Prelude Jim Pearce

Chiming of the Singing Bowl Rev. Misha Sanders

Words of Welcome and Announcements  Rev. Misha Sanders 

Good morning! I am Reverend Misha Sanders, your senior Minister here at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation, of Sandy Springs, Georgia, where I am coming to you live from our front porch! You will notice growth in the background of every shot today, and I hope you find it an exciting as I do.

Welcome to online worship! We here at NWUUC seek to create loving community, inspire joy and spiritual growth, and support courageous action. All are welcome, as together we journey towards justice and equity by learning, caring, and acting together.

We especially welcome any newcomers and visitors we have today.  

Usually, immediately following our online worship, we share a virtual coffee hour, but this week is a little different.  Ours is a faith community that practices congregational governance, and we value, as one of our principles, the democratic process within our congregations. And so today we have our Part Two of our annual congregational spring meeting, immediately following our worship service. At this meeting we will be voting on approving a budget for the upcoming church year, one that our board of trustees has worked hard on, keeping our core values, principles, and mission in mind on every line item. We will also be voting on the start-up of a pre-school we hope will help our community of all ages thrive long into the future. All members are encouraged to stay and cast your votes.  Friends and visitors may stay too, of course, if you are interested in observing a small piece of how congregational governance works in this beloved community, in the age of virtual meetings.  

If you haven’t already, now is a great time to grab whatever materials you’ll need to light your own chalice if you’d like that to be part of your worship experience today.

As always, kindly set your phones to worship mode; we won’t know, but we think you might enjoy the hour free from distractions. And feel free to check in on your social media of choice to let your friends and family know about this place of caring you’ve found today. Our congregation is an exciting place to be, and we love it when you share the good news!

And although we cannot be physically together to greet each other today with hugs, high-fives, smiles, and words of love, we are all together in spirit and each and every one of us is welcome.  

Our Director of Music, Dr. Phillip Rogers, will now lead us in singing together.

Music ‘ “Enter, Rejoice and Come In” Dr. Philip Rogers

Call to Worship  Rev. Misha Sanders

WAKE UP!

Wake Up!
By Christian Schmidt

Let us wake up.

Not just from the Sunday morning exhaustion, from the wish for a few more drowsy minutes in bed.

Let us wake up to this world we live in: to its beauty and wonder, and also to its tragedy and pain.

We must wake up to this reality: that not all in our world have what we do, however much or little that is.

We must wake up to the idea that our wholeness, our lives, are only as complete as the lives of those around us, of those we are inextricably tied to in a great web of mutuality, of which all of us are part.

We must #staywoke, in the words of our friends and colleagues involved in Black Lives Matter, working every day for racial justice in our country.

Let us wake up, let us stay awake, let us #staywoke.

And now, in this time and place, let us worship together.

Chrissy Haddad will now lead us in singing together once more.

Music – “I’ve Got Peace Like A River” Chrissy Haddad

Lighting of the Chalice  Sydney Kahn 

Deep Calls Unto Deep, Joy Calls Unto Joy
By Gordon B McKeeman

Deep calls unto deep, joy calls unto joy, light calls unto light.

Let the kindling of this flame rekindle in us the inner light of love, of peace, of hope.

And “as one flame lights another, nor grows the less,”

we pledge ourselves to be bearers of the light, wherever we are.

Story Wisdom  Adia Udofia-Fields – The Perfect Square

Reading  Rev. Misha Sanders

By Adrienne Maree Brown, from Pleasure Activism

“a spell to cast upon meeting a stranger, comrade or friend working for social and/or environmental justice and liberation:

you are a miracle walking
i greet you with wonder
in a world which seeks to own
your joy and your imagination
you have chosen to be free,
every day, as a practice.
i can never know
the struggles you went through to get here,
but i know you have swum upstream
and at times it has been lonely
i want you to know
i honor the choices you made in solitude
and i honor the work you have done to belong
i honor your commitment to that which is larger than yourself
and your journey
to love the particular container of life
that is you
you are enough
your work is enough
you are needed
your work is sacred
you are here
and i am grateful”

Let us focus on sending love and gratitude and strength to all of those fighting for justice in our city streets this week, as our own Jim Pearce shares with us his gift of music.

Music –  Morning Has Come”  Jim Pearce

Joys and Sorrows Rev. Joan Armstrong-Davis

Prayer and Meditation  Rev. Joan Armstrong-Davis

Music – “I Am Open” – Dail Edwards

Sermon Rev. Misha Sanders

It says “Sermon” right here in my Order of Service script, but this isn’t really a sermon.  I just want to talk to you about several things today, really.  

Today is our Outgathering. The Sunday that, back when Unitarian Universalists traditionally closed up church completely for the summer, would have been our final Sunday together of the church year. We’ve continued the tradition of Outgathering, although church is year-round these days, because we like this tradition, because people come and go a lot during the summer months in a normal year, thus making summer worship attendance pretty low some weeks. We come in and out of each other’s lives more transiently over the summer, and then join together again at the end of the summer, in our traditional Ingathering worship.  

