“The lives they lived hold us steady.”
As we approach Memorial Day, a reading from the Rev. Kathleen McTigue, senior minister of the Unitarian Society of New Haven, Connecticut, along with photographs of memorial gardens at Unitarian Universalist churches across the country.
They Are With Us Still
by Rev. Kathleen McTigue
In the struggles we choose for ourselves, in the ways we move forward in our lives and bring our world forward with us,
First Unitarian Church of Rochester, New YorkIt is right to remember the names of those who gave us strength in this choice of living. It is right to name the power of hard lives well-lived.
Murray Unitarian Universalist Church in Attleboro, MassachusettsWe share a history with those lives. We belong to the same motion.
They too were strengthened by what had gone before. They too were drawn on by the vision of what might come to be.
First Unitarian Church of Des Moines, IowaThose who lived before us, who struggled for justice and suffered injustice before us, have not melted into the dust, and have not disappeared.
Towson Unitarian Universalist Church in Lutherville, MarylandThey are with us still.
The lives they lived hold us steady.
First Parish Church in Weston, MassachusettsTheir words remind us and call us back to ourselves. Their courage and love evoke our own.
We, the living, carry them with us: we are their voices, their hands and their hearts.
Unitarian Society of Hartford, ConnecticutWe take them with us, and with them choose the deeper path of living.
Source: “They Are With Us Still” by Rev. Kathleen McTigue, senior minister of the Unitarian Society of New Haven, Connecticut, Reading #721 in Singing the Living Tradition, the current Unitarian Universalist hymnal. Photographs from the websites of the listed churches.
Tags: Kathleen McTigue, living faith, memorial, remembrance
