On Monday, June 13th, almost 1000 people gathered at City Hall for a candlelight vigil to honor those who were killed in the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando and to show love and support for the LGBTQ+ community here and everywhere. Many UCG members gathered to love and grieve together. Two of our ministers, Shelly Wilson and Vince Amlin, spoke at the vigil (along with UCG members Donn Smith, and Helen Warren, and a letter from Lauren Poe). Shelly’s prayer and Vince’s reflection are below for those who couldn’t attend.
Spirit of re-creating love,
Make of all of us a new rainbow people, born of tears and storms.
Erupting from clouds that hide and from claps of pain like thunder that threaten to break apart the sky,
may an unexpected calm dwell in the twilight of violence.
Help your rainbow people somehow to find light again and to shine.
Folded into your heart this night are the beloved and blessed dead, gone from us, but wrapped in your care. For their lives among us, we are grateful, and from the impact of their deaths, we pray you will make us wiser, more compassionate, and more determined to live in peace with justice, now and always, may it be so, Amen.
Three weeks ago, I had a conference in San Francisco,
and a dozen other ministers and I spent an incredible
Friday night in the Castro, dancing until way too late. What
I remember from that club was the instant sense of
community among the diverse crowd and the sheer joy we
all felt at dancing together.
A friend wrote yesterday that nightclubs and bars have
served as sanctuaries for people who have been forced
out of their sanctuaries. Sunday morning’s violence was a
violation of sacred space, of holy ground; an act of terror
in a space of safety and love.
That’s how terror and hatred work. They try to corrupt the
beautiful things in our lives. They seek to steal our joy.
They hope that we will be too afraid to do the things that
make us happy: too afraid to dance, too afraid to march,
too afraid to kiss in the street.
They hope we will be scared enough not to ask about the
root causes of this violence, scared enough to turn against
a Muslim community that itself has been victimized,
scared enough to forget the progress we have made and
the momentum we are gaining.
Now is a time for tears, for anger, for remembering those
who have been lost and healing those who have been
hurt. If you need a safe space in which to do that, you can
come to our sanctuary or to one of the other communities
represented here tonight. We need to be together and
care for each other in our grief.
But a time is coming when we will need to dance, even if
we are afraid. And when the time comes, I hope you’ll join
me at Pulse or at UC, or wherever you like to go. I hope
you’ll refuse to let anyone steal your joy, and that you’ll
dance, and march, and kiss in the streets to prove again
that love will always win.