This year, of course, is so different in so many ways.  

We are not physically together for goodbye hugs and a shared meal.  

And that’s hard. It’s hard knowing that we won’t be coming back together for a proper Ingathering in a free months, either. Especially given that this amazing new building expansion will be completed and just sitting here awaiting our return.  

Alas, global pandemics don’t really care about our traditions or our excitement over what we are building together here. And that’s brutal and unfair.  

I had a sermon all ready for today called “Joy is and act of Resistance”, from a poem by Toi Derricote, in which Toi lifts up the work of getting free from racial oppression, and gives the people in the struggle the explicit permission to take break from their rage and their fighting to experience joy.  

I even planned to wear this new Georgia Peach stole I had commissioned for this day. 

That’s where I was going to go with this. Informed also by the work of Adrienne Maree Brown, in this book [show book], Pleasure Activism. I bought Pleasure Activism after seeing it highly reviewed, and not knowing that it is not a book written for me. It is by, for, and about black women, and I acknowledge and honor that, while telling you that I have also learned much from it, although that is beside the author’s point completely. [remove stole]

But, I’m not preaching that sermon today, because although I had intended to make our virtual Outgathering a time of great joy and celebration… just like COVID-19 didn’t care about our plans, another deadly virus in our nation didn’t care, either. That deadly virus is Racism. 

Racism is why people are in the streets screaming that Black Lives Matter in our beloved city, and in cities, towns, and suburbs all over our country this week. Racism is why the joy sermon has to wait. Racism is why the beautiful building that is being prepared for us doesn’t matter at all in this moment and simultaneously why the real church…the one that lives inside us all…matters more than ever before. It is why this predominantly white congregation in the wealthiest zip code in Georgia called a minister who will not conduct business as usual, even on Outgathering Sunday, even on my favorite Sunday of the liturgical year, Pentecost Sunday, even though it is the one year anniversary of the day you called me to serve you, and even though we’re getting ready to begin a meeting to vote on money issues. I want us to remember why Pentecost Sunday last year was so significant to the future of this congregation, and why YOU, the people who called me to serve you…made the decision you made.  

I need to remind us that you called a minister who told you plainly and clearly who I am and who I envisioned us to be. And I need to remind us that if I did not clearly speak up about the moral injury of racism, then I would not be living up to what you called me here for, and your vote to call me would have been wasted. 

Thinking about the sacredness of your yes vote on calling me to serve with you is a big part of why I was in the streets of Atlanta bearing your name this weekend.  I was not there to declare myself an ally to the black lives that matter, because ally is not an honor I can bestow upon myself, it is earned and and accepted from the people in the margins, not me. But I was there because YOU, Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation, called me to be there. Not here. Not in this empty building we all love. You didn’t call me to a building or a location. You called me to a mission, a set of principles, and a covenant with you. 

That’s why our Outgathering is an affirmation that we, Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Sandy Springs, Geogia, rise together to proudly proclaim that Black Lives Matter.  

It is why our name is added to this joint statement my Atlanta-area Unitarian Universalist colleagues and I are releasing this week in our names. My colleague, Rev. Taryn Strauss wrote these words for her congregation, and has allowed our clergy cluster to adapt them for the whole of our area congregations. Here is our joint statement: 

As multi-racial Unitarian Universalist Congregations of Metro Atlanta, Georgia, we condemn the acts of racism and white supremacy around the country this week, and before.  We join the families and communities of Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, GA, Breonna Taylor in Louisville, KY, and George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN, in anguish, outrage, exhaustion and grief. 

We cry out as one in the Wilderness, longing for relief from the other epidemic: racism that has been built into the foundations of our nation.  We see how the institution of white supremacy is connected and upheld by individual acts of murderous violence by white people, by white women weaponizing their race against innocent black men, by police department cover-ups, by governments that allow armed white militias to storm state capitols while tear-gassing peaceful protesters on the streets.  

We see clearly the connections of how COVID-19 has ravaged black communities more than any other, communities of people whose work may be called essential but who are paid meagerly, while white communities are statistically more protected from poverty, death, and sickness.  We must stay focused on the goals of equity and justice during this pandemic.  

For every life that falls another thousand will rise.

For every breath that is snatched away, we will use our breath to grieve and to speak out for the lives and livelihood of black people.

The forces of evil think this is how movements die.

But if they think killing one of us unjustly is going to make us bow down, they are mistaken, because rarely in the course of history has that ever been the outcome of such grave, clear injustice.

Instead, an innocent life lost so publicly and tragically has caused people to discover new reservoirs in the soul.

We, the Unitarian Universalist Congregations of Metro Atlanta commit to do the work of interrogating and condemning white supremacy within our institutions, our communities, and our hearts.  We believe none of us are truly free until all of us are free.  We work, pray and fight for the liberation of all, and the vitality of each.  

