pastor prayers

God of all people, of every land and culture and type of body and gender and way of loving and moving and learning
If we keep telling our stories, stay curious about each others’ being, open our hearts to each others’ welfare, learn to hold the complexities of the noble and the petty in ourselves and others… if we can hang on and grow up and reach out enough, may we one day reach the moment when a young African American girl being honored for her achievement can count on the respect she is due. May we live to see a day when humor will be possible – and funny! – without resting on stereotypes that demean everyone present. Let us spend as much time assessing the stuff on the inside of folks who walk that red carpet as the stuff on the outside: their courage and wit and heart and foibles at least as important as their Harry Winston and Armani Privet. And in the mean time, for those of us who enjoy the spectacle as it is even while we wince and bemoan its shortcomings, let us not forget the work that is ours to do.

This sabbath day, one on which I actually am free of regular church duties, I am sitting with the dissonance of worlds.  This week was the third in a row that brought with it anxious speculation in my sphere about whether or not church would be happening due to predicted winter storms.  The concerns we have about canceling church are real: we want to keep church open for all who can come.   We believe worship should be taken seriously and the gathering of the community should happen if at all possible.  And yet we don’t want people to abandon good sense or safety in order to be here, and feel the responsibility to let people off the hook so they can stay home and worship privately if that is the most sensible choice.  All well and good.  All well worth conversation and consideration.

In the New York Times this morning was an article about how long and far people travel in parts of Africa to arrive at the church for succor: a meal, a safe place to rest, a prayer for healing.  I think of the folks who are working to keep body and soul together after losing their homes and their jobs in the U.S.   I think about the people of Syria, who are overflowing refugee camps in Lebanon, and how delighted they might be to have the sole challenge of the threat of a snow storm to contend with as they struggle to keep their families and their faith intact.  I don’t think these facts should make us risk life and limb to make it to church on Sunday mornings in our bubble of privilege and prosperity, but I wish they could give us a growing sense of urgency for what the purpose of the church and ways we might use the formidable resources we do have at our disposal.

And so I pray:

God who works in us and through us, whose love is known to heal and to save, whose creative power is always at work:  Help us to remember that the worth of all this gathering and praying and singing is to enact some transformation in our lives.  Church means nothing if it’s not inviting us to realize the greater goodness that wants to be seen and known in our world, the conspiracy of your grace that is active when we let ourselves be its vessels.  As we fret over whether we will be able to shovel our driveways in time for worship and whether the parking lot will be plowed and how much ice will be on the roads, let us be at least as aware of a grander invitation: to make a commitment in every season to harness the gift of this privilege toward digging out from the perennial and devastating storms of poverty and war and imprisonment.  Let us find ways to stem the tide of lives lost to the havoc wreaked in our world by human hands.  Help us live the call to be partners in this ongoing creation, and keep our eyes lifted to those hills from whence help does come.

I found myself at the local Y not once but twice today (only once to work out – long story).  I love gyms but the Y in particular because of the variety of people I encounter.  As I did my tedious time on the elliptical because the treadmills were all taken, I people watched, making up back stories for each person who came, offering a good wish for what I thought they might need based on their gait, their physique, their chosen form of exercise… you know, all the accurate measures of anyone’s soul.  It occurred to me as I did this that it would be easy to think that we all were there working for the same thing: fitness.  And that assumption might lead one to imagine that our yearnings were similar, if not in the global sense then at least for the moments that we were sharing that overheated space.  But if I followed my imagined back stories for my fellow travelers at the Y, I realized even that would be a mistake.  Though the same staff and equipment were meeting our needs, though we were sharing the space on the same day and time, our strivings were in fact for many things deeper than weight loss or heart health, physical strength or beach bodies.

Today’s prayer is for all the hidden strivings we express in very similar ways, for the channeling of our needs for love, for sanity, for endurance, for strength and forbearance, for release of anxiety and for integrity of being, into activities that on the surface look so simple (if not easy): weights, treadmills, spin bikes, circuit training and swimming pools.  For all of the unseen, unspoken struggles we share as we sweat and grunt and groan, as we listen to iPods and chat with companions, may there be ears to hear and eyes to see our earnest work for relief.  May our strivings not go unnoticed, in this life or beyond.  May we find the deeper realms of wellness we dream of, and that we all deserve.

