Good morning and welcome home, I am Allen Vander Meulen, your Covenant Leader this morning.
For me, this church and actually all of you, are a place of rest and restoration. A community of those with whom we gather and find love and support and healing and purpose.
And it is in times like these, times where we see pain and harm, even death, needlessly and deliberately inflicted upon so many in this nation and throughout the world, that we learn why communities like ours are so important. Communities that welcome all and labor to build respect and love and affirmation and hope, for all.
We worship and work together to prepare ourselves and those whom we love to go out into a hurting and lost world; ministering out-of, and sharing, the Gospel that has been planted within us.
And so, with these thoughts in mind, hear this poem written a few days ago by Amanda Gorman (whom you may remember spoke at Joe Biden’s Inaugural) entitled “For Renee Nicole Good, Killed by I.C.E. on January 7, 2026.”
They say she is no more,
That there her absence roars,
Blood-blown like a rose.
Iced wheels flinched & froze.
Now, bare riot of candles,
Dark fury of flowers,
Pure howling of hymns.
If for us she arose,
Somewhere, in the pitched deep of our grief,
Crouches our power,
The howl where we begin,
Straining upon the edge of the crooked crater
Of the worst of what we’ve been.
Change is only possible,
& all the greater,
When the labour
& bitter anger of our neighbors
Is moved by the love
& better angels of our nature.
What they call death & void,
We know is breath & voice;
In the end, gorgeously,
Endures our enormity.
Delivered at Memorial Congregational Church UCC in Sudbury MA, January 18th, 2026 (the 2nd Sunday of Epiphany).
The original post for the poem can be found here: https://x.com/TheAmandaGorman/status/2009432288661000193.
The prolog to Ms. Gorman’s poem is Copyright 2026, Allen Vander Meulen III, all rights reserved; licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
The Here and the Hereafter 