We proclaim yesterday, today and tomorrow: 

Black Lives Matter.

Let me remind us about why this calling last year and this declaration this year both coming on Pentecost Sunday matters to me. 

I will quote straight from the candidating sermon I preached to you this time last year, in this fiery stole I wore that day, because I remain as committed to this version of beloved community as I was this time last year. Just more in love with you all now, is all. There is God language, because the context of the sermon was Christian scripture, which remains absolutely okay to talk about in Unitarian Universalist sometimes. Here’s what I said that day:

“You know what is my favorite thing about the particular Day of Pentecost described in the second chapter of The Acts of the Apostles? The most diverse group of people imaginable assembled in Jerusalem that day, and God showed them that they could celebrate common ground THROUGH diversity, not in spite of it! God didn’t suddenly give everyone a common language or perspective. God spoke THROUGH people in the ways that others could understand!

It was never about the woowoo of ‘Speaking in Tongues’. It was and is about speaking clearly and deliberately in ways that draw people in and include us all.

We are speaking in The Spirit when we shout it loudly in the streets that Black Lives Matter.” 

Beloveds, it is Outgathering. It is a time of joy, of looking back, and of looking forward. It has been one helluva year. And next year is shaping up to be a helluva opportunity to love each other and stay connected in new and exciting and different ways that none of us ever could have imagined, and maybe wouldn’t have even wanted to. Yet here we are.  

Speaking in the language of Pentecost that says until we can ALL be included in in-person gatherings then we will stay home. Because y’all mean’s all, y’all. Georgia has taught me some things. 

So, to sum up what I needed to say today in this non-sermon chat:

Joy is an act of resistance.  

Black Lives Matter.

We will gather when we can ALL gather because y’all means all. 

I will miss you while I take some time off this summer. 

And most importantly…and more now than the first time I said it.

I love you, I love you, I love you…and there’s nothing you can do about it!

Chrissy Haddad will lead us in some singing now, and I invite you to be still and breathe deeply with me ,or song along. 

Music “Find A Stillness” LIVE Chrissy Haddad

Offering  Rev. Misha Sanders

The offering that we take each Sunday isn’t just a stale habit:
it’s an opportunity to recommit to this place, and to this people.

Our offering is an affirmation—a “yes.”
When we give, we say yes to something we value.

With our gifts, freely given, may we say yes to the values of our faith.
May our text-to-give offering help us practice Unitarian Universalism within and beyond our congregation, as tools to empower our mission.

Our offering will now be given and gratefully received.

To the work of this congregation, which is weaving a tapestry of love and action, we dedicate our offerings and the best of who we are.

Benediction  Rev. Misha Sandes

Fitted for This Day
By Kimberly Quinn Johnson 

We are the ones we have been waiting for.*
We are not perfect, but we are perfectly fitted for this day.
We are not without fault,
but we can be honest to face our past as we chart a new future.
We are the ones we have been waiting for.
May we be bold and courageous to chart that new future
May we have faith in a future that is not known
We are the ones we have been waiting for.*

Postlude Jim Pearce

Prelude Jim Pearce 

Chiming of the Singing Bowl Rev. Misha Sanders 

Words of Welcome and Announcements  Brian Freeman

Good morning! My name is Brian Freeman, and I am your Worship Associate today! 

Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation seeks to create loving community, inspire joy and spiritual growth, and support courageous action. All are welcome, as together we journey towards justice and equity by learning, caring, and acting together.

We especially welcome any newcomers and visitors we have today.  I hope you’ll join us after worship for coffee hour… from the comfort of your own homes.  The link to our Coffee Hour Zoom room will appear in the chat box toward the end of worship, and we will remind you about it again there.  When you click the link to join coffee hour, please remember that the password is “coffee”. Again, you will be reminded in the chat, toward the end of our worship service.

If you haven’t already, now is a great time to grab whatever materials you’ll need to light your own chalice if you’d like that to be part of your worship experience today.

As always, kindly set your phones to worship mode; we won’t know, but I think you might enjoy the hour free from distractions.  And feel free to check in on your social media of choice to let your friends and family know about this place of caring you’ve found today. Our congregation is an exciting place to be, and we love it when you share the good news. 

And although we cannot be physically together to greet each other today with hugs, high-fives, smiles, and words of love, we are all together in spirit and each and every one of us is welcome.  

Call to Worship  Rev. Jo Von Rue 

Friends, it is my great joy today to indroduce you to one of my very best friends.  I met Rev. Jo Von Rue in the fall of 2014 when we both entered Meadville Lombard Theological School, and she and I have loved each other and been mistaken for each other in UU spaces ever since. Jo is the kind of friend you oughtta get yourself one of.  When she is not busy talking me through my latest crisis at all ridiculous hours or laughing with me about irreverent things, Jo is the senior minister at May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society in Syracuse, New York.  And I promise, the decision to ask Jo to join us for Memorial Day weekend here in May was coincidental, although kind of funny.  May Memorial UU is are lucky to have her as their minister, I am lucky to have her as a friend, and we are all lucky to have her here with us today to call us to worship.  Good morning, Rev. Jo! 

