Inspiration:
With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.
–William Wordsworth
We Are All About Saving Souls
What are we doing here? What is our business? The answer is simple: we are in the business of saving souls. You heard me right: what we are about is saving souls.
Those of us who have had any brush with evangelical religion in our lives are apt to have an instantaneous negative reaction to that assertion. Soul-saving? Our business? Not us!
I don’t make any claim to know what happens to us after the death of the body, or whether there is or is not something beyond this life. I do know that there are many kinds of private hells in which living men and women dwell every day. These are small personal hells of meaninglessness, banality, and loneliness. Hells of shame, hells of guilt, hells of loss, hells of failure. There are as many kinds of these small hells as there are people who live in them. And from some of those hells, we, as a church, can and do provide a kind of salvation, a release, or, at the very least, a respite. We are in the business of saving souls from those kinds of small, individual hells of despair and disappointment that drive people into exile and isolation, separated from community as well as from their own essential goodness.
BY REV. SUZANNE MEYER, (1953-2010) TO READ MORE
How wonderful and wise. Many of us feel heaven and hell are right here beside and inside us on earth. May it be that a congregation is restorative. I’d like to know more about Suzanne.