November 8, 2026
24th Sunday after Pentecost
MINISTER
Lay Leader: David Giansiracusa
SCRIPTURE
Psalm 62: 1-2, 5-8; Romans 8: 24-27, 38-39
LAITY SUNDAY: 3 Reflections by Roy Hitchings, Susan Yoder, Vicki Doudera
ROY HITCHINGS: Coping with a Troubled World -- Hope and Resilience
Hope vs optimism:
-Dick Synder 1:1 over beer(s) 15 years ago- very helpful because I was somewhat pessimistic about the world at that time. We discussed the difference between hope and optimism.
-Hope = “a desired expectation; what I want to happen”. It’s the opposite of despair
-Optimism = “expecting things to lead to positive, favorable outcomes”
-Difference: I do not expect good results as often as I used to, but try to remain hopeful that things will get better, and then I work toward that end.
- I can always remain hopeful
What works for me (“sometimes”)
1) Take action, do something:
-For myself: prayer, exercise, yoga, be outside in nature (these fall colors), sing, go fishing (surprise!!)
-Debbi’s ”Trump Free Zone” sets limits on bad stuff at the dinner table
-We watch Ted Lasso or something positive or that makes us laugh (release those endorphins) especially last thing before we go to sleep
- Be with others that lift me up: chorus, Ryan’s helpers; Deb’s Rotary
-For others:
- Skip (friend): Volunteer at Meals on Wheels & Food pantry
- Do something meaningful to help others, e.g. I give blood,
- Smile, try to be kind and friendly during my daily interactions, e.g. Hannaford
-In Politics:
-VOTE because “your vote matters”; hopefully you also did.
-Be an advocate for positive change in something that I am passionate about (e.g. Gun safety for me)
2) Be Thankful for what I have (not dwell on what I don’t have or what’s wrong). Rounds at PBMC seeing cancer patients – gave me perspective – my issues were pretty minor compared to theirs.
Michael Coleman story (told with his permission): 17+ years with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Slowly lost many body functions and independence like walking, talking understandably, driving. It would literally take Michael 5 minutes with his walker to get from the back pew of the church to this altar. Yet he does not despair. He knows that he will not beat ALS “because no one ever has”. But he has a wicked sense of humor: works out at the Y 3 times a week; actively posts his political views on FB; credits his wife Ruth and friends for their support. His secret: he takes it 1 day at a time, is flexible, adapts, does not dwell in the past; He loves and is loved by his daughters and many friends. “I try to let go of my losses so they don’t control me, and focus on the people and organizations (Y) that keep me engaged and enjoying life”
Michael is great inspiration for all who know him. He personifies HOPE.
In Conclusion: I always feel better after church than I did when I arrived. Why?
- Positive peer group – YOU
- Meaningful sermon that touched me and made me think
- We take action based on our beliefs e.g. Justice and Witness programs like anti-poverty led by Jonathan Frost.
- And every Sunday I am reminded how fortunate I am to live here and have friends like you. YOU give me hope.
SUSAN YODER: Journey
After thinking about David’s assignment for the past few weeks, I’d like to share a bit of my journey from deep, gut-wrenching grief and loss of hope to rediscovering hope, and life, again. For without hope, there is no life. And I think I can do this.
I feel like this is the story of my journey to finding hope again but I need to say a word about my husband Tom. As many of you know, he was a man of deep abiding faith in God. Tom never lost hope and we never discussed my waning hope. In fact, the day before he died, he told us he wanted to get strong enough to resume treatment in Boston.
And now my story...
I had six years to ready myself for Tom’s death as he fought a mighty battle with cancer. I’m the oldest of four and something of a control freak or as Tom called me, the bossy older sister. And I’ve always been the cockeyed optimist.
When Tom was diagnosed with cancer, I spent hours at the Google School of Medicine trying to become more learned than his Harvard-educated oncologist. I couldn’t learn enough to stop Tom’s cancer. And my sense of hope started to slip.
Then I decided to read every book written on death and dying so I’d be prepared when his time was near. I still couldn’t stop the steady progress of the cancer. My hope for our future together slipped further away.