[Rev. Jo calls us to worship]

Thank you, my friend.  Please join me in a moment of settling in further as we listen to music that fits the day, and will no doubt stir up feelings.  Patriotic music can stir up all kinds of feelings, some of them very conflicted.  I know.  And I know that for each person here, that mix of feelings will be different. I invite us to pay attention to what kind of feelings come up for us, and honor them all.  You may even talk about them respectfully in the chat, if you’d like to.  Let us listen together. 

Music Interlude 1–  U.S. Army Strings play “My Country Tis of Thee” [Memorial Day Tribute video]

Lighting of the Chalice  

Story Wisdom  Adia Fields-Udofia

Reading  Brian Freeman

Ten Thousand Baby Names, by Kathleen McTigue

When my youngest daughter was about two years old she came across a tattered paperback on our bookshelves, Ten Thousand Baby Names, and for a little while this was her favorite book. Drawn by the shining face of the baby on the cover, she brought it to me over and over and demanded that I read through the names. This was prelude to what was, at the time, her favorite story of all: How we chose her name.

What’s in a name? Always, there is a story. You were named for a beloved relative or, contrarily, named after no one because your parents wanted a clean break from family history. If you were a first son and your family went in for such things, you got to be called after your father and have “junior” tacked on. If you were a daughter, you could be named for a virtue or aspiration such as Hope, Serenity, or Faith. Recalling some sweet romantic setting, your parents might have named you for their favorite Spanish or Italian village. Perhaps you carry the name of one of their heroes or heroines, or more whimsically, some favorite musician or movie star. Maybe you’ve ended up with an affectionate nickname born of a sibling’s mispronunciation, or some jackass thing you tried as an adolescent and never lived down.

Always, there is a story.

In church on Sunday mornings we read aloud the names of the American soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan each week. Alone in my study the night before, I speak each name out loud and then wonder about the stories. I imagine these soldiers as the babies they once were, held in someone’s arms at a baptism or naming ceremony. The proud relatives gathered around as the name was formally bestowed, and everyone beamed as the baby cooed or wailed or fidgeted. There was so much gladness and pride in each moment of naming, and not once did anyone imagine that the road their baby walked would end eighteen or twenty years later in a mix of blood and dust halfway around the world.

As part of a witness for peace on Memorial Day, a cairn of stones was built at a busy downtown intersection in Hartford, each stone bearing the name of a fallen American soldier, or one of the tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani civilians who have died in these wars. How do you choose one name from thousands, to symbolize so much carnage and loss? I finally brought three stones to the cairn, one for each of my own three children. Each stone bore the name of a child who had died on the birthday of one of mine. As I placed the stones, I wondered about their names.

Always, there is a story.

Music Interlude 2 – “America, the Beautiful”, Sally Mitchell, piano

Joys and Sorrows Rev. Joan Armstrong

Prayer and Meditation  Rev. Joan Armstrong

Music: Hymn #360 Here We Have Gathered Dr. Philip Rogers

Sermon  Remembering Well  Rev. Misha Sanders 

CW

 I have an old friend back in Illinois who was not a veteran of any foreign war. He served as a private in the United States army in a time of peace, from 1954 through 1958, just after Korea, and just before Vietnam. And so, it might seem odd that I am going to lead with a story that is his memory, his story to tell, but I am going to do just that,with some identifying details changed, because some of our fallen soldiers are not remembered well, and today, I cannot think of a more appropriate place than right here to remember my friend’s brother in arms, Private Sitman.  

The history of the name Private Sitman being thrown round in my friend’s family has been legendary. Every Memorial Day, every Veteran’s Day, at some point, his family all knew that my friend, let’s call him Frank, would pop open a can of Dr. Pepper, raise it in the air and say, “To Private Sitman. You are not forgotten.” And then, someone would laugh a little and ask the same question that had been asked every other time before. “Who is Private Sitman?” And Frank would respond with silence, a shake of his head, and sometimes nothing more. Sometimes, quietly, he would say, “A man that deserves to be remembered.” And that was that.  

When I say that it became legendary in Frank’s family, I do not mean that as a high honor. It had become something of an ongoing joke. They all knew that Frank had never seen combat, and that his years of being stationed in Toul, France seemed to have been filled with revelry and youthful indiscretions that he would never, ever in a million years expound upon to his kids who knew of him as the pious teetotaling good Christian man that he had become.  Drinking Frank’s signature Dr. Pepper became an occasion to lift high our glasses or cans and toast Private Sitman.  And Frank didn’t mind that. 

