Welcome back.
We begin a new year with a mix of stability and change, as is always the case.
Our traditional ingathering service, where we will rededicate our community and ourselves to our highest principles, is a recognition of this intertwining of new and old.
The community of people who make up The First Church In Belmont are entirely different than those who created our congregation 159 years ago; and yet, there is continuity in our community.
Our theology has changed as well, moving from Unitarian Christianity to a mixture of many different points of view on religion and the universe. But the religious liberalism that underlies those theological shifts remains and is part of what binds us together. Of course, all human communities-religious and secular, liberal and conservative, public and private, even our families-experience that same mixture, that same combination of change and continuity.
So as we gather in September 13, let us do so with the recognition of our ever-the-same, ever-changing community. And let us celebrate both the change and the continuity.
