Who doesn’t love a nice invitation? It’s great to be invited to a party or to a new job or just to the movies. And yet…. Sometimes the power of invitation is in knowing when to shut the door and say, “no, thank you.”

I love the Rumi poem that we shared in Touch Points this month. I love the idea – and indeed the spiritual practice – of viewing all of life’s experiences as a guest to be welcomed knowing that they bring gifts even though they may be disguised as hardship. I’ve practiced this form of welcoming in my life with varying degrees of resistance and success. It’s not easy especially when what shows up is painful or represents a permanent change we simply have not invited.

Someone once said that there may not be a ‘reason’ for everything that happens but everything that happens provides an opportunity. I find this to be true although sometimes it takes a minute to figure out the opportunity part. 

Of course, sometimes I think the opportunity that shows up is the opportunity to shut that door and say, “no, not today!” I’m thinking now of the suffering in the world that seems to knock at our collective doors every hour of every day.

My heart broke once again this month as I heard the news of yet another school shooting. And I asked myself: “how do we shut the door on this?” As we mourn those that have been killed a sad truth, that we do not want to face, lingers at our door. This will not be the last. Another mass shooting seems destined to be walking down the pathway toward us. When and where we do not know, but somehow we can sense its presence.

We may not be able to change what has already arrived at our door but how do we stop the next unwanted guest before they get here?

Lorenzo Prado, one of the survivors of the Parkland High School shooting said it so well: “To let these victims’ lives be taken without any change in return is an act of treason to our great country.” “What we must do now is enact change because that is what we do to things that fail: We change them.”

As Unitarian Universalists we are asked to do two powerful things:

Live with out hearts wide open, welcome and see the sacred in all and invite life in to meet us
AND
Shut the door on injustice and harm and use every tool we can to make change and put an end to suffering

It is not always easy to know how to love so fully or to know how to shut the door to prevent life experiences from coming our way. But, to borrow from Lorenzo, not trying is an act of treason to our great faith.

Enjoy this month’s practice of invitation and share with each other what you discover!

With Great Love,

Rev. Deborah Bennett
Minister, Westminster Unitarian Church