All Hallows' Eve 2024: A Message from the Trees

I paused on the path in the park, stock-still, listening and looking for birds betwixt and between the boughs and billowing leaves overhead as others strolled, strode, sauntered, and cycled by. 

I was caught off-guard in that moment, mesmerized by the magnificent and miraculously munificent display of majesty—a matinée made for me?—when I mused to myself:

Ah, an elegant death.

Maybe what I meant, as the leaves languidly fell in larger and larger numbers around me, was an elegant dying. 

I imagined the trees, aware of their leaves' senescence, slowly sloughing them off in an ancient autumnal "Rite of Shedding," free from shame or any sour, sullen sadness. Perhaps with a pinch of pride.

And then I thought, "Who the fuck wants to die, proudly or otherwise?"

Well. 

Alas, I know that some do; I dare not judge. I might, however, quiver with wonder. I have indeed learned that there can be no living without dying. We who live and die are all sacred, hallowed by our even being to begin with. Are we not holy?

I marvel that I can yet be moved to this quintessential asking of questions. 

Epiphany 2024: A New Year's Message from the Birds

In the spring of 2023, I was going on a little walk through the woods with one of my friends (hey, Chrystie!) when she took out her phone to use an app to identify some plants that sparked her curiosity. We did that a few times, and I didn’t think too much of it, because usually when I’m curious enough about a plant to know something more about it I just ask my husband Joel, because he knows EVERYTHING about plants. (OK, maybe not EVERYTHING, but enough for any casual interest I might have from time to time.) At some point though, during our walk, she also used an app to identify some birdcalls that we wanted to know more about, and my brain exploded! (Not literally, thank God.)

Shortly after returning home from that visit to Virginia, I downloaded “Merlin” to my phone, and I’ve been hooked ever since!

Just a month or two prior to that visit, Joel and I moved to Ballenger Creek, MD, about an hour west of Baltimore City where we’d lived for many, many years. In our new home, I take many more opportunities – sometimes daily – to be in nature and to explore my surroundings, including hiking up mountains, strolling alongside rivers, and now, identifying birds! I’ve been learning all about my new hobby, including its language (pro tip: it’s called “birding;” “birdwatching” is literally a spectator sport in comparison), and even joining the local chapter of the Maryland Ornithological Society. That now makes two separate MOS’s that my household is a member of, through Joel, who is an active member of the Maryland Orchid Society. Anyway, birding gets me up and out of the house doing things that I find interesting, and it’s good for both my physical and mental health. I love it.

Now that I am a fledgling birder (ha! see what I did there?), I am constantly listening for birdsong and peering through my new pair of binoculars trying to identify species by what I hear and see. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE! How did I not notice them before? Why did they all kind of just look/sound the same and blend into the background? I cannot believe the incredible diversity of avian species; they are endlessly fascinating. So, when the new year rolled around, it was almost a game for me to find out what my first birds of 2024 would be…

Because I heard the loud caw of an American crow before I could even leave my house, I made a mental note of that and went out to find the first bird I would actually see for the new year. From the car on my way to a New Year’s Day hike with Joel, I saw a vulture soaring in the distance. It was most likely a turkey vulture, since that is what is predominantly present around here this time of year – but it was too far away, and I know too few positive distinguishing markers between it and the black vulture from that distance, so I also made a mental note of that and kept driving. Then whoosh!, a red-shouldered hawk flew by. Three different birds, each one closer, in the span of a few short minutes. A treat! And what could these birds portend?

*****

Around Thanksgiving of last year, I ordered and received a copy of Queers the Word: A 40-Day Devotional for LGBTQ+ Christians. I calculated that if I started the following Monday, November 27, it would take me through Advent and I would finish on January 5, the last day of the Christmas season; indeed, I finished the devotional yesterday, and it was a great spiritual practice for me to engage with a friend. Today, January 6, is Epiphany, which (in Western Christianity) is a celebration of the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Broadly speaking, however, an epiphany can be any manifestation of the divine breaking through to us mortal folk, whether that be as an apparition, as inspiration, as an idea, as an omen…as the birth of a holy child…as…birds? Hrm…

The first person I thought about while that bird was screaming its head off outside my bedroom window was my friend and colleague Mathew P. Taylor, the second anniversary of whose death we just commemorated in December. I can’t even begin to describe what a warm embrace that cawing was to my spirit. If I had been using the Merlin app, it would have identified what I was hearing as Corvus brachyrhynchos, or the American Crow. What my spirit immediately heard was Mathew saying, “hey, friend! I pulled a card for you, and I want you to know…you got this! Have a great year!” What a blessing. Mathew is still with me.

