No Going Back
Our world is changing quickly, so often in ways that are in deep conflict with our values. From immigration, to climate change, to foreign affairs, we wonder what to do with our despair, fear, and disorientation. Historically, religious liberals have seen ourselves as charged to keep catastrophe at bay by fixing the world’s brokenness and re-building the world in its proper shape. Instead, what if we imagined the Apocalypse not as a future event, but as one that is already behind us? How would we understand the task at hand? How might this worldview help us understand our role in the emergence of our shared future?
Come at 9 a.m. and rehearse with our summer choir to sing in the service—all are welcome! David Lauth and Alan Ware will be playing selections from Leonard Cohen and U2.
Join us for worship this Sunday, July 15, at 10 a.m.!
Order of Service: July 15 Order of Service
Listen to the Sunday Service podcast:
Offering Recipient: Women’s Prison Book Project (give here)
The Women’s Prison Book Project (WPBP) provides women and transgender persons in prison with free reading materials and educates those on the outside about the realities of prison and the justice system. Women in prison have specific needs for particular kinds of information: legal aid pertaining to women who fight back against their abusers, material on families, children, women’s self-help, and women’s health. Our offering plate will be used for postage, rent, and the purchase of some specific books, and would thus work against the isolation and deprivation that the prison system uses to keep those on the inside from connecting to those on the outside. WPBP also needs your book donations. We have designated shelves in the Social Hall for books donated to WPBP and a flyer describing the types of books most frequently requested.
Summer Worship Theme: Emergence
We humans look at a flock of birds flying overhead, sketching awe-inspiring designs in the sky, and think the birds must be following a leader. But leadership alone has never been the full measure of history nor the full inspiration of the beauty and patterns that emerge from a community of birds in flight. In fact, the patterns we see in the sky are made by each individual bird bringing to the group its own creativity and reacting to the movement of two or three of its neighbors. It is a dance between freedom and faithful followship. Our work in community, our efforts in justice making, and patterns of right relationship emerge in the same dance between freedom (our own creativity) and faithful following (our commitment to our neighbors, community). Together we create patterns of love and justice. This summer we ask: what makes something emerge? How and when do we lead? How and when do we follow? Where and how do we place our attention? What is emerging?
