Dear Beloved Community,
I am writing this letter imagining your faces. I can imagine you in your routine place in the sanctuary, with that warm light, radiant from the golden windows shining on you, illuminating your belovedness. 🙂 That’s a gift no one really tells you about before becoming a minister, perhaps they wanted to let me find my way into the gift on my own, or perhaps you simply can’t grasp the depth of the truth until you are waist deep in it – but I’ll tell you, and I know many of you do experience this, there is a special beauty in looking out into this sea of beloved companions every week and feeling so deeply connected and bound up together in this life on the Way. It doesn’t get old to me. Often, when I get to face you as we sing hymns, pray prayers, read scriptures, and meet together at the table, I am simply overcome with gratitude for the grace of a life lived all wrapped up with yours. I know that for some of you, my telling you this is the worst possible thing you might imagine. (Introverts, I know this because I am one of you!) But is not the practice of seeing and being seen, the practice of seeing more clearly and seeing in a new way, the practice of seeing God in all, and in everyone, and everywhere exactly what we are doing here? So, yes- I see you. Thank you for seeing me. Yes – I love you. Thank you for loving me.
There is an Irish proverb that says, “it is in the shelter of each other that the people live.” This has certainly been true for me with you. Even before I arrived in Winston-Salem nearly four years ago, I had heard of the people who were First Baptist Church on Fifth. I was told of your resilience and honesty, your willingness to dialogue and wrestle, your love and hope. Through Divinity School, internships, discernment, ordination, residency, work and play, tragedy and joy, you, beloved friends, have been a shelter in which I have lived. You have held space for my questions and my calling, my concerns and my dreams. You have guided me back to a God who collaborates with us in the work of expansive love. You have taught me and re-taught me that we do not have to do any of this alone. As we move toward this Sunday’s festivities, and I think of all that it means for us to be capping off our celebration of 100 years in this place, I wonder in awe about how this church house has provided a home in which shelter can be found for generations. This church has been a place to weather storms, question certainties, celebrate joys, form faith and friendship, find common ground, and gather together with God in all seasons. Which is to say, these people, before and now, have time and again become the shelter for each other.
When Emily welcomes new folks who are rooting their lives in our congregation, she often tells them (and reminds each of us) that we are ready for them to lead us, to be more honest, more just, more loving, more kind, more generous, and more brave. You, friends, have certainly led me in this way. I am so glad I have been here in this season with you. As Devin and I make our preparations to move to Illinois, we are going, fully changed by the shelter of love you have shared with us. As I write this, it is that well-known E.E Cummings poem that keeps coming to my mind.
“i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go”
I carry your heart with me, dear church, I carry it in my heart. I do hope you will carry me in your heart, too.
With love and hope for the road ahead,
Olena