The Parsa Family Tree

It’s February vacation week in Massachusetts and I’ve taken my two boys to visit my parents.  Today we had a massive play date with four of their second cousins and all of my mother’s surviving sisters.  At one point a young voice called out “Grandma” and three women who probably never imagined this would be them all turned at once.  Realizing what had happened, they chuckled for a moment before the needs of the kids took over again.

My father enjoyed circulating the room, the only adult male in attendance, holding a framed photo of me when I was about three standing proudly on the beach at the Caspian Sea.  One hand clasped a shovel planted victoriously in the sand next to a bucket full of seashells.  Can you believe who this is? He asked, and everyone enjoyed pointing out how easily that could be my three-year old son.

I am fond of speaking of the metaphorical, abstract, human family.  You know, the interconnected one that is one body and one blood, children of God and all of those beautiful, wonderful things.  And I mean every word of it when I do.  Yet there is something almost more miraculous about realizing the literal family that binds us to genetic proclivities for illness and for brilliance, for beauty and for girth.  Whether the tree we trace is biological or affectional hardly matters: that we owe our existence and nurture to people who age after age took care of each other, annoyed each other, saw each other for all that they were and also missed each other completely is amazing.  That they still, through passion and betrayals, through droughts and epidemics, through long winters and cruel twists of fate somehow kept the connection alive to arrive at us is nothing short of astounding.  That we will do the same through space and time until those of us who are now still getting used to being someone’s parents or aunts or uncles have found our new calling as elders makes me certain of grace.

Today, my prayer is one of thanks and praise for the people who I learn of in half-remembered lore by my father and “oh did I ever mentions” from my mother and the amazing fact that through the generations on two continents those families were joined by coincidence and fate and that I got to be, and because of similar fate my children will do the same.

Thank you, God of life, for the fact and the miracle of family.

My three year-old is full of drama.  Though he has never seen Elvis, he does a mean impression, including a proclivity for ending any moment when he has held the attention of a “crowd” with a bow from the waist and the words “Thank you.  Thankyouverymuch.”

Though he is doing it for crowd-pleasing effect, the automatic quality of it is touching to me.  He’s not expressing some Great Thanksgiving from the tips of his toes, but he is certainly on to something.

Spirit of our every thanksgiving, help us to remember to pause in awareness of the attention and the affection that meets us in the smallest gestures.  Let us tune our awareness at least as much to those fleeting moments of acknowledgement: the exchange with the grocery cashier; the wave and nod to the neighbor; the ‘hello’ from a passerby on the sidewalk.  Let these moments of connection, however brief, however fragile bouy us through the moments of lack that too often claim our hearts through anxious clinging: the wrong thing said; the phone call not returned; the joke we didn’t know how to take.  Help us to orient ourselves to the “thankyouverymuch” of each and every encounter, and feel the blessings flow.

Amen.

Today, my prayer is to remember to lean into love.

The kind of love that sees us for all of who we are: that gets our need for warm and fuzzy and “I see how well you mean” and because it’s so in touch with our goodness also is uniquely able to offer the kind of kick in the behind we need when we’re very far off the mark.  It’s what I aspire to offer as a parent, in way it can be understood.  It’s the kind of love I value most from my sweetheart, who can kindly tell me that last Sunday’s sermon wasn’t my best work, which I hear in the knowledge that he thinks I’m the bees knees, which then makes it possible for me to ask all about what didn’t work without (too much) anxiety.  It’s the kind of well-rounded love that, when we lean into it, can help us grow into who we are most called to be.

God too big for any name, we know you as tenacious,fibrous, strongly-woven love.  Surround us in our fondness for either/or, for love or hate, for war or peace, for right or wrong, and help us lean into all-that-is.  Let us not be so blinded by thoughts of purity of deed and action that we fail to see your presence in those who have disappointed us, even (especially) our selves.

Let us see that our leaders can make awful decisions and still be made of good.  Open our eyes and strengthen our spirits to share our criticism in ways that own up to the failures larger than any one person’s leadership or vision, in which we all play a part.  Help us to lean into the troubling facts of this world and its complexity, and the ways all of us who have freedom to vote and to spend are complicit in those failings.  And as we lean, keep us from throwing up our hands in a fatalism that absolves us of what we can do.  Which is much.

