I recently read a sermon online by Tim Kutzmark in the Quest for Meaning, published by the Church of the Larger Fellowship. It was in an issue on hospitality and was entitled, To Be Seen.  Here’s a brief excerpt:

“When we come into a Unitarian Universalist congregation, we don’t ask one another to leave behind our doubts or our discoveries. We don’t ask each other to leave behind our questions in order to adopt some system of beliefs that someone else figured out for us and tells us is true. We aren’t asked to pretend to practice or believe in something that doesn’t feel authentic to us.
Here, we are seen as the unique, freethinking, questing spiritual beings that each of us is. Here, in this faith, we are seen, not as sinners needing salvation, but as human beings—beautiful, good, and flawed—who yearn to be recalled to our best selves again. And, here in this community, as we are seen for who we are, we also see in each other the potential to become together something so much more than we are on our own.
This is the true nature of hospitality: to offer, over and over again, to see the true selves of others. To offer our true selves to be seen. It isn’t always easy, to live with such open eyes, so open to the eyes of others. But the purpose of this faith is not to make us comfortable; the purpose of this faith is to help us choose to see and bless the world.”

You can read the entire sermon at http://www.questformeaning.org/quest-article/to-be-seen/. As we begin this new year, one of my hopes is that we see hospitality in this light and help each other – old friends and new alike – to see each other with open eyes to find our place in this amazing spiritual home.  Sounds like an aspect of the shared ministry we seek.

Nancy Pinson, Membership Team Lead