And then I saw, but did not positively identify, a turkey vulture, Cathartes aura. In my short eight months as a novice birder, I have come to understand that vultures generally get a bad rap. They are commonly seen as ugly, perhaps gross, and may even be feared. But the more I encounter these supposedly ugly, gross, and fearsome creatures, the more I have come to appreciate them. They play a vital role in their ecosystems, often consuming the carcasses of other animals that have died – their scientific name means “purifier,” and it is cognate with the word catharsis. Incidentally, they also eat other things, like fruits. They are also kind of beautiful up close, somewhat statuesque, certainly graceful, and they actually seem to be rather good-tempered despite human misgivings. At least around here! And so I thought to myself…what can it mean for me to be encountering this turkey vulture on New Year’s Day? Well, there is a lot about this world, and my experience of it, that is ugly, gross, and fearsome…but through the example of this hulking bird, perhaps I can learn to consume and be nourished by those things in me that have died, or that need to die, to help purify and keep my spiritual ecosystem healthy. Perhaps I can come to see that the past – and the present – that I constantly ruminate over doesn’t have to maintain a death grip on my life; perhaps if I look closely, I can find the beauty and grace in my experience, learn from it, and let it go, soaring like the vulture into a brighter day…

Finally, the red-shouldered hawk, Buteo lineatus. I haven’t learned to identify many hawks yet, and the meaning of its scientific name, “lined buzzard,” doesn’t hold any apparent spiritual significance for me. Most of the hawks I can identify around here are red-tails. But this one was clearly a red-shouldered hawk – the first bird that I both saw and positively identified this year, though I did not hear its call. One of the main things that hawks are known for is their keen eyesight. Because of their visual acuity, hawks can see very clearly objects that are up to 100 feet away, enabling them to hunt efficiently and effectively from great soaring heights. For this reason and others, hawks are often symbols of seeing “the big[ger] picture,” with the red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks serving additionally as symbols of spiritual vision, clarity, forward movement, and an efficient and effective pursuit of goals and dreams. WHAT? I’m too superstitious to say anything more about that right now lol I don’t want to jinx myself. Let’s just say that this is very encouraging!

So there you have it. I have begun 2024 with a threefold (hahaha) epiphany, a divine manifestation with a message for my life this year: 1) those who love me are rooting for me and have my back, 2) the past, though it may seem bad and dead, can nourish me and sustain my life, but only if I purify my relationship with it and learn to let it go, and 3) I can and will soar, clearly spotting my goals and dreams, and moving forward to grab hold of them. Whew! I am encouraged. May you, too, find encouragement in your life as you pursue your own dreams.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

 

 

Drinking from Deep Wells: A Candlemas Reflection

I was a faithful member of the United Methodist Church from the age of 12 until I was 18 and in college. When I left, for good in my mind, at the age of 19, I told myself that I was a leaving behind a church that condemned me, a religion that left me malnourished, and a God who had forsaken me for eternity. In a period of less than two years, my spiritual journey led me along a path from doubting Christian, to anti-religious atheist, to inquisitive Unitarian Universalist. My dalliance with atheism was short-lived and half-hearted, and my embrace of Unitarian Universalism was initially borne of gratitude for discovering a way to be religious that allowed me to be rid of the Christianity that I’d left behind me. I have now been a Unitarian Universalist for 18 years – at 36 years old that’s half my life so far, following the 18 years I was a professing Christian, and threefold the years I belonged to the United Methodist Church with which I identified for so long. A lot about my theology and my religious outlook has changed in all that time, and I continue to reassess my beliefs as I age and have more life experience.

