Anything is Possible
Written by the Rev. Lorraine Ceniceros
Conference Minister
Greetings, members and friends of the Kansas Oklahoma Conference of the United Church of Christ!
We’ve made it to a new year and, like a new day, anything is possible.
My life experience has informed me that the above statement is easy to say but much harder to believe. Letting go of the past to start something new is much more difficult than it sounds. When I work with congregations who are entering into a season of transition, I often tell leadership that it’s important to say goodbye well. A congregation who has said goodbye well is a congregation that is prepared to say hello equally well.
I believe members and friends of the Conference were able to say goodbye well to your former Conference Minister Edith Guffey. There were many opportunities to say thank you, to show appreciation, and most importantly to share stories about your communal Conference life that allowed you to laugh and cry with Edith, to honor the wonderful work she accomplished and the deep relationships that were formed. You could tell me I can say this because I attended the Farewell/Retirement event you held for Edith, and you would be correct. But I feel I can really say this because of the wonderful welcome I have received. I fully believe a welcome as lovely as the one I’ve received is the fruit of a healthy goodbye.
Light dances on the floor of the sanctuary at Zion UCC in Junction City
As we enter the third week of the new year, I am happy to share that I am comfortably settled into my new home, have officially become a member of Zion UCC, and have begun meeting with clergy and church leadership. People in the community where I’ve settled are friendly and seem to be more than willing to have a short conversation. As I have been tending to personal business, I have met several people who are curious about why I’ve moved to Kansas. I have short elevator speech about my call to the Conference and a longer bit of information about the United Church of Christ; what we are about and how we are called to love and accept our neighbors, no matter who they are, how they personally identify in the world, or how they present as their authentic selves. Every person I’ve shared my story with has made the statement “we need this here!” or something close to that. Recently I was blessed to have lunch with a small group of our clergy who shared similar stories. When family members of LGBTQIA folks attend a UCC church the clergy are serving, the family members will often share how much they appreciate the love and acceptance they experience from the church toward their family members.
Friends, indeed, we need this here. I believe there are people in this world and certainly, many parts of Kansas and Oklahoma, who long for communities of faith where LGBTQIA folks and their family members can be received as full members in the body of Christ and honored as sacred images of God, just as they are. I also believe this world is longing for communities of faith where all our siblings, no matter their skin color, ethnicity, or family of origin are accepted. Together, we celebrate the richness of experience this brings a community of faith. My dream is for you, me, and our congregations to embody the grace filled love of God clearly to the world around us.
I know these big dreams are easy to dream and much more difficult to live out. It takes courage to step out in faith, to be seen in the community of your neighbors and friends as people who believe in God’s equal love for all. To be clear, I’m not talking about engaging in the struggle of changing people’s minds about what they believe. I leave the job of changing people’s hearts to God. What I’m talking about is creating intentional spaces of love and acceptance for our neighbors. Spaces where we loudly proclaim our belief in the love of God. A flag or two wouldn’t hurt, but this is more about having the courage to say out loud, to ourselves and to each other, what we believe and why we believe what we do. If you would like to have a conversation about this, I would be happy to meet with you, your leadership, or your congregation to talk about all of it: your fears, your hesitation, your misgivings, and even your disagreement with what I believe.
As we enter the third week of 2022, the tradition is to wish friends and acquaintances a Happy New Year, but the truth is many of us are weary and tired. The pandemic we thought would end by Easter 2019 is still with us and the losses and grief many of us have experienced are almost too much to bear. I hope you were able to spend the Holidays with long missed loved ones, but even in our celebrations the mindfulness born from long experienced caution was never far from our minds. Couple this caution with the question of how to keep going amid exhaustion, grief, loss, and the unsettledness of not knowing what the future, and it is no surprise that even the strongest among us are exhausted. As my first message to you as your Conference Minister comes to a close, I offer you a poem by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, adapted from an original prayer by Sir Francis Drake:
Disturb us, O Lord
when we are too well-pleased with ourselves
when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little,
because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, O Lord
when with the abundance of things we possess,
we have lost our thirst for the water of life
when, having fallen in love with time,
we have ceased to dream of eternity
and in our efforts to build a new earth,
we have allowed our vision of Heaven to grow dim.
Stir us, O Lord
to dare more boldly, to venture into wider seas
where storms show Thy mastery,
where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.
In the name of Him who pushed back the horizons of our hopes
and invited the brave to follow.
Amen
Friends, people are waiting for the church to speak on injustice. To be a place of respite, refuge, and restoration. Stir us, O Lord, and let us be the voice that speaks God’s light to the world.