“Why We Come to Church” – May 17, 2026

Rev. Sophia preaching, with Kyle Belmont, Charlyn Bethell, and Guy Urban.

As we continue to work with May’s theme of ‘ritual’ we will consider the many rituals we engage in as Unitarian Universalists, and as friends and members of First Parish. We might ask ourselves: what’s the story beneath some of our treasured rituals? and why do we do them? If you are seeking for renewal, meaning, and the genuine love of a community, then slow down and worship with us this Sunday!

Reading: “This Grace that Scorches Us,” by Jan Richardson

Here’s one thing
you must understand
about this blessing:
it is not
for you alone.

It is stubborn
about this.
Do not even try
to lay hold of it
if you are by yourself,
thinking you can carry it
on your own.

To bear this blessing,
you must first take yourself
to a place where everyone
does not look like you
or think like you,
a place where they do not
believe precisely as you believe,
where their thoughts
and ideas and gestures
are not exact echoes
of your own.

Bring your sorrow.
Bring your grief.
Bring your fear.
Bring your weariness,
your pain,
your disgust as how broken
the world is,
how fractured,
how fragmented
by its fighting,
its wars,
its hungers,
its penchant for power,
its ceaseless repetition
of the history it refuses
to rise above.

I will not tell you
this blessing will fix all that.

But in the place where you have gathered, wait.
Watch.
Listen.
Lay aside your inability
to be surprised,
your resistance to what you
do not understand.

See then whether this blessing
turns to flame on your tongue,
sets you to speaking
what you cannot fathom

or opens your ear
to a language
beyond your imagining
that comes as a knowing
in your bones,
a clarity
in your heart
that tells you

this is the reason
we were made:
for this ache
that finally opens us,

for this struggle,
this grace
that scorches us
toward one another
and into
the blazing day.