I remember a class called “The New UU” that I took at the first UU congregation I would join on my new path, which is now called the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Montclair (NJ). In one of the early sessions, a gay former Catholic got into a heated debate with the minister leading the discussion about the role of ritual in Unitarian Universalism. This man was angry at even the merest suggestion that what would be his newfound faith should in any way resemble the one which had scarred him, which meant that there was absolutely no room for ritual of any sort, or even the word ritual itself. At the time, I thought he was being ridiculous; but in him I recognized the hurt that I, too, was feeling as a gay man ostracized by the faith of my upbringing. Who was I to judge him? Unfortunately, he did not find what he was looking for that evening, so he got up in a huff mid-class and he left. I sometimes wonder where his journey led him after that night. As for me, I decided that religion was still a worthwhile pursuit and I chose to remain.

My early years as a Unitarian Universalist were ones in which I was comfortable being dismissive of Christianity and also being around others who were equally or more dismissive. For a modern movement whose roots lie in two Christian denominations, it bewilders me how much we have come to embrace an overall disdain for our origins. Granted, I appreciated this tendency at first; but my years of study and open encounter with those UU’s who would still follow Jesus, not to mention my separation from the particularist and fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible that I’d fled, rendered me less hostile to the faith of my upbringing than I’d once been. Reading the works of Marcus Borg, whom I declared to be my favorite theologian upon his death just a year ago, was a great influence on my willingness to not disregard and discard all the good that I’d known within Christianity. In my experience, many Unitarian Universalists are open to the wisdom of ABC religion – Anything But Christianity.

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that I have come full circle and consider myself a Christian – I haven’t evolved that far, yet! – nor do I mean to imply that everyone can and should find that the Christian story is of ultimate value to their lives. I’m simply observing that, at some point, we became a faith that is comprised largely of people whose major impulse is to leave behind rather than to move toward. How do we overcome that?

In the eighteen years since I left Christianity behind me, I have attended Christian churches of various denominations only for weddings, funerals, and, after I met my husband and began observing Christmas again, Christmas Eve services. I once attended a Lutheran service on Palm Sunday because a nephew was being baptized. In almost every instance, I felt like an outsider. A welcomed and well-treated outsider, but an outsider nonetheless. Last year on Candlemas, a time of purification, preparation, initiation, and commitment, I decided that my spiritual life was spread too broadly and that I needed to choose the wells from which I would drink more deeply. On that day, I joined both the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship, having decided to stop fighting my background, and the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans, having long ago come to the conclusion that an observance of the natural cycles of the earth, and of life, held great value for me. I’ve spent the year between that Candlemas and this embracing the idea of claiming a narrower path than the one I’ve been taking all these years. I began moving closer to the rhythm of the Christian liturgical cycle during Advent, reflecting on quiet hope in the dark of the year. I continued observance of the rhythm of the pagan wheel of the year, participating once again in my church’s Winter Solstice ritual. In eighteen years, I refused communion at every Christian service I went to where it was offered (except once a year, at most, in my own UU congregation where I could partake in good conscience). On this last Christmas Eve, after ten Christmases in a row of letting my husband and in-laws go up for communion and waiting behind, I led our pew up to the front of the church and partook with them. Just this weekend, I attended the Imbolc ritual of the Baltimore Reclaiming Community, where I honored the lengthening of days, asked a blessing on holy candles, gazed into the ignis purgans, and made a pledge to “live fully now” in the coming year. Next week brings Ash Wednesday... There’s something about these rituals that I’ve been missing in Unitarian Universalism, notwithstanding the sometime belief that there is too much ritual, as espoused by the wounded man I’d met so many years before as a new UU.

Part of what we as Unitarian Universalists value in religious life is the “encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations”, and we promote the “direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life”. I have come to a point in my life where that means I must dig more deeply and draw from the wells that I have chosen for myself. The words of what some view as the Unitarian Universalist’s most sacred hymn plead “roots hold me close, wings set me free”. For the year ahead, I intend to explore ways in which I might be held close by my Christian roots and set free by Pagan wings. I will continue to be nourished from other wells, as they offer me their resources; but I will tend to my own at this time, and I will pray that this anchoring and expanding might continue to be held within my chosen faith community. Spirit of Life, come to me…come to me.

