I hope this note finds you well. It has been a busy week at church and it will be a busy weekend, too, with lots of opportunities for connection and community. On Saturday we’ll celebrate the life of longtime member Bobbi Keppel in the Sanctuary and on Zoom at 2pm. On Sunday we’ll worship together at 10am and then head South to Ferry Beach for an all-church picnic along with our Auburn UU friends! Sunday afternoon brings Queer Community Conversations, too, at 4pm. Whether in the Sanctuary, by the bonfire, or on Zoom, I hope for an opportunity to be in fellowship with you this weekend. 

 

Our worship service this week, entitled “What’s the Risk?”, is an invitation to discern together what role risk plays in our personal lives (spiritually, emotionally, materially, physically) as well as our lives as a faith community. We’ll reflect on the Parable of the Trapeze and think together about all the risks that being human requires. In this moment in history where basic rights are under attack and political violence is increasing, living our UU values in public can put us at risk. What are the risks of action? What do we risk by staying silent? How do we decide which risks are worth it, and how do our identities shape these decisions? 

 

Late Catholic priest, author, and theologian Henri Nouwen had a longtime fascination with trapeze artists, especially the trapeze troupe The Flying Rodleighs. He writes of seeing them perform for the first time… “it looked like everything that’s important in life… a world of discipline and freedom, diversity and harmony, risk and safety, individuality and community, and most of all flying and catching.” (Nouwen, from Flying, Falling, Catching by Carolyn Whitney-Brown).

 

I wonder how getting in touch with our own relationship to risk might allow us to fly, fall, and catch with deeper intention and, in turn, add more meaning and depth to our lives. 

 

Until we are together, may your days be blessed.