The View from Here – January 5th, 2024

Greetings Church Family,

I pray that you and yours are well and that you have what you need these days.

Our month’s worship theme is Liberating Love and, personally, I’m feeling a lot of it at First Parish. I have come to love you and this congregation so deeply. You make me laugh, you challenge me, you teach me, you inspire me, and your continued kindness and generosity towards me and one another, makes being your minister a complete joy. We are truly a blessed church.

This coming Sunday, Rev. Lisa Perry-Wood will be our guest preacher who, only a few days ago, joyfully agreed to preach in light of our other guest getting sick. She’s a wonderful UU minister who I am sure you will love!

I will be preaching at the UU Church in Haverhill, where I served for two years as Intern Minister before arriving here. Rev. Frank Clarkson and I have been hoping to co-lead a worship service for a long time now, and I look forward to being back and bringing warm greetings from FPW. It’s good for teaching congregations to stay connected to their previous Intern Ministers. It helps us to remember that congregations and ministers are linked together in a beautiful, far-reaching web of mutuality and faith. As a proud teaching congregation yourselves, I sense you know this well.

It seems fitting to look to some of the wisdom of one of your previous Intern Ministers, the wise and wonderful Rev. Darrick Jackson, as we consider this month’s theme and how deeply connected we truly are:

In these times, we are called…
Called to step into the mess and murk of life
Called to be strong and vulnerable
Called to console and to challenge
Called to be grounded, and hold lofty ideals
Called to love in the face of hate…
And we cannot do it alone
We need one another…

 What a blessing it is to love you, and to be a part of it all with you.

I hope to see you in church!

With love,
Rev. Sophia