Feeding The Common Life in Turley/NorthTulsa

Hi all.

Here on the northern edge of Tulsa, in the one month just past, we redistributed for free 11,000 pounds of food, and 7,500 pounds of that was given out in one hour thanks to the visit we coordinated from the mobile food van of the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma, and thanks to all our volunteers who mobilized to give the food to neighbors first and then themselves. Almost all of our volunteers use the food pantry here themselves..

I am humbled to think that all we do now, and even more to come, wouldn't have happened without the action just nine years ago in January when we began our first failing attempts at church that led to our amazing missional community; we wouldn't be here without the first support of the folks there in the suburbs and then during the time of our move to Turley/NorthTulsa, and without even those many not with us any longer, and without the support of you all from far from us and all the students who have worked with us in the ensuing years, and the groups that have helped us with donations and grants, all of you have inspired us and our neighbors here; and so that food event that literally stopped traffic on North Peoria to see what was going on in the abandoned Cherokee School parking lot would not have happened without you. But, it is a sign of things to come, even greater, and even more surprising. Maybe our related motto to "That's soooo Turley" should be something we say a lot of here, and hear from others, "Wow!", especially when it sinks in how few of the usual resources we have.

Giving out food in January was one of our signature events, but we do so on a regular, ongoing basis, as well as organizing common meals, and working with our partners on the deeper social issues that have created so much need especially in our zipcode. Here, as often as we can and as best we can but never as we could, though always in the spirit of abundance, we feed the hungry, we clothe, we give out hope that change can happen, we create connections for relationships, we create events for justice, and for celebrating life itself, and we seek to partner with all who want to connect their mission with ours. A lot that never makes it into our list of coming events is all part of this work.

In the next two months, in very common and diverse ways, the Sacred will be present here growing healthier lives and neighborhoods. Behind each of the things you read about below, there are a few struggling lives of people who, in partnership with the Higher Life, make it happen. In the church year now, this is the season of Epiphany, when we lift up the ways God is made visible in the common creation and common life, illuminating for us the path to follow, especially giving us examples to adopt as soon we enter into that time of narrowing our path during Lent to focus our attention on deepening our connection with the Sacred. So come join with us as we serve the world in the days ahead; be amazed at what a very small group of committed citizens can do, with a big vision and a full to overflowing heart:

Saturday, Feb. 11, eat with us at the Turley Odd Fellows Lodge, 6227 N. Quincy Ave., 8 to 10 am, $5 suggested donation; proceeds are used to benefit the community. Because of the forecasted bad wintry weather this weekend, the Garden Day kickoff has been postponed until the following Saturday, Feb. 18 at 10 am at our Welcome Table KitchenGardenPark, 6005 N. Johnstown Ave. and every good weather day after that on Saturdays. At 5:30 and 7:30 pm weather permitting each Saturday our Recovery 12 step groups meet at our community center, 5920 N. Owasso Ave...Also on Saturdays, Feb. 11 and Feb. 18, there is the registration and workout for the renewed and vitally important for our neighborhoods North Tulsa Youth Baseball, and Softball, for those 4-14 years old, 11 am-2 pm at O'Brien Park. Years ago some of the best youth sports was organized in North Tulsa, but for years the facilities here were used mainly by those bringing in their childrens' teams from the suburbs; it is great to have a locally produced organization now in its second year rebuilding on the legacy.

Sunday, Feb. 12, 9:30 am, study based on the latest biblical and theological scholarship through the "Saving Jesus (from the radical right and the secular left)" DVD, followed by our common liturgy and communion, common meal, and then join us from 2-5 pm at the Peace Academy, 4620 S. Irvington Ave., for the second session of the Interfaith Trialogue Series, this year on Food, Religion and Community, and after which there will be a planning session for the Marketplace of Ideas event that we will be a part of to help conclude the series (see below).

Tuesday and Thursday each week, 3 to 6 pm, Food Pantry and Clothing Pantry and Computer Center and Library open.

Thursday, Feb. 16, noon, first part of Volunteer Orientation for our various projects. Free lunch. First session focuses on Mission, Vision, Values, and Relationship Skills.

Friday, Feb. 17, 5:30 pm, community townhall featuring a presentation by the State director of the Dept. of Human Services at Tulsa Community College Northeast Campus, room 617, Apache and Harvard, and networking with other groups in State Rep. Seneca Scott's district.

Sat. Feb. 18, 10 am. the Garden Day Kickoff at the park and orchard, 6005 N. Johnstown Ave., one of our first miracle among the ruins projects...also that day representing our group I will be at our McLain High School Foundation Board Retreat as we grow our plans for helping the students, families, staff, and partners continue transforming our region's junior and senior high school.

(We had a great community meeting to hear from the representatives for The Lighthouse Charter School that will most likely be going into our neighborhood Horace Greeley School which is soon to be closed, we suspect; Greeley is the school the students transferred to this year near us after the Cherokee School on North Peoria right across from us was closed. We are also working actively on plans to bring community organizations into the now abandoned Cherokee School; by the way, we did hold our recent worship service in the gardens we created at Cherokee after burying the dead dog that had lain unattended in the parking lot for more than a week; and we are working on some way to keep our summer feeding program going this coming summer at Cherokee School if at all possible where we fed more children and youth 18 and under than at any other site as we kept it going throughout the summer and not just during summer school like so many sites that relied on school staff.)

Sunday, Feb. 19, after our study, our worship, our common meal, we will go to Boston Avenue Methodist Church for the final session of the Food, Religion, and Community program and we will be a participant in the Marketplace of Ideas that follows highlighting the food justice programs of area groups. See more at www.occjok.org.

Tuesday, Feb. 21, 6:30 pm in honor of Black History Month and our ongoing mission that includes reconciliation, we will have a free meal and showing of the recent documentary on the struggle for reparations for African Americans, featuring Tulsa native and professor Dr. Cornel West and others, called "Stubborn as a Mule." (I am sure for our meal we can work in a little Mardi Gras theme).

Wednesday, Feb. 22, Ash Wednesday Service. Contact me for details as I suspect we will be again joining our partners at the Turley United Methodist Church for their evening service beginning Lent.

Thursday, Feb. 23, at 6 pm we will hold our first Weekly Lenten Vespers Service, then at 6:30 pm is the Neighborhood Safety Group meeting.

Tuesday, Feb. 28, 7 pm, join us for community townhall and organizing at the Community Association meeting at O'Brien Park.