So his family, some of them my age and my close friends, made up stories about Private Sitman. Was he a created composite of some kinds?  We searched the military records associated with Frank and the men with whom he served, and none of us ever found a Sitman. When people asked Frank about that, he would only say, “That’s why I speak his name. You won’t find record of it anywhere but in the memories of those who remember.”  And then he would change the subject, and they would always let him.  

In 2013, I let my son skip school for a day to go to Springfield, Illinois’ capital, with me to march in support of full marriage equality for all. After our bus returned to the UU church in Rockford, Kyle and I got some dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants, and we ran into dear old Frank . He invited us to sit with him. I told him where we had just come from, which he had guessed from our rainbow regalia.  

During that late evening dinner, Frank said this to me. “I’m not sure about this marriage thing, but I sure was glad to see the military change on gay soldiers. I knew one once. And there is no way what they did to him is okay, no matter what I believe the Bible says about homosexuality.”  

And then, we sat in silence while tears began to roll down the face of my nearly-octegenarian Pentecostal life-long friend, while he told a story aloud that not many ever got to hear.   

It wasn’t a long story, because there just wasn’t enough to make it any more dramatic than it was. Very soon after arriving at his station in France, Frank got to know a fellow soldier in his troop just a little bit, they weren’t destined to become good friends, and they knew it. Frank wasn’t sure he liked this guy much, and besides, as Frank said, “We all thought he acted a little funny.” He made an offensive arm gesture along with the word funny. I stayed silent, because this was clearly not a time when he intended humor… he was simply working with the framework he knew, however hard for my son and me to witness. He struggled to continue, and I wondered if he was regretting even starting this story.   

Rumors had began to generate about where the guy went when they all went into town on R&R. There was talk that some of the other soldiers had invited him to visit brothels with them, and he declined. There were rumors that he split off from the rest of the guys to go somewhere else and wouldn’t tell them where or why. Then someone said that he was seen coming out of a bar known to be frequented by gay men. There was talk that he was One of Those Kind, and that he couldn’t be trusted. 

And then, one night, as Frank was lying in his bunk not quite sleeping, several officers came quietly into the barracks, put something over the face of Private Sitman so that he wouldn’t make any noise, and carried him away.  As he recalled, they had come in a number indicating they thought there might be struggle, but Private Sitman seemed to offer none. They simply carried him away. Minutes later, others arrived who swiftly and quietly removed the empty bunk and all the belongings of the soldier. And while this was happening, Frank remembered the stirring and breathing of every man in the barracks indicating that they too were all awake, pretending to sleep. He recalls hearing silence, then one gunshot, then silence.   

In the morning, no one said a word. No one shared knowing glances. No one mentioned the empty space where a bunk had been, nor asked about their missing brother. Private Sitman’s name never again appeared on any roll, his absence was never addressed, and by the end of their four years together, Frank wondered whether some of the soldiers had completely forgotten that Private Sitman existed, which seemed to have been the design all along.  

But Frank never forgot. He lifted his nearly empty glass of Dr. Pepper and said quietly, “Here’s to you, Private Sitman. You are not forgotten.”  

I believe that Frank shared that story with me because he trusted that I would remember well. And I have his permission to share it with you, with his name not shared. He wonders who will remember things that should be remembered, after he is gone.  

And, so, although it as not my story to tell, I knew for sure that in this place, on this day, Private Sitman’s name would be raised, because he is not forgotten. I wish I knew more. I wish Frank had ever known the man’s first name.  He never heard it spoken.  And the records I can find of the men who served in that place and time with Frank do not include anyone by the last name of Sitman. Frank was right… they wanted him erased. I am here today to bear witness to the fact that it did not work. Private Sitman existed. Private Sitman mattered. Private Sitman changed my friend and made him a better man.   

Remembering well isn’t about having all the details, or having a really compelling story to pass along. Some of our fallen soldiers are now only remembered through the decades by aging family who might not remember dates, and even parts of names sometimes, or how their beloved sibling, or child, or partner sounded when they laughed.  Some things fade in the human mind, but that does not mean we do not remember well.   

We remember well when the sacrifice they made changes us for good.  

We remembered well on this week in 2016 as we listened to President Obama in his historic visit to Hiroshima when he said, “That is why we come to this place. We stand here, in the middle of this city and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell. We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused by what they see. We listen to a silent cry. We remember all the innocents killed across the arc of that terrible war and the wars that came before and the wars that would follow. Mere words cannot give voice to such suffering, but we have a shared responsibility to look into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again.”

Elie Wiesel survived the Jewish Holocaust in which all the rest of his family perished, and he said in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, “Because I remember, I despair.  Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.” 

We remember well when we reject despair. We remember well when we reject a political rhetoric that sounds all too chillingly familiar. When the words that are being said by some people in high places that sound chillingly like we have revived old speeches and old documents and simply replaced a few words. Add to the word ‘Jewish’ the word ‘Muslim’ or ‘immigrant’. Add to the word ‘Japanese’ ‘immigrant detention center’. Add to the word ‘black’ the word ‘transgender’.  

