FROM THE MINISTERS

Rev. Kelly Crocker, Co-Senior Minister

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of my best friend’s grandmother, whom we lovingly called “Grandma Thelma.” Grandma Thelma loved potato chips, game shows, and seersucker pants. She made macaroni salad with mayonnaise and green onions, and I remember thinking it was delicious and fancy. My friend Colleen and I would spend our summers running in and out of the house, stopping only to see if we could yell out the Wheel of Fortune answer before Grandma Thelma figured it out. It was a great fortune of this life that I was blessed with an extra grandma. My vivid memory is of Grandma Thelma sitting on the couch in the living room, in those seersucker pants, yelling to me as I left the house. From the day I met her until her death, every time I left the house she would yell, “go find some joy!” Her life was hard, she was widowed young, she worked long hours to raise her children alone, her body was always hurting somewhere. Yet here she was, yelling at us to go out and find some joy.

Mary Oliver wrote, “If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.”

I wish I could read these words to Grandma Thelma today. I wish I could see her sly smile spread across her face as she said, “See? I told you so.” From an early age, I had this wise woman teaching me that joy was something to be grabbed and held on to, in the face of everything life brings, joy could be an act of resistance.

When asked, “What is joy?” Rev. Willie James Jennings of Duke Divinity School responds, “I look at joy as an act of resistance against despair and all its forces.” He goes on to explain that when he says despair, he means, “all the ways in which life can be presented to us as not worth living.”

We are surrounded by reasons to despair. Our days are full of moments of sorrow. Anti-LGBTQ legislation being passed at a rapid rate. A planet crying out desperately for our help. Democracy under assault. Women’s rights and children’s rights and the rights of the ill and the old threatened in unprecedented ways. We can each add our own sorrows to this list.

Some say this is no time to think about joy. I think that’s because joy is often thought of as times without pain or suffering. But what if we thought of joy not as separate from sorrow, as we know how tangled and intertwined they really are. Or as Frederick Buechner says, “Joy is a mystery because it can happen anywhere, anytime, even under the most unpromising circumstances, even in the midst of suffering, with tears in its eyes.” I love thinking of joy as what emerges as we face it all together, reminding each other of the beauty that remains, how it comes when we lift one another up and care for one another in the face of all of it. What if joy is what grows when we help each other hold our heartbreak?

Perhaps then we will see joy not only as a practice of resistance, but as necessary to our survival. So I say to you, Go find some joy! ◊

Lay Ministry Program

George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “There is no love sincerer than the love of food.” We all have those stories in our lives of the people who prepared food for us as an act of love. Whether it was our grownups when we were children, and they came into our room with a bowl of homemade soup or a partner or friend making us a cup of tea and a simple meal at the end of a long day. We know that food is so much more than food and often says the things we want to say when our words fail.

This is true in our families and here at FUS. Our Lay Ministry program supports members in various ways, one of which is providing meals for members who are in need due to illness, emergencies, or new life. Members who receive these meals have a tangible symbol of the love and support of all of us. A recent recipient of the meal ministry program said, “While recovering from surgery and enduring cancer treatments, I sure didn’t feel like eating, nor could I face cooking.

Thank you, FUS meal ministry volunteers, for helping me through some trying times!”

How does it work? Our lay minister coordinator, Jane Richardson, discusses food preferences and allergies, if any, and a schedule is created using Sign Up Genius. Emails then go out to our Wonderful Meal Volunteers, who sign up to deliver a meal, usually on a twice weekly schedule for between 6 and 12 weeks. We have just started making meals for one of our families currently experiencing a medical challenge.

We invite anyone in our congregation who might be interested in becoming a Meal Volunteer to contact Jane at jane.richardson711@gmail.com. Meals can be purchased if you are not into cooking. And if you are not able to deliver a meal, we have volunteers who will do that part for you. This is a great opportunity to connect with and support each other. ◊