Each Night And This Night; Each Child and You

Hi, everyone. Thanks for tuning in.

You are not a disappointment.

When I was a kid growing up in the Unitarian Universalist Church, we had a music director named Maureen Ferrara and she took the words of Sophia Lyon Fahs and set them to music: "each night a child is born is a holy night."

You are not a disappointment because you are not the world savior. Or maybe we are all the world's saviors.

Each night a child is born is a holy night. Every night is holy, every night is sacred, every baby. Every baby is sacred. Everyone is sacred. Every human, every baby, grows up to be a sacred adult. You are sacred.

You are not a disappointment. Your place on this earth is not determined by your ability to be productive, or be useful, or even be kind. Although kindness is good.

You are not a disappointment because you did not bring in wealth. You are not a disappointment because you did not achieve the milestones of adulthood long now past.

You are not a disappointment. You are a joy, you are a gift. You are all kinds of unknowable possibility. You are the embodiment of the sacred made flesh. You and everyone near you and everyone far from you, every single person is holy. Everyone.

It's one of the hardest things to wrap my head around. It's one of the best things to wrap my head around.

Every person, every child, is holy and sacred and here.

And we don't even know if there's a reason or not, but it doesn't matter. The point is joy and pleasure, and the pure, raw reality of existence. Just existence. Maybe existence is the point. Existing just for the sake of itself, just for the sake of itself.

Each night a child is born is a holy night, and that includes the night that you were born. Whether it was tonight, or half a year away. Each night a child is born is a holy night. And you are holy. Each night is holy by itself, without any people or non-people. Without any other reason. And you, too, are holy.

You, too, are part of the reason. Each night. Each day and each night, and each day and each night is holy, and you are holy. And this night, symbolically is the night when we celebrate the holiness of every night and every child.

And for those of us who do not celebrate this particular night, this particular child, this particular ritual- for there are many of us- we will celebrate in our own time, in our own days, in our own ways: that the world is sacred, that time is sacred, that existence is sacred. And that life always comes again. Somehow.