Thanksgiving 2011: Celebrating Our Seniors/Our Elders
Remarks by Rev. Steven Epperson
October 9, 2011
© 2011 Unitarian Church of Vancouver
Rob Dainow came into my office, I think it was two years ago, and told me he thought it would be a good idea, and timely too, for us to recognize and celebrate the senior members of our congregation. Rob, some things take time to gestate. But I never forgot this good idea of yours, and so today, taking a cue from Hillel, the great first century rabbi, who said: “If not now, when?”—the time has come to single out and celebrate the elder and veteran members and adherents of our congregation.
In looking over our UCV membership, I am deeply impressed not only with the size of our senior cohort; more important, I am sincerely impressed and deeply thankful for the richness of their lives—your lives—and for the role our senior members have played at UCV, in one way or many ways, down through the years. You know very well that without your service and devotion to this congregation, we would not be here; nor would we be as strong and visionary a religious community as we enter into our 102nd anniversary year. And for this I, and all of us here, are deeply grateful to you.
About a month ago, we did our best to compile a list of our members and adherents fast approaching, in the midst of and beyond their eighties. When that list arrived at my desk, I just about fell off my chair, though I shouldn’t have been surprised: there were 88 names listed there; and if the Talmud is right, as I quoted from it a couple of weeks ago—if one person, one soul, is comparable to an entire world, our senior members constitute a galaxy of planets—each unique, priceless—whole worlds of memory, experience, of joys and sorrows, vision and achievement.
Look around this room with me for a moment; consider what I have just said. How fortunate we are that the universe has sown out into this congregation the rich fullness of the life of our ...
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