November 30, 2014

The First Sunday of Advent

I was moved to stand here today mostly by the Isaiah Scripture, particularly that phrase, “Thou art the Potter—I am the clay.”  Since it’s the first Sunday in Advent, I wondered how that thought portrayed  the birth of Jesus.  We know that Isaiah predicted the birth of The Messiah several times, saying, “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son ,” and once he even confessed his own doubts:  “Shall a woman bear a child without pain?…Who has heard of anything like this?”  Like Isaiah, those are my thoughts too, but since am the clay, I’m not yet fully formed.

November 23, 2014

Feast of the Reign of Christ

Three weeks ago Jackie Wallen preached about the thin places, where we find ourselves closer to God.  I’ve loved that image since I first heard it a few years ago.  We all have our thin places and thick places too.  I said in mission group a while back that things really thicken up for me in this Sanctuary when we stand to sing a hymn.  If I thought I had any real chance of success, I’d petition Celebration Circle to cut back the number of hymns to one or two per service or, best of all, none.  I’d much rather extend the time of our periods of silence because for me it is often in the silence that everything thins out. 

November 9, 2014

Twenty-second Sunday After Pentecost

The Gospel today speaks of the bridesmaids who were ready – who had filled their lamps with oil and of the ones who had not.   I find more questions than answers in reading this passage:

                           What does it mean to be ready?

                            What am I getting ready for?

                            To be in the presence of God?

                            How do I prepare myself to be in the presence of God?  

                            Where do I find this lamp oil?

November 2, 2014

The Feast of All Saints

Today we are celebrating All Saints Day. All Saints Day is a part of a sequence: of days — Halloween, All Saint’s Day, and All Souls Day – that mark a special time of year. It’s the season when we become acutely aware that our days are getting cooler and our nights are getting longer. We stand between summer and winter, light and dark, life and death, the ordinary world and the world of spirits. These days, Jan Richardson says, are:

A sacred space in the turning of the year—what Celtic folk have long called a thin place,  where past, present, and future intertwine, and the veil between worlds becomes  permeable.”

 October 26, 2014

Twentienth Sunday after Pentecost

READING

Art speaks to the senses in ways that are too complex and subtle to be able to fully define in words. We respond physically and emotionally to the colors, shapes, textures, rhythms, timbres, pitch, or other aspects of a painting, a song, a film in ways that are difficult to describe, but still very real.

Deborah Sokolove, Sanctifying Art

INTRODUCTION

When the Sacred Conversations on Race and Diversity Planning Group organized our first joint worship service last year, we focused on a social justice issue that both of our faith communities found pressing and ripe for multiracial, multicultural social action—the myriad injustices surrounding our system and practice of mass incarceration.  This year we decided that our communities shared something else in common, the creation and appreciation of art.  So we thought we would lift the theme of creativity’s role in our spiritual journey.