September is for Welcome
Posted by Rev Lucy
Posted on September 14, 2023
Happy September! Our Soul Matters theme this month is Welcome and our small groups will reflect on these questions:
- Who welcomed you in when you needed it most? How has that gift changed you? What would you say to the person if you had the chance?
- Are there aspects of yourself that have not felt welcomed?
- What new ideas have you welcomed in and how have they changed you?
What would your answers be? More materials on these theme are in the Materials For Individual Reflection.
Meanwhile here a bit of food for the soul. Have a good month
In Sweet Company
We sit together and I tell you things,
Silent, unborn, naked things
That only my God has heard me say,
You do not cluck your tongue at me
Or roll your eyes
Or split my heart into a thousand thousand pieces
With words that have little to do with me.
You do not turn away because you cannot bear to see
Your own unclaimed light shining in my eyes.
You stay with me in the dark,
You urge me into being.
You make room in your heart for my voice.
You rejoice in my joy.
And through it all, you stand unbound
By everything but the still, small Voice within you.
I see my future Self in you
Just enough to risk
Moving beyond the familiar,
Just enough to leave
The familiar in the past where it belongs.
I breathe you in and I breathe you out
In one luxurious and contented sigh.
In sweet company
I am home at last
—- Margaret Wolff
September Welcome (PDF)
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This very compelling poem calls out to the depth of belonging with the path of welcoming in. I loved the phrase ‘You do not turn away because you cannot bear to see your own unclaimed light shining in my eyes. You stay with me in the dark. You urge me into being. You make room in your heart for my voice….’ So powerful. It resonated deeply.
My life has been granted a ‘pause – reset’ since I had a stroke four days ago. Everything is a miracle, even the act of breathing in and breathing out. Yet there is also a place in the womb where the soul is held- by the divine, by beloved and even by strangers. This poem resonated with a poem by Oriah Mountain Weaver, The Invitation, with “I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.”
Much gratitude.