The Welcome Table Church, free universalist christian missional community

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

2012-01-26T13:16:00.000-08:00

Freely Following Jesus

Wildflower ChurchAustin TX Jan. 22, 2012

The reading from Mark1:14-20…a part of the weekly lectionary, a way churches of different traditionsall read and comment on the same biblical passages each week; the UU ChristianFellowship was one of the founding organizations who set up the current revisedcommon lectionary; www.commontexts.org.

Now after John wasarrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God,¹⁵andsaying, “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 ofGalilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—forthey were fishermen.¹⁷And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I willmake you fish for people.”¹⁸And immediately they left their nets andfollowed him.¹⁹As he went a little farther, he saw James son ofZebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets.²⁰Immediatelyhe called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hiredmen, and followed him.”

Contemporary readingfrom “Christian Voices within Unitarian Universalism”

Sermon

Let’s begin with around 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 abit of the wide bandwidth of what it means to freely follow Jesus among ourfaith community’s tradition, but let me say upfront that even these selected voicespresent too limited a picture, as you will see. Still, they reveal encountersof the heart and the hands as well as from the mind.

From Dave Dawson: --“Ishare 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 Isay I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ…I remain a UU Christian asa witness to those in mainline Christianity that, yes, universal salvation isalive and well, and it is a beautiful option for those people mired inshame-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 toclaim him, and let him claim me. I was going to have to say, “Yes, this is mypath. You are my guide, my teacher, and my savior, for without you my soulwould get brittle, my mouth grow bitter, my heart hard.”

From Terry Burke: --“My baptism remainscentral to my religious self-understanding. As part of the confession of faiththat Carl Scovel had me write, I said, “I believe that God seeks a loving,dialogical relationship with humanity, and that the life, death, andresurrection of Jesus Christ calls us to reflect that sacrificial love in ourlives. The cross and the faithful community proclaim that it is more importantto 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. Nodoubt 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 liberalreligious community, the more conservative I’ve become on a personal level. Sonow I can say, I believe that Jesus was the son of God (not God but the son ofGod); I believe in the resurrection (not the resuscitation of a dead body butthe resurrection); and I believe that I am saved by grace (not because I acceptJesus as my personal savior but because, despite my confusion and my unbelief,despite my shortcomings and mistakes, in a mysterious way, beyond mycomprehension and explanation, God accepts me).

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

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

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

The religious landscapein America has changed vastly since 1945 when the UUCF began. In UUism, inChristianity, and in UU Christianity. These UU Christian voices now are morediverse than you would have found when the UUCF began. Surprise, surprise, theyare still changing. For a faith that roots itself in the theological beliefthat revelation is not sealed and cannot be sealed, we do seem to still resistchange. I once had a church member in another congregation say “When I joinedthis 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 ongoingrevelation as a core value of our tradition, it doesn’t mean continuallythrowing the baby out with the bathwater in every successive generation, as ifthat is the mark of a progressive faith. Sometimes, often, ongoing revelation meansreturning to our touchstones and knowing them more fully because of where wehave been, and being touched and supported by them even more deeply andstrongly because of it.

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

Once upon a time, tospeak 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 thatlong ago, relative to our history. In a 1936 national survey of Unitariansonly, some 92 percent of the respondents said they considered their localchurch to be a Christian church. Now, of course, there were many in theso-called Christian church then who would have argued against that. As thereare today. But, I don’t think it is spiritually healthy to let others defineyou, and what is interesting is how the Unitarians saw themselves. For theUniversalists, by and large, they didn’t consider it then an issue to besurveyed about, so integral was Christianity to their identity even thoughthere were movements within Universalism already working to change that.

But if we want toreally grasp the notion of how commonplace Christian is in our roots, we shouldlook at the statement of belief approved in 1853 by the American UnitarianAssociation.

“WE BELIEVE in JesusChrist, the everlasting Son of God, the express image of the Father, in whomdwelt all the fullness of the God-head bodily, and who to us is the Way and theTruth and the Life. WE BELIEVE in the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Fatherand the Son, the teacher, renewer, and guide of mankind. WE BELIEVE in the HolyCatholic Church as the body and form of the Holy Spirit, and the presence ofChrist 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 thepower of Christian truth. WE BELIEVE in the constant Atonement whereby God inChrist is reconciling the world to himself. WE BELIEVE in the Resurrection frommortal to immortality, in a future judgment and Eternal Life. WE BELIEVE in thecoming of the Kingdom of God, and the final triumph of Christian Truth.

And that was from theheretical Unitarian Liberal Christians of their time, and after Ralph WaldoEmerson and Theodore Parker had preached their famous sermons andTranscendentalism was rising. You might say it was approved because of thosesermons and the theological changes underway.

A couple of points toknow, though: one, there may be some among us, maybe the TrinitarianUniversalists, like myself, whom have always been a part of who we are, who resonate withthat 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, Christianshelped 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 ofChristians they were, they helped form an association where they could, andwould be, in the minority. It is not abad cultural place for a follower of Jesus to be.

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

But by 1945, coming outof the end of the second world war and wanting to cast a vision of a new kindof faith for a new kind of world, the Unitarians began to create commonlanguage of purpose that did not specifically lift up God, much less anymoreChrist. In reaction to that and to preserve and promote their faith within andwithout their own ranks, the Unitarian Christians, including the firstpresident of the later created UUA, created a national fellowship. From 1945 to2004, the fellowship was in Massachusetts, once having its own building indowntown 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 ledfellowships, Unitarian Universalism became the opposite of Christianity, and itwas considered a contradiction to be a UU Christian. Over time as Christianityliberalized in many of its denominations, and as more and more UUs began to seehow they were a more than tradition, rather than an anti this or thattradition, people began to see UU Christians as conundrums, puzzles. That meantwe got a lot of questions like “If you are a Christian and a UU, do you believein the Trinity, in the divinity of Jesus, in Hell and Heaven, etc etc? Andespecially the question, wouldn’t you be more comfortable in a Christiandenomination like x, y, or z?”

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

What we have morphedinto then is a UU Christianity where some places it is still commonplace tothink of UU and Christian in the same way, and where some places it is seen asa contradiction, and where it is to many a conundrum, in large measure becausewe now have the Convergent UU Christians. These fall into two categories. Onekind are those who converge different ways of primarily following Jesus orpracticing their Christian faith. We have classic UU Christians who see Jesusas a teacher, who seek to follow his lessons. We have small c catholic UUChristians who experience Jesus in the traditions and rituals of the churchover the centuries. And we have liberationist UU Christians who know Jesus inthe actions of healing and liberating and being with the oppressed andmarginalized and suffering. (You can read more about these types in thepamphlet Who Are The UU Christians by the Rev. Tom Wintle on our website). Moreand more UU Christians are converging these different ways of expressing theirfaith. But we also now have UU Christians who are converging their Christianfaith 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 theirregular attendance and membership in a Christian community. And, to top it alloff, we do have UU Christian churches who are also affiliated with otherdenominations the same as they are with the UUA. The spirit of convergence isalive and well. And, as we often say, we don’t think Jesus, or the radicalinclusivist Paul and other early Jewish followers of Jesus, would have it anyother way. In fact UU Christianity islike a living embodied parable told by Jesus.

Which brings me to thefinal part of this sermon, tying a first century life together with our 21^stcenturies lives: what is it about Jesus that keeps causing otherwise sanepeople to do crazy things in their life, still, whether it be leaving theirlivelihoods and putting down their fishing nets, their careers, and following someone who asks nothing of themother then everything, who doesn’t say come follow me only if you are good, andbelieve this or that, but who says come and together, in freedom, we will dosomething unheard of, be fishers of people, especially the drowning and thelost and the left behind, rebuilders of abandoned places and people, come andwe will live in a way and in a place that will be both draining and fulfillingat the same time, where you will be asked not to hide from the crosses theRoman Empire has erected to scare you into submission to its unjust ways butyou will be asked to pick up that cross and transform it from fear to love, torisk your very life, in order to show the world that another way of life ispossible, in fact can be glimpsed here, now, in what we are doing, and somedaywill be here for all?

