[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]If you aren’t connected personally with schools right now, it may not have seemed like a big and heavy week. But get a real check in with any local students, parents, teachers, staff or people who love any of these types and you’ll quickly get to the impossible question of what to do about school.

This past Monday, PSD announced its beginning plans for school opening. It’s complicated is an understatement.

As has been the case often during the pandemic, The Holderness Family has just the right video to sum up the dilemma….[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/Yt7JhsbENPY” align=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]To be honest, as a parent with kids in PSD, my reaction to the announcement from the district was mostly: 🤷 😥 (shrug/sad face). I guess I think – literally anything that they’d say at this point feels like it would be the wrong solution. Because we’re in a situation with no good solution.

Which means, it’s a situation that’s exactly made for us.

A lot of times, Unitarian Universalists come together because we have a good sense of what needs to happen, and we feel the pull to call for action, and to work towards its realization.

But where our community really shines is when we step fully into the mystery. The struggle. The confusion. The places where things are entirely unclear and where there’s no good solution.

Because it’s here in our mutual struggle where we can show up for each other for real. Where we can open ourselves up to what our mission calls “the unfolding mystery of this life.” And where we can discover what it really feels like to partner with courageous love – which as I said in my sermon about courageous love – is often an experience that puts us in touch with pain.

And, as I also said, the only way these experiences of life’s brokenness get transformed and healed in a bigger sense is if we are willing to not step around it, or over it, but to go through it, together.

That’s what many of us were doing as we gathered Thursday night for what I called a “lament space” for parents, and for anyone who is feeling school’s impossibility.

And, this is what we will be responding to again this Sunday as we continue our series on UU Good News. Our UU Colleague, the Rev. Lee Allison Paczulla from Well Spring Congregation in Pennsylvania will be offering the message this Sunday, focused on the Universalist good news of saving what we love.

With love and in partnership,
Rev. Gretchen[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]