“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back.”
In case you were shoveling or hiding under the covers during last Sunday’s service, I spoke about the epidemic of loneliness in our nation and the power of human encounters, even very brief ones. Taking a cue from the words of James Baldwin (above), I suggested that we might help each other make a spiritual practice out of “mirroring and magnifying each other’s light”– or beaming love at people. For the shy, a good way to practice this is to beam love at your friends or at babies in the grocery store. Even the briefest of positive human encounters is life-giving.
Everyone needs clear-eyed people beaming love to us… and such love can liberate us. As I said on Sunday, there can be a liberating love in real human connections, in speaking one’s truth and being heard, in feeding people, in sensing our kinship with all life, in connecting with the Creativity that infuses life on earth, or in connecting with the divine. If we are doing things right, folks can get a taste of all that at North Parish.
If we keep our light under a bushel, it has no chance to get out into the world… or invite people into ours. So many people don’t know that UU congregations exist, even when they drive by us for years! Maybe in addition to beaming love at strangers, we might practice inviting friends to check out North Parish. You just never know when a loving community full of “mirrors and magnifying glasses” might be exactly what they or their kids need (even when they don’t know it yet.)
Hope to see you at the Meeting House this Martin Luther King Jr. weekend!
Rev. Lee