Thursday, March 1, 3:30 pm, join us at the center for our Future of Turley Partnership Planning Meeting; at the past meeting besides our organizing work, and besides the charter school presentation, we hosted a presentation by Reggie Ivey, director of the Tulsa Health Department about the new Wellness Center and its programs being built in our area.

Sunday, March 4, join us at 10:30 am at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Stillwater as I preach a Lenten word based on Mark 8:31-38, "A Theology of the Cross for Unitarian Universalists"

Looking Ahead: Come serve with us as we transform our area during our Second Annual Week of Service, March 11-16, volunteering with us and our partners, and helping us host Wildflower Church again from Austin, Texas. As part of that we will have our Monday, March 12, Tour and Orientation of our Service Area of TulsaNorth/Turley, and that evening at 5:30 pm we will host a free meal for all, and have a 6 pm showing of the new movie "The Way" starring Martin Sheen, about the pilgrimmage along the Camino de Santiago, the way of St. James, in Spain, http://theway-themovie.com/. This is a movie with missional community values and themes, about forming community along the road of life, not organizing it first and then taking the walk, and about the challenges and surprises of transformation along the way, especially in the common life act of walking. We will also have a discussion afterwards and presentation by the Rev. Jonalu Johnstone, of First Unitarian Church in Oklahoma City, who recently journeyed on the walk.

And come to the national Revival of the UU Christian Fellowship, March 22-25, in Fairfax, VA in the Washington, D.C. area; see all the information at www.uuchristian.org/revival.

Finally, a few quotes to cast the above in its deeper meaning:

"Any religion that professes to be about the souls of people, and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion." Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Every spiritual master in every tradition talks about the significance of small things in a complex world. Small actions in social life; small efforts in the spiritual life; small moments in the personal life. All of them become great in the long run, the mystics say, but all of them look like little or nothing in themselves." Sister Joan Chittister.

(We have a short hand for that: It is soooo Turley.).

blessings, and thanks, and more soon,

Ron Robinson

www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com www.turleyok.blogspot.com www.uuchristian.org www.ptstulsa.edu

Freely Following Jesus, a sermon preached in Austin, TX Wildflower Church

Freely Following Jesus

Wildflower Church Austin TX Jan. 22, 2012

The reading from Mark 1:14-20…a part of the weekly lectionary, a way churches of different traditions all read and comment on the same biblical passages each week; the UU Christian Fellowship was one of the founding organizations who set up the current revised common lectionary; www.commontexts.org.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God,¹⁵and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”¹⁶As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen.¹⁷And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”¹⁸And immediately they left their nets and followed him.¹⁹As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets.²⁰Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.”

Contemporary reading from “Christian Voices within Unitarian Universalism”

Sermon

Let’s begin with a round of a few different voices from Unitarian Universalists, lay and clergy, who are in the UU Christian Fellowship. I hope it telescopes right away just a bit of the wide bandwidth of what it means to freely follow Jesus among our faith community’s tradition, but let me say upfront that even these selected voices present too limited a picture, as you will see. Still, they reveal encounters of the heart and the hands as well as from the mind.

From Dave Dawson: --“I share a desire for the freedom to test the outer limits of my Christian faith. Within my church I am not told I am wrong, just looked at quizzically when I say I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ…I remain a UU Christian as a witness to those in mainline Christianity that, yes, universal salvation is alive and well, and it is a beautiful option for those people mired in shame-based churches.

 From Anita Farber-Robertson: --“It was not, however, going to be enough to want Jesus in my life. I was going to have to claim him, and let him claim me. I was going to have to say, “Yes, this is my path. You are my guide, my teacher, and my savior, for without you my soul would get brittle, my mouth grow bitter, my heart hard.”

 From Terry Burke: --“My baptism remains central to my religious self-understanding. As part of the confession of faith that Carl Scovel had me write, I said, “I believe that God seeks a loving, dialogical relationship with humanity, and that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ calls us to reflect that sacrificial love in our lives. The cross and the faithful community proclaim that it is more important to love than to survive and that love is stronger than death.”

From Robert Fabre: --“So Unitarian Universalism was, for me, the pathway back to Christianity. No doubt I wouldn’t be where I am today, wouldn’t be the person I am today, without it. Ironically, the longer I’ve been associated with this liberal religious community, the more conservative I’ve become on a personal level. So now I can say, I believe that Jesus was the son of God (not God but the son of God); I believe in the resurrection (not the resuscitation of a dead body but the resurrection); and I believe that I am saved by grace (not because I accept Jesus as my personal savior but because, despite my confusion and my unbelief, despite my shortcomings and mistakes, in a mysterious way, beyond my comprehension and explanation, God accepts me).

 From Victoria Weinstein: --“Who is Jesus Christ to me? He is both a teacher of the Way, and the Way itself. For one who has always had a hard time grasping the concept of God, let alone developing a working definition of God, Jesus both points me toward a definition of God and then lives that definition. Jesus Christ is the freedom that laughs uproariously at the things of this world, while loving me dearly for being human enough to lust after them. He is my soul’s safety from all harm. He is the avatar of aloneness, a compassionate and unsentimental narrator of the soul’s exile on earth, and proof of the soul’s triumphant homecoming at the end of the incarnational struggle. He is not afraid to put his hands anywhere to affect healing. He mourns, and weeps, and scolds, and invites. He is life more abundant and conqueror of the existential condition of fear.”

And From the late Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley: Today, Jesus remains a central figure of my religious identity. And yet I don’t often call myself a Christian because there is no agreement on what the term Christian means, either within Unitarian Universalism or without…There are conservative and liberal understandings of the Jesus story and Christian witness, and none of these has any exclusive claim on Jesus or those who seek to follow him. In my Christian witness, no one’s soul (or spiritual salvation) is dependent on a particular ritual, obligation, or statement of belief. There is no giant cop up in the sky dictating who will go up and who will go down. And yet I have been moved to tears by liturgical expressions of the story of Jesus and his work as a mystical teacher. It’s most accurate to say that I am a nominal Christian who has also found truth and wisdom in pre-Christian and mystical religions, earth-centered spiritualities, religious humanism, womanism, and other theologies of liberation. I have embraced the spiritual practice of Thai Chi and the wisdom of Buddhist philosophy. I am a Unitarian Universalist because I do not exclude any particular theology. As the spiritual says, there is “plenty of good room” at the banquet table.