Jesus’ parablesreveal perhaps the clearest picture we have of who he was and why he was sorevolutionary that he was killed; they show the kind of Jesus we are trying tomake visible in the world through our missional community back in Oklahoma inan area of great suffering and abandonment where we are guided by the 3Rs ofrelocation, redistribution, and reconciliation. So, as I began with the words of some of hisfollowers, to close let me end with Jesus’ words.

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

Jesus’ phrase “kingdom of God”, was itself a kind of internalparable, 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 oryour crosses lining the roads. Caeser was Lord and Savior and was called thatand the Son of God, and what was divine, then and now, was power and honor andproperty and propriety and security, being cool, popular, successful,accomplished, affluent, and with an appealing appearance. Jesus immediatelychallenges those assumptions by claiming kingdom is not Caeser’s but that ofthe God who is in relationship with the poor and the conquered. Today instead of the Kingdom of God, we in theU.S. might say the Consumer Marketplace Entertainment Empire, or just theEmpire 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 thepurity of the unleavened bread, rather something moldy that was to be keptseparate and apart while preparing your meal. God, Jesus is saying, is in whatothers seek to shame and silence. And the main player in this God story is awoman, and as if that isn’t bad enough in the eyes of the world, she is a womanwho sneaks or steals this leaven, and then foolishly puts it into enough flourto feed a feast, and what happens? It all goes bad, all becomes, in the eyes ofthe world, useless, to be abandoned. And that’s where the parable ends. Andwhere it really begins to take off.
The God of this parable, as Jesus’ ministry and life also revealed, hasrelocated…from holiness to unholiness, from power and privilege and publicstatus and acts to what happens in the home, out of sight is no longer out ofmind, at least in God’s mind and sight; the everlasting has relocated fromfullness and contentment to times and places and people of emptiness and whatothers see as waste; also God here even changes from being A Static Being to becominga process, to a movement that changes and corrupts from within the dominantculture’s status quo and beliefs in what is worthy and respectable.

As Jesus challenged the authorities of his time, so thisparable challenges us today, to also pick sides, to relocate, to go experienceGod, 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 quointact.

Jesus expresses the life and depth of a real freedom, afreedom known as empowering both persons and the communities that nurture thosevery persons, a freedom whose other name is responsibility, a freedom that isthe opposite of license to do what one wills, a freedom that has been thehallmark of the free church tradition of Unitarian Universalism from itsorigins in radical congregationalism that found a home on this continent. Akind of freedom that in this world today needs to be shouted from themountaintops and lived in the abandoned places, especially when so many littleEmperors 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 upsidedown, and inside out, and during it all marvel, in amazing grace, at whathappens next.

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

2012-01-11T18:27:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-06T08:42:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-23T09:55:00.000-08:00

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 itsspirit of surprising love, abundance, peace, joy, and hope have been felt herein our area. Thanks for letting us share them with you. Our wish is that thesereports bring you as much goodwill as you all have brought to us.

We call this area of North Tulsa and Turley at this time ofyear especially a "new Nazareth." Scriptures report that peoplebelieved 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 thebigger, shining new city of Sepphoris, a kind of suburban sprawl built by andfor the economy of the Roman Empire, taking up land that had sustained thepoor, displacing people. Nazareth was even moreso then a place for the leftout, the left behind, the decidedly uncool people. And yet, today, so few haveever heard of Sepphoris, while Nazareth, well Nazareth is known the world overfor the good that came from it, and that keeps coming.

The New Nazareth: All you have to do, anytime there is astory about any sort of crime, and in fact a story even about any sort of newdevelopment or plans or groundbreaking, here on the northside of Tulsa, is togo 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 orshould ever move there, and nothing good will last because our neighbors won'tlet it, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the lack of resources and thehistory of segregation and neglect and decisions made by people who leaveelsewhere breaking apart the social communities, it is all about people makingbad choices they and their children even should be punished for. We hear thisall the time from people who have grown up and spent many adult years in theTulsa area without ever coming to this area, and how afraid they are when theydo, and how others warn them not to. It is not that we don't have struggles andproblems of crime, and bad choices so often driven by so many addictions, andlord knows it is so much easier to get people to respond based on fear ofsomething or someone than to get them to respond out of a desire and beliefthat they can make this part of the world, and their lives, better.

And yet, just a few days ago, we held a party here, threwopen our doors for anyone to come, had no security guards, and had no idea howmany would come celebrate Christmas with our small group; the past few years inour old community center space just a half mile north of us now, we had had agood time with about 20-30 people from the area, most of whom we knew. But thisyear, in our new and still emerging community center space, without still beingable to afford much attractive signage on the outside to let people know whatthis big building is being used for, our Christmas Party had some 125 people, amajority of whom hadn't been here before, or only for our Halloween Party whenwe had 300 people show up, and no security guards then either, and no violencethen either. We fed people with Christmas tamales and pizza from businessesright here, and from what we and another church provided; we brought and gotgifts to hand out and in a fishes and loaves moment kept finding gifts to giveout to all the children who came; and we sang as a community christmas songsand hymns, these voices of people who hadn't sung together before, and mightnot have another opportunity to sing with others this season.

And yet, here in the new Nazareth, at that party, a littlegirl said, to no one in particular, as she was moved by the spirit of themoment of community, "This is the best night of my life." Think aboutthat. It was both a moment of great wonder; like an angel proclaiming in anight full of danger and oppression and isolation "Be Not Afraid for Ibring you great tidings..." And it was heart breaking too. She had not hadthis 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 andperhaps estranged from other family, so no extended family expereinces, nochurch expereince, no means to go outside the area much if at all; the lightsof Christmas, the excess and abundance of Christmas, the story of Christmasitself, mostly comes to her through the screen of a television, which bothconnects her to a greater world and accentuates her own isolation anddisconnect from it. Her family has had to choose between keeping utilities onand having food and having gifts; we make it just a bit more bearable byhelping with the food and gifts so they can spend on the utilities, thoughskimping on all of it.

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

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

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

That is what Christmas is about, especially here; it isabout creating "And yet" moments, an "And yet" world. Theworld was ruled in terror; the rich kept getting richer and the poor keptgrowing in number and kept getting poorer with fewer places to turn to forhelp; the land was being used up; the religious authorities were becomingservants of the Empire; technology was improving and the spirits of people weredeclining; 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, andyet a baby was born...and in that fragile, vulnerable particular event, is allof divinity and eternity, the spark of possibility that not only is anotherworld possible, but in that birth another world has been started, all in orderto remind us that it is such abandoned, fragile, vulnerable, and very ordinaryparticular people and places and events that we are to go in search of theSacred.

"This is the best night of my life." I hope,truly, that our Christmas Party, our place, ourselves, all become a fadingmemory for that little girl here. I hope another world embraces her and she hasso 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 hereand able to grow and give back to others all right here, instead of having toflee to Sepphoris. Mostly, I hope we are able to continue creating suchnativity events for others like her in many more ways, places, and times aroundour community here. For all that, go to www.turleyok.blogspot.com andread all we have done and are doing through our community foundation work; thisletter has been about the spiritual center that is the hub for all the spokesof the other work, though you can at the link above easily make a donation andbe a part of our community here where such a little amount makes such a bigdifference.

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

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

Sunday, Dec. 25, 9:30 am join us for Christmas MorningWorship of our own Lessons and Carols and Communion Service and Meal here at5920 N. Owasso Ave. We will take a break from our Justice for the Poor videoseries and resume it on Jan. 1.

