Chaplain Clementina Chéry preaching, with Rev. Sophia Lyons, Kyle Belmont, Charlyn Bethell, Chuck Dickinson, Laura Horn, Guy Urban and the music of our Choir!
How do we live our deepest values in a way that creates belonging, healing, and justice? In this service, Chaplain Clementina invites us to reflect on what it means to “set the table” in our personal, spiritual, and communal lives. Drawing from the principles of Unitarian Universalism and the Peace Institute —love, unity, faith, hope, courage, justice, and forgiveness—we’ll explore how these values guide us in making room for others and for transformation. Join us as we nurture a space of welcome, reflection, and purpose.
Chaplain Clementina Chéry is the Founder, President, and CEO of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. Her life’s path was transformed in 1993 following the tragic loss of her 15-year-old son, Louis D. Brown, to gun violence. In the face of unimaginable pain, Chaplain Chéry chose a path of peace, resilience, and service, founding the Institute in 1994 as a beacon of healing and a testament to her son’s legacy. Her chaplaincy invites people of all faiths, spiritual paths, and moral convictions to join in the collective work of healing and transformation, and the sacred path of peace.
Reading: Revolutionary Love, by Unitarian Universalist minister and religious educator Rev. Dayna Edwards
I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my faith.
My faith that our collective love united can drown out the evils
of empire and hate and greed;
Together we create a love energy more powerful than
any force of oppression.Because
When two or more people are gathered side by side, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder
the force of love ignites liberation.Revolutionary love calls us to know ourselves deeply
see God in the stranger
find beauty in the imperfect.
Revolutionary love calls us to find the divine in dirt
the holy in the heartache and the sacred in the scars.Revolutionary love calls us out and then back in;
Revolutionary love calls us to be better and do better;
Revolutionary love calls us to heal and hold each other;
because None of us would be here…if it weren’t for our faith
in each other.