Sun, 3/21 ~ Service with First Parish Church of Berlin: Joining Our Wildernesses Together ~ 10am

Berlin UU Service -- Lukasz Szmigiel -- Unsplash

Sunday, March 21, 10am
“Joining Our Wildernesses Together”
with Rev. Janet Newton, First Parish Church of Berlin

IMPORTANT NOTE ~
The service begins at 10am.  Participants should arrive at the online service early — by 9:50am to ensure admittance. Please be on time as online access closes once the service has started.

In Ross Gay’s recent collection, The Book of Delights, he writes that one of the most beautiful ideas he’s ever heard came from a student of his who, in response to a question about her ideal learning community, answered “What if we joined our wildernesses together?”
It is a beautiful line. And it’s a stunning thought: that hidden within each of us is a wilderness to be explored and across which we might encounter others as they bushwhack and trail-blaze through their own internal wildernesses.

The question presents: What might these wildernesses be? Ross Gay wonders whether “the wilderness…[with its] thickets, bogs, swamps, uncrossable ravines and rivers….is our sorrow?”

What are we to do when the griefs and sorrows we carry prevent us from being able to find a way forward, as individuals or communities? Eckhart Tolle suggests that when we are “full of problems, there is no room for anything new to enter, no room for solution.” Joanna Macy notes that despair makes us refuse to face the realities of our world and so prevents us from taking meaningful action.

What if the wilderness is our sorrow? What if we could join them together?

This Sunday, as we look back over the past year, we’ll ask those questions. And we’ll seek release through ritual as we grapple with grief, sorrow, and the possibility of finding meaning — and each other — in the wilderness.

Our worship begins at 10 AM, with virtual coffee hour in breakout rooms to follow.

Zoom Link:
FPC Berlin Zoom Room