of interim work and yet you did not hesitate to hit the ground running with me. The activities you have engaged in with thoughtfulness and commitment are numerous—from the new Right Relations team and Committee on Ministry, to a wildly successful stewardship drive, a lay-lead revival of our social justice activities and an engaged mission and vision process. Meanwhile, you kept important day-to-day church functions, like our beloved fellowship hour and pastoral care team, going strong. This is good and vital work you all have been doing. I am proud, grateful, and blessed.

I am also compelled to remind you that rest and play are holy! Yes, it takes work to keep church running, but I think we are also called to make church a place that values respite, creativity, delight and imagination. In fact, I think this is a unique and especially sacred calling for a church community. In a world that values productivity, urgency, and profit, we can provide a different kind of space—one that recognizes the inherent worth and dignity of each person beyond any utilitarian purpose. We can make space to marvel at the mystery and miracle of our existence and assert that meaning is found beyond what can be measured or accomplished.

And it’s not just me saying that! There are well-developed theologies that point us towards rest and play as divine callings. The practice of keeping the Sabbath is the most obvious. God rested and invites us to rest too. In his excellent book, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to a Culture of Now, theologian Walter Bruggemann writes, “The Sabbath rest of God is the acknowledgment that God and God’s people in the world are not commodities to be dispatched for endless production.” Bruggeman ties Sabbath practices not only to love of God and care of self, but also to love of neighbor. He asserts that the Sabbath invites us to refrain from demanding labor from those around us and rather make space for deep and relational connection.

In the movie Bull Durham, Susan Sarandon’s character Annie Savoy famously says, “I believe in the church of baseball.” While we might not all treat our hobbies with this level of religious fervor, an appreciation for play is an idea with deep spiritual roots. Jewish and Christian thinkers point to God’s delight in the act of creation as evidence that time spent in play and creativity are divine. Christian theologians turn to the stories of Jesus’s friendships, playful storytelling, love of dinner parties, and willingness to turn water into wine to develop their theology of play. Hinduism has the concept of “Lila,” which asserts creation is an outcome of divine playfulness. Theologian Brian Edgar goes so far as to write that, “play is the essential and ultimate form of relationship with God.” Embracing fun, pleasure, and play is one way of honoring the divine spark within each of us and recognizing we are made in the image of a loving, resting, playful creator.

Rest and play are central to our identities as humans and children of God. They are our birthright and we do not need to do anything to earn them. But if we did, I promise that you have. So, I hope this spring, you will make time to engage in rest and play. I also hope that you will see First Church as a place where you are invited into these holy activities. Together we can make space for ease, quiet, laughter, imagination, creativity, connection, joy, and even a little mischief.

One of the scripture verses above our pulpit is from Matthew 11: 28-30 and reads “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” May ours be a sanctuary, where all who are weary can find rest for their souls.

In faith,
Rev. Danielle