We remember well when we reject the notion that this is somehow different and better time and we refuse to be deceived. 

And so, because it is right and fitting to do so, today, I say aloud the name of Private Sitman.    

I wonder if there are names of fallen soldiers that you would like to share in this space right now. We will all be a little better for having read their names, although we cannot be together to read them aloud. If you would grace us by sharing their names in the chat box, we will do our best to remember well with you.  

Let us do nothing but sit with these names in silence for the next minute.    

Thank you for remembering well with us today.  

Here’s to you, Private Sitman. We remember you well.  

Dr. Phillip, please lead us in singing, my friend. 

Music Hymn #100 I’ve Got Peace Like A River

Offering  Rev. Misha Sanders ,new video with Anthony Kahn composition

The offering that we take each Sunday isn’t just a stale habit:
it’s an opportunity to recommit to this place, and to this people.

Our offering is an affirmation—a “yes.”
When we give, we say yes to something we value.

With our gifts, freely given, may we say yes to the values of our faith.
May our text-to-give offering help us practice Unitarian Universalism within and beyond our congregation, as tools to empower our mission.

Our offering will now be given and gratefully received.

To the work of this congregation, which is weaving a tapestry of love and action, we dedicate our offerings and the best of who we are.

And such a great big thank you again to our guest, the Rev. Jo Von Rue, who will share this morning’s benediction.

Benediction  Rev. Jo Von Rue

Postlude Jim Pearce

Prelude Jim Pearce

Chiming of the Singing Bowl Misha 

Words of Welcome and Announcements  Anthony Kahn

Good morning! My name is Anthony Kahn, and I am one of your Worship Associates today.

Welcome to online worship with Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Sandy Springs, Georgia.  We here at NWUUC seek to create loving community, inspire joy and spiritual growth, and support courageous action. All are welcome, as together we journey towards justice and equity by learning, caring, and acting together.

We especially welcome any newcomers and visitors we have today.  I hope you’ll join us after worship for coffee hour… from the comfort of your own homes.  The link to our Coffee Hour Zoom room will appear in the chat box toward the end of worship, and we will remind you about it again there.  When you click the link to join coffee hour, please remember that the password is “coffee”. Again, you will be reminded in the chat, toward the end of our worship service.

But wait, there’s more!  At 1 PM, our CUUPS group will be hosting a Beltane ritual, and all are invited to come and be a part of this celebration of Spring.   A link to THAT Zoom room will also be listed in the chat. 

If you haven’t already, now is a great time to grab whatever materials you’ll need to light your own chalice if you’d like that to be part of your worship experience today.

As always, kindly set your phones to worship mode; we won’t know, but I think you might enjoy the hour free from distractions.  And feel free to check in on your social media of choice to let your friends and family know about this place of caring you’ve found today. Our congregation is an exciting place to be, and we love it when you share the good news!

And although we cannot be physically together to greet each other today with hugs, high-fives, smiles, and words of love, we are all together in spirit and each and every one of us is welcome.  

And now my fellow Worship Associate, Joy Hickman, will call us to worship. 

Call to Worship  Joy Hickman

Lighting our Chalice today is Alida LeBron.

We light this Chalice as a symbol of our Unitarian Universalist faith.

We recognize and honor the hands that came before us that had the strength to

seek their own truth.

We celebrate our own two hands that carry on the work of love and justice in the world that is

our heritage

And for those to come… in their hands… we will leave our legacy so that they may build on it

and continue to make the world a better place.

Lighting of the Chalice  Alida 

Story Wisdom  Jay Kahn

Thank you to our very own talented Jay Kahn for creating that video story for us!  And in the spirit of Miss Adia’s Wondering Questions’ she often shares with us…I wonder.  

I wonder what the blue fish might represent to you.  

I wonder what the red fish might represent.  

I wonder what the person feeding the fish represents?

I wonder if now, when we have more time to be at home and think deeply about things, if these parts of the story might represent our thoughts, and how the thoughts we feed are the ones that take over the pond, our mind?  

But that’s just what I think this story might mean for me.  What about you?  

For now, our Sydney Kahn has a reflection for us about HER thoughts right now.  

Reflection   Sydney Kahn 

About a year ago, my days were packed. I had early morning meetings into a full day of school then band or winterguard or a club meeting and homework. I never got a metaphorical breath of fresh air and I loved it. I thrived under the go, go, go kind of schedule to the point where I planned out my free time to hold its own designated activities. I will watch one show, clean the house, then work on my research paper, then go see my friends and we’re going to do this and this and you get the point.

