In the waning light of this season, we Christians take upon ourselves a practice of preparing ourselves for the coming of the Christ, the Divine Light. This practice is done in our hearts and in community. Our congregation will practice in our services. You are invited to join us in this practice. Here is a schedule of our services.
Each Sunday morning at 10 AM.
Each Wednesday evening at 6:30 PM, Rest and Bread, a service of prayer and communion.
Every weekday morning at 7 AM, a service of morning prayers.
Our Christmas Cantata will be on Sunday Morning, December 20 at 10 AM
Christmas Eve Services will be on Thursday, December 24 at 7 PM
Dear Beloved,
Molly suggested that while she was away on sabbatical, we should try to hear some of the top preachers in our area. We should invite them to guest preach. We have followed Molly’s advice and invited some fabulous preachers. Our first guest preacher is the Rev. Dr. Mary Luti, a renown liturgist and excellent preacher. Mary is the Visiting Professor of Worship and Preaching, and Director of the Wilson Chapel at the Andover Newton Theological School. She will be with us this Sunday, preaching, “No One Is Alone.” And Mary will lead our prayers. We invite you to come hear Mary preach, to come and pray, sing and be in community this Sunday.
Ian is our liturgist. Tim Duhamel and Jen Purves are our greeters. Deb Duhamel and Peter Baskette are in the Nursery. Erin Iwanusa will teach Sunday School.
Erin is beginning our new curriculum for our children this Sunday. The curriculum is called Godly Play, and is based in a Montessori style of teaching. The Godly Play story for this week is the Good Shephard.
Just after services and coffee hour, there will be a Safe Church Training for all who work with or are interested in working with our children. This training will be led by Ellen O’Donnell, the chair of the Safe Church Committee and a Deacon.
The Sacred Conversations on Race Steering Committee will also meet.
Before Sunday is Saturday. On Saturday, during the day, some of us will go to Maine, departing from the church at 11:30 AM to canvass door to door for marriage equality. In the evening at 7 PM is our monthly Game Night. There will be, as usual, a wide array of amazing games set out by the Yeagers. In addition, the game Guitar Hero will be played. One can, for a donation to the handbell fund, be the Guitar Hero.
I pray your night is filled with peace, I hope to see you on Sunday.
Love,
Laura Ruth
Beloved,
I am giddy with joy, and the promise of rest. I am buoyed by your good wishes and your blessings, as I get ready for my 3-month sabbatical of rest and prayer, travel and learning, attention to body and attention to spirit. Time to blow bubbles with the kids after dinner, without the (usually happy, but still!) interruption of evening meetings, time for walks with the spouse or with God, plain old time!
This is my last Sunday before sabbatical starts, one suitable for hanky-waving. I’ll be preaching, from one of Jesus’ “I Am” statements in the gospel of John: “I am the Good Shepherd.” The sermon will be something of a charge to you all: what to do while Molly is away? The short answer: rest yourselves, as you are able. As the Tao puts it: wu wei, or Do Without Doing. Align your spirit’s desires with your body’s activity, and the things you do feel like less work.
Joe Zarro, newly graduated from Harvard Divinity School, is our able liturgist. The blessed Laura Ruth will lead a charge from the sabbatical team and the entire congregation, back to me, parameters for a good sabbatical. We will commune! Breaking bread, taking cup, together. We’ll sing fabulous hymns. We’ll send you off with a keepsake, a small something to remember your faith community by as summer begins to scatter us, something we’ll bring back together in the fall, to symbolize the unique place each of us has in this Body.
If you have a favorite quote, from scripture or elsewhere, bring it along. You’ll be invited at coffee hour to write down words of blessing (your own or those of a more famous person) to glue into a travel journal the family and I will take along on our pilgrimage. We will carry your words with us from place to place, wherever we rest our heads, and think of our people.
Lawd, how I will miss you! Isn’t it good to miss people you love?
this is the day that the Lord has made,
Molly
ps: Sunday evening, 4-7pm, parents get ready for leisure: it’s Parents’ Night Out!
Beloved,
We’re midway between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and so it’s time to honor our own version at First Church: a post-gender Mothering Fathering Sunday.
Mother’s Day, some of you likely know, was founded as an antiwar effort by mothers who were tired of losing their sons in violent conflicts. How times have changed…This Sunday, we’ll celebrate mothering and fathering not as an exercise in materialism, but as a spiritual practice: to remember the Mother and Father of us all, to stick our finger in the side of those images of God who created us.
I’ll be preaching, on the idea: “why does it seem like the default image for God in our imaginations is old, male, white? Why is it, despite our best imaginings and most progressive upbringings, does this stick?” Joan Dolamore is our first-time liturgist! Laura Ruth will preach for the children, tell us the Word. The children and women will sing. It is Jubilee Sunday and children older than Nursery age are invited to be in worship with us!
You might see a few of our prodigal old folk back among us. If you see them, go and introduce yourself. These are the people who built our church. They’ll want to know that it’s in good hands, your hands; and they’ll want to know something about you.