We had to give up our boat, which we had named Esperance, when we still had hope. Esperance is French for hope. And one day I realized I was doing all the driving, whether it was to Dana Farber in Boston or to Church. I bought a walker and David G got us a wheelchair. And hope drifted further away.
And when Tom’s time came, despite all I’d done to be ready, I was completely unprepared.
In those early days, there was no light anywhere. And there was certainly no hope. The future is implicit in hope, and I no longer had a future. Hope is an active verb and there I had no energy left.
There was certainly false hope for a while. False hope in the form of Joan Didion’s magical thinking. Can I wish upon a star? The unspoken wish that one day Tom would walk back through the door and life would resume as intended. False hope was all I had left.
In time, David Jones, whose beloved Hilary died two days after Tom, introduced me to a very skilled grief counselor. Working with her, I learned over time that I couldn’t and shouldn’t go around the pain. I began to see I could only go through the pain and endure the unendurable.
As time moved inexorably on, I learned to survive. Moving through grief was changing me but I was coping. I was learning to do things on my own again. I was allowing my heart to open as I worked through the pain of loss. And I found I was beginning to live in a liminal space, with one foot in the past and one very tentative, unsure foot slowly but steadily moving forward.
And then one day, I saw I learning to be a little happy and heartbroken at the same time. I realized I was living again. Not the life I planned. Not the life I wanted. But my life was starting to feel like my own again and I was oh so slowly figuring out who I might be.
And hope too was returning slowly, but surely. Living proof that hope doesn't die when a person does. It just finds new places to bloom. No, I’ll never be the same. I am a different person than I was before November 13th, 2024.
So, what are my hopes today?
I hope, first of all, now that Tom is home again with God, that he is happy, and that he knows I love him still and always will. I hope he remembers the startled look on the face of the Episcopal priest who married us 40 years ago when we said at the end of our vows, “even death won’t part us now.”
I hope that the path to my future will eventually reveal itself to me. Losing Tom clearly upended my life and I still have no clear vision of my future as I walk into it.
I hope I am not burdening people with my grief but being of service to others as that has always been an important part of my life.
I hope I will carry with me the lessons I learned in my season of deep loss and that my heart will always stay open to the grief of the world.
And I hope I always remember that in the end, all that matters is who I walked all over Paris with.
Finally, as I’m speaking from a pulpit, I feel the need to speak of God’s role in my journey. For a while, I lost God and I’ll leave it at that. Somewhere in the last year, I was able to return to my daily practice of contemplative prayer and meditation. I sit at my altar, light the candle Jean Forest gave me, and begin my conversation with God as I have for years:
Loving God, I praise you, for you are the one from whom I came and to whom I will return. You conceived the universe and wove the world together and hold my life in your hands. You know my best and my worst and you will not let me go. With the mystics and saints from long ago, with my ancestors gathered here with me, I praise and thank you. Amen
Along with hope and love, God is moving back into the center of my life.
VICKI DOUDERA
Last year I spent Thanksgiving in Manhattan, on West 32nd Street and Broadway, sitting on the bed of my hotel room and eating take-out Korean food. I had to eat on the bed because the room wasn’t big enough for a chair, and because I had my 9 year old adopted black Lab Blue with me and she barked whenever I was out of her sight. We were both grieving. Blue had lost her owner, my neighbor Virginia, in June, and I had become a widow in a sudden and traumatic way eleven months earlier. Neither of us felt particularly grateful. I left Maine knowing I could not “do” a traditional Thanksgiving. I couldn’t bear to be with anyone, not even my wonderful family. I was not feeling thankful. And so Blue and I braved the bumper-to-bumper traffic and drove someplace where we could be completely anonymous. Alone together in a city of strangers. We spent four days walking… to Central Park; to ground zero; to Rockefeller Center. We admired the decorations in the Fifth Avenue shop windows. We saw the Macy’s Parade. And, because our hotel was in Koreatown, we ate lots and lots of Korean food.