I would also include the voices of the non-Christian UUs who are a part of the UU Christian Fellowship but who love to learn with us and even worship with us. These include atheists and agnostics and many others who do not claim to freely follow Jesus, but who find their own spiritual lives deepened by being around those who do; and I would include the progressive Christians who are not UUs who are a part of us too, who like what we bring to the Christian table and are sometimes amazed to find that what they think have been new discoveries in biblical and theological studies have actually existed for centuries, among us.

The religious landscape in America has changed vastly since 1945 when the UUCF began. In UUism, in Christianity, and in UU Christianity. These UU Christian voices now are more diverse than you would have found when the UUCF began. Surprise, surprise, they are still changing. For a faith that roots itself in the theological belief that revelation is not sealed and cannot be sealed, we do seem to still resist change. I once had a church member in another congregation say “When I joined this church I guess I thought it had always been the way it was when I joined, and would always stay that way.” On the other hand, when we talk about ongoing revelation as a core value of our tradition, it doesn’t mean continually throwing the baby out with the bathwater in every successive generation, as if that is the mark of a progressive faith. Sometimes, often, ongoing revelation means returning to our touchstones and knowing them more fully because of where we have been, and being touched and supported by them even more deeply and strongly because of it.

There are four words that I think sum up the relationship between Christianity and Unitarian Universalism—in terms of our history and still at work now. They are: Commonplace. Contradiction. Conundrum. And Convergence. (I have borrowed the first three words and ideas from the Rev. Earl Holt.  I updated to add the fourth, convergence.)

Once upon a time, to speak of Christian voices in our movement would have been a commonplace thing, as redundant as saying Methodist or Baptist Christian. It hasn’t been all that long ago, relative to our history. In a 1936 national survey of Unitarians only, some 92 percent of the respondents said they considered their local church to be a Christian church. Now, of course, there were many in the so-called Christian church then who would have argued against that. As there are today. But, I don’t think it is spiritually healthy to let others define you, and what is interesting is how the Unitarians saw themselves. For the Universalists, by and large, they didn’t consider it then an issue to be surveyed about, so integral was Christianity to their identity even though there were movements within Universalism already working to change that.

But if we want to really grasp the notion of how commonplace Christian is in our roots, we should look at the statement of belief approved in 1853 by the American Unitarian Association.

 “WE BELIEVE in Jesus Christ, the everlasting Son of God, the express image of the Father, in whom dwelt all the fullness of the God-head bodily, and who to us is the Way and the Truth and the Life. WE BELIEVE in the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, the teacher, renewer, and guide of mankind. WE BELIEVE in the Holy Catholic Church as the body and form of the Holy Spirit, and the presence of Christ in all ages. WE BELIEVE in the Regeneration of the human heart, which, being created upright, but corrupted by sin, is renewed and restored by the power of Christian truth. WE BELIEVE in the constant Atonement whereby God in Christ is reconciling the world to himself. WE BELIEVE in the Resurrection from mortal to immortality, in a future judgment and Eternal Life. WE BELIEVE in the coming of the Kingdom of God, and the final triumph of Christian Truth.

And that was from the heretical Unitarian Liberal Christians of their time, and after Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker had preached their famous sermons and Transcendentalism was rising. You might say it was approved because of those sermons and the theological changes underway.

A couple of points to know, though: one, there may be some among us, maybe the Trinitarian Universalists, like myself, whom have always been a part of who we are, who resonate with that language and those theological expressions today still; it is good to remember we never voted not to believe that statement, or another, but we only voted here and there new expressions for new times, not as official replacements that negated what came before; and second, Christians helped to create a faith community that, even if unconsciously in some ways, was open to others different from them; in large measure because of the kind of Christians they were, they helped form an association where they could, and would be, in the minority.  It is not a bad cultural place for a follower of Jesus to be.  

On the Universalist side, in the mid 1930s, they affirmed the following statement: “The bond of fellowship in this Convention shall be a common purpose to do the will of God as Jesus revealed it and to co-operate in establishing the kingdom for which he lived and died. To that end, we avow our faith in God as Eternal and All-conquering Love, in the spiritual leadership of Jesus, in the supreme worth of every human personality, in the authority of truth known or to be known, and in the power of men of goodwill and sacrificial spirit to overcome evil and progressively establish the Kingdom of God.”

But by 1945, coming out of the end of the second world war and wanting to cast a vision of a new kind of faith for a new kind of world, the Unitarians began to create common language of purpose that did not specifically lift up God, much less anymore Christ. In reaction to that and to preserve and promote their faith within and without their own ranks, the Unitarian Christians, including the first president of the later created UUA, created a national fellowship. From 1945 to 2004, the fellowship was in Massachusetts, once having its own building in downtown Boston.  A year after hiring me, we moved the UUCF from The First Church of Christ, Unitarian, in Lancaster, Mass, to our church in Turley.

            After 1945 in many places, especially in new lay led fellowships, Unitarian Universalism became the opposite of Christianity, and it was considered a contradiction to be a UU Christian. Over time as Christianity liberalized in many of its denominations, and as more and more UUs began to see how they were a more than tradition, rather than an anti this or that tradition, people began to see UU Christians as conundrums, puzzles. That meant we got a lot of questions like “If you are a Christian and a UU, do you believe in the Trinity, in the divinity of Jesus, in Hell and Heaven, etc etc? And especially the question, wouldn’t you be more comfortable in a Christian denomination like x, y, or z?”

Quick answers to those conundrum questions:  Christians have always believed many things about the nature of God and Jesus and the afterlife; UU Christians do as well. The interesting new development in UU Christianity is that a great number of our members have been non-Christian UUs first, and that it has been through Unitarian Universalism that they have become Christians or Jesus followers for either the first time ever, or as adults, so the thought of leaving for another church doesn’t appeal.  