After church: nothing! but coffee hour, sunshine, friendship.
blessings,
Molly
Beloved!
It’s a beautiful day. What are you doing indoors?
This Sunday in church: I’m preaching from John’s gospel, more gooey, high-blown stuff on love, specifically: “This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Hear this John: easier said than done. We have a hard enough time loving ourselves. Maybe we’re starting at the wrong end of things? What is the relationship between loving, knowing, yourself, and loving, knowing, others?
Andrea Ranger is our first-time liturgist! People, come and smile and nod at her, when she confesses. If she happens to tear, cry with her. This is what it means to be one bread, one body, broken.
Laura Ruth is back with us! She’ll lead us in prayers. Thom is back! He’ll lead us in song. Our new Sunday school teacher, Erin Iwanusa, begins! She’ll be with the 7-11 year olds until Katy Pare finishes in June, then shift to the 3-6 year old classroom. Find her, greet her, make her feel at home among us!
After worship, we reuse, recycle, and take the “one body” image a little further: our first-ever Clothing Swap at church. Bring your well-loved stuff to share! Shoes especially invited–any extra will go to Rwanda for genocide orphans.
Now, what are you doing still reading this? Go outside!
blessings,
Molly
Beloved,
It’s been a quiet week at First Church Somerville. So much of what we hoped for, worked for, prayed for, has come to pass. Easter season is waning, Sacred Conversations are drawing to a close. Laura Ruth went back to Ontario this week, and her partner Meck’s father Jaap passed. Remember them in prayers today, as they bury him, then eat casseroles and tell stories.
This weekend in church: something else is drawing to a close. While Joe Zarro, our student minister, will be with us for several more weeks, he is preaching his last sermon among us! He’ll be preaching on spiritual gifts, and on perseverance in their use, from the Love chapter from I Corinthians: “If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels…”
Elleard Heffern is our able liturgist. I’ll be assisting in whatever way needed. Laura Ruth will be making her way back yet from north; welcome her when she’s home. Joe T leads the choir as Thom takes some well-deserved vacation.
After worship, those who are interested in supporting our relationship with the Casa San Jose orphanage in Colima, Mexico will gather in the Chapel to discern if God is calling us to our usual biennial mission trip for Winter 2010. Tickets are cheap right now, people… If you are interested in going on the trip and can’t make it to the meeting, or are concerned that a mission trip right now would draw off too much energy and resources in a time of recession, please let me know ahead of time.
People, the light has never been more beautiful than it is at this moment. Go outside, wherever you are, close your eyes, feel the sun on your face, and breathe deeply. TGIF!
blessings
Molly
Beloved,
Do you believe, like Huey Lewis, in Love? Do you believe in God? Do you believe that God is Love?
Do you believe that music is the food of Love? Do you believe that we know Love by this: that Jesus laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay our lives down for one another? Do you believe that faith is Love in action?
If you believe, or want to deepen your believing, you are invited this weekend. You are invited to music, to Love in action, to laying down our lives for one another:
Saturday night: Pete Shungu’s benefit concert on behalf of his father Daniel’s work against riverblindness in subsaharan Africa
Sunday morning: Worship–singing, praying, breaking open the word. Toni Snow is our liturgist (her first time! be loving!) I’ll be preaching from a letter, I John, on loving, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. Communion!
Sunday morning, continued: Dr. Daniel Shungu teaches us about his lifesaving work in Africa
Sunday noonish: Biannual All-Church Work Day! Pizza, ABBA, putting things together, moving things around, getting the sludge out, deep conversations while scrubbing windows
Sunday evening: reward yourself with a long day’s worship and word at the Michael Gulezian concert, 7p in the sanctuary. Drink it in!
blessings this coolly beautiful day~
Molly
We are walking the road toward Emmaus this weekend.
Our gospel for this Sunday is a story that is told in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 24. Two guys, Cleopas and Simon are walking along, headed toward Emmaus, maybe commuting to work or to see family. They’re talking together about what happened over the weekend. A rabbi, their teacher was just executed by the Roman Empire. Their rabbi, their spiritual leader had been arrested while praying, shuffled back and forth between courts, quickly convicted, and quickly executed. When the woman went to tend the body of their rabbi, the body was gone!
While Cleopas and Simon busy talking about this horrible news and their great loss, they are joined by a stranger on the road. The stranger wants to know what they are talking about. It turns out this stranger knew something important, life changing.
If you come on Sunday, we’ll tell you who the stranger was, and what the stranger knew. But for this weekend, we too are on this road busy trying to make sense of our lives, trying to show up where it is necessary. Who knows what stranger we might meet as we travel together?
We can travel together tonight to Ryle’s in Cambridge to dance to latin music with Betsy, Melissa H., and others. We can travel with First Church’s Marching band – we go to the First Congregational Church of Natick tonight to teach that congregation how to travel with a drum.
