...But who is my family?

This post is based on a message I had been carrying for a number of days leading up to the FGC Gathering. I felt an opening and offered it during Meeting for Worship held under the care of Friends for LGBTQ Concerns on Friday that week. -Liz

Y'know how sometimes you are given a message and it stays with you for awhile before Way opens and you feel the nudge to speak it during Meeting for Worship...?

For about a year now, I have been serving on the Gathering Committee to help prepare the Gathering this year. And the theme has been, "...But who is my neighbor?"

Ever since the committee came under the weight of that theme last year, it has been working on me and changing me. As the Gathering has approached, I found myself living into a different question. It changed from "...But who is my neighbor?" to "...But who is my family?"

I think of my own "little-f" family. It's not that mine is a perfect family or a family that has been easy to love. But in the sense that we are all part of the "big-F" Family, we are all called to love one another, as part of God's family.

. . . . . . . .

Sometimes my partner and I get into these little discussions about just which one of us is the Center of the Universe. And recently as we were having at it one more time, I joked that clearly the word "universe" is wrong: that it really should be the ME-niverse, because the U-niverse is all about YOU, but the ME-niverse is all about ME.

We had been joking back and forth about that for some time, but earlier this week during Gathering, I found out something new about the YOU-niverse and the ME-niverse.

After a very long and tiring day, I was rewarded by coming across a table in the dining room filled with people I love who I didn't know knew each other. I joined them and we started talking excitedly about how we each knew one another and what was going on for each of us.

Soon I was telling them of course I had stumbled across this wonderful table because after all, I was the center of all things, and that in fact the word "universe" was a misnomer: The correct word should be the ME-niverse, not the YOU-niverse, because the YOU-niverse is all about you and the ME-niverse is all about me.

We laughed about that, and then suddenly, we hit on a new word, recognizing that all of us had something to do with having found each other that evening at just that moment:

The WE-niverse.

Blessings,
Liz