Resolutions 20:15

It's 2015 now, and a question that's asked over and over this time of year is "what are your new year's resolutions?" Generally, my response has been something along the lines of, "I don't make new year's resolutions". This year, however, I decided to set several goals for the year and so I have shared those with people instead of resolutions. But the more I think about it, the more I realize how foolish I'm being. What good is a goal if you don't have the resolve to strive to attain it? So to any of you who received my self-righteous answer, I apologize! And I resolve to make a decent effort to achieve the following goals in the year ahead:

1. Health. My management of my own health has been half-assed and reactive for several years now. I have pretty much been coasting along and only addressing issues as they've arisen. In 2015 I will be more proactive and manage my physical and mental health in better ways. Now that I'm approaching 36 — which is not that old! — I can't really afford to take my fitness for granted.
2. Education. I have been telling myself for almost half my life now (!) that I will return to school to finish the undergraduate degree that I began but never completed. Once again, there have been half-ass attempts in the past to do this, but it's time to hunker down and git-r-done! (sorry...couldn't help it.) I also want to attend seminary and explore the possibility of becoming a Unitarian Universalist minister of some sort. That'll be easier with the undergraduate experience.
3. Redacted*.
4. Family. I am very liberal, progressive, and open in just about every way you can imagine. But there are still areas where I have more traditionally-minded opinions. Last year, my partner and I became husbands by legally marrying in a beautiful ceremony at our church. See? Traditional. This year, I would like to do the research needed for us to lay the roots we would like for our family. Will we buy a house? Will we have children? Will I finally take a class in personal finance and become a real grown-up? 
5. Relationships. I have admitted more than once that I have not been the best friend for the past several years, and I have not done much to sustain loving relationships with family members either. I can come up with many reasons why this has become the case, but I don't want to make excuses. I can and will do better! I will send cards, write letters, make phone calls, and visit more often. This is absolutely necessary.
6. Spirituality. I will pay more attention to my spiritual life, and will do the things that bring me peace, joy, happiness, and edification. Some of these are playing music, attending performances, reading, writing, studying, hiking, praying, speaking French, being mindful, being grateful, going to church regularly, and making my husband happy.
7. Purpose. I will be more purposeful about my life. One way I will do this, for now, is by adding more structure to my days so that I can actually pay attention to the goals I have set for myself for the year. I will review my goals periodically to make sure that I am working toward their attainment, and I will add/subtract goals as they are needed or met.

So, there they are. My new year's resolutions as of today, January 6, 2015. Your prayers and support will be greatly appreciated for the next twelve months. I got this, y'all! Thank you.

I'll link related posts below as they are written. Happy New Year!

*Goal #3 will be revealed when appropriate.

Palm Sunday in the ELCA

Yesterday, on Palm Sunday, I attended a service at a Lutheran Church for the baptism of my partner's and my newest nephew. Over the years that I have been with my partner I have changed a lot, and my feelings about Christianity have evolved and broadened. Still, the only times I set foot in Christian churches for a service over the past decade have been for weddings, funerals, and for the past eight Christmas Eves with my partner's family at their Lutheran Church. Every year, my internal dialog leading into Christmas revolves around whether or not to take communion. So far, my resolve has been not to participate, both because I respect the rite for what it means to the community in which I am a guest, and also because I respect that the rite in that format doesn't mean much to me. After all this time, I figure that folks in the congregation have grown accustomed to my stepping aside and observing while they line up rather than joining them up at the altar. Going to a service, in the daylight, at the start of the holiest week in the Christian liturgical year...that was going to be something different altogether!

Except, that it wasn't. Despite my admittedly small anxiety over the question of communion, I wondered what my reaction would be to doctrine around the last few days of Jesus' life and his pending resurrection. I wondered what my reaction would be to the sacrament of baptism, understood in most Christian communities as an initiation into the Christian fold. Would I bristle at the exclusivity of it all? Would I find the tone of the service arrogant and condescending? Would I hold my breath and pray for it to be over so we could take pictures and go back to the farm for lunch with family?

No. None of that happened. In fact, I was actually very pleased with the whole experience. The people were warm and welcoming, as they always have been. The hymn tunes, for the most part, were familiar and comforting. The scripture reading from Isaiah spoke to me, and the gospel reading was touching, if somber. The baby was ever so peaceful and neither cried nor woke during the baptism service. Included in the time for intercessory prayer were words of inclusion which, while affirming the primacy of Christ for the congregation at hand, yet still honored and respected people of differing belief! I was amazed and pleased. And, though I'm not sure of the exact reason (perhaps because of the quiet tenor of anticipation during Holy Week), there was no communion!