Clearly, I hated being idle. I filled my time for a reason, because if I didn’t accomplish something in my day, I felt unproductive; I still feel that way. I don’t like “doing nothing” which is why I chose to do everything. But now that everything is gone. No band, no guard, no work, no elaborate outings. No banquets, no spring concert, no prom, no graduation. A lot of people feel sorry for the senior class of 2020, and I get it. It does suck. But what hurts most for me is the sheer nothingness that it my day to day life now. My rabbit-fast days are now more like the tortoise. And most of the whole world is that way. Idle humans can do wonderful things, though. Cities applauding their essential workers. Police performing for apartment tenants from the street. People holding social distancing block parties to feel some sort of closeness.

But these can’t possibly replace the routines we once had. Any of that is maybe an hour or two tops. The rest of the time is just. There. At first, I tried to fill every second like I did before and got frustrated when I inevitably failed or lost motivation. But after days of really wanting this book to be interesting or baking too many cookies, I started to slow down. I noticed the flowers blooming outside and the wind whistling outside my window. I found ways to make the house a more pleasant place to be, so I could just be there. If all I accomplish in a day is my schoolwork. That’s okay. Having no obligations is something to get used to, but I think it’s freed up my way of thinking. I’m learning to relax into not really doing anything and being okay with it rather than feeling guilty as I would’ve felt a year ago. I’m finding my own moments of joy in moving my body, in theoretically painting some pinecones, in making new friends over the Penn Facebook page. I think slowing down is a good thing. Gives us a chance to pause our hectic lives to appreciate and create the beauty inside and around us.

Our friend Robert Niedermeyer created this beautiful music for us today. I invite you to settle into the next few minutes and listen. 

Music Robert Niedermeyer video

Joys and Sorrows Chloe Morgen

Prayer and Meditation  Chloe Morgen

By Michael R Leduc

May we look with gratitude upon this day, for the beauty of the world, for the first radiance of dawn and the last smoldering glow of sunset. 

Let us be thankful for physical joys, for hills to climb and hard work to do, for music that lifts our hearts in one breath, for the hand-clasp of a friend, and for the gracious loveliness of children who remind us of the wonders of life. 

May we be appreciative above all for the concern and love of those around us; for the exceeding bliss of the touch of the holy which suddenly awakens our drowsy souls to the blessed awareness of the divine within us and within others. 

For all of this, and for the countless other blessings present in our lives, let us be grateful. Amen.

Music Decemberists video

Sermon  Rev. Misha Sanders

This is my worship calendar.  It is mostly now pages to go straight into the recycling bin because of that thing they say about the best-laid plans being…I don’t know… something about rodents and John Steinbeck, but I don’t care. The point is, plans change.  

Two Sundays ago was to have been our celebration of our Coming of Age youth. We were to celebrate and hear the credo statements of Dev, Shea, Lily, Anthony, Caroline, Jaiya, and Robert. We offered to create a virtual Coming of Age worship with them and they said a hail and hearty No Thank you.  And good for them.  They know they deserve their in-person Coming of Age experience, and they shall have it; just later than planned.  

And today.  Today was to be the day we celebrate the bridging of Sydney Kahn from high school youth to college-bound young adult.  And Sydney, we do celebrate you today, but like the Coming of Age Youth, Sydney also chose to postpone the larger celebration until we can be together face to face.  And so we will.  

Currently two couples and I are planning weddings that will happen with sensible social distancing and without the fanfare they deserve.  

We have already in the past few weeks, in this community, laid beloved members to rest without memorials to say our goodbyes.  

And you know what, beloveds, I’m going to say a very theological, pator-y, chaplain-y thing now, so feel free to take notes and quote me on this:  THIS SUCKS.   

That’s it.  This sucks.  During a recent Committee on Ministry meeting I shared via Zoom, of course, one of our wonderful members reminded ME, that it is perfectly normal right now to just say everything sucks and take a break from trying to find the silver lining.  And that is true.  

But…I can’t just completely stop there, because of what is happening here in this very worship service.  Let me let you in on a little bit of how this worship sausage was made.  

Our High School and Middle School youth met via Zoom a few weeks ago to plan this worship.  Since our planned themes and topics were out the window anyway, THEY picked the topic.  They wanted to talk about resilience.  

And you know, we haven’t actually SAID the word resilience much in this service today, if even at all, but resilience in action is what we have witnessed in every element of this worship.  

What these precious teens are sharing with us from their hearts today is their gift to this beloved community that they love, and they are doing it with humor, grace, honesty, and by giving a TON of their time and talent to the endeavor.  And please stick with us, because the gifts of their talents are most assuredly NOT over yet today.  

Do you have any cornstarch in your house?  If you do, maybe this is something you can try later today, or sometime soon.  I’m going to make some Oobleck.  Have you ever made oobleck?   It’s so super simple, that even I can make it and not mess up, usually.  Sometimes, anyway.  

All it takes is cornstarch and water.  That’s all.  However much cornstarch you use (I’m using one cup) you just mix in HALF that much water.  So, a half a cup of water for my Oobleck.  You can add some food coloring if you like, but I didn’t have any of that today for my Oobleck.  And that’s okay.  In Quarantine Kitchen, we use what we have, right?  