We can travel to First Church on Saturday, tomorrow night to hear the most amazing music performed by Meghan Kerley on the clarinet, with our own Joe Turbessi. I’ve heard their rehearsal, and their music is exquisite, no hyperbole. It is amazing. This event is a fund raiser for our handbell fund – music begets music. A $7 donation is requested.
We have the NYT and the Globe available with coffee for Sunday morning at 9 AM. You can come early and read about who and what in the world we need to pray for during our service at 10.
Our service is at 10 AM. Kelly Champion is our liturgist. Joe Zarro will preach a children’s sermon. My sermon for the rest of the congregation is “Walking With You Is My Prayer.” Tim Duhamel is the greeter. In the Nursery I will be Shane Yeager, Nursery II is Liz Danner, our Shepherd is Michael Molla.
After service our coffee hour will be served by our fabulous new fellowship team. Then the music committee and the compassionate caregivers meet.
Come walk, come eat, come see, come be. We are Christ to each other. We miss you when you’re gone.
Oh, don’t forget our panel on Thursday at 7:00. Persevering Up Heartbreak Hill: A Panel to Address Racism and White Privilege in the Communities and Congregations of Somerville and Beyond. Our steering committe has put a lot of work into this justice event. Please invite your friends and colleagues. Please come see what Edith Guffey, Associate General Minister of the UCC, Anthony Hollaway, Somerville Police Chief, Elena Latona, activist, and Peggy McIntosh, professor at Wellesley have to teach us about their lives and our world. Come with what you know. As we say where I’m from, “Each one, teach one.”
Love,
Laura Ruth
Beloved, how could I have forgotten to write you until now? Call it spring fever. I meant to alert you days ago to what you hopefully already know: we have an awesome follow-up to Easter. Something juicy and delicious, not for the high-holy-day crowds but for us, who come weekly for our spiritual nourishment.
Soul Sunday! We have a home-grown soul band, in the form of Pete Shungu, trumpet; Ben Davenny, bass; Mike Molla; drums. Pete and Ben are bringing friends, including the vocalist from Pete’s band, Soul Movement. We’ll be singing African-American spirituals, Lionel Ritchie, Jill Scott. God is good! And we’re superbad. 
I’ll be preaching, about the ego and the soul. Jen Purves is our fabulous liturgist. Joe Zarro handles prayers, with care.
It’s not too late to bring a friend. The one who thinks that church is boring, irrelevant, judgy. The one whom you really want to surprise.
It’s not too late to invite your roommate. The one you suspect is pretty lonely.
It’s not too late to ask the person you’ve already asked to church four times. Fifth time’s the charm. Things may have shifted for them. They may finally be ready for this place that you love, that means so much to you.
Happy Day, soul brothers and sisters!
Molly
Beloved,
This morning at breakfast my three year old said to her grandfather, “Do you know what we goin’ do on Easter, Grampa?” I braced myself for the inevitable litany of things the Easter Bunny was going to bring her, and cursed my dereliction of duty as Minister Mom.
“We’re going to say (drops to sotto voce) hallelujah.”
There is something to joy deferred.
There is something to going through hell, but knowing–knowing–you will come out the other side.
That is what Easter is for. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.
Today, we weep. The church has been swept of communion crumbs, for today we have no communion with God. We feel our aloneness, the aloneness of Jesus. As DH Lawrence put it,
And God is good, for I wanted him to die
To twist and grovel, and become a heap of dirt
In death. This death, his death, my death
It is the same death, this death.
The church will be open from 7:30a-5:45p today, Good Friday, for quiet prayer, hourly chant and scripture, healing prayer with ministers and deacons, a chance to mingle your suffering and the suffering of the world with that of Jesus, on the cross, or to sit with Him in silent vigil, so that He will not be alone after all.
Tomorrow, Saturday, we gather in the hush, for communion with each other, if not yet God. Easter preparations, and pizza, happen starting at 5p in the sanctuary. If you want to help set the stage, join us. If you want to be surprised, stay away.
At 6p tomorrow, Saturday, mortals join the happy chorus which the morning stars began. Oops. Wrong composer. All who want to provide the solid core for our Easterly Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah, gather to rehearse with Thom. Rest assured, on Easter morning everyone will have the score–but this here’s your chance to know the score, too.
Sunday, 6a, Sunrise Service: We gather at the peak of Powderhouse Park–follow the luminaria through the dim dawn–with five neighboring churches, to resurrect Jesus and watch the Son rise. Our own Joe Zarro will deliver the message, and Laura Ruth brings the music.
Sunday, 10a, Service of the Resurrection: Trumpets! Strings of Glory! Children, flowers! Your pain, transformed into art: the bricolage cross from our Lenten wreckage shines. I’ll preach, and John Olson is our liturgist. The Fellowship Committee makes their coffee hour debut, and our children go on an egg hunt after worship. Dress in your finery! Wear your hats, your spats! Come, shine before God! Come, learn what it is to live again!
blessings and peace
Molly
