Last night's Worship Associates meeting was a place for me to listen to how "my people" think about the experience we have together on Sunday, and the experience we hope to lead with one another for our community. I was touched by the reflections of my associates; and I also heard the great variety of perspectives on what touches us, what remains with us, how we order our own lives into the orderliness of our worship. I'm trying to encourage us to build our own interconnections and to model a coherence that our church needs. And I think this group has some of the capacity to accomplish this.
While I've been typing, Ronnie Gilbert and Holly Near have been singing "Too Good Arms" (Charlie King) in the background. Does a minister's "first" church follow him or her all the days of her or his life? This was the anthem of Community Church of Boston, the theme of our ongoing reluctance to trust the state (and all authority, really) and desire to speak our truth about the rotten system that acculturates us. I know that that song forever rings in my heart:
"We will remember this good shoemaker!
We will remember this poor fish peddler!
We will remember all the strong arms and hands
That never once found justice in the hands who rule this land.
And all who knew these two good men
Knew they never had to rob or kill,
Each had lived by his own two hands, and lived well,
And all their lives, they had struggled
To rid the earth of all such crimes.
And all our lives, we must struggle
To rid the earth of all such crimes."
Doesn't get truer than this, for me.
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