Practicing Gratitude

Practicing Gratitude

The practice of gratitude has always been an important one in my life, especially in times when gratitude can feel so far out of reach. My sister and I picked up our gratitude practice again since the passing of our father. We text each other every day, simple things that we noticed in our lives that we want to give thanks for. This is a practice to intentionally help us look at the goodness that is in each of our lives. To help us notice the small or big kindnesses that we see in our lives. To name the love, the light, and grace that is all around. 

This practice is not one to negate or override the feelings of grief or frustration that come with loss, especially around the holidays, but to simply help ground us in the reality that love and goodness are all around too. Gratitude doesn't have to, nor should it, eclipse the deep pains or fears we feel. 

So as we practice gratitude and name things we are thankful for with loved ones in the coming days, let our gratitude and our grief come together. Let us know that gratitude and grief can co-exist; that they are two sides of the same coin; that they are friends who know each other all too well.

No matter how this holiday season finds you, may you embrace the warming practice of gratitude by noting the small kindnesses in your life; may these kindnesses bring you and yours peace and comfort.

As you reflect, we invite you to embrace the type of kindness Danusha Laméris writes about below:

Small Kindnesses by Danusha Laméris

 I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us Honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

What is a small kindness someone has done for you that sticks with you? When did someone enter into your life at just the right moment? This week, we invite you to share it with someone. Think expansively. Reflect deeply. Either way, share it with someone and know that when gratitude is shared, that kindness can radiate to all whom it touches.

And lastly, if you are looking for a blessing for your Thanksgiving table, consider this by John O'Donohue:

For Equilibrium, a Blessing

From: To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings
Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.
As the wind loves to call things to dance,
May your gravity be lightened by grace.
Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.
As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.
As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said,
May your sense of irony bring perspective.
As time remains free of all that it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.
May your prayer of listening deepen enough
To hear in the depths the laughter of God.

Blessings,

Pastor Eli

A Prayer for Honoring Transgender Day Of Remembrance

A Prayer for Honoring Transgender Day Of Remembrance

The weight of this year's Transgender Day of Remembrance feels heavier and more personal as anti-trans violence is on the rise across the United States and globally. Anti-trans legislation appears on ballots across nearly every state. Threats, erasure, and hostility continue to come from multiple levels of government.

There is also new data from TGEU’s Trans Murder Monitoring 2025 that reveals dangerous shifts. There is a growing number of murder victims who are trans movement leaders and activists. The TGEU report states that over the past year, trans activists accounted for about 14% of reported murders, nearly doubling from the previous years. Thus, making activists and movement leaders the second most targeted group globally. 

Locally, we feel that weight as Metro Trans Umbrella Group reported a threat made against the Trans Memorial Garden here in St. Louis. MTUG is taking the necessary precautions to protect our community, yet it is heartbreaking to know that such hatred sits so close to home.

So today, we call to mind all our trans, nonbinary, and gender expansive beloveds who have died by senseless violence. We call to mind all those who died by suicide because they could not find safety or belonging or hope in their own lives due to the hatred that fills our world today. We remember all those who went unnamed, misnamed or who were never known as their true selves. We draw upon their strength, their bravery, and their self-love. We give thanks for the way they lived their lives as their authentic selves and for all teachings they bestowed upon us. We pray for the courage to carry on their legacy and know their names. We mourn and grieve their deaths as every person taken from us deserved a lifetime of love, safety, and celebration.

God of Many Faces, God of Many Genders, God of Infinite Holy Expressions, grant us strength to carry on their legacy of bravery, courage, and self-love. Help us to remember them. Help us to honor their lives. Help us to protect one another with fierce, enduring care, because the only way we get through all of this grief is with one another.

To every trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive person who hears or reads these words: as a community, we offer prayers of deep love and gratitude. Thank you for your courage. Thank you for your existence. The world is better because you are here, exactly as you are. God of Infinite Love, we ask that You strengthen every heart that feels afraid; comfort every heart that grieves; and steady every heart that worries about what comes next.

Holy One, help us rise in voice and spirit. Help us challenge and stand against hateful rhetoric. Help us to live authentically and safely. Remind us that our power cannot be stolen, because we are so powerful together. Remind us that trans people have always existed, in every generation, in every culture, in every place and time. Remind us we will continue to exist with beauty, brilliance, and strength.

And may hope take root in all of us. A fierce, steady, and unshakeable hope. A hope that insists on life, insists on dignity. A hope that insists that the world can and will be transformed into a world where trans people are protected, uplifted, and alive.

Love and strength to each of you,
Pastor Eli

P.S. If you would like to learn more about the statistics and who is affected by transphobic violence, you can click here.

