Mainstream American culture acts as if everything important happened today, or will happen in the near future, like a car driving down the highway with no rearview mirror. Yet the majority of other world cultures know that our past is intimately intertwined with the present. Día de los Muertos, and festivals like it, are a way of acknowledging and celebrating those connections. Our annual Ancestor’s Sunday service aims to help us heal our relationship with “those who have come before.”
Theme Question: What does it mean to be a community of healing?
Abigail Van Buren, the original “Dear Abby,” has been quoted as saying, “A church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.” This echoes words attributed to Jesus, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” We UUs don’t use words like “saints,” “the righteous,” and “sinners” all that often, yet we ought to listen through those particular words to hear what’s being said – religious communities exist, at least in part, for the work of healing. And each of us can no doubt think of a great many things in need of healing – from our own personal heartaches, right up to the health of the planet. What would it mean for us to see TJMC as “a community of healing?” What might we do differently? How might we be different? This is a month to explore such questions.
