Spilling the Light

Some people are used to keeping rules; don’t cross the street when the light is red, only sensible. It turns out that keeping rules isn’t the same as keeping covenant, which asks us, instead of keeping a bright line, to keep our promises.
 
To what have we promised ourselves? To this moment in time and place. To this community and even, tenderly interconnected, this planet. We promise ourselves to the idea that we are each and all human beings. We promise that there is something moving between us that we cannot tame and cannot measure. The chalice is a reminder that what flame we keep inside us cannot light the way.
 
The light must spill to shine.
 
The thing you must be is yourself. Unadulterated, shedding the willingness to journey alone, as though you are made of something hard and unforgivable. You are human. You belong, right here, right now. And together, we will chase away the sickness, the secrets, and leave only the open possibility that the future is a space for growth.

—-  Theresa I. Soto
spilling the light: Meditations on Hope and Resilience, 2019

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Rev. Soto is a Unitarian Universalist minister and activist.  They have enjoyed interim ministry and chaplaincy with veterans. They have served as a community minister with the Rogue Valley UU Fellowship, and is the newly called senior minister of First Unitarian Church of Oakland, California.  They also serve as co-chair of the Journey Toward Wholeness Transformation Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Association, and co-vice president of Diverse Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries (DRUMM).