What we have morphed into then is a UU Christianity where some places it is still commonplace to think of UU and Christian in the same way, and where some places it is seen as a contradiction, and where it is to many a conundrum, in large measure because we now have the Convergent UU Christians. These fall into two categories. One kind are those who converge different ways of primarily following Jesus or practicing their Christian faith. We have classic UU Christians who see Jesus as a teacher, who seek to follow his lessons. We have small c catholic UU Christians who experience Jesus in the traditions and rituals of the church over the centuries. And we have liberationist UU Christians who know Jesus in the actions of healing and liberating and being with the oppressed and marginalized and suffering. (You can read more about these types in the pamphlet Who Are The UU Christians by the Rev. Tom Wintle on our website). More and more UU Christians are converging these different ways of expressing their faith. But we also now have UU Christians who are converging their Christian faith with say Buddhism, or neo-paganism, humanism, Jewish roots, mysticism, and also among us are those who converge the UU part of their faith with their regular attendance and membership in a Christian community. And, to top it all off, we do have UU Christian churches who are also affiliated with other denominations the same as they are with the UUA. The spirit of convergence is alive and well. And, as we often say, we don’t think Jesus, or the radical inclusivist Paul and other early Jewish followers of Jesus, would have it any other way.  In fact UU Christianity is like a living embodied parable told by Jesus.

Which brings me to the final part of this sermon, tying a first century life together with our 21^st centuries lives: what is it about Jesus that keeps causing otherwise sane people to do crazy things in their life, still, whether it be leaving their livelihoods and putting down their fishing nets, their careers,  and following someone who asks nothing of them other then everything, who doesn’t say come follow me only if you are good, and believe this or that, but who says come and together, in freedom, we will do something unheard of, be fishers of people, especially the drowning and the lost and the left behind, rebuilders of abandoned places and people, come and we will live in a way and in a place that will be both draining and fulfilling at the same time, where you will be asked not to hide from the crosses the Roman Empire has erected to scare you into submission to its unjust ways but you will be asked to pick up that cross and transform it from fear to love, to risk your very life, in order to show the world that another way of life is possible, in fact can be glimpsed here, now, in what we are doing, and someday will be here for all?

            Jesus’ parables reveal perhaps the clearest picture we have of who he was and why he was so revolutionary that he was killed; they show the kind of Jesus we are trying to make visible in the world through our missional community back in Oklahoma in an area of great suffering and abandonment where we are guided by the 3Rs of relocation, redistribution, and reconciliation.  So, as I began with the words of some of his followers, to close let me end with Jesus’ words.

A favorite parable is when Jesus said, my translation, the kingdom of God is like a woman who stole leaven and put it into three measures of flour, until it was all corrupted. End of parable. But those few words are about the radical fact of God changing sides, as my seminary professor Brandon Scott puts it. Of God’s Relocation, redistribution, reconciliation. Follow Jesus and experience God changing sides.

Jesus’ phrase “kingdom of God”, was itself a kind of internal parable, for the kingdom, the world, the Empire as everyone knew, was Caeser’s. The evidence was everywhere; if you needed reminders just look at your coins or your crosses lining the roads. Caeser was Lord and Savior and was called that and the Son of God, and what was divine, then and now, was power and honor and property and propriety and security, being cool, popular, successful, accomplished, affluent, and with an appealing appearance. Jesus immediately challenges those assumptions by claiming kingdom is not Caeser’s but that of the God who is in relationship with the poor and the conquered.  Today instead of the Kingdom of God, we in the U.S. might say the Consumer Marketplace Entertainment Empire, or just the Empire of Me or Our Kind

In this world changing parable you see Jesus goes on to link God with leaven, something very ordinary, but also something considered unholy, not like the purity of the unleavened bread, rather something moldy that was to be kept separate and apart while preparing your meal. God, Jesus is saying, is in what others seek to shame and silence. And the main player in this God story is a woman, and as if that isn’t bad enough in the eyes of the world, she is a woman who sneaks or steals this leaven, and then foolishly puts it into enough flour to feed a feast, and what happens? It all goes bad, all becomes, in the eyes of the world, useless, to be abandoned. And that’s where the parable ends. And where it really begins to take off.
The God of this parable, as Jesus’ ministry and life also revealed, has relocated…from holiness to unholiness, from power and privilege and public status and acts to what happens in the home, out of sight is no longer out of mind, at least in God’s mind and sight; the everlasting has relocated from fullness and contentment to times and places and people of emptiness and what others see as waste; also God here even changes from being A Static Being to becoming a process, to a movement that changes and corrupts from within the dominant culture’s status quo and beliefs in what is worthy and respectable.

As Jesus challenged the authorities of his time, so this parable challenges us today, to also pick sides, to relocate, to go experience God, and help make God visible, where the powerful and the privileged won’t go, making visible what they seek to keep hidden in hopes of keeping the status quo intact.

Jesus expresses the life and depth of a real freedom, a freedom known as empowering both persons and the communities that nurture those very persons, a freedom whose other name is responsibility, a freedom that is the opposite of license to do what one wills, a freedom that has been the hallmark of the free church tradition of Unitarian Universalism from its origins in radical congregationalism that found a home on this continent. A kind of freedom that in this world today needs to be shouted from the mountaintops and lived in the abandoned places, especially when so many little Emperors seek to misuse the word freedom, just as they misuse Jesus as well.

In freely following Jesus today, we can, we hope, continue, just as the parables did and call us to, to turn our lives and the world upside down, and inside out, and during it all marvel, in amazing grace, at what happens next.

 

Revival/Retreat sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship: Welcoming the Feminine in Christianity, and much more worship and workshops

Come experience the power of progressive Christianity and the free religious spirit and participate in our 10th Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship Revival/Retreat. Share this exciting news and event with others.

 

Lectures Theme: Many Voices, Many Verses: Welcoming The Feminine in Christianity

Worship Theme: Hard, Sacred Words

Small Group Theme: Deepening Spirituality: With A Little Help From My Friends

Workshop Themes: Prayer, Bible, Theology, Universalism, Celtic Christianity, Sacred Feminine, New Metaphors, Missional Church, Growing Small Groups of Jesus Followers, UU Christianity 101

Come March 22-25, 2012, UU Congregation of Fairfax, VA. in the Washington, D.C. area.

Come for one day or for full event. We even have single event prices. All worship will be free and open to the public. See www.uuchristian.org/revival for registration and where you can download the revival brochure and more. Check back often for updates. Contact us with questions or to recieve updates at executivedirector@uuchristian.org.

Presenters and Preachers:

Lecturers: Dr. Mary Hunt "Feminist Theologies in Action---Women Around The World Doing Faith-Based Justice Work; Dr. Amy Oden, "Wide Open Spaces: Women's Voices in Christianity", Margaret Starbird: "Mary Magdalene: Woman and Archetype"

Workshop Presenters. Revs. Thomas Schade, Anita Farber-Robertson, Susan Newman, Scott Wells, Ron Robinson, Sue Mosher, Dave Dawson, Jennifer Sandberg, and others to be announced. .