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

Saturday Dec. 31 beginning at 9 pm we will have a New YearsEve Watch Party here, games, watching the movie Ghandi to bring in a new yearof 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 ourusual gathering for video series from Sojourners, communion and meal andservice.

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

More to come in the New Years Letter....till then, livejustly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God, and pay attention to the manyways Christ is being born in, among, and beyond you, remembering thatChristmastide begins, not ends, Dec. 25 so keep it in your heart, share it andcelebrate it throughout the 12 days; to help in that go visit www.uuchristian.organd go to the Christmas links there on the home page, and keep checking backfor the gifts of Christmas there; and pause to reflect on how Christmas is notyour birthday (even those of you born on Dec. 25 lol) but is the birthday ofthe 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

2011-12-19T12:30:00.000-08:00

Christmas Candlelight Service

Lessons and Carolsand 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 daylet us worship at the altar of joy, for to miss the joy of Christmas is to missits holiest secret. Let us enter into the spiritual delights which are thenatural heritage of child-like hearts.
3 Let us withdraw from the cold and barren world of prosaic fact if only for aseason.
That we may warm ourselves by the fireside of fancy, and take counsel of thewisdom of poetry and legend.
Blessed are they who have vision enough to behold a guiding star in the darkmystery 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 andjustice in the midst of present wrongs and strife.
Blessed are they who have greatness enough to become at times as a littlechild.
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 isvery close at hand, and that all may enter in who have eyes to see and ears tohear and hearts to understand.

"OCOME, ALL YE FAITHFUL"

OCome, 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
InAdvent 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 forthis holy night when we begin again in the spirit of the Child. And so we cometo Christmas once again, as have those before us through the centuries, themighty 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 inspirationand their aspirations.
In miracle and mystery, Jesus was born, light shining in the darkness. Inmiracle and mystery, all are born, new lights of life full of hope.

May our lives be theLight of this Good News.
Peace and joy and hope and love---which never come easy and are easily lost—allcome 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 Christmaswe 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 lightthese candles once again in this Season which reminds us how to live most fullyall our days.

We light thesecandles to proclaim the coming of the light of God into the world.
With thecoming 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 mournand who suffer in this special time, that their hearts be lifted. With thecoming of this light let there be love. Such great love helps us to love Godand one another, especially our enemies. With the coming of this light letthere be hope, that goodness will prevail in our lives and world, thatoppression will end, that what unites us is stronger than what divides us, thatwe will find our way in the light of God and fear not.

With the coming ofthis light let there be born once again the simple transforming freedom theChrist 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 ofGod’s Creation, with our hearts, minds, souls, and our hands.

We light these candlesto 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 ofJesus, grant that his spirit may be born anew in us. Open our ears that we mayhear 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: Luke2:1-7

In those days adecree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.²This was the first registrationand was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.³All went to their own towns tobe registered.⁴Josephalso went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of Davidcalled Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.⁵He went to be registered withMary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.⁶While they were there, the timecame for her to deliver her child.⁷Andshe gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laidhim in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

"AWAY IN AMANGER"

Awayin 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

SECONDLESSON: Luke 2: 8-12

⁸In that region therewere shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.⁹Thenan angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone aroundthem, and they were terrified.¹⁰But the angel said to them, “Do notbe afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:¹¹toyou is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, theLord.¹²This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped inbands of cloth and lying in a manger.”

"THE FIRSTNOWELL"

Thefirst 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.

ThirdLesson: Luke 2: 13-20

And suddenly therewas with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,¹⁴“Gloryto God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”¹⁵Whenthe angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to oneanother, “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 andfound Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.¹⁷When theysaw this, they made known what had been told them about this child;¹⁸andall who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.¹⁹ButMary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.²⁰Theshepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard andseen, as it had been told them.

"ANGELSWE HAVE HEARD ON HIGH"

Angelswe 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.

PRAYEROF PEACE AND JUSTICE
"TheWork 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 theirflocks,

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 ismentioned, say in unison: O Light that shines in our darkness: come and free us with your love.

"IT CAME UPON AMIDNIGHT CLEAR"
Itcame 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” byFrederick Buechner

Christmas is not just Mr. Pickwick dancing a reel with the old lady atDingley Dell or Scrooge waking up the next morning a changed man. It is notjust 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 annualreaffirmation of Peace on Earth that it is often reduced to so that people ofmany 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 thatmust strike some as blasphemy and others as sheer fantasy, the chances are youhave not heard the message for what it is. Emmanuel is the message in anutshell. Emmanuel, which is Hebrew for "God with us." That's wherethe problem lies.

The claim that Christianity makes for Christmas is that at a particular timeand place "the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity" came to bewith us himself. When Quirinius was governor of Syria, in a town calledBethlehem, a child was born who, beyond the power of anyone to account for, wasthe high and lofty One made low and helpless. The One whom none can look uponand 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 theancient tale of what happened is told raw, preposterous, holy and year afteryear the world in some measure stops to listen.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. A dream asold 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 couldmake it so.

Maybe it is that longing to have it be true that is at the bottom even of thewhole 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 aworldly language.

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

It is wishful thinking. The shepherds. The star. The three wise men. Makebelieve.

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

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

Emmanuel. Emmanuel.

"O LITTLE TOWNOF BETHLEHEM"

Olittle 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.

COMMUNIONRESPONSE
We liftup our hearts in God for the gifts of Life given for all.
Thanks be to God.

As Christmas remindsus 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 thebread 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 tokenof our daily bread, and this token of our cup of forgiveness which quenches thethirst 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 sacredoffering of this small meal, one to another, inspire us to acts oflovingkindness, all in the Spirit of the One born upon this night who showed usfaithfulness without fear, preparing a welcome table for all.
Thanks be to God.

And so we jointogether in saying the prayer Jesus taught to those who would follow in hisradically inclusive hospitable and justice-seeking way of the Spirit. OurFather, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will bedone, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, andforgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead usnot into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, thepower, and the glory, forever, and ever. Amen.

BREADOF LIFE, CUP OF HOPE

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

May we remember thatin our times of hunger and brokenness, of sadness even in holiday season, thatGod 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 alwaysenough of what all need if we all share and take no more than we need. That isthe way it is in God’s inn, God’s welcome table, open to all regardless of whothey are, what they believed, especially for those who are suffering, andoppressed. Come let us celebrate at the table the birth of the one who wouldmake table gatherings in the midst of strangers and enemies, in the abandonedplaces of the Empire, reminding all there of God‘s healing presence.

SHARINGCANDLELIGHT FROM THE CHRIST CANDLE
"SILENTNIGHT"
Silentnight, 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 whichGod has made.

Let us rejoice and be glad therein (Psalm118).

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

For what does theEternal ask from us?

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

Go now in peace, andmay 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 Childbringing light into your life and world.

Fourth Sunday of Advent: Hope Liturgy

2011-12-17T20:44:00.000-08:00

The Welcome Table
A FreeUniversalist Christian Missional Community

Following theradical Jesus in deeds not creeds. Join us in service to our communitythroughout the week. Our Welcome Table of Worship is open to all who welcomeall, regardless of belief or denomination, race, gender, sexual orientation,age, physical abilities, economic status, or political affiliations. We don’tthink Jesus would have it any other way.

Free because weare non-creedal. We don’t give theological tests for admission, but encourageyou to test us and try us to see if this way is for you. Universalist becausewe believe God is Love and All who abide in Love abide in God for all time (1John 4:16). Christian because the generous compassionate way and story ofJesus, while not exclusively so, is our primary pathway opening up to God.Missional because we are sent to serve others more than ourselves. Communitybecause we are made not to be autonomous individuals but to be a people of God.

Invocation
Today is the day which God has made: Let us rejoice and be glad therein.
What does theEternal require of us? To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.

