This Sunday we celebrate Homecoming. This is a time in our congregational year when we return from summer’s rest to a full multigenerational gathering, kicking off new programs and activities, and celebrating our interdependence with one another. We bring water from many places far and wide to join together as one. We return again to recommit ourselves to the mission of this congregation: to nurture spiritual growth, embrace a welcoming community, and live our values in the world.

Water has so many meanings, which we observed this past summer through a time of extreme weather and climate disaster. It may be both creative and destructive; it may bring life and it may take life away. Water is the Spirit of Life. As I reflect on September’s Soul Matters theme of The Gift of Welcome, I wonder what it might mean to welcome in all that life entails: both joy and suffering, loss and change, new meaning and possibility that is emerging among us now.

Water also flows, like the winding rivers we may have refreshed our bodies in or walked across on bridges. It flows as life flows, ever onwards, ever changing. Perhaps you have experienced great changes this summer, or are anticipating, hoping, fearing, wondering about changes yet to come.

What change in your life might you be resisting? What might it look like to welcome in those changes?

In the upcoming month, I invite us to explore what it means to welcome in the fullness of life: the people who gather from so many places, the changes that are teaching and transforming us even now, the gifts of emergence in this great turning of the world that are calling us to create the future yet to come.

I look forward to seeing you, exploring with you, and celebrating Life together with you this Sunday!

Peace and welcome,
Rev. Terri