When Donald Trump got elected President, I said I would build a bigger table.

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O congregation of sensible shoes.
O buttoned plaid shirts, men in neat beards,
O matriarchs with your practical Judy Dench hair,
O, church parking lot of Prius and Volt. We

are trying. We hung Black Lives Matter
over the door, and that’s not nothing.
Nobody is saying it’s nothing. What
they’re saying is “Keep going”

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Love is the doctrine of this church, the search for truth is its sacrament, and service is its prayer.

I love those words, and to me they capture the essence of CVUUS, what we do here together each week, and what we take with us when we leave and go out in to the greater world.

I believe that everything in this life at its most fundamental level is based on love, and that everything we do in life must have love as its foundation.

I believe that justice, compassion, and respect are all born of love, and I feel that righteous anger, too, springs from love and a passion to make things equitable and just.

I believe that love will always win in the end. Always.

This may all sounds well and good, and I will readily admit that I am an idealist. But am I a PollyAnna? Not by a long shot. I know there are tremendous obstacles and trials on the path of love. It’s something we all deal with every single day.

But I see CVUUS as an incubator of love and hope, as a safe haven in which to envision and build the stepping stones to a more loving and peaceful world. CVUUS is a place where I come precisely because we don’t all look the same, we don’t all think the same way, and we don’t all approach things from the same perspective. That’s the way life is. We respect and value our differences, and even though we may not always be perfect when it comes to bridging our differences, it is something we yearn for and strive to do.

Every time we welcome someone through that door and every time we walk out of it, we are ambassadors of justice, of compassion, and of love. And at CVUUS we are committed ambassadors.

I see it time and again in our readiness to face challenges, in our passion to act, in our fearlessness to confront hatred and violence, in our willingness to admit mistakes and to regroup and go at it again; in our eagerness to reach out and share, I see it when we look in each other’s eyes, clasp hands and honor each other and our work together.

We may be small here at #2 Duane Court in Middlebury,VT, but we are mighty. I know that our efforts and the love we build here together does and will have an impact far beyond our little burg.

So, let’s squirt some WD-40 on the hinges of our hearts and open them even wider. Let’s continue to be resilient and creative in the face of animosity and difficulties; let’s build and share more love in every possible way we can.

Because love in all its manifestations is the only way forward.

As some of you know, I was raised in this community from the age of 9. I vaguely remember the infamous first meeting in the Berninghausen’s, and remember well every stage of our growth leading up to this lovely space. In the early days of planning CVUUS it was my own mother who made the “piss or get off the pot” pronouncement which perhaps prompted the paths of fate which have brought us all together today. I know her bluntness and aforementioned approach to life and decisions has prompted many a move in my own life.

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