Chalice LightingCovenant
This is our covenant as we walk together in life as a people of Godstriving to make Jesus visible in the world: In the light of truth, and the loving and liberating spirit ofJesus, we gather in freedom, to worship God, and serve all.

Fourth Sunday ofAdvent: The Candle of Hope

Scripture: Luke 1: 26-38

²⁶In the sixth monththe angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,²⁷toa virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. Thevirgin’s name was Mary.²⁸And he came to her and said, “Greetings,favored one! The Lord is with you.”²⁹But she was much perplexed byhis words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.³⁰Theangel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.³¹Andnow, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name himJesus.³²He will be great, and will be called the Son of the MostHigh, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.³³Hewill reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be noend.”³⁴Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am avirgin?”³⁵The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come uponyou, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child tobe born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.³⁶And now, yourrelative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is thesixth month for her who was said to be barren.³⁷For nothing will beimpossible with God.”³⁸Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant ofthe Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departedfrom her.

Lighting The Advent Candles For Peace, Joy, Love, and Hope

One: The Gospel of Johnspeaks of Christ as the light coming into the world. In commemoration of that coming,we light candles for the four weeks leading to Christmas and reflect on thecoming of Christ. Christ is coming. Christ is always coming, always entering atroubled world, a wounded heart. And so we light candles of peace, joy, love,and hope as the markers along our way in this season of Advent leading towardthe manger in Bethlehem and the renewal of our spirit in the coming ofChristmas.
All: Loving God,as we move through the days and weeks of this Advent season, We open all thedark places in our lives and memories to God’s healing light. Show us yourcreative power. Prepare our hearts to be transformed by you, That we may walkin the light of Christ always coming into the world.

One: The light ofpeace, may it guide us through our hurts, away from violence, grounded injustice and compassion, knowing that the deepest peace comes not from goods forthe self but from The Common Good. All: Blessed are the peacemakers. Halleluia. One: The light of joy, may it surprise us with thespirit of wonder and new creation, and may we find it in the simple things ofthe Spirit all around us. All: We Rejoice in the Spirit of the Lord, thatbrings sight to the blind and healing to the wounded, freedom to the captives,liberation to the oppressed, justice to the poor, Halleluia. One: The lightof love, may it open our hearts and hands to the plights of others, remindingus of the love of God for us unconditionally, renewing our lives, bringing alltogether in the oneness of God. All: God is Love and all who abide in Loveabide in God. Halleluia. One: The light of hope, that even when we do notfeel the spirit of the season, even when God seems far removed from this worldand peace and justice and joy and love seem empty words, when fear is allaround and our own actions and thoughts have closed the door to the innshutting ourselves off from others and they from us, may this light of hopestill shine, and with every flicker grow stronger with the faith that God isstill present, still speaking, still giving birth to that which may save usall. All: In peace, in joy, in love, and in hope, we pause and ponder andpass on to others the ways of God. Halleluia.

Morning Songs of Hope and Advent: #95, There Is More Love Somewhere; #346,Come Sing A Song With Me; #241 In the Bleak Midwinter; #244 It Came Upon TheMidnight Clear

Prayer of Confession:

Gracious and Loving God, we acknowledge toyou, to one another, and to ourselves that we are not what you have called usto be. We have stifled ourgifts and wasted our time. We have avoided opportunities tooffer kindness, but have been quick to take offense. We have pretended that wecould make no contribution to peace and justice in our world and have excusedourselves from risk-taking in our own community. Have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and help us to live ourlives renewed in your Spirit. We long for peace within andwithout, for harmony in our families, for the well-being of our neighbors, and helpus to love our enemies. Yet wehave too often not made the hard choices that love requires. Show us how towalk in your path of faithfulness, hope, and love. Amen.

Please share prayers and blessings, joys and sorrows

Now we join insaying the prayer Jesus taught for all those who would follow in his way ofradical compassion, courage, conscience, and commitment.
Our Father whoart in heaven hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, onearth as it is in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us ourtrespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not intotemptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power,and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Communion

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Last Advent in Prison: A Poem of Hope

Prayer: O God, in the loving andliberating spirit of Jesus, we gather at this welcoming table open to all,remembering how Jesus gathered people from all the walks of life, stranger andfriend and enemies, gave thanks to you, offered all the bread of life and thecup of blessing and proclaimed a covenant of love for all in your name. Weremember too the wonder of his life, as we remember the wonder of all ofCreation given unto us and how all are One. We remember the agony of his death,and all the terrors and the tyrannies that oppress people today. And weremember the power of resurrection, the mystery of faith in the everlastingSpirit, the triumph over fear. Help us to remember to practice resurrectioneveryday, as we remember all those who have given Love the ultimate trust andthe last word and who have worked to create the beloved community of renewedand abundant life. Help us to remember with this meal especially all those whoare hungry, and may we treat all our meals as sacred and to be shared. Take us,bless us, so that even in and with our brokenness we may serve others. Amen.
Jesus said I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gaveme drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me.I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. And theysaid, Lord, when did we dothis? And he said, You did this for me when you did itfor the least of these. Here is the bread of life, food for the spirit. Let all who hunger come and eat. Here is the fruitof the vine pressed and poured out for us. Let all who thirst now come and drink. We come to makepeace. We come to be restoredin the love of God. We come to be made new as aninstrument of that love. Allare worthy. All are welcome.

Let us BreakBread Together on our knees, let us break bread together on our knees when Ifall on my knees with my face to the rising sun o Lord have mercy on me Let usdrink wine together on our knees let us drink wine together on our knees when Ifall on my knees with my face to the rising sun o Lord have mercy on me let uspraise God together on our knees let us praise God together on our knees when Ifall on my knees with my face to the rising sun O Lord have mercy on me.

Passing the Plate and Cup of Communion

1.We’re gonna sitat the welcome table, we’re gonna sit at the welcome table one of these dayshalleluia We’re gonna sit at the welcome table, gonna sit at the welcome tableone of these days 2.All kinds of people round that table, all kinds of peopleround that table one of these days halleluia, all kinds of people around thattable, gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days 3.No fancy style at thewelcome table, no fancy style at the welcome table one of these days halleluia,no fancy style at the welcome table, gonna sit at the welcome table one ofthese days.

Benediction
Let us go outinto the highways and byways. Let us give the people something of our newvision. We may possess a small light, but may we uncover it, and let it shine.May we use it to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds ofmen and women. May we give them not hell but hope and courage. May we preachand practice the kindness and everlasting love of God. Amen

“Shalom Havyreem,Shalom Havyreem, Shalom, Shalom, Shalom Havyreem, Shalom Havyreem, Shalom,Shalom”
“Go Now in Peace,Go Now in Peace, May the Love of God surround you, everywhere, everywhere, youmay go.

The Christmas Letter from A Third Place Foundation

2011-12-15T20:09:00.000-08:00

Hi and thanks to all for your interest and presence with us this past year. We just finished hosting another wonderful group from Leadership Tulsa today on a tour of the northside, so much to say and talk about in so short a time, and so I come away wishing that everyone could walk with us through the year, the ups and downs, the detours and deadends and surprising openings that mark our journey each year. This letter might fall in the category of Things I Kept Thinking About....I hope you will also read it and consider ways to give to us at the end of the year after you hear about what a year it has been in so many different ways.

2011 has been a phenomenal year when things kept getting worse, and things kept getting better, side by side. It has been a year in this regard unlike any before in our own history here, and perhaps in our community's.

We began the year by purchasing the abandoned church building that had been a central fixture for years in this community but had been foreclosed and empty for years, a symbol of so many vacant and abandoned and rundown structures here. We were able to buy it thanks to equity we had from a few months before, with your help, buying the city block of abandoned homes where we have put in our still emerging and blossoming KitchenGardenPark and Orchard on North Johnstown Ave. Along with a grant from the Zarrow Foundation, we were able to buy this old building and start reusing it even before renovating it. Thanks to a grant from the Flint Family Foundation we have been able to settle in to the building better and keep up our outreach and services and grow them.