Worship Leaders for Opening, Closing, Taize, Communion, Baptism, Prayer and Healing, Daily Office: Revs. Melanie Morel-Ensminger, Mary Katherine Morn, Kathleen Rolenz, and more to be announced.

Small Groups Coordinator: Rev. Lillie Mae Henley; group facilitators to be announced.

More on The Lecturers:

Dr. Mary Hunt is a feminist theologian who is co-founder and co-director of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) in Silver Spring, MD. She lectures and writes on theology and ethics with particular attention to social justice concerns. Dr. Hunt received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. She also received the Masters in Divinity degree from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley and the Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. Her undergraduate degree in Theology and Philosophy is from Marquette University. She will focus on ways in which women from the Christian tradition, especially in the women-church movement, are engaging in new forms of sacrament and solidarity. She is author of a classic work, Fierce Tenderness: Toward A Feminist Theology of Friendship.

Dr. Amy Oden is Dean and Professor of History of Christianity, Wesley Theological Seminary. Dr. Oden received her B.A. from the University of Oklahoma and her Ph.D. from the Southern Methodist University. Dr. Oden has published such books as In Her Words: Women’s Writings in the History of Christian Thought, And You Welcomed Me: Sourcebook on Hospitality in Early Christianity, and the Wesley Study Bible. She has recently finished a book project entitled God's Welcome: Hospitality for a Gospel-Hungry World. She is both a respected scholar and a dynamic speaker.

Dr. Amy Oden's lecture will be: Wide Open Spaces: Women’s voices in Christianity. She writes: 'Throughout history women have called Christianity to more spacious thinking and living. Women’s voices invite and challenge the faithful to the good news of an expansive life. We will listen to their stories, and engage them with our own."

Margaret Starbird holds BA and MA degrees from the University of Maryland. She later studied theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, TN. Starbird is the widely acclaimed author of works that seek to restore Mary Magdalene to a position of honor denied her for 2000 years by the entrenched hierarchy of the patriarchal system. Starbird gives lectures and workshops worldwide focused on reclaiming the Sacred Feminine in Christianity. She writes: Who was Mary Magdalene? Could she have been the wife and beloved of Jesus? What became of her after the Crucifixion? Why was her story suppressed by the Church Fathers and why must we now retrieve it? With an eye to the “Easter Mysteries” celebrated at the Spriing equinox, we will examine the Sacred Partnership revealed at the very heart of the Christian faith. Reclaiming this ancient mystery corrects a tragic “design flaw” in Christian doctrine—the loss of the Holy Bride."

 

The Workshops:

Some of the exciting workshops and special conversations and gatherings we will have during Revival will include:

Special three-hour Centering and Contemplative Prayer Workshop, Sue Mosher, Universalist National Memorial Church, Washington, D.C.

The Bible and Women: It's A Man's World, Or Is It?, Rev. Dr. Susan Newman, All Souls Unitarian Church, Washington, D.C.

A New Metaphor for UU Christians: From 'saving remnant' to 'hidden wellspring,' Rev. Tom Schade, First Unitarian Church, Worcester, MA

Praying the Psalms, Rev. Anita Farber-Robertson, Interim Minister, Swampscott, MA

Women, the Image of God and the Universalist Hope, Rev. Scott Wells, Washington, D.C.

Divine Feminine in Celtic Christianity, Sue Mosher, Universalist National Memorial Church, Washington, D.C.

Missional Church, Rev. Ron Robinson, Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship and The Welcome Table Church, Turley, OK,

UU Christianity 101

Starting and Nurturing Small Groups of Jesus Followers, Dave Dawson, member of All Souls Unitarian Church, Washington, D.C.

Symbols of the Feminine Divine, Jennifer Sandberg, Universalist National Memorial Church, Washington, D.C.

The Small Groups: Deepening Spirituality

Three times during the Revival, participants will meet in small groups to "deepen spirituality with a little help from our friends", sharing lives, faith journeys, the revival experience, and more with an intentional program. The purpose is to engage small group participants in experiential exercises which will lead them to a deeper understanding of their own spiritual depths. With this knowledge, they will be able to establish or enhance their own spiritual practices. To share with others one’s life experiences around desire for greater spiritual meaning in one’s life. Facilitators present experiential exercises that will allow participants to share personal feelings, thoughts, and responses to words, sensory stimuli, music, and imagery. Participants will, by the end of the small group sessions, have a greater under­standing of their ability to pray, contemplate, or meditate. With this newly acquired knowledge, they will be better equipped to establish their own spiritual practices.

 

2012 Dreams

 This Sunday, in the spirit of the season of Epiphany, bring your dreams for what our missional community can be and do in 2012. We will wind up our final video episode of Justice For The Poor starting at 9:30 am then have a short worship that is long on sharing dreams and plans for this year. Calendar making as sacred act and art. We will be planning our MLK events and parade entry. And our common meal and more planning. And come walk with us Sunday Jan. 15 at 5 pm as we participate again in the candlelight march downtown and the Martin Luther King, Jr. interfaith service at Boston Avenue United Methodist. And planning a mission trip to Austin, TX for the weekend of Jan. 22 when I preach there on being a Christian in Unitarian Universalism. Plan on joining us here for a mission week of service and learning March 10-16.

How in the year ahead can we deepen our daily prayer, our weekly worship, our monthly lifesharing struggles and strengths, our annual retreat, our committment to a pilgrimmage during our lifetime, being open to daily random acts of kindness justice and beauty? What shape will that take? What new can we offer our community? How can our work through the Community Center, in the community, and at our Community GardenPark be intertwined with our learning, our serving, our worship?

"And Yet"...A Truly Living Nativity Scene in This Our New Nazareth

The Christmas Words from The Welcome Table

a free universalist christian missional community, 5920 N. Owasso Ave., Turley, OK 74126

feel free to forward and share with others...

Soon it will be the season of Christmas. Already though its spirit of surprising love, abundance, peace, joy, and hope have been felt here in our area. Thanks for letting us share them with you. Our wish is that these reports bring you as much goodwill as you all have brought to us.