As they say in the United Church of Christ, God is still speaking! And I am indeed pleased with strides made of late in the Lutheran Church (ELCA), specifically with regard to attitudes on human sexuality. My assumptions about what Christianity is are biased by my experience of what it has been, and are crumbling in the face of what it is becoming - which is ever-more inclusive and tolerant of diversity, at least in certain corners of the United States.

Here's what I was confronted with on Sunday:

Isaiah 50:4-9(a) {NRSV}

⁴ The Lord God has given me
    the tongue of a teacher,
that I may know how to sustain
    the weary with a word.
Morning by morning he wakens—
    wakens my ear
    to listen as those who are taught.
⁵ The Lord God has opened my ear,
    and I was not rebellious,
    I did not turn backward.
⁶ I gave my back to those who struck me,
    and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;
I did not hide my face
    from insult and spitting.

⁷ The Lord God helps me;
    therefore I have not been disgraced;
therefore I have set my face like flint,
    and I know that I shall not be put to shame;
⁸     he who vindicates me is near.
Who will contend with me?
    Let us stand up together.
Who are my adversaries?
    Let them confront me.
⁹ It is the Lord God who helps me;

who will declare me guilty? 

I listened to the reader, and I heard the still, small voice within me say "God has a use for you". I felt like, yeah, maybe one day I will actually go to seminary. I thought of all the bad experiences I had in the past and into the present with those who profess the love of God while inflicting spiritual harm on anyone who is different than they are, and I heard "you are a child of God, do not be ashamed". I heard the foreshadowing of "they know not what they do", and while I began to feel pity for people who claim Christianity yet do not follow Jesus' command to love, I realized that those pitiful people were not the ones with whom I was worshiping. No, these people were a community of people striving together, struggling together, to be the best people that they could be. These people were Christians the way God intends Christians to be. It was a revelatory moment for me, hearing the scripture read in this context. It wasn't until later that I discovered that, at least according to the program insert provided by the ELCA, these words of the prophet Isaiah were seen as predicting the Messiah and were to be read as though Jesus said them. No matter. God was still speaking through Isaiah's words, and I heard what God wanted to say to me, in my heart.

Later, toward the end of the baptism portion of the service, came the intercessory prayers:

Returning to the Lord with all our heart, let us pray for the whole people of God, the earth, and all who cry out for healing.

{A brief silence.}

Form in the church the mind of Christ, that we may empty ourselves for the sake of the world you love. Hear us, O God.
Your mercy is great.

Open the ears of civil authorities, that they may hear the voices of those facing insult and degradation, and those who cry out for bread and shelter. Hear us, O God.
Your mercy is great.

Rescue the earth from abuse and pollution, and bring an end to famine, disease, terror, and bloodshed. Hear us, O God.
Your mercy is great.

Bless the Jewish people as they celebrate Passover, and grant that the religions of the world may grow in mutual understanding and respect. Hear us, O God.
Your mercy is great.

Draw near to all who feel abandoned, or who face alienation, death, or illness this holy week {prayers inserted here for local community members}. Hear us, O God.
Your mercy is great.

Teach us to walk the way of the cross, that we may be a community of forgiveness and mercy. Hear us, O God.
Your mercy is great.

{Here other intercessions were offered.}

We remember all the martyrs and saints who at death were commended into your merciful hands (especially Oscar Romero). Bring us, with them, to the joy of the resurrection. Hear us, O God.
Your mercy is great.

Hear us according to your steadfast love, O God, and in your great compassion bring us to resurrection and rebirth in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen. 

Can you believe it? I hardly could.

At the end of the service, church members came up to this large group of people, mostly out-of-towners just present for the baby's baptism, and sincerely welcomed us, inviting us back for next week's service! The pessimist in me thought "they are a tiny congregation and it must feel nice to have more people present for services", and this is probably true. But the optimist in me thought "these are people of God, behaving in a way that is pleasing to God."

And we all laughed, and smiled, and rejoiced. It didn't hurt that our nephew (like all our other nieces and nephews) is the cutest most adorable most well-behaved kid on the face of the planet*.



*The bias here is all mine, and I'm not ashamed!

formspring question: What holiday traditions do you and your family celebrate?

