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Dear Community,
In recognition of the sorrow we share, in honor of the lives that have been lost and changed forever in Knoxville, Tennessee, and in sympathy with the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, we offer a meditation of grief and a prayer for healing.
When good lives are lost, a community mourns. This is a time of
mourning. Our hearts and minds reach out to the people of the Tennessee
Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. They are our sisters and brothers
in faith. They are a community not unlike our own that seeks freedom,
tolerance, and justice, and aims to welcome all who enter their doors.
They have lost two individuals to a violent act. Two families mourn.
They are our sisters and brothers in mourning.
When good lives
are lost, a community bears witness. The community of the Tennessee
Valley Unitarian Universalist Church is comprised of all ages. Children
were present to extreme violence, to lasting images of pain. We bear
witness with this community – attentive to their experience, seeking as
they do to heal the wounds of violence.
When good lives are
compromised by injury, a community seeks healing. Violence has
compromised many lives. We know they seek healing, and we cheer them
on, hoping they will regain their strength and ability.
When good
lives are lost and violence echoes through a community, we pause in
silence, in prayer, in vigils. We hope that solidarity will close some
of the gap between our souls and circle round our aching world in an
embrace of healing. Dear Community, there is madness in this world. We
have seen this of late. It has touched us in a way we did not imagine
was possible – it has torn through the simple beauty of community.
There is anger in this world, and sorrow. There are lives lost too
young, and hearts burned by witnessing such ugly violence.
Dear
Community, there is more in this world than we can control or
understand. Ours is often a search for truth and meaning. And we may
find some – some day, in response to this event – but in these hours,
sense is not yet achievable. Dear Community, let us pause in mourning,
in witness, in healing. Let us hold our brothers and sisters in
Knoxville in the Unitarian Universalist community and beyond, with our
full hearts, knowing that we cannot change what has been wrought, but
that we can respond with a deepened empathy.
You may wish to
reflect and pray in silence or to gather with your family before meals
to share a few words, or to gather on Sunday or other days throughout
the week with our Unitarian Universalists of Sterling community. You
may want to talk with the children in your family, to pray or reflect
with them, considering especially the lives of the children in
Knoxville that have been forever changed. Whatever moves you, I entreat
you to allow its space in your days. Life is short, a truth we have
learned yet again – may we spend it in ways that serve the cause of
healing.
In shared sorrow and faith,
Reverend Anya Sammler-Michael
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