Mug Of Grace

Mug of Grace

Most summers after I turned 9, I flew with the unaccompanied minor program to Bradenton, FL where my grandparents lived in a townhouse with a pool. I spent the days helping with things around the house, putting together desserts for my grandma’s tea parties, and spending endless hours in the pool. I woke up early most mornings, spending time with my grandpa who liked the early morning hours and sat in the darkness for an hour or so before the sun rose. Together, we would “read” the paper - I would look at the comics while he read more serious things. 

A black coffee drinker, he would make me a hot chocolate — the day’s first practice of grace and generosity with tablespoon after tablespoon of chocolate heaped into the already chocolate Nesquik mixture. 

This week, we celebrated my grandpa’s 98 years of life by touring around the places he and my grandmother raised their 3 children and holding a small service outside of the former Naval base near Detroit that included military honors. It was amazing to drive past the places he and my grandma made a mark on: the park they helped build with all recycled materials, the hospital they volunteered at, the many stories of things gone wrong, and grandpa sitting down with the kids to attend to them with grace, even when big things happened like car accidents.

To live a life that is centered in grace and generosity is the life modeled to us by God’s economy: one where scarcity is met with abundance; fear met with assurance; early mornings met with hot chocolate so thick the spoon could stand up in it. This week, as we prepare for our congregational meeting and as we enter into the last of this series on abundance, let us open our senses to the overflow all around us. 

With Love,
Pastor Lauren

Photo: My grandfather, David A. Bennett and grandmother, Beverly Bennett just before grandpa left to work as a morsecode operator during WWII.

A Prayer for Courage, Compassion, and Love

A Prayer for Courage, Compassion, and Love

Tomorrow, on Friday, November 7, the Supreme Court may decide whether or not to hear a petition seeking to overturn the historic Obergefell v. Hodges decision, a ruling that made marriage equality the law of the land. At the same time, a video has been circulating of a bishop from a gay-affirming church declaring that he is “no longer gay,” sharing a story of how he claims to have "overcome" his previous life.

For many of us, these headlines and moments stir up something tender in us, not only fear and anger, but a familiar ache. Because this far from the first time our love, our lives, or our very identities have been called into question and called into question under the name of loving God. This is not the first time we have seen people try to deny who they are in the name of faith, conformity, or righteousness. Our communities have been fighting this very fight for decades. Many of us have been fighting for our right to love, to marry, to build our families, and to be our whole and authentic selves for the majority of our lives. 

And so, each time these wounds are reopened, we feel it. We feel the hurt, the confusion, the exhaustion of being told, yet again, that our dignity and worth are up for debate. So if you are feeling weary or frightened know this: you are not alone. You are not alone. You are loved and seen and known. We are in this together.

Let us remember: we have lived through scary and challenging times before. We have endured defeats, losses, and setbacks. We have been told to hide, to change, and to disappear. And yet still, we are here. Despite it all, we have persevered, persisted, and prevailed. We love, we fight, and we make a way even when it seems there is no way.

So may our prayers in the coming days be ones of courage, compassion, and steadfast truth.
May we hold one another close and closer still.
May we speak truth in the face of fear.
May we pray for our Supreme Court Justices, that they be moved with compassion, justice, and mercy for all people they serve.
May we pray for those who feel divided in their own bodies.
May we pray for those fighting battles that we do not see or do not understand and may we be moved with compassion, justice, and mercy for all people.

And may we continue to love, to build community, and to believe in a world where all can truly be free. For no matter what the courts decide or the headlines declare, as Bishop Yvette Flunder reminds us:

“Our calling is clear — to proclaim that God’s love is expansive, inclusive, and unrelenting; that our sexuality [and gender identity] are not obstacles to holiness but doorways to understanding the God who is Love.”

Love will remain no matter what.

And so will we.

Love,
Your Pastors

Happy Halloween!

While my mom and I cut bats from construction paper for our Halloween decorations, we loved watching Hocus Pocus—the fun story of witches freed for one night to cast their spells of immortality, when the veil between life and death grows thin. I loved the costumes, the mischief, and the courage of the kids determined to make sure the mystery of death was not overcome by the wrong people, even as I proudly wore my own witches' hat.

Halloween was once all about seeing how much candy I could stuff into my pillowcase. Now, I find myself drawn to the deeper traditions of All Hallows’ Eve—a time rooted in Western Europe’s ancient rituals that honor the thin space between the living and the dead. As the world around us sheds its color—leaves falling, greenery fading—we are invited to ponder what has passed and what is yet to come. This season of bright leaves and dewy mornings beckons us to contemplate life’s mysteries and to welcome what we can only glimpse through a veil.

