Ends and Beginnings

This past Sunday, Rev. Parsa introduced the theme of wholeness as a lens through which to understand the mission of church life. As fragments of divine light – fragile people thrown into a hurting world – we gather together in fellowship to repair ourselves and the world: tikkun olam.

If you were listening carefully to Rachel Naomi Remen’s rendition of the Kabalistic story of creation, you likely heard the cosmology’s underlying paradox: the end is nothing more than a return to the beginning. In effect, humanity’s task of restitution – of bringing the world back to its original state of divine omni-presence – represents the highest end, the greatest possible achievement. To reach the end of time is to arrive at its beginning.

This cyclical framework of human progress is not foreign to our Unitarian Universalist tradition. In fact, you need not look much farther than our trusty grey hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition:

What we call a beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from.

- T.S. Eliot (#685)

Ask yourself: what is closing in my life to make room for a new opening? What beginning must end so that I can embark on a new beginning?

I know for me, the road to First Parish was paved with endings. I had to say goodbye to the familiarity of the classroom, to the church community with which I worshipped on Sunday, to the luxury of not using a car – and to my academic scholarship! These are but a sampling of the many closings, large and small, that opened my path to ministry in Milton.

I have repeated on multiple occasions how good it is to be at First Parish. I would not change a thing. But it is important, I believe, to notice and to name the ends. Some we welcome, some we lament. Either way, we carry all of them with us. Living in awareness of and appreciation for the shadows of the past brings the light of the future into sharper relief.

Reflection for the week: The end clears space for new beginnings.