Right away though we had the great winter blizzard that shut down the community for weeks and kept us from moving in for about a week, and which opened up more problems with the roof to go along with the major vandalism attack that had hit the building for the first time in its long 90 year history. But as soon as we were able to move in, we held a Community Art Event where area residents were able to help us clean and paint art and brighten up the building on the outside. During this same time though we lost our community health clinic from OU which had closed their others in north Tulsa the previous year. It would herald a year of increased abandonment in this area where so much community wise had closed.

We held community organizing events with OU on several issues facing our community, and worked more on the community health worker proposal that would help take primary care out of the clinic and into the neighborhoods themselves in revolutionary new ways of growing health that lasts. We are looking forward to more service learning projects with OU Social Work as 2012 begins and will be reporting on it.

In the Spring we got word that our post office, which we had had for as long as there had been a community here more than 100 years, was scheduled to be closed. After organizing petitiions, after working to actually get the story out in the public, the post office was still closed. We are hoping to find some place in the community now, though, that would like to work with us to host a possible Village Post Office to replace what we lost. This area where people have the least resources to be able to get to other alternatives to the post office is the place where they close; it is a symbol of the way values of the powerful reinforce convenience for the privileged over comfort for the afflicted.

At the same time we also got the report that the former Turley School, now Cherokee School, was scheduled to be closed; we worked on getting information out to residents, and coming up with alternatives, but the school was closed, and the communities suffer from not having a major place like school where community and residents can intersect. And we are likely to see more schools closing, possibly with charter schools placed as possible alternatives in Greeley but not Cherokee, which is better than having it closed too like Cherokee was, but we still have the major building in the heart of the community at Cherokee being vacant. We are working with OU and others to try to dream up possible new community friendly uses. Our children go to an increasingly different number of schools so far away from our community these days that this continues to be a difficulty in making the connections for community here where there are so few avenues available to do that.

Speaking of Cherokee, we have lighted up the archway and Christmas tree at Cherokee School even though it is closed so it will not be darkened this holiday season. And we have lighted up the community center building so our area will have a few public and commercial buildings with decorations showing spirit and a source of light in this time of darkness, when almost no other buildings for miles along North Peoria have any decorations for the public and our community again this year; part of the problem that comes when people who own the businesses or run the places don't live here. I know that most people in Tulsa will never see these few little holiday decorations and night lights, but I believe, in the spirit of Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree, that they signify more meaning about the reason of the season than all the glitz in other areas of the city and suburbs. We are going to do the same at the Welcome To Turley signs as we head toward the beginning of Christmas. It is part of our mission to make the community look better even before we spend on ourselves. And we are working with the Cherokee School reunion committee; and we are part of a major community food policy grant proposal that if it is received we might be able to lobby for some of its use in our area.

During the summer even after the school closing, and all the grief it caused, we managed to get the school to stay open throughout the summer so we could hold the Summer Cafe daily free lunch program for all under eighteen years old, and we stayed open longer than any other site and served more because of it. Our summer was hit hard by two natural events though, the long record setting drought and heat wave and the wildfires. We were able though because we had bought the center building to be able to open it up as the first response shelter for all the evacuues; just as we had used it as a tornado shelter in the Spring storms. Out of that experience came our renewed Turley leadership planning group that is concentrating on disaster response and deep issues. One of our residents was killed at night because of the lack of street lights and that we have no sidewalks along our major street, also a state highway, that people have to use to get to and from walking to the store or other businesses; including those in wheelchairs who have to use the highway lanes. This group is planning ways to build up the infrastructure needs of our area and are working again on plans to incorporate our own citizens and a city of Turley, or at least to find out if people will go for it. Our summer was also marked by a week of service where we hosted a church group from Wildflower Church in Austin, Texas who helped us during all this keep up our spirits and make plateau changers in some of our community sites. And at the end of the summer we were partners with OU on community health research that we hope will help us to grow more connections and the health worker plan; we are now helping with research on healthy food with the Indian Health Care Resource Center.

Even in the heat wave, we were able to win our community orchard and organize a major volunteer effort to plant forty fruit trees during the hottest day of the year. Seeing the growth of the garden and orchard has been a major accomplishment of the year; our fall harvest helped feed our neighbors and bring them together and we have so much more to do as we move forward expanding and turning it into an outdoors third place. We also helped spur on the county's commitment to removing many of our abandoned and rundown houses; this is an ongoing concern and project and we still have so many dangerous commercial and residential buildings that are left to waste. This year we also got the Federal Home Loan Bank grant that has helped us to turn the old abandoned homes into our GardenPark; it is a great example of putting all three legs of the stool into collaboration to make a huge difference in an underserved area; we used government through OU students who helped us prepare and envision it; private business through Freedom Bank and the home loan grant program; and ourselves as a nonprofit and help from grant writers at the government US Dept of Agriculture Tallgrass Resource and Conservation District to all work together to bring it about.

This Fall we have been picking up the pieces from the losses, helping Greeley School transform for the new students and staff and faculty, helping to renew the advisory board at O'Brien Park, and helping out with the continued growth of the McLain Foundation and the big event of the Taste of North Tulsa promoting healthy food and lives; and yet, in the midst of it have had to suffer our own personal losses due to the unexpected deaths of two of our own board members, Gwen Goff and Linda Taylor, and our major partner in food justice Steve Eberle. These emotional losses tempt us to turn toward our own selves and needs though we know to honor their legacies we need to continue their work making the world right outside our doors a better, safer place. Our new board members, Deb Carroll who has taken on the renewal of our food pantry justice and sustainability center, and Elaine McDondle of Sarah's Residential Living Center by McLain High School, and Demalda Newsome of the North Tulsa Farmers Market, all are giving us renewed hope and spirit as we begin to enter a new year. There is still a good buzz of wonder and hope from our sponsored community Halloween Festival that drew 300 people; and from our smaller but significant Thanksgiving turkey dinner giveaways and our Thanksgiving community meal.

By the way we just received today our 125 vouchers to distribute to 125 families in our area to be able to take big boxes of food at our Major Food Giveaway on Friday, Jan. 13 from the Mobile Food Van of the Community Food Bank. And we don't just give out food; but we teach about healthy food, give out recipes, connect people with community gardens, and with all of our community events throughout the week, and recovery groups on the weekend.

We end up the year with our Christmas Community Party on Tuesday Dec. 20 from 6 to 8 pm. Come sing with us, have refreshments with us, play games with us, get face painted, watch Christmas videos, and get to know each other better as we dream and make those dreams real in ways that continue to amaze all of us.

I wish I had been able to tell all this to the Leadership Tulsa guests today. I would have told them better what a remarkable gift it is to be able to live here with those who are struggling but still find ways to give of their strengths and spirit, of the new dreams many have, how just staying here and alive and dreaming is a sign that another world is possible; last night several of us in the community watched the movie Joyeux Noel about how peace broke out and friendships were made and worlds changed on the battlefields of France during World War One on Christmas Eve; they paid a price for creating, for a moment, that different world, but it was one that changed their lives forever, and can still today for us. I should have mentioned more to the group about the growing possibilities and community involvement with the Vann Green Park Industrial Area here, along with our unique setting of hill and bottomland so close to downtown. And I should have said more about how issues of racial justice, reconciliation, ethnic diversity, both still challenge us, and are a blessing to us here as we find ways to deepen our lives together across barriers; living next to one another, serving together with one another, linking and empowering the poor regardless of ethnicity, is all an opportunity we get to have that others may want to do but have to go out of their way to do. More on that as we move toward our participation again with the Martin Luther King Jr. celebrations.