This time of year my partner and I celebrate the Winter Solstice at home. Then we celebrate Christmas together with each of our families. I am thinking about observing Kwanzaa; I also plan to be more intentional about observing the natural cycle of seasons. My favorite holidays are Thanksgiving and Passover!

Ask me anything cultural, especially about language, music, sexuality, religion and faith.

How I came to celebrate the winter solstice

Winter and I have never quite succeeded in getting along with each other.

Every year, the days grow noticeably shorter. The temperature drops. Everything slows down except such year-round obligations as, say, going to work and paying bills. Included among the things that slow down are my energy and the capacity to deal with all the things that seem to speed up in comparison to my spirit’s attempt at hibernation. In short, I usually find winter to be a depressing season that I just have to survive until it’s over, and some years are easier than others.

I moved to Baltimore in September 2003, about two weeks before the autumnal equinox. Having no family in the area, and knowing only two people in the city, this was a time of great adjustment for me. I immediately became half of a new couple that had a brief and tempestuous relationship, ending two weeks before Christmas. It was devastating, and that may well have been the hardest winter of my life. I somehow made it through, but I would continue to see the season as a grave hardship that, unfortunately, I would have to battle every single year for the rest of my life.

I hadn’t really been a big fan of Christmas since leaving the United Methodist Church. The scars from my disputes with Christianity had not yet really begun to heal, and the overly-commercialized mess (in my opinion) that the holiday had become was a real downer and left a bad taste in my mouth. If I had thought to do so, I might have said a hearty “bah, humbug!” – but as it was, my focus was on making it to spring and trying not to feel left out entirely from winterly festivities. This was no easy task.

Then my church here in Baltimore started holding worship services on the day of the winter solstice. At first, there was a very small gathering in our parish hall, and it was quite an intimate, interactive and embodied affair. I don’t recall whether it had a specifically Wiccan bent, but it may have. In subsequent years, it was moved to our sanctuary and morphed into something more recognizable as a “Protestant-style” worship service, which was nice for some and not as nice for others. It has since become one of the most largely attended events on our church calendar and is the winter holiday of choice for many, including myself.

Learning about and celebrating the natural source of so many festivals of light meshed well with my understanding of my reaction to winter and made the mythic stories of the season more palatable. I simply wasn’t getting enough sunlight, and didn’t feel any personal connection to the winter festivals with which I was familiar. Acknowledging the reality of the solstice in story, ritual, and song [and by using a Happy Lite®, and a daily regimen of vitamin D, and a new attitude…], welcoming the return of the “light of the world” each year, has helped me to see that the season I so despised is part of a natural cycle in which I can find both joy and wonder. Instead of brooding melodramatically until the trees begin to bloom in the spring, I can actually enjoy the unique opportunities winter presents. Well, I still brood, but now I can actually live through the winter instead of just trying to survive it.

In addition to celebrating the Solstice, for the past six Decembers I have even gone with my partner’s family to their Lutheran Christmas Eve Service and celebrated Christmas with them as well. I enjoy spending the holiday with them even if I don’t claim it as my own. There’s something beautiful about so many people across so many diverse cultures trying to find a way to literally survive the winter. I might not ever have understood this as one of the origins of the Christmas story, which tells of a people celebrating the birth of the Sun/Son, the Light of the World, if it weren’t for the annual Winter Solstice service in my Unitarian Universalist congregation. Seeing the commonalities between the two and celebrating both, in my own way, is one of the most hopeful things I can do in this season.

We turn the wheel of the year; what is old dies and is born again.

May it be so!

Thanksgiving Prayer

O God - Source of all,

Dear Spirit of Life,

We are thankful for this day of gathering, feasting and celebration; for the opportunity once again to sit and eat and be with one another.

We are appreciative of all hands that made today's meal possible - those that planted, those that tended, those that harvested and prepared, those that cooked and those that served.

We are grateful for the sunlight and the rains, for the soil and its nutrients, for the winds that bore seed - in short, for the wondrous miracle of existence.

We are mindful of all these things and more, on this day, set aside for such a purpose, and we pray that we might carry such mindfulness into all the rest of our days.

May this gathering and the sharing of this meal be blessed and a blessing for all.

Amen.

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