We call this area of North Tulsa and Turley at this time of year especially a "new Nazareth." Scriptures report that people believed that the village of Nazareth had such a bad reputation that "nothing good could come from it." At the time 2000 years ago, Nazareth was little known and little regarded. Just a few miles away stood the bigger, shining new city of Sepphoris, a kind of suburban sprawl built by and for the economy of the Roman Empire, taking up land that had sustained the poor, displacing people. Nazareth was even moreso then a place for the left out, the left behind, the decidedly uncool people. And yet, today, so few have ever heard of Sepphoris, while Nazareth, well Nazareth is known the world over for the good that came from it, and that keeps coming.

The New Nazareth: All you have to do, anytime there is a story about any sort of crime, and in fact a story even about any sort of new development or plans or groundbreaking, here on the northside of Tulsa, is to go to the Tulsa World online and read the comments left by people to the story. The refrain is the same; people get what they deserve because they are there, meaning here, and if they were smart they would leave, and no one would ever or should ever move there, and nothing good will last because our neighbors won't let it, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the lack of resources and the history of segregation and neglect and decisions made by people who leave elsewhere breaking apart the social communities, it is all about people making bad choices they and their children even should be punished for. We hear this all the time from people who have grown up and spent many adult years in the Tulsa area without ever coming to this area, and how afraid they are when they do, and how others warn them not to. It is not that we don't have struggles and problems of crime, and bad choices so often driven by so many addictions, and lord knows it is so much easier to get people to respond based on fear of something or someone than to get them to respond out of a desire and belief that they can make this part of the world, and their lives, better.

And yet, just a few days ago, we held a party here, threw open our doors for anyone to come, had no security guards, and had no idea how many would come celebrate Christmas with our small group; the past few years in our old community center space just a half mile north of us now, we had had a good time with about 20-30 people from the area, most of whom we knew. But this year, in our new and still emerging community center space, without still being able to afford much attractive signage on the outside to let people know what this big building is being used for, our Christmas Party had some 125 people, a majority of whom hadn't been here before, or only for our Halloween Party when we had 300 people show up, and no security guards then either, and no violence then either. We fed people with Christmas tamales and pizza from businesses right here, and from what we and another church provided; we brought and got gifts to hand out and in a fishes and loaves moment kept finding gifts to give out to all the children who came; and we sang as a community christmas songs and hymns, these voices of people who hadn't sung together before, and might not have another opportunity to sing with others this season.

And yet, here in the new Nazareth, at that party, a little girl said, to no one in particular, as she was moved by the spirit of the moment of community, "This is the best night of my life." Think about that. It was both a moment of great wonder; like an angel proclaiming in a night full of danger and oppression and isolation "Be Not Afraid for I bring you great tidings..." And it was heart breaking too. She had not had this experience before, so many people gathering in peace, joy, hope, and love. She probably, if she is like so many we live with here, a few in her family and perhaps estranged from other family, so no extended family expereinces, no church expereince, no means to go outside the area much if at all; the lights of Christmas, the excess and abundance of Christmas, the story of Christmas itself, mostly comes to her through the screen of a television, which both connects her to a greater world and accentuates her own isolation and disconnect from it. Her family has had to choose between keeping utilities on and having food and having gifts; we make it just a bit more bearable by helping with the food and gifts so they can spend on the utilities, though skimping on all of it.

And yet, here we were all for her, celebrating, blessing our meal and running out of it and getting more of it and all saying Amen, and people making connections for the first time, and hearing about all we have been doing and will be doing, people impromptu volunteering to help us at the food pantry this past week even as they come to get their own food in what has been our busiest ever week; we have run out of turkeys from the food bank and have had to purchase more on our own to meet the need; and this week in another amazing event the children in our neighborhood school, Horace Greeley Elementary School, who are all on free lunch programs themselves, they and their families filled up 15 boxes of food in the month of Nov. and Dec. and on the last day of school contributed it to our food pantry, which many of them use. And yet that night, and this month has all been very ordinary; it has taken so little effort, really, on our part; so few people have created it; no one has been stressed out or worried about its outcome; no one has tried to control it and shut it down out of fear of what might happen, or what might not happen, not have enough, or get this or that wrong.

And yet, though most of our commercial and public district is dark at night even in this season, we have lighted up our building, and we have even lighted up the historic memorial arch and evergreen tree in the courtyard of Cherokee School that has been closed since we finished our summer daily free lunch there. These few lights are what that little girl sees though with her own eyes, not through a screen, and I believe they mean more than all the bright lights on the other side of town, because they are here where she lives.

And yet, I like to think of what has been experienced here in the past few weeks (including the worship and discussions and movies and common meals we have on a regular basis in the missional community gatherings and with our Advent Vespers too) all as a truly living nativity scene. Not one that has people dressing up to look like the manger scene, as wonderful as those are; Not a pageant either; but a truly living embodied nativity scene, for at our Christmas Party, at our overflowing food pantry experiences, at the Greeley school food drive for us, Christ was born again.

That is what Christmas is about, especially here; it is about creating "And yet" moments, an "And yet" world. The world was ruled in terror; the rich kept getting richer and the poor kept growing in number and kept getting poorer with fewer places to turn to for help; the land was being used up; the religious authorities were becoming servants of the Empire; technology was improving and the spirits of people were declining; the prophets were getting their heads cut off and more were jailed, more silenced, more made refugees. And yet, a baby was born...at the same time, then as now, that babies thousand times over in numbers die, are killed, and yet a baby was born...and in that fragile, vulnerable particular event, is all of divinity and eternity, the spark of possibility that not only is another world possible, but in that birth another world has been started, all in order to remind us that it is such abandoned, fragile, vulnerable, and very ordinary particular people and places and events that we are to go in search of the Sacred.

"This is the best night of my life." I hope, truly, that our Christmas Party, our place, ourselves, all become a fading memory for that little girl here. I hope another world embraces her and she has so many other better best nights of her life that this one will be lost to her. I hope that other world happens right here too, and that she is nurtured here and able to grow and give back to others all right here, instead of having to flee to Sepphoris. Mostly, I hope we are able to continue creating such nativity events for others like her in many more ways, places, and times around our community here. For all that, go to www.turleyok.blogspot.com and read all we have done and are doing through our community foundation work; this letter has been about the spiritual center that is the hub for all the spokes of the other work, though you can at the link above easily make a donation and be a part of our community here where such a little amount makes such a big difference.

Finally, here is some of the news of the ways we gather:

Saturday, Dec. 24, 5 pm join us at the Turley United Methodist Church for a Christmas Eve candlelight service, at 6050 N. Johnstown Ave. across from our Welcome Table KitchenGardenPark and Orchard.