But more of all of that in the new year. It will be for us a Year of Celebrations, when we take time to mark and thank and renew all the partnerships and people that have helped us get to where we are, whom made 2011 a little bit easier and a little bit more bearable for us, as we seek to make it so for our neighbors. A Year When We Go Deeper. Stay tuned.

And if you are still here with me at this point, let me ask you to help us enter 2012 on an amazing, surprising, gifted note. We need your End of the Year tax deductible contribution. You can make it easily and safely online at www.turleyok.blogspot.com, or can mail a check to A Third Place Community Foundation at The Welcome Table Center, 5920 N. Owasso Ave., Turley. OK 74126. Everyone of the things I have written about above will still be projects, are still in need of support; including things I didn't mention like how we are a warming station now as we were a cooling station this summer, how we are still building up our free internet center for those here without, how we need more money for our food pantry purchases, for our gardenpark, for new signs to let the world know what we have going on, for the transformation of our remaining building into a community room, for new shelves for the clothing room, for bathroom renovations, for some part time staff to keep the center open and growing a few more hours a day, and for a new website presence. These are all the "uncool" things that make possible the transformational things mentioned above.

So, thank you for all you have done, even the important work of spreading the word about us; and as we tell one another here, we are all, regardless of our circumstances, blessed in special ways, with something we each can give. We love to be able to offer to one another here the opportunities to give of our selves in so many ways; we love to be able to extend that opportunity to you too as we end out this incredible year.

More will be coming about special spiritual offerings and reflections to end out the year and to begin the new year, about Christmas and holiday worships from the missional community side of things. But, for those of you who would like to get and share more about our project side of things through the foundation, I am also attaching a large zip of materials that will help you to go deeper into our being here, and we hope you will share it too with others who might not know about this best kept secret and new ancient way of community development.

In the spirit of the One who sends us to serve, who refreshes us so we may bring comfort to others, who seeks for us to make visible those values that are everlasting, know you are a gift, for which we here are so thankful...

Ron Robinson

Third Sunday of Advent: Liturgy of Love

2011-12-10T12:03:00.001-08:00

The Welcome Table

A Free Universalist Christian Missional Community

Following the radical Jesus in deeds not creeds. We are a church primarily as we are in service to our community throughout the week. Our Welcome Table of Worship gatherings are another way we become church. All of our activities and worship are open to all who welcome all, regardless of belief or denomination, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical abilities, economic status, or political affiliations. We don’t think Jesus would have it any other way.

Free because we are non-creedal. We don’t give theological tests for admission, but encourage you to test us and try us to see if this way is for you. Universalist because we believe God is Love and All who abide in Love abide in God for all time (1 John 4:16). Christian because the generous compassionate way and story of Jesus, while not exclusively so, is our primary pathway opening up to God. Missional because we are sent to serve others more than ourselves. Community because we are made not to be autonomous individuals but to be a people of God.

Invocation

Today is the day which God has made: Let us rejoice and be glad therein. What does the Eternal require of us? To live justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.

Chalice Lighting Covenant

This is our covenant as we walk together in life as a people of God striving to make Jesus visible in the world: In the light of truth, and the loving and liberating spirit of Jesus, we gather in freedom, to worship God, and serve all.

O Lord, let my soul rise up to meet you As the day rises to meet the sun.

Third Sunday of Advent: Love Candle

Scripture:

1 Thessalonians 5:14-21

And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them.15See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.

16Rejoice always,17pray without ceasing,18give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.19Do not quench the Spirit.20Do not despise the words of prophets,21but test everything; hold fast to what is good;

Isaiah 61: 1-4

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners;2to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn;3to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.

4They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

Lighting The Advent Candle For Love

One: We have lighted two candles---for peace, and for joy. Today we light the third candle—the candle of love. With this flame we signify the love of God that surrounds and fills us at all times, but that we recognize in a special way in the Christmas story. There is no greater power than love. It is stronger than rulers and empires, stronger than grief or despair, stronger even than death. All in God’s love for all.

All: Loving God, we open ourselves to you this Christmas season. As these candles are lit, light up our lives with your imagination. Teach us the peace that comes from justice. Fill us with the kind of joy that cannot be contained, but must be shared. Magnify your love within us. Prepare our hearts to be transformed by you, That we may walk in the light of Christ. Amen.

Morning Songs: #95, There Is More Love; #131 Love Will Guide Us; #121 We’ll Build A Land; Hymn For Advent: #241, In The Bleak Mid-Winter

Sharing Prayers

Now we join in saying the prayer Jesus taught for all those who would follow in his way of radical compassion, courage, conscience, and commitment.

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, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Communion

Prayer: O God, in the loving and liberating spirit of Jesus, we gather at this welcoming table open to all, remembering how Jesus gathered people from all the walks of life, stranger and friend and enemies, gave thanks to you, offered all the bread of life and the cup of blessing and proclaimed a covenant of love for all in your name. We remember too the wonder of his life, as we remember the wonder of all of Creation given unto us and how all are One. We remember the agony of his death, and all the terrors and the tyrannies that oppress people today. And we remember the power of resurrection, the mystery of faith in the everlasting Spirit, the triumph over fear. Help us to remember to practice resurrection everyday, as we remember all those who have given Love the ultimate trust and the last word and who have worked to create the beloved community of renewed and abundant life. Help us to remember with this meal especially all those who are hungry, and may we treat all our meals as sacred and to be shared. Take us, bless us, so that even in and with our brokenness we may serve others. Amen.

Jesus said I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. And they said, Lord, when did we do this? And he said, You did this for me when you did it for the least of these. Here is the bread of life, food for the spirit. Let all who hunger come and eat. Here is the fruit of the vine pressed and poured out for us. Let all who thirst now come and drink. We come to make peace. We come to be restored in the love of God. We come to be made new as an instrument of that love.

#406, Let us Break Bread Together on our knees

Passing the Plate and Cup of Communion

#407 “We’re Gonna Sit At the Welcome Table”

Benediction

Let us go out into the highways and byways. Let us give the people something of our new vision. We may possess a small light, but may we uncover it, and let it shine. May we use it to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men and women. May we give them not hell but hope and courage. May we preach and practice the kindness and everlasting love of God. Amen

“Shalom Havyreem, Shalom Havyreem, Shalom, Shalom, Shalom Havyreem, Shalom Havyreem, Shalom, Shalom”

“Go Now in Peace, Go Now in Peace, May the Love of God surround you, everywhere, everywhere, you may go.

For more on our community and way, www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com, www.turleyok.blogspot.com, www.uuchristian.org, www.tcpc.org, www.uua.org, www.ccda.org, www.christianuniversalist.org

Second Sunday of Advent: Joy

2011-12-03T14:03:00.001-08:00

The Welcome Table
A Free Universalist Christian Missional Community

Following the radicalJesus in deeds not creeds. Join us in service to our community throughout theweek as that is the primary way we become church. Our Welcome Table of Worship, when we gather to be refreshed by God's spirit for engaging in service with God through the week, is open to all who welcome all, regardlessof belief or denomination, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physicalabilities, economic status, or political affiliations. We don’t think Jesuswould have it any other way. Our worship is small group worship, participative, real, relaxed, and relational. It isn't for everyone, but everyone, of all ages, is welcome. We don't have separate child care, but share our space with families and embrace a theology of "holy chaos."

Free because we are non-creedal. We don’t give theological tests for admission,but encourage you to test us and try us to see if this way is for you.Universalist because we believe God is Love and All who abide in Love abide inGod for all time. Christian because the generous compassionateway and story of Jesus, while not exclusively so, is our primary pathwayopening up to God. Missional because we are sent to serve others more thanourselves. Community because we are made not to be autonomous individuals butto be a people of God.

Invocation
Today is the day which God has made: Let us rejoice and be gladtherein.
What does the Eternal require of us? To live justly, love mercy, andwalk humbly with our God.