Keep this before us too: We can offer those closest to us the kind of love that holds us to our aspirations, even as we see how hard they are to reach, and all the reasons we falter.  We can keep talking about the kind of world we want to live in and the ways we want to be with each other in it.  We can invite people who don’t already agree with us into that conversation.  We can practice the kind of love that belongs to us all, that is not about agreement or disagreement but about connection.  We can learn to tell each other the God’s honest truth: that each of us gets to be seen as beautiful and possible and good, and because of that beauty and possibility and goodness we are called to grow into more of it, stretch into the possibility of our connection, and figure tough stuff out together.

God of love, please make it true, though we are skeptics to the core, that if we lean into you the way will open.  Though our parts may still be broken, we can be whole.  Make this hopeful rallying cry and prayer true for us: Yes, we can.

Amen.

Your heart is a muscle the size of your fist.  Keep loving.  Keep fighting.

I’ve always loved this poster/slogan, and was reminded of it today when several people shared it on Facebook.  It’s absolutely apt for a year in which the first day of Lent and Valentine’s Day occupy the square on the calendar.

I am generally averse to Valentine’s Day because it holds up the notion of love I find the most false and dull.  I am a fan of romance.  I certainly can get behind the power of finding someone who can share your life and put up with your quirks and help you through the tough stuff, and the miracle it is to be with that amazing person each and every day.  I think appreciating that amazing fact has very little to do with bouquets of flowers and diamond jewelry and fine chocolates.  Or greeting cards or grand proclamations.

What I feel in touch with on this VaLENTines Day is the need to keep fighting my way to the love that is there under and woven within and playing in the background of all the din of life that claims our attention all the time.  The love that does not come in on a white horse to rescue us from the trials of life, but that holds us and has our back as we face them.  The love that keeps a steady hold on us when we’re tempted to run off the rails with our fears of failure or the pressures of our success.  The steady arms that show up as people who care when the losses we never thought we could bear jump onto our shoulders from behind and flatten us.

The fight I’m feeling called to this Lenten season is the one that invites both the heart and the fist to open, and to feel the grace that flows through the blood that is pumped and the fingers that are extended to feel and to bear all that this life is.  It’s a fight against the world that says such openness is not wise, that there is no evidence for a God who might actually be there to hold us.  It’s a fight for space for the soul that wants wholeness and needs space for weaving its connections.

It’s a fight that begins with the laying down of arms.  Let it begin.

This sermon was given at the Ordination of Erik Resly at First Parish in Milton, MA, January 28, 2012

It is amazing, wonderful, a thrill to be celebrating Erik’s ordination today.

I don’t need to tell anyone here that he is a remarkable man, who has worked incredibly hard, brought spiritual depth and heart and joy to the work of theological study and the practice of pastoral skills, and done it all while spending more than his share of time in hospitals – not just as chaplain but as patient.

It is nothing short of a miracle to be celebrating this day with you, and nothing short of a blessing to be sending you forth to do the work of marking and honoring the sacred in our world.

I feel a duty to warn you, though, that I have consulted the oracle sometimes known as the internet, and the news for churches is not good these days. Reports abound, both substantiated and speculated, that the church is in decline.
Not the kind of decline that has been reported on and off for the last millennium,
but decline with a capital D, as in: Dying.

Erik, you are entering into ministry, and have trained for parish ministry in particular, in a time when more people know how to do Downward-facing Dog than have a favorite hymn.  Team in Training has people raising thousands of dollars for medical research and spending months in grueling training to run marathons, while we have trouble finding people to spend 45 minutes reflecting on a story with children on Sunday morning.

In a culture where thoughts are useless if expressing them requires more than 140 characters, parish ministers spend a lot of time crafting a dynamic worship service with thematic integrity, carefully chosen music and a 2,000-word sermon.

I’m sure you knew when you started your expensive Harvard Divinity School education that ordination was available online from the Universal Life Church at the low, low price of… free.  Their web site boasts that twenty million people have done this.
What is wrong with us?

To be ordained is literally to be put in an order – for Catholics the order of apostolic succession; for us the order of a body of congregations recognizing one anothers’ wisdom to identify those who are called and skilled to serve in ministry among them.

If the order into which we are being placed is dying, what does it mean – not just for those of us who have been or are preparing to be ordained, but also for those doing the ordaining?

Walter Brueggemann’s prayer (that we heard as our reading) asks the One of many names:

“Form us in freedom and wholeness and gentleness,

Reform our deformed lives toward
Obedience which is our only freedom,
Praise which is our only poetry,
And love which is our only option.

