Reminders about the importance physical, emotional, mental, spiritual renewal abound in the vast and vaguely boundaried world of health and wellness: 8 hours of sleep, more or less; 8 glasses of water–or has that been debunked–10,000 steps a day; stand up and move around for five minutes out of every hour; limit screen time; pay attention to gratitude; no blue light before bed; try to be mindful; no screens in the bedroom; 3 meals a day or six small ones or grazing or intermittent fasting; four food groups, food pyramid healthy plate; work/life balance; prioritize supportive relationships. And on and on. We can’t escape scores of variations on this theme coming at us every day from dozens of sources.

There was a time in our faith tradition’s history when All Souls was the second most common name for our congregations, behind First Parish/First Church of Whatever City. It was a reflection of the Universalist strand of our merged faith–our belief that all souls are held in God’s unceasing love. This All Souls’ Day, the day the Christian church remembers all who weren’t remembered yesterday on All Saints’ Day, this All Souls Day I’m cognizant of how often I’ve drawn our attention to our Universalist heritage since returning from my summer break–and even before.

Last week I spoke at length about surviving in today’s world without being swamped with compassion fatigue, about the two steps I believe will buoy us up even as our days and hours are filled with situations demanding our compassion, that will protect our hearts while allowing us to participate in the healing of the unending sorrow that surrounds us. Face the pain. Act to alleviate the pain. Act in small, perhaps unexpected ways that we might not even recognize as helpful.

About thirty years ago Charles Figley, the Paul Henry Kurzweg Chair in Disaster Mental Health at Tulane University, coined the phrase compassion fatigue to refer to

“absorbing information and often the suffering of others through empathy. It happens when a helping professional experiences exhaustion due to caring for someone, and can lead to profound emotional and physical erosion that takes place when helpers are unable to refuel and regenerate themselves.”

"In days of old, animals believed

humans to likewise have a soul"

I love bits of prose, poetry, movie dialogue or song lyrics that turn our expectations upside down or inside out–such as those lines from today's call to worship by Annette C. Boehm, who translated them from the German herself. If we’ve thought about it all, we might debate whether or not there is some irreducible, inextinguishable bit of human existence that might be called a soul? Or have wondered, do animals have souls? Such ponderings are familiar to me.

I worked in a large suburban branch of a county library all through high school, and in a university library all through college, and a very small town library for a couple years just before moving to Savannah. In all three places I heard the same comment over and over again: "it must be great to work somewhere so quiet and calm". But libraries host community meetings. Draw people of all ages eagerly searching for books, dvds, and audio books, and enthusiastically researching every imaginable topic. Host storytimes of wiggly, giggly toddlers and curious preschoolers, and study groups of college students, and adult literacy classes. Provide internet access for unhoused folks and folks who lack access at home. Serve as free lunch sites for kids when school isn’t in session. Run summer reading programs. Function as polling places. Libraries are neither calm nor especially quiet.

If I had a do-over on this morning’s sermon title, I’d choose Not All Belonging is Salve. That profound truth comes from NYTimes bestselling author of Black Liturgies, Cole Arthur Riley who wrote:

"I'm beginning to think alienation and rejection are the two great persuaders of our own unloveliness. The cunning will wield them against you so that you acquiesce to the systems of a community in order to retain membership in it. Perhaps you know what it's like to need to believe a certain doctrine or creed so that you can belong in a spiritual space, or to vote a certain way to belong at the dinner table. When someone places your very belonging at stake, they are prodding an ancient wound. Not all belonging is salve."

If Symborska is right, and all the water that is and ever was in the world is contained, somehow, in this single drop on my finger and in the drops in the water you brought with you this morning and in the sources from which you gathered your water–and there is scientific basis for that claim–and if we turn this morning to water as a metaphor for truth or enlightenment, than isn’t it a bit foolish that we come again and again to this specific place and time in search of what might be found anywhere there is water, at home or our neighborhood or our home towns or wherever we went for vacation this summer or pretty much anywhere? Perhaps. But it matters that we are here.

Pinkie promise.

Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.

That’s a piecrust promise.

Do you solemnly swear…?

Do you…? I do.

We make promises throughout our lives, to friends, family members, therapists, judges, spouses, neighbors, just about everyone with whom we enter relationships. Some of those promises are explicit and some are tacit but no less real.

If you are about my age or older you remember back before backspace and delete. Before word processing. Before that magic tape in a Brother electric typewriter that would somehow lift a typed character from a page–but only one or two characters back and only if the typebars were perfectly aligned. Back before White-Out. Back when there were typewriter erasers. Typically disc shaped pink erasers attached to stiff plastic brushes, though some later ones were pencil shaped with a stiff plastic brush at the opposite end of the cylinder.

I ended last Sunday’s sermon with these words:

"these times call us to heed the lessons of the cycle of earth’s seasons… each in its time. Let us be eager and unwavering in our pursuit of the remedies nature’s ways might teach us, fearless and joyful in turning our learning into action for the transformation and salvation of the world."

This week I’m still pondering what we might and probably should learn from nature. I’m also struggling a bit, wondering if there are limits to the lessons we can draw and the ways we can and should emulate nature’s way.

My maternal grandfather, of whom I have no memory, a hardware store owner, car salesman, and sometime family farmer, notoriously lacked the patience typically required of farmers or backyard gardeners for arrival of harvest time. Greenhouses, fertilization, insecticides, pesticides and other agricultural advances notwithstanding, still there is, as the ancient preacher proclaimed, a time for planting and a time to pluck up what is planted.

A couple weeks ago, May 25, 2025, was the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of the American Unitarian Association–one of the precursor organizations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which this congregation is a member. It was also the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association–a precursor of the current day General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches. Neither the American Unitarians nor the British Unitarians knew that the other body was organizing itself on that specific day.

'Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.'

People the world over recognize flowers, gloriously clothed flowers, as flowers despite their stunning differences, one variety from another. What better symbol could Norbert Capek have chosen when he set out to create a ritual celebrating the simultaneous glorious diversity and holy oneness of his Unitarian congregation in Prague one hundred and two years ago this month?

Our worship theme for the month of June is, as Kurt said, the Practice of Freedom. So, I’m going to need you all to return here at 4:00 this afternoon, and then at 11:00 and 4:00 again tomorrow, and for each of the 28 days after that, so we can begin to scratch the surface.

And there’ll be homework.

Freedom of. Freedom to. Freedom from. Freedom for. Freedom for whom? Under what circumstances? With what limitations? Ought we to concern ourselves with granting freedom or gaining freedom? How does this year’s overarching theme ‘the practice of’ change the nuance of the focused monthly theme ‘freedom’? And what of liberty? Are freedom and liberty synonymous?

One of my more scold-y Unitarian Universalist colleagues–fabulous by scold-y–issued a warning a few weeks ago: “if you’re going to call it an Easter service, you better preach about Jesus and the resurrection; if you talk about baby chicks and blooming flowers and new life, don’t you call it Easter.”

On the one hand, I don’t completely disagree with her. Seldom an Easter goes by when I don’t read a gospel account of the resurrection, and I always, always reference the story in my sermon, and hey, there is a reason we’re doing Easter today and Earth Day next week. That is to say, to give each its due. On the other hand, however, I think my colleague is flat wrong. It’s the same miracle–resurrection, baby chicks, rebirth in the springtime of the year (whenever spring occurs where you happen to be). The same miracle. Life triumphs over death.