Chalice Lighting Covenant
This is our covenant as we walk together in life as a people of Godstriving to make Jesus visible in the world: In the light of truth, and theloving and liberating spirit of Jesus, we gather in freedom, to worship God,and serve all.

O Lord, letmy soul rise up to meet you As the day rises to meet the sun.

Second Sunday of Advent: Joy
Scripture: from Mark 1 and Isaiah 40

1The beginning of the good news ofJesus Christ, the Son of God.

²As it is written in the prophetIsaiah,

“See, I am sending my messenger aheadof you,
who will prepare your way;
³the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”

⁴John the baptizer appeared in thewilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.⁵Andpeople from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem weregoing out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessingtheir sins.⁶Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leatherbelt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.⁷Heproclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am notworthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.⁸I havebaptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

“Comfort, O comfort my people, saysyour God.²Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she hasserved her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from theLord’s hand double for all her sins.

³A voice cries out: “In the wildernessprepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.⁴Everyvalley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the unevenground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.⁵Then theglory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, forthe mouth of the Lord has spoken.”⁶A voice says, “Cry out!” And Isaid, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like theflower of the field.⁷The grass withers, the flower fades, when thebreath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass.⁸Thegrass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.

⁹Get you up to a high mountain, OZion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem,herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah,“Here is your God!”¹⁰See, the Lord God comes with might, and his armrules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.¹¹Hewill feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, andcarry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.

Lighting The Advent Candle For Joy
One: Joy is all around us—in the children, the lights, the music, the gatheringtogether. But how often do we let our preparations—or our memories—push joy tothe side?

All: Joy is like an underground spring that wellsup within us, but joy is also a choice, an attitude. Like a muscle, it needs tobe exercised. So today we open ourselves to joy, trusting that God has alreadyplanted it in us. All we need to do is give it care and offer it to share.

One: Loving God, we open ourselves toyou, trusting that this is how you made us: you created us for joy-filledhearts and lives. Show us the creative power of hope. Teach us the peace thatcomes from justice. Fill us with the kind of joy that cannot be contained, butmust be shared. Prepare our hearts to be transformed by you, that we may walkin the light of Christ.

All: We will Rejoice for God has createdus with the capacity for joy. We will find what makes us joyful, and make thatour gift to the world. We will trust in God's good will for all of creation andopen ourselves to God's gentle, transforming love. We will welcome newpossibilities in our lives. We will offer ourselves to God's goodness. We willgo forth in peace, and joy.

Morning Songs: #30, Over My Head; #29, Joyful, Joyful; #95, There Is More Love;Hymn For Advent: #231, Angels We Have Heard on High

Sharing Prayers

Now we join in saying the prayer Jesus taught for all those who wouldfollow in his way of radical compassion, courage, conscience, and commitment.
Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy willbe done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread, andforgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead usnot into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and thepower, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Communion
Prayer: O God, in the loving and liberating spirit of Jesus, we gather atthis welcoming table open to all, remembering how Jesus gathered people fromall the walks of life, stranger and friend and enemies, gave thanks to you,offered all the bread of life and the cup of blessing and proclaimed a covenantof love for all in your name. We remember too the wonder of his life, as weremember the wonder of all of Creation given unto us and how all are One. Weremember the agony of his death, and all the terrors and the tyrannies thatoppress people today. And we remember the power of resurrection, the mystery offaith in the everlasting Spirit, the triumph over fear. Help us to remember topractice resurrection everyday, as we remember all those who have given Lovethe ultimate trust and the last word and who have worked to create the belovedcommunity of renewed and abundant life. Help us to remember with this mealespecially all those who are hungry, and may we treat all our meals as sacredand to be shared. Take us, bless us, so that even in and with our brokenness wemay serve others. Amen.
Jesus said I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave medrink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. Iwas sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. And they said,Lord, when did we do this? And he said, You did this for me when you did it forthe least of these. Here is the bread of life, food for the spirit. Let allwho hunger come and eat. Here is the fruit of the vine pressed and poured outfor us. Let all who thirst now come and drink. We come to make peace. Wecome to be restored in the love of God. We come to be made new as an instrumentof that love.

"Let us Break Bread Together on our knees"

Passing the Plate and Cup ofCommunion
“We’re Going to Sit At the Welcome Table”

Benediction
Let us go out into the highways and byways. Let us give the peoplesomething of our new vision. We may possess a small light, but may weuncover it, and let it shine. May we use it to bring more light andunderstanding to the hearts and minds of men and women. May we give them nothell but hope and courage. May we preach and practice the kindness andeverlasting love of God. Amen

“Shalom Havyreem, Shalom Havyreem, Shalom, Shalom, Shalom Havyreem, ShalomHavyreem, Shalom, Shalom”
“Go Now in Peace, Go Now in Peace, May the Love of God surround you,everywhere, everywhere, you may go.

For more on ourcommunity and way, www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com, www.turleyok.blogspot.com, www.uuchristian.org, www.tcpc.org, www.uua.org, www.ccda.org, www.christianuniversalist.org

Come Be With Us At SWUUSI Conference, Bread, Not Stones, July 22-27

2011-11-30T06:26:00.001-08:00

SWUUSI 2011, July 22-27, 2012

SouthwestUnitarian Universalist Summer Institute, Western Hills Lodge in Sequoyah StatePark, near Tulsa, between Wagoner and Hulbert on Highway 51.

Morning ThemeTalk: "Bread, Not Stones"

By The Rev.Thomas R. Schade, minister of the First Unitarian Church of Worcester, MA

Tomwrites: "To use a football analogy, liberal religion is turning fromdefense to offense. After nearly 40 years of being on the cultural defensive,we now turn to the work of calling people to another way of life, tochallenging the status quo, to shaping character in new ways, to changinglives. The world wants to know what we are carrying. We need to open our handsand show them. Is it bread, not stones? Bread is faith development, vocation,and mission. Stones are inward looking communities, institutional maintenance,and ministry as "mass mood management."

The Rev.Thomas Schade was called as the Associate Minister of the First UnitarianChurch of Worcester, MA, in the fall of 1999, to serve with Rev. BarbaraMerritt, then the Senior Minister of the church. In the fall of 2006, he wasdesignated as the 11th Minister of the First Unitarian Church of Worcester,founded in 1785. His ministry was affirmed in the Spring of 2010, when he wasdesignated the sole minister of the church when Rev. Merritt retired. Alife-long Unitarian, he received a BA from George Washington University in1970, majoring in Political Science. After a career in Information Technology,he began preparing for the Ministry in 1995, studying at the Perkins School ofTheology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He was the internminister at Horizon UU Church. In 1999, he received his Masters of Divinity andwas ordained by the First Unitarian Church. His essays have appeared in thebook "Soul Work" and elsewhere. He is a past president of the UUChristian Fellowship. He is married to Sue Schade, a hospital executive. Theyhave two grown daughters.

SWUUSISunset Talks

"Outof this Stillness": Spiritual Direction and Mission

By The Rev.Tony Lorenzen

Monday:Wrong Way Wainwrights (Or how UU's do church backwards)

Spiritual direction helps us find our way and find what saves us, both asindividuals and as a group. We will look at our Soteriology leading toMissiology leading to Ecclesiology. Too often UU's start with/argue over whatit means to be church, Ecclesiology, then maybe find a mission, andoccasionally talk about what saves us or makes us whole.

Tuesday: Misnomers

Why Spiritual Direction, Mission, and Salvation need reclamation and reframing.

Wednesday: Resistance - It's not just for therapy.

How we avoid the sacred as individuals and congregations and how overcomingthis resistance frees us for mission.