Our confidence matches our need, and so we pray…”

We know that our lives are form-able,
that freedom and wholeness and gentleness could be their shape.
We know this both in and out of church, but church is where we call ourselves back to it.  Church is where, at our best, we practice the obedience, the praise, the love that can reform our lives.

If the existing form of the church is dying, it seems a bit futile to ask what is killing us – the list is long, full of pointing fingers and none of the blame is verifiable.

What we need to ask is:  what is saving us?

We humans are hungry for ways to make meaning in our lives,
to know we’re okay, to know that good is possible in and through us.

We are especially hungry when we find ourselves adrift.
Some of us find our way into churches,
but we are just as likely to be the regulars at the local bar on trivia night, or sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, lying in a jail cell awaiting sentencing,
in the checkout line at the grocery store, or frantically chasing children around a playground.

Neighbors in need of a good word might be sitting next to you at a Superbowl party,
cutting you off in traffic, or sleeping next to you in bed.

What has saved me, and keeps saving me as I meet the eyes of a beloved parishioner just diagnosed with cancer,
or just facing the end of a marriage,
or touching grief at the loss of a child,
or enraged with the injustice of our world,
what saves me each week as I climb the stairs to this pulpit
praying my words will be enough and knowing they aren’t,
turns out to belong very much to this order to which we ordain Erik this evening,
the order to which I was ordained 14 years ago.

It begins with the power of the Unitarian notion that as children of the same source – however we name that source – we are endowed with the capacity to grow in goodness.  Jesus – prophet and teacher – showed us what it might be like
to live fully awake to that divine power born in us.

And the Universalist conviction that that same divine source is also our destination – we are equally loved and held and equally redeemed to a wholeness that we can only dream of.

We are called to live those two convictions informed by our Puritan ancestors,
in covenant together, humbled by all the ways our goodness is hampered by our brokenness, our own ability to love our neighbor never as generous or spacious as the love which gave us birth.

And in our humble gathering, committed to seeking and cultivating the good,
and to living into the love that holds us,
we catch glimpses of the world as it was meant to be.
The paradise that is already here if we tune ourselves to the grace in our midst.

This is a demanding faith.
It’s a faith that needs people to be firmly convicted, and deeply willing to live its spiritual challenge. It requires us not to live isolated in communities of self-satisfied folks convinced of our own worth, wondering why others don’t stop by to see how awesome we are, but to stand alongside those who have been told they have no worth, and show by our companionship that we are kin.

This faith doesn’t simply suggest, but requires obedience:
We have to admit we are not the ones in charge.

The good that is possible in and through each of us is greater than we can imagine.

The love that holds us even when we fall is deeper than the weight of our despair.

For a long time, we have hidden ourselves from the power of this faith by covering it with the cloak of vagueness.
We have kept ourselves at a distance from our own need, from the places where we let ourselves be saved.

We need communities of faith that are going to make it to those intimate and vulnerable places where we lay bare our needs to one another, and then let our companions bear witness to the goodness we’re afraid we don’t possess, and claim their partnership with us as siblings in spirit, and most of all, to be with us in the sacred promise of community, even when none of us is sure of our potential for goodness or of God’s love.

Once we have been to that place together, there is a new kind of confidence that emerges, an understanding we can hold deep in our bones that this faith means something real, is something real, and its message is something the world cannot be without.

Whether or not churches as we know them survive, we humans will always need a faith that can meet the real holes in our lives, the times when we desperately need to be met by a community’s fire-in-the-belly conviction that we matter,
that we are loved, and that we can be part of something good, even if we haven’t managed to be very good so far.

“Our confidence matches our need, and so we pray…”

Whatever the movement of this faith will look like in the future, we will need leaders, people who make their lives a practice of spiritual depth, intellectual commitment, and wide open hearts.

People who, whether or not the order to which we are ordained remains as it was,
are willing to publicly order our lives according to this call.

We need to show up with the comfortable and walk with them into the uncomfortable places that challenge their privilege and power.

We need to be willing to humble ourselves to all we must learn from those whose lives we cannot imagine – both the powerful and the vulnerable.

We must testify to our own journeys of faith, and return again and again to the truth of our own limits.

We will need the compassion to look kindly upon those who would like to make us their enemies, and wonder always at how the demands of love intersect with the commitment to justice.

