This sermon is inspired by the words of UU author Frances Moore Lappé, “Hope is not what we find in evidence, it is what we become in action.” When we understand hope as a choice to move, to jump into the work of creating a more just and joyful world, this can radically change the presence we bring to the world. When we re-frame hope as movement, what possibilities open up in our lives as individuals and in community?

Our Guest Preacher this morning is Carter Smith, a seminarian at Harvard Divinity School, Class of 2021. In college, at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, Carter was always working to combine learnings from her Religious Studies and Political Science classes with her extra-curricular work as co-director of the school’s Student Environmental Center, and as a volunteer activist for voting rights. Now, she is interested in learning about movement building and change-making in a world that needs healing, and how to bring that into her future ministry. In her free time she enjoys working with the HDS beekeeping club, exploring New England, brewing kombucha, and experiencing community life over the dining room table in the multi-generational housing cooperative she calls home.