As we open our doors to trick-or-treaters and listen to their sometimes cringy jokes, may we also remember to turn inward once the porch lights go dark. Let us welcome the spirits of our ancestors, making space for the saints who continue to guide and shape us. As you mark All Hallows’ Eve and All Saints’ Day, light a candle for those who have shown you the way—honoring the saints, seen and unseen, who help us navigate the beautiful mystery of life.

Let us pray: 

In your wisdom beyond our understanding, you have placed a veil around this life. We don’t know what was before; we don’t know what’s after. All we know is the passing from one to the next and the holy in-between in which we live all of our days. Our lives are only a brief glimmer in your eternal glory, one flickering candle with a borrowed flame. [...]⁠

Let our brief flames ignite and inspire others, passing on what we have received from the saints you have placed in our lives. And as our lights dim, grant us the peace of rest in your holy darkness and your eternal glory. May we then come to fully understand the mystery of our faith:⁠

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. Amen."⁠

⁠—excerpt of a prayer from "Liturgy for All Saints Day" by Rev. Anna Strickland

Blessings,
Rev. Lauren

Dare to Feel Joy

IN TIMES LIKE THESE by Phyllis Cole-Dai

The wound is the place where the light enters you.  —Rumi

In times like these we must dare to feel joy.
We cannot wait till every line

of thunder has marched through to the east.
Our job is to make love to this world now

when the luminosity of love being made
can reveal how everything matters.

There is no storm this light cannot enter,
no dark so turbulent, dense, and hard

this light will not break through— 
light will keep coming for you

like a mama bear who hears your forsaken cries 
and huffs over the river rocks to save you. 

It’s still the dead of night when she spots you
high in the pine tree fear made you climb.

Are you not glad to be found?

+++

To see images of reunited families has brought me to tears this week— how rare it has become to see any embodiment of joy on the faces of Jewish or Palestinian people for the last two years. Seeing the relief and joy of the hostages coming home felt like watching a miracle. Likewise, to see Palestinian prisoners released to their families was like watching rain fall in the desert. 

With this amazing joy there is also so much grief, rage, and wreckage left behind. It feels like only a courageous path of vulnerability will be able to transform deep-seated resentments toward a way of hope and healing. My prayer for peace in the Middle East is a prayer for the kind of deep, ongoing reckoning exhibited through the process of restorative justice.

In the wake of news we have prayed for and news we are weary of, I take on Phyllis Cole-Dei's words to heart "in times like these we must dare to feel joy." Always we are on the brink of beauty just as we could be on the brink of breaking, so let us find ways to find joy in the hope of right now. Let us remember what it's like to be held tightly by those who love us. From that space of love, let us have ears like the mama bear who hears the cries for rebuilding, for healing, for peace-making, and finds a way to create a safe place for those in our care. Perhaps it is in these actions we can find a way toward that kind of abundant hope we so crave in our world. Perhaps it is in these things our true purpose resides: to hold what is good, keep safe the vulnerable around us, and dare to feel joy on the journey.

With Joy and Gratitude,
Pastor Laruen

Moving from Scarcity to Plenty

Moving from Scarcity to Plenty

Mark Nepo reminds us of an old story: "A young man [is] freezing on the side of the road in Alaska. He's hitching a ride to Miami. He's so cold he can barely hold up his handmade sign. After a long wait, a friendly trucker stops and says, 'I'm not going to Miami, but I'm going as far as Fort Lauderdale [the city just north of Miami].' Dejectedly, the young man says, 'Oh,' and turns the ride down. This folk myth of our modern culture warns us against our want for perfection…”

Nepo asks us: “How often do we refuse our fate under the guise of holding out for the right thing? How often do we turn down the path presented like a gift because it's not exactly what we're dreaming of? How often do we hold out for the perfect partner, the perfect job, the perfect house? How often do we martyr ourselves to some imagined ideal? How often do we lose sight of what we're really after, insisting on all or nothing, when there is so much abundance?”

This week, we are starting a new series: Six Stone Jars, where we focus on the economy of Jesus rather than the economy of the world. In our time, it would be easy to believe there is not enough of anything. Not enough land, not enough jobs, not enough healthcare, not enough room in our hearts for people who are different. While it may be true that our politics embody a world with not enough compassion, not enough empathy, and not enough care, we might miss what there is more than enough of so many things. How might we be transformed as we look around and see not scarcity but plenty? How can we see something new when we let go of the notion that perfection is the goal? How will we embrace the opportunity to work with the world as it is instead of only seeing things as it could be? 

God of abundance, we thank you for the infinite ways there are to do good. When we find ourselves looking for that “perfect” thing or way of being, restore our vision for the world to notice all the many paths we can take toward restoration, wholeness, and goodness. Transform our understanding so that we can focus our attention on the plenty that surrounds us.