It’s been quite a March. Beware the Ides! Celebrate Women’s History. Enjoy your Irish roots
– real or purely fictional. Passover brings its stories and symbolic meals to families in small pandemic pods. Appreciate the signs of spring – I’ve had reports of crocuses, and I’m hearing peepers and seeing wrens and robins in back of my house. March Madness goes on in some form. And it’s time to observe the anniversary of the declaration of the Covid 19 pandemic.
It’s been a long, strange year, of loss and change – the unfathomable numbers like over ½
million deaths, loss of jobs and income, evictions and homelessness, long lines for food banks. Drug addiction, overdoses and alcohol consumption have risen. Increased hate crime attacks on Asian Americans, and the terrible Spa Shootings. And also the tiny, yet overwhelming daily changes of lockdown – supporting distance learning, the anxiety of obtaining groceries, scattered family celebrations, missing hugs and handshakes, hair grown long and unruly. And the new face of our public lives – masks everywhere, baseball and football played before cardboard cutouts, even the Oscars’ best picture is open to movies not shown in theaters. The year that began as The Great Pause has become year of the Asterisk. What is normal anymore?
As the slow, frustrating, and erratic vaccine rollout begins to ease the worst of the pandemic,
President Biden has raised hopes that we may celebrate Independence Day with small family gatherings. We can look forward to a day of herd immunity. Meanwhile, we must keep up the known effective public health measures – masks and distancing, and accelerating the vaccine effort.
How can we begin to plan for return to Sunday morning worship in our building? Who do
we want to be? How can we best live out our UU values? This fellowship has been doing a great job of caring for one another, of maintaining and enhancing your building. The garden has expressed and supported your commitment. What else do you want to do? This is your opportunity to rethink what it means to be a significant presence of religious liberalism in Pottstown. How can we support each other in our spiritual development? How shall we mark our losses and celebrate our return?
Let the Great Pause become the Great Revival for us all.
Kerry