I attended the Northern New England District spring meeting in north Conway, NH. I love the collective energy of big group gatherings and love the opportunity to connect with colleagues, see friends and drink from the living waters of our shared faith. Gathering together in this way with a blend of worship, program, and time to learn from eachother in informal settings fuels the important work done in our individual congregations in our individual lives and in our communities. I leave these gatherings inspired and grounded and plugged into our association. I leave prepared to do the work of our faith: work which is becoming more and more vitally important. And part of that work is re-imagining community, part of that work is building healthy community grounded in hope and living out a practice of love. What that looks like is up to each of us and to all of us.
Rebecca Parker, President of Starr King School for the Ministry, was the keynote speaker and she was mind blowingly amazing. I went to Starr King School and it was really powerful to have Rebecca's presence here. Her talk helped ground me in my own calling, reminding me once again how I began walking down this path. She talked about early Christian notions of Paradise and how it was to found and made right here and now. Rebecca then went on to show how Universalism in particular connects to those early strands. It reminds me of my singular fascination with pronoia and affirms my belief that this is the next evolution or voicing of this Universalist theology.