It sounds like a desperate, sad thing to do, right? Leave your loving family for a less-than luxurious hotel room? No one suggested such a strange trip to me. Yet it was something I felt compelled to do. Looking back a year later I realize that my Thanksgiving exile was the start of hope returning to my life.
In the year following Ed’s death, I did not feel hopeful. Not one bit. Grateful, yes, but they are not the same things. My overwhelming emotion throughout most of 2025 was the opposite of hope. What I felt was one of the most destructive human emotions. I felt despair. I had never felt that way in my life. Devoid of hope, devoid of optimism. For example, when my daughter became engaged, my first response was not one of joy, but a deep hopelessness. How would I get through the months of planning - never mind the wedding itself — without Lexi’s dad? The dysfunction in Washington we were living through was unbearable. And so I did not listen to the news. I played country music instead. I cried every day — multiple times — no matter where I was.
My behavior must have been very tough to witness. Facing persistent despair reqires coping strategies if you’re going to survive.
Exercise was one coping mechanism that kept me sane. Taking long walks or hikes, usually alone but sometimes with a quiet friend. Shortly after Ed died I realized I needed something to get me out of bed in the morning. A routine that would become automatic so my poor brain didn’t have to think. I started weight training at the Y at 5:30 several mornings a week, a practice I have continued. Exercise of course also gives natural endorphins, which help tremendously when one is deeply sad.
Fellowship is another coping strategy, although I found I had to protect my fragile heart. Some people were just too verbal or too positive for me to take. I will admit that I found it difficult to come here some Sundays because our welcome was just too exuberant for me. Finding like souls — women who had suffered what I had suffered — was incredibly helpful. So, too, was reading the words of widows and widowers.
Another coping strategy was to acknowledge and honor my despair. For once in my life I did not care or consider what people would think. If I needed to cry, I did it. If I became overwhemed because of a certain triggering song, or memory, or phrase uttered by a well meaning person, I left the room. I was open and honest about what I was going through, whether I was here in Camden or in August doing my job.
About that job… Two weeks before Ed died I was sworn in to my 4th term in the Maine Legislature. Two weeks after his death I had to start my daily drives to Augusta to serve as representative. I was also made House Chair of the Environment and Natural Resources committee, a big job for anyone, nevermind someone in my state. I wasn’t sure how I would do it all and I did entertain the thought of stepping down. After all, as one friend said, I had the perfect reason. But just like my weight lifting class at the Y, the routine of having to get dressed, get in the car, drive to Augusta and engage with my fellow legislators, lobbyists and members of the public somehow helped. (It’s also true that my leaving would have made our voting margins dangerously close and that would not have been fair to my colleagues.) Some mornings I cried all the way to the capitol. But I got out of the car, grabbed my briefcase, and went to work. I did what I saw as my duty. And as the weeks wore on, I realized two things: first, my despair had given me an extraordinary gift: a much deeper empathy and recognition of suffering. Second, I came to see that I was putting one foot in front of the other in a capable way. I was working. I was showing up. I was doing projects around the house: painting rooms; finding new homes for Ed’s things; knitting sweaters. I was incredibly sad, but I was also resilient.
Pastor David made the comment to me that “resilience is a fruit of Hope.” For me, being resilient helped me to survive my despair. Did it lead to hope? The turning point was that trip to Manhattan with Blue. I told myself that I needed time alone to think, to cry, and to watch all the Hallmark movies I wanted. I decided that when I returned to Camden after Thanksgiving, I would try to be “ready for Christmas.” I didn’t mean that I would have a beautifully decorated home (in fact I wasn’t even sure that I would get a tree) or perfectly wrapped presents. I meant that I would arm myself psychologically for the joy of the season. I would try to “let myself be light,” as Frank Sinatra says in the Christmas song. I would work in the New Year to open my aching heart, even as I continued to grieve.
This was the first glimmer in a long, dark tunnel of a year. This was a sign of hope for me, perfectly timed for the season of Advent when we wait for the light of the world to arrive.
This Thanksgiving I will gather with Blue, and my family, to eat a real dinner in a real chair. But I will always treasure that strange trip I took last year, the turning point when hope again came into my life. Not as a replacement for my grief, but as a loving companion to it.