When you mix cornstarch and water together it creates something really interesting.  

I could slowly put my hand throught this mixture all day long and just feel the silky mess running through my fingers and let you watch it drip into the bowl, and while it kinda feels nice for me to do that, it would probably get boring really fast.  Maybe it already did.  It just stays soft messy, watery, sorta-sticky goop.  That’s all.  But not really.  Because what makes it react DIFFERENTLY than just continuing to be soft watery messy goop, is the force of the impact I use to touch it.  

It’s called a non-Newtonian fluid.  That means a lot of things, but some of them are that the solid substance…the cornstarch…does not dissolve in the water.  It stays intact and just cooperates with the water and lets the droplets of water flow intermixed with the granules of starch. When things are slow and easy.  But when a sudden force impacts the mixture, the water droplets get pushed aside, and the starch grains jam up against each other and refuse to move for my fingers. It becomes solid.  I can remove my hand, and slowly try again, and the water droplets are back in the mix making a gooey mess, and the next instant I can smack the mixture hard, and it solidifies right under and around my fingers.  

It’s pretty cool, and I totally think you should try it.  Yes, you.  This is an all-age activity and all-age doesn’t mean just for kids.  So, maybe you can make some Oobleck this afternoon.  Maybe you can make some during coffee hour with each other.  

Are you picking up what I’m laying down here?   

Our youth are resilient and creative, and generous and loving, and make no mistake, they are also Oobleck. They stick together and don’t let unexpected impact tear them apart, and they just do what needs to be done.  Whether as a youth group, in their families, in their school circles which have been so unfairly disrupted. They are showing us how to Oobleck.  They’re better at it than a lot of us.  And where did they learn that? Maybe you can remember a time when you were a pretty great force of Oobleck yourself. Because our kids and our teens learn the ways of Oobleck from those who have paved the Ooblecky way.  Maybe that’s you.  Maybe that’s others in this beloved community who have gone before us.  Maybe it’s people from outside our beloved community from whose influence we are now the beneficiaries.  

Wherever it comes from, I sure am thankful for it.  I am a gooey, falling apart mess sometimes until I remember that my true nature is a lot more Ooblecky than that mess. I am so grateful when someone reminds me.  

Beloveds, we can do hard things.  

We. Can. Do. Hard. Things.  We are resilient.  We are creative. We are loving, brave, funny, messy bowls of Oobleck.  And that is a beautiful thing to be.  

“We are going. Heaven knows where we are going.  But we know within.  And we will get there.  Heaven knows how we will get there.  But we know we will.  It will be hard, we know!  And he road will be muddy and rough, but we’ll get there.  Heaven knows how we will get there.  But we know we will.  Woyaya.  Woyaya.  Woyaya. Woyaya.

Now.  Our own David Niedermeyer has a Stewardship Moment for us, and I promise you, you do not want to miss it.  David, it’s all yours, friend.  

Stewardship Moment David Niedermeyer

Northwest UUC is not the building that we use, it is the community that is what makes it what it is. And the community I have seen here is one that cares for others, will accept others for who they are, and will do their best to make the best decisions possible. It is because of these things that I trust this community, and I hope you will show how much you trust and appreciate this community by donating even just a little bit. Because if everyone gives just a little, then just like individuals in a community it will amount to something big.

Offering Rev. Misha Sanders

Thank you, David.  I don’t have anything more to add, except to encourage you to text Donate to Give, that information will be shared on the upcoming slides.  Or give in whatever form works best for you.  I encourage you to speand the next five minutes breathing deeply and appreciating the amazing music that Anthony Kahn has created for us to accompany our offering slides today. 

Benediction  Rev. Misha Sanders

Thank you, Anthony Kahm, for your gift of music to us today. 

Thank you, beloved Northwest friends and family, for your financial gifts to this community.  

Thank you, Middle and High School Youth Worship Associates, for ministering to us all today.  

Our words of benediction are by Rev. Karen Bellavance-Grace.

“In praise of computers and routers and servers and all the hardware and software that can help us build our connectedness;

in praise of all the gremlins that live in the machines and bug our programs and help us to practice patience;

in praise of the trolls who dwell in the internet and push us to live out our first principle in real time;

in praise of power surges that eat our data and devour our final draft, for giving us the opportunity to rebuild and remember that our work is as much transient as it is transcendent;

in praise of the Error: Page Not Found, which reminds us that with some people we need to find new paths to make connections, because not everyone uses the same keywords;

in praise of servers that drop our connections which reminds us that all who serve have built-in limits to their capacity;

in praise of communication and connection, whether it is face-to-face or Zoom-to-Zoom,

We always risk errors, hurt feelings and misunderstanding,

But it is also, always, worth the risk.”

Thank you for being resilient and playing and learning and loving with us today.  I love you!  See you in Coffee Hour, friends! 

Postlude Jim Pearce

Text number: Text to 73256: DonateNWUUC