Sunday, Dec. 25, 9:30 am join us for Christmas Morning Worship of our own Lessons and Carols and Communion Service and Meal here at 5920 N. Owasso Ave. We will take a break from our Justice for the Poor video series and resume it on Jan. 1.

Thursday, Dec. 29, 6:30 pm the neighborhood safety meeting his held here.

Saturday Dec. 31 beginning at 9 pm we will have a New Years Eve Watch Party here, games, watching the movie Ghandi to bring in a new year of peace and resistance to Empire, with refreshments, black eyed peas and more.

Sunday, Jan. 1 New Years Day worship, 9:30 am to 1 pm our usual gathering for video series from Sojourners, communion and meal and service.

Thursday, Jan. 5, our Future of Turley planning group here at 3:30 pm, and at 5:30 pm at O'Brien Park, 6147 N. Birmingham Ave., we will join the Advisory Board to welcome at a reception our new activities director there.

More to come in the New Years Letter....till then, live justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God, and pay attention to the many ways Christ is being born in, among, and beyond you, remembering that Christmastide begins, not ends, Dec. 25 so keep it in your heart, share it and celebrate it throughout the 12 days; to help in that go visit www.uuchristian.org and go to the Christmas links there on the home page, and keep checking back for the gifts of Christmas there; and pause to reflect on how Christmas is not your birthday (even those of you born on Dec. 25 lol) but is the birthday of the one whose wish list is to bring good news to the poor.

blessings, and thanks again,

Ron Robinson

Christmas Lessons and Carols and Communion and Candles Liturgy

                         Christmas Candlelight Service

Lessons and Carols and Communion

The Welcome Table

 Free Universalist Christian Missional Community

5920 N. Owasso Ave. Turley, OK  74126

INVOCATION
from "Christmas Beatitudes" by David Rhys Williams

On this blessed day let us worship at the altar of joy, for to miss the joy of Christmas is to miss its holiest secret. Let us enter into the spiritual delights which are the natural heritage of child-like hearts.
3 Let us withdraw from the cold and barren world of prosaic fact if only for a season.
That we may warm ourselves by the fireside of fancy, and take counsel of the wisdom of poetry and legend.
Blessed are they who have vision enough to behold a guiding star in the dark mystery which girdles the earth;
Blessed are they who have imagination enough to detect
the music of celestial voices in the midnight hours of life.
Blessed are they who have faith enough to contemplate a world of peace and justice in the midst of present wrongs and strife.
Blessed are they who have greatness enough to become at times as a little child.
Blessed are they who have zest enough to take delight in simple things;
Blessed are they who have wisdom enough to know that the kingdom of heaven is very close at hand, and that all may enter in who have eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to understand.

"O COME, ALL YE FAITHFUL"

O Come, all ye faithful, Joyful and triumphant
O Come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem,
Come and behold him, Born the King of angels
O Come, let us adore him, O come let us adore him,
O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.

Sing choirs of angels, Sing in exultation,
O Sing, all ye citizens, of heaven above
Glory to God, In the highest
O Come let us adore him, O come, let us adore him
O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.

LIGHTING THE ADVENT & CHRIST CANDLE
In Advent season each week we have pointed the way to Christmas. Peace, Joy, Love, and Hope, these are the touchstones in our journey preparing our hearts for this holy night when we begin again in the spirit of the Child. And so we come to Christmas once again, as have those before us through the centuries, the mighty cloud of witnesses who have lighted our way with their lives of faith, hope and unconditional love.
May the lights we burn tonight warm us with memories of their inspiration and their aspirations.
In miracle and mystery, Jesus was born, light shining in the darkness. In miracle and mystery, all are born, new lights of life full of hope.

May our lives be the Light of this Good News.
Peace and joy and hope and love---which never come easy and are easily lost—all come together in the liberating spirit of God.
May God’s light heal our lives and world.

And may this light, on this special night of birth, remind us that to be in the spirit of Christmas we must be where peace needs to be born,
Where joy needs to be sung,
Where hope needs to be found,
And where love needs to be shared.
We light these candles once again in this Season which reminds us how to live most fully all our days.

We light these candles to proclaim the coming of the light of God into the world.
With the coming of this light let there be peace. Blessed are the peacemakers. With the coming of this light let there be joy. Blessed are those who mourn and who suffer in this special time, that their hearts be lifted. With the coming of this light let there be love. Such great love helps us to love God and one another, especially our enemies. With the coming of this light let there be hope, that goodness will prevail in our lives and world, that oppression will end, that what unites us is stronger than what divides us, that we will find our way in the light of God and fear not.

With the coming of this light let there be born once again the simple transforming freedom the Christ Child brings to the world, through which the light of God shines in all, that we may be God’s people every day, and care for one another and for all of God’s Creation, with our hearts, minds, souls, and our hands.

We light these candles to proclaim the coming of the light of God into the world.

      
PRAYER
O God, who hast brought us again to the glad season when we remember the birth of Jesus, grant that his spirit may be born anew in us. Open our ears that we may hear the angel songs, open our lips that we may sing with hearts uplifted, Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace, goodwill toward all. Amen. (King's Chapel Book of Common Prayer)

FIRST LESSON: Luke 2:1-7

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.²This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.³All went to their own towns to be registered.⁴Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.⁵He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.⁶While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.⁷And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

"AWAY IN A MANGER"

Away in a manger, no crib for his bed,
The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head;
The stars in the sky looked down where he lay,
The little Lord Jesus, asleep in the hay.

The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes
But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes
I love thee, Lord Jesus! Look down from the sky,
And stay by my cradle, till morning is nigh

SECOND LESSON: Luke 2: 8-12

⁸In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.⁹Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.¹⁰But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:¹¹to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.¹²This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”

"THE FIRST NOWELL"

The first Nowell, the angels did say,
was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay
In fields where they lay keeping their sheep
On a cold winter's night that was so deep.
Nowell, nowell, nowell, nowell,
Born is the king of Israel.

Third Lesson: Luke 2: 13-20

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,¹⁴“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”¹⁵When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”¹⁶So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.¹⁷When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child;¹⁸and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.¹⁹But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.²⁰The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

"ANGELS WE HAVE HEARD ON HIGH"

Angels we have heard on high sweetly singing o'er the plains
and the mountains in reply echoing their joyous strain
Gloria, In excelsis Deo; Gloria, In Excelsis Deo.

