Your UUA Central East Region team is here to move with you on the twists and turns of our shared journey. Join us for a brief pastoral message about what we’re encountering in the field, and how we’d encourage re-centering Love in these troubled times.

Transcript of the video above:

Hey everyone, this is Reverend Alia. My pronouns are they them. I am part of the fabulous Central East Region team who works with congregations through the UUA. I'm here with some colleagues today and we just wanted to put together this short pastoral message for you all.

Some of what we're seeing in this time, is that times of high stress can bring out the very best and the very worst in all of us and sometimes all at once. So as you're experiencing the ripples of the time that we're in, if you're experiencing an uptick in miscommunication or conflict, maybe that's a signal that it's time to take a breath collectively, to remember that we're really in this together. And I'm going to pass it over to some of my colleagues, who also want to say just a couple of words about the time that we're in and what they would suggest.

Everyone I'm Reverend Megan Foley, I'm the Regional Lead for the Central East Region. So, so glad to be doing this with, with our folks today. I've been thinking ever since Alia had brought up that we are seeing a lot of folks being testy with each other across the board, I have been thinking about the ways in which problematic behavior is a model even when you don't agree with the people doing it, that often times like you can, you can see, oh this is how we're going to be now as humans, and and adopt that kind of subconsciously. And so what I'm wondering about this time is whether or not we should instead kind of ground down in our own values and our own hopes for how we want to be in the world, even if it feels like just like a little mustard seed of something to do in the face of some enormity that we hate. We still have the option of choosing how we respond and how we want to be in the world.

And I just want to add in to, an amazing, just when I was thinking this, an amazing quote came to me from Rebecca Solnit, so I'm going to read it aloud as well.

The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean that we cannot save anything, and everything we can save is worth saving. Remember in this tide of hate what love is. Take care of yourself, because you are interwoven with the 10 trillion things in this single garment of destiny that has been stained and torn, but is still being woven and mended and washed.

And so we are part of the great community of people who are still mending and weaving and washing, which has always been the case. And it's on people like us to remember the values and the way we want to be in the world and model that in turn for others, so that the world can be a better place. We also don't have to have all the answers in this time, it's like enough to start modeling how we know to be together with exquisite care in a time where lots of things are falling apart. We're the people who do the mending and the holding and sometimes that means holding things as they fall and that's okay too.

Hey everyone I'm Sana Saeed, Congregational Life Staff at the Central East Region, walking alongside you in this sacred world of Building Beloved Community. I know that many of our congregations are feeling the weight of conflict, change and uncertainty and times of anxiety, it can be easy to lose sight of the love and the purpose that bind us together. Yet even now we are not alone.

May we root ourselves in our deepest values, remembering that transformation is still possible and that deep listening and mutual care can lead to healing and that the work of love and justice continues one faithful step at a time.

As adrienne maree brown reminds us, when we are engaged in acts of love, we humans are at our best and most resilient. May we meet this moment with love. Love for each other, love for our communities, and love for the world we are building together.

My name is Lenore Bajare-Dukes, my pronouns are she and her, and I too am a member of Congregational Life field staff of the Central East Region. For me times of crisis sometimes have a way of narrowing focus. Unfortunately sometimes they narrow my focus on what I really need to be doing and sometimes they narrow my focus on what's irritating me or the things that I can control, when so much feels out of control.

I want to invite us all to pause and slow down and to remember that there are things we very much need time and space for right now. We need spaces of fierce welcome. We need to tend to survival. We need to build in extra time to rest when folks get sick. We need to be ready and able to act. And we need time to play, and to laugh with each other, and to create and to rehumanize. And I'm not sure that we have time for all of those things when we are also holding tight to the things that we can control that might have seem like they mattered a lot a little while ago, maybe.

So this is an invitation to let go of all that you can right now that does not serve. Because we are actually in a crisis, and it is okay to shift your plans when you are in a crisis. It's okay to spend time practicing things that might seem so very small, things like kindness, and to pour all the love and attention into care that you can into that which connects.

In this time we're called to pay attention to what's really essential and to put love at the center, when that's not the way the winds are blowing. And so I want to thank you for all the work that you're doing in the world and all the ways that you're showing up with love day after day. And I want to remind you that we're in this together that you're not alone. And not alone also in practicing exquisite care for the people around you, for the people you don't know yet, for the folks who are coming in the generations after us. We're doing the work that we do today with that future focus in the frame, and it really matters how we are with each other in this time.

So thank you for being you.

Be well.

Megan, Beth, Sana, Cassandra, Renee, Lenore and Alia