Memo from MAM Nov. 12, 2024

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The President of our Unitarian Universalist Association. Reverend Doctor Sofia Betancourt wrote:

Re-sharing a poem here that I shared in my President’s Report to the 2024 UUA General Assembly because it speaks to me of the strength of our living tradition.  I believe that living every day in our faith offers us a through-line, a thread, that keeps us connected to one another and grounded in our values when the world is on fire. Keep hold of the thread, Beloveds. Times of unknowing are what religious community is for.
The Thread

By William Stafford

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
As I mentioned during Sunday’s post-election worship service, I learned an important phrase during my training in and exploration of Relational Cultural Theory, that phrase being, “Isolation is a building block for oppression.”  In the weeks, months and years ahead, please do not allow yourself to become isolated.  I believe that First Unitarian Church of Louisville offers many avenues to break down the building blocks of isolation.  For those of you who have not joined a Chalice Circle (our small group ministry) yet, I encourage you to do so.  You can email the Chalice Circle team.
Also I talked about how important it is to track our patterns of thought and behavior during times of stressful change.  Michigan State University professor of psychology, John Shneider suggests that the following three questions are important to ask during major change:  What’s lost?  What’s left?  What’s possible?.  I invite you to visit these questions daily and somehow record your responses—voice recording or journaling or visual imagery.   Over time it will be important to review past responses and notice how change is affecting your sense of being.
Lastly, like many of you, I am finding the writings and reflections, “Letters from an American” on Substack from Heather Cox Richardson helpful.  November 8th was particularly powerful.  I also continue to encourage Substacker Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

Will we as Unitarian Universalists continue to hold love at the center of our values in finding our way forward?  Yes we will.
In doing so, I believe it is essential to remember this quote from Martin Luther King Jr’s definition of love in his 1967 address to the anti-war group ‘Clergy and Laity Concerned’:

When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life.  Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.  This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first Epistle of Saint John, ‘Let us love one another;  for love is God and everyone that loveth is born  of God and knoweth God.’ 

(Strength to Love,  Martin Luther King Jr, 1963, Foreward by Coretta Scott King, 1981,  Fortress Press, Philadelphia, PA, 1981).
Love, Mary Ann
Reverend Mary Ann Macklin

PS Earth.  Courage.  Calm Abiding