Our job is to be the ones who hear the needs deeply and offer in response some confidence – not an arrogant confidence of unwavering belief, but the deep trust of a faith that has changed our lives. And to equip others to do the same.

We are asked to make it our sacred duty to tend the holy fire so that it is big enough to melt hardened hearts and warm those brought in from the cold, but not so big that it consumes or destroys the folks who gather around its inviting glow.

If we do it carefully, joyfully, humbly, we may see a day when the conviction of God-given goodness and love’s saving power is at least as well-known and practiced as Downward Dog.

In spite of the name of the degree we carry, in the words of Barbara Brown Taylor,
“there is no mastering divinity. There is only the calling to love God and love our neighbor, and that can be done anywhere, with anyone. Ministry is not what you do but who you are.”

Erik, there is no doubt that ministry is who you are.
You join us in ordination to this faith at a time when your skills, your vision, your intellect, your spirit are needed to be part of the vibrant future that is yet to be seen.

Welcome to this order of pastors and prophets, of seekers after holy wisdom and tenders of sacred fires.

Whatever the future may bring, may we all find ourselves formed in freedom and wholeness and gentleness. May we know the truth of “obedience as our only freedom, praise as our only poetry, and love as our only option.”

Amen.

This is an abridged version of the sermon preached at First Parish in Milton, MA on Sunday, November 27, 2011.  The first Sunday in Advent.

I know you’ve seen the street sign, too. Usually found in residential neighborhoods, it’s meant as a caution to drivers who might otherwise barrel down the streets thoughtlessly. Slow: children – those two words and one punctuation mark speak volumes. “This is a place where children live, children who are loved. Please drive slowly so that they may live.” And of course beyond that there is even more: all the layers of hopes and dreams their parents have for them, the perennial challenge of protecting and raising children well, the sense of vulnerability we all have. I know that’s what the sign means to evoke for us, but I often read it a little differently. It makes me pause all the same, but it also makes me smile.

Sometimes I like to imagine that it says: Slow, children.

Slow down, children of the universe

Go slow, children of the God who made all life in its mysterious beauty and fragility.

Take it slow, all of you who are still growing, though past a certain age you are loathe to admit it.

Slow, because life is a great gift we are meant to savor, not gulp.

Slow, children! Life gets its deepest meaning when we have space of heart and presence of mind to let all of it in.

We grow best, all of us still-children of someone and something greater than us all, when we have the time to let the wisdom of our experience guide our choices.

To do that we must move slowly, children.

Maybe I intentionally mis-read the sign because it’s exactly the reminder I need, daily.

I can’t drive through enough residential, family-filled streets to keep it current in my mind.  It’s the combination that is key.  To take it slow, and that we are children.  We rely on the benevolence of others for our well-being.  We are held in the arms of a force of life and love grander than ourselves.  We are still growing into who we are and what it means to be human in this world, (and though we might fight it, we pray we never stop that growth.)  We have plenty of responsibilities, including being an adult in our work and in our relationships and as we parent our children and care for our parents and do the million other things asked of us as people of a certain age. Still, deep in the heart of each of us, where the greatest wonder and the deepest fears and the highest hopes reside: there is a child.

The pull is strong this time of year to turn inward, to measure our lives in some way. The moment may come somewhat uninvited: the moment of irritation intertwined with a hint of inferiority as the shameless braggart in the family waxes eloquent about the accomplishments of self or children. Or it may be a welcome surprise: catching up with a distant cousin, an old friend, a faraway sibling, a beloved parent, and realizing connections never before explored. It is rare that we can escape the holiday season, no matter how hectic our lives, without at least a moment of pause in wonder, in celebration, in grief, in contemplation of the meaning of our lives.

That place in us that is still someone’s child, that growing, glorying, grieving place comes a little closer to the surface this time of year. Its work is deep and real and true, and most poignant with us as the nights lengthen and the festive lights are hung. It’s there, waiting for a little attention. Waiting for a chance to grow us more fully into ourselves.

As faiths around the world have known for millenia, we belong to the cycles of nature. As the earth pulls back its energy into itself, so must we. A lot happens under that surface if we will let it. If.

That work can be full of joy, but it can also be tearful, and angry and difficult.  Slowing down means sitting squarely with disappointments we had shrugged off but still hold as wounds.  It means letting in our sadness at the loss of loved ones we miss especially this time of year.  It means sitting with our own fears of inadequacy, our sorrows at mistakes we’ve made.

