This month we explore HOPE at the UU Church of Columbia…

“Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” -Arundhati Roy

It feels as though we welcome the holiday season into a space of turmoil this year, as powerful social movements for change help us question all we thought we knew, as continuing violence and displacement and terror around the world tear at our hearts and souls, as the drums of war begin to beat once more.

Yet the stories that human beings have told for millennia in the dark of December are resonant and powerful for just such a time as this: Lamps lit against the dark, great roaring bonfires calling back the sun, a single light that burned on days beyond the possible, a little baby holding the hope of an oppressed nation.

These stories all show us something profound about the nature of hope and our capacity to imagine the possibility of a world – and our hearts within it – made whole at last. These stories show us, in each of their traditions, that Beloved Community begins with hope, and can never come to be without it.

Join us this month as we grapple with the calling of hope – Where shall we place our hope? How can it be authentic and not false? How does it live with the reality of despair? How do we carry the weight of its burden? How do we share this calling to hope?

See you in church!

Hopefully yours, Rev. Molly

(Photo credit: Peter Bowden)