The Soul Matters theme for March is Renewing Faith. We celebrate spring equinox, life’s momentum renewing around us. We mark two years of Covid-19, yearning to bust out of confinement, yet cautious.
What does it mean to renew faith in 2022?
Respecting UU spiritual/ philosophical diversity, faith is not a doctrine. Faith is not a noun, but a verb. Faith is experienced individually, and faith is relational. The ultimate spiritual practice: keeping faith with life. With our deepest wisest self, with one another. Faith is allowing life – and love – to hold us.
How do we keep faith with life? How do we allow it to hold us?
Checking in today with three distant friends on Zoom, Sally shared her yearning for someone to sit with her, to hear what’s on her heart. Her close-by friends are all overwhelmed after two years of pandemic upheaval. She yearns to be held. To sit back to back with another, breathing. We three listened, witnessed Sally tearing up. And then saw her face brightening: “I need a swim! The sea always lifts me up.” Sally shows our shared human spiritual journey: Our need to belong, to be witnessed, to feel what we’re feeling, to open to the wisdom we already know that buoys us up: We’re always held by the sea.
What is Sally’s ‘sea’ for you?
For me it is the open sky. Looking up from the computer, opening to the beauty of the constantly changing sky – whether snowy, rainy or sunny, windy or calm. Beauty – life – evolving around me (and within me) all the time. Shining in each other’s eyes, voice, presence. Unscripted awareness arising (listening, writing, reading) in this very moment, inviting us to be here now, to co-create this moment, together.
May we engage in our own ways – renewing faith, keeping faith with life.
Rev. Mary