Thursday: Cities on a Hill - What might this Look Like

Models from Ginghamsburg Church, Wellspring and Rochester, Soma, A Third Place,Lucy Stone Cooperative, UU Social Justice Academies

Rev. TonyLorenzen is a Universalist Christian living a missional life in north Texas. Heserves on the Board of Directors of the UU Christian Fellowship aswell as the Board of the Keller FarmersMarket. Follow him on his blog at www.sunflowerchalice.comon TWITTER @revtonyuu.

SWUUSI Workshops

Mornings

1. TheCalling of Ministry: What the Heck do Ministers Do Anyway and/or So You Want ToBe A Minister, The Rev. Mark Christian, lead minister, First Unitarian Church,Oklahoma City

2.Spiritual Practice and Spiritual Direction, Revs. Jonalu Johnstone and DebraGarfinkel, graduates of HeartPath; The Rev. Johnstone is program minister atFirst Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City; The Rev. Garfinkel has served aspastoral care minister at All Souls Church in Tulsa, and is a spiritualdirector in Tulsa.

3."The Great Online Third Place" by Joanna Fontaine Crawford

Missionalchurch leaders encourage us to go to where the people are – to their “thirdplace,” which is the place you spend your spare time when not at home or atwork. Along with bars and coffeehouses, probably the most popular hangout in avirtual one – the Internet. How do we reach these folks, and keep theirattention? Learn about making church videos, livestreaming, copyright issues,and how to make the most of your online presence through Twitter, Facebook,Tumblr, Foursquare, and more.

JoannaFontaine Crawford is the Intern Minister for the Church of the LargerFellowship, which provides weekly online worship services to members around theglobe. She’s also that person who posts a bazillion times on Facebook.

4.Learning The Night Sky, Paul Derrick, tentatively set.

5. SWUUSIChoir, director to be named later.

6.missional liberation environmental gardens

BonnieAshing, project leader for the new kitchengardenpark and orchard with A ThirdPlace Community Foundation and The Welcome Table Church in Turley, OK.

A chanceto consider how your garden can be a spiritual discipline, your “firstwilderness” and a contribution to the health of our environment. A chance towrite your personal “green manifesto”. Who are you? What do you love? How willyou fight for it? And how do others experience their environment? Suggestedreadings list available on request but not necessary. Bring seeds to swap ifyou like!

Afternoon

1. ExaminingYour Mission Field by the Rev. Susan M. Smith, District Executive of theSouthwestern UU Conference

Everycongregation needs a clear vision for its future and a plan for how it will beaccomplished, but most make the mistake of grounding this vision in the wantsof the current congregants rather than the needs of the community that theyserve. This workshop will provide a variety of ways to consider who yourcongregation can serve now and into the future.

2. TheSermon on The Mount, by The Rev. Chuck Freeman

3.Marking Memories, Making Meaning - Spiritual Practices for Unitarian UniversalistFamilies by Scottie Johnson, seminarian at Perkins School of Theology

4.Climate Change -- Updated

Tim Mock
Tim writes: Over years of facilitating conversations about climate change, Iaccumulated 32 pounds of paper resources and 4.4 gigabytes of multimedia fileson my computer, always searching for what is new, important, interesting, andunderstandable by the lay person. As of this writing (August 2011), a recentbook by the director of NASA's Institute for Space Studies, probably theworld's best climate scientist, tops the list. The title -- "Storms of MyGrandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our LastChance to Save Humanity." The science is fascinating, and the issue is"likely to be the predominant ... moral issue of the 21st century."UUs have a vital role to play.
5. Strings and Things, Nancy Cain

Stringsand Things is a workshop for people who like to sing folk songs, playtraditional music, or just enjoy listening to others play and sing. Acousticinstruments of any kind are welcome: strings, brass, woodwinds, harps, flutes,bodhrans, etc. We use Rise Up Singing as a reference for our songs. All arewelcome.

6. Aworkshop still to be named.

EveningWorship Services

Monday:The Rev. Barbara Jarrell, All Souls UU Church, Shreveport, LA

Tuesday:The Rev. Patrick Price, Community UU Church, Plano, TX

Wednesday:Cathey Edwards, intern minister, First Unitarian Church, Oklahoma City

Thursday:To be named

First Sunday of Advent Worship 2011: Peace

2011-11-27T16:39:00.001-08:00

The Welcome Table
A Free Universalist Christian Missional Community

Following the radicalJesus in deeds not creeds. Join us in service to our community throughout theweek. Our Welcome Table of Worship is open to all who welcome all, regardlessof belief or denomination, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physicalabilities, economic status, or political affiliations. We don’t think Jesuswould have it any other way.

Free because we are non-creedal. We don’t give theological tests for admission,but encourage you to test us and try us to see if this way is for you.Universalist because we believe God is Love and All who abide in Love abide inGod for all time (1 John 4:16). Christian because the generous compassionateway and story of Jesus, while not exclusively so, is our primary pathwayopening up to God. Missional because we are sent to serve others more thanourselves. Community because we are made not to be autonomous individuals butto be a people of God.

Invocation
Today is the day which God has made: Let us rejoice and be gladtherein.
What does the Eternal require of us? To live justly, love mercy, andwalk humbly with our God.

Chalice Lighting Covenant
This is our covenant as we walk together in life as a people of Godstriving to make Jesus visible in the world: In the light of truth, and theloving and liberating spirit of Jesus, we gather in freedom, to worship God,and serve all.

O Lord, letmy soul rise up to meet you As the day rises to meet the sun.

First Sunday of Advent
Introduction: Welcome To A New Kind of Time Zone and The Peace That Brings Usand Keeps Us In Abandoned Places, from Shane Claiborne, Common Prayer

Scripture:
But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor theSon, but only the Father.³³Beware, keep alert; for you do not knowwhen the time will come.³⁴It is like a man going on a journey, whenhe leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commandsthe doorkeeper to be on the watch.³⁵Therefore, keep awake—for you donot know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or atmidnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn,³⁶or else he may find youasleep when he comes suddenly.³⁷And what I say to you I say to all:Keep awake.” From Mark 13

And Mary said, “My soul magnifies theLord,⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,⁴⁸for hehas looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on allgenerations will call me blessed;⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done greatthings for me, and holy is his name.⁵⁰His mercy is for those whofear him from generation to generation.⁵¹He has shown strength withhis arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.⁵²Hehas brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;⁵³hehas filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.⁵⁴Hehas helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,⁵⁵accordingto the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendantsforever.” From Luke 1

“To love someone is not first of allto do things for them, but to reveal to them their beauty and value, to say tothem through our attitude: You are beautiful, you are important. I trust you.You can trust yourself. We all know well that we can do things for others andin the process crush them, making them feel that they are incapable of doingthings by themselves. To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities forlife, the light that is shining in them.” Jean Vanier

Lighting The Advent Candle For Peace

One: The Christ of Peace is coming. Christ is always coming, always entering atroubled world, a wounded heart. And so we light the first candle, the candleof peace, and dare to express our longing for peace, for healing, and thewell-being of all creation.

All: Loving God, as we enter this season, We open all the dark places in ourlives and memories to your healing light. Prepare our hearts to be transformedby you, That we may walk in your light.

One: We light this candle knowing full well that peace is elusive, and insome parts of the world, it is almost completely absent. Yet in this season ofAdvent, we trust that God is never absent from us. God is always preparingsomething new.

All: And even where there is war and discord, whether between countries, withinfamilies, or within our own hearts. God is present, gently leading us to newpossibilities.
---Jeanyne Slettom, alt.

Morning Songs: Dona Nobis Pacem, I’ve Got Peace Like A River, Gonna Lay Down MySword and Shield
Hymn For Advent: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

O come, O come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here, Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel, Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Day-Spring come, and cheer Our spirits by Thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, And death's dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel, Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O Come, you Splendor very bright, as joy that never yields to might
O Come, and turn all hearts to peace, that greed and war at last shall cease.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel, Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Sharing Prayers

O God help us to be instruments of Thy peace. Where hