Our theme for December selected by our KCUUC Council on Worship is “Hope”.  As she usually does, Mary Oliver finds the most elegant ways to access abstract topics.  Let me share a prose-poem by her titled Maybe hope, maybe faith:

In the winter I am writing about, there was much darkness.
Darkness of nature, darkness of event, darkness of the spirit.
The sprawling darkness of not knowing. We speak of the light of reason.
I would speak here of the darkness of the world, and the light of———.
But I don’t know what to call it. Maybe hope. Maybe faith, but not a shaped faith—only, say, a gesture, or a continuum of gestures.
But probably it is closer to hope, that is more active, and far messier than faith must be.
Faith, as I imagine it, is tensile, and cool, and has no need of words.
Hope, I know, is a fighter and a screamer.

We are a people that largely has gone beyond notions that faith in the benevolence of a traditional Father-God is the source of all hope.  Yet, I think we are still primarily a hopeful people.  We don’t give up because we sense that resources are always available for meaningful change if we have hearts to understand and eyes to see.   The human condition has a tragic side but also, always, a dynamic hope.  Our dignity comes from aligning ourselves with the power and intent of the creative energy in the world that justifies hope.

I intend to speak more on this topic at our worship service on December 10.

May this be a season of hope and joy for you and yours,

Rev. Bill