Shepherds why this jubilee? Why these songs of happy cheer?
What great brightness did you see? What glad tidings did you hear?
Gloria, In Excelsis Deo; Gloria, In Excelsis Deo.

Come to Bethlehem and see, Him whose birth the angels sing
Come adore on bended knee, Christ, the Lord, the newborn King.
Gloria, In Excelsis Deo. Gloria, In Excelsis Deo.

PRAYER OF PEACE AND JUSTICE
"The Work of Christmas" by Howard Thurman

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the Kings and Princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flocks,

The work of Christmas begins.

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry

To release the prisoner,

To teach the nations,

To bring Christ to all,

To make music in the heart.

PASTORAL PRAYERS

After each prayer is mentioned, say in unison: O Light that shines in our darkness:  come and free us with your love.

"IT CAME UPON A MIDNIGHT CLEAR"
It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old
From angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold
Peace on the earth, good-will to all, From heaven's all gracious King.
The world in solemn stillness lay, to hear the angels sing.

But with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long
Beneath the angel strain have rolled Two thousand years of wrong
And man, at war with man, hears not, The love song which they bring
O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing.

READING

“Emmanuel” by Frederick Buechner

Christmas is not just Mr. Pickwick dancing a reel with the old lady at Dingley Dell or Scrooge waking up the next morning a changed man. It is not just the spirit of giving abroad in the land with a white beard and reindeer. It is not just the most famous birthday of them all and not just the annual reaffirmation of Peace on Earth that it is often reduced to so that people of many faiths or no faith can exchange Christmas cards without a qualm.

On the contrary, if you do not hear in the message of Christmas something that must strike some as blasphemy and others as sheer fantasy, the chances are you have not heard the message for what it is. Emmanuel is the message in a nutshell. Emmanuel, which is Hebrew for "God with us." That's where the problem lies.

The claim that Christianity makes for Christmas is that at a particular time and place "the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity" came to be with us himself. When Quirinius was governor of Syria, in a town called Bethlehem, a child was born who, beyond the power of anyone to account for, was the high and lofty One made low and helpless. The One whom none can look upon and live is delivered in a stable under the soft, indifferent gaze of cattle. The Father of all mercies puts himself at our mercy. Year after year the ancient tale of what happened is told raw, preposterous, holy and year after year the world in some measure stops to listen.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. A dream as old as time. If it is true, it is the chief of all truths. If it is not true, it is of all truths the one that people would most have be true if they could make it so.

Maybe it is that longing to have it be true that is at the bottom even of the whole vast Christmas industry the tons of cards and presents and fancy food, the plastic figures kneeling on the floodlit lawns of poorly attended churches. The world speaks of holy things in the only language it knows, which is a worldly language.

Emmanuel. We all must decide for ourselves whether it is true. Certainly the grounds on which to dismiss it are not hard to find. Christmas is commercialism. It is a pain in the neck. It is sentimentality.

It is wishful thinking. The shepherds. The star. The three wise men. Make believe.

Yet it is never as easy to get rid of as all this makes it sound. To dismiss Christmas is for most of us to dismiss part of ourselves. It is to dismiss one of the most fragile yet enduring visions of our own childhood and of the child that continues to exist in all of us. The sense of mystery and wonderment. The sense that on this one day each year two plus two adds up not to four but to a million.

What keeps the wild hope of Christmas alive year after year in a world notorious for dashing all hopes is the haunting dream that the child who was born that day may yet be born again even in us.

Emmanuel. Emmanuel.

"O LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM"

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin
Where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.

COMMUNION RESPONSE
We lift up our hearts in God for the gifts of Life given for all.
Thanks be to God.

As Christmas reminds us of how the Divine came into the world in one so small, young, and fragile, so the Gifts of Life Abundant are in the ordinary made extraordinary, in the bread of the earth and the juice of the grape becoming food of the Spirit, incarnations of the Sacred.
Thanks be to God.
As Christmas calls us to be mindful of all those in need, all without a room, all with grief and fear, and to work for a world more just, so may this token of our daily bread, and this token of our cup of forgiveness which quenches the thirst of the soul, call us to go feed others.
Thanks be to God.
As Christmas offers us peace and light in times of darkness, may the sacred offering of this small meal, one to another, inspire us to acts of lovingkindness, all in the Spirit of the One born upon this night who showed us faithfulness without fear, preparing a welcome table for all.
Thanks be to God.  

And so we join together in saying the prayer Jesus taught to those who would follow in his radically inclusive hospitable and justice-seeking way of the Spirit. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever, and ever. Amen.

 
BREAD OF LIFE, CUP OF HOPE

All are worthy and all are welcome in this free and open communion. We follow the practice of intinction, or dipping of the bread into the cup before eating.

May we remember that in our times of hunger and brokenness, of sadness even in holiday season, that God provides wholeness and abundant gifts of Creation all around us, among us, and within us all, more than enough to share with others. There is always enough of what all need if we all share and take no more than we need. That is the way it is in God’s inn, God’s welcome table, open to all regardless of who they are, what they believed, especially for those who are suffering, and oppressed. Come let us celebrate at the table the birth of the one who would make table gatherings in the midst of strangers and enemies, in the abandoned places of the Empire, reminding all there of God‘s healing presence.

SHARING CANDLELIGHT FROM THE CHRIST CANDLE
"SILENT NIGHT"
Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin mother and child, Holy infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.

Silent night, holy night, shepherds quake at the sight
Glories stream from heaven afar, Heavenly hosts sing Al-le-lu-ia
Christ the Savior is born, Christ the Savior is born

Silent night, holy night, Son of God, love's pure light
Radiant beams from thy holy face, With the dawn of redeeming grace
Jesus, Lord at thy birth, Jesus Lord at thy birth.

BENEDICTION

This is a Day which God has made.

 Let us rejoice and be glad therein (Psalm 118).

And let us treat it as the gift it is--with surprise, delight, care, and attention, and look for ways to share this holy day and all Life’s gifts with others.

For what does the Eternal ask from us?

To live justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God (Micah 6).

Go now in peace, and may the peace of God go with you all the days of your life.

Go now in joy, finding the deepest spirit in the simplest of things.

Go now in love, dedicated to making it visible as justice for all.

 Go now in hope, the spirit of the Christ Child bringing light into your life and world.