The outward pull of the season is surely an enticing escape: Shopping! Lights! Carols! Shopping! Food! Shopping!

In this season of faith in the coming of god in the most common and plain form, to the most common and plain people, let us not be too busy to watch for the new life stirring in our own hearts. Let us make space not for the shoulds but for the needs of our souls.

If that is reveling in lights and taking in concerts and feeling exalted by it all: do it!

If that is giving ourselves and others permission not to rush, to take a much-needed rest, to play, to reflect with dear friends: do it!

Remember also that the moments savored in stillness take us to great depth, though the world may cry out against it.  It could, in fact, be that the transformation we await so fervently in our world needs us to slow down, to re-adjust our internal clocks to sacred time, to envision a world transformed by a depth of living that honors the sacred in each and all and reminds us of what we really need: each other.

Slow, children!

Walk in barren woods without a rush.

Curl up with a good book even though there are cards to be written.

Play a board game with a loved one when the chores aren’t yet done.

Slow, children.

I know it’s not what the sign means, but imagine with me for a moment that this is exactly the message we need to take in this Advent season. What if we let it play in our heads, imagine it spoken to us in the voice most likely to make us gladly obey:

A doting grandmother or wise grandfather,

A goofy aunt or a doddering uncle,

A compassionate but stern friend.

Slow, children:

When memories of loved ones lost return as you miss them

Baking the handed-down recipe without its signature chef,

Untangling lights without the smart-alec comments of Uncle Bob,

Missing the annual letter from the friend who passed away too soon.

Slow: children

Slow with your tender heart,

Slow with your fond memories,

Slow, as you let the loved ones who are still with you

know a bit of what is stirring in your soul.

Slow, children:

Slow with the hurts and angers, the disappointments and dismay,

Let them have their place too, in the lengthening nights,

Ask them what they in their uncomfortable truths have to teach you.

Slow, children, with the knotted places in your bellies.

And with the joys?

Especially slow with the joys, dear ones.

With the delight of new love in life,

the eager anticipation and heart-bursting welcome of a new child,

the satisfaction of work that feeds the needs of our spirits,

the delight in the well-being of our nearest and dearest,

the thrill at thanksgiving for the many little miracles that can make all of life a celebration

Slow, children: the gifts of this life were meant to be savored.

Let god arrive in us and with us in every form, that we may bring to birth new life, new truth, new love in this magnificent world.

Amen.

This is the text I wrote as the basis for my homily at the UU Vespers service at Occupy Boston on October 16, 2011.  I spoke without notes, so the homily delivered was ‘adapted.’

Isn’t it great to be here?

It is a thing of beauty to see people coming together across political persuasions and ages and ethnicities and just about everything else in order to say: we are all in the same boat.

In order to say: we are all in the same boat and we are not about to let it sink!  It is ours to repair and restore together.

We are not going to wait, and we are not going to use the same crew that built the broken ship to repair it.

This is our work, this is our world.  Let’s make it whole together.

This is a beautiful thing.

Its an act of faith to be living out here, or to come here and stand in solidarity.

It’s an act that is part of our faith, a faith that calls us to live the redemptive and the hard promise that we are all destined for the arms of a love that knows no limit.

We are all destined for that land.

“We are the 99%” is the slogan of this movement, and we are there with it.

But our faith calls us to know deep in our bones what it means to be 100%.

100% born from a thread of goodness and hope that is woven through 100% of beings on this planet.

100% capable of goodness.

100% able to see and cultivate that goodness in ourselves and each other.

100% the ones in whose hands this world rests.

100% infused with the power of divine love, forgiveness, grace.

We are powerful when we are in touch with our anger.

We are powerful when we call out injustice, and when we hold accountable those who have done wrong.

We are even more powerful when we do all of that and keep in our hearts and minds

The truth that even those whom we call out for their injustice are a part of us

And when we account for the fact that in smaller ways we too have been part of the system we want to transform.

100% of us are destined for the arms of a love that knows no limit.

100% of us were born and offered the breath of life from a source we cannot fully name.

100% of us are in this boat together.

100% of us hold the power to turn the ship around, to mend its leaks, and repair its sails to set it right again.  We need all our stories, all our hearts, all our spirits, all our anger and frustration, all our hope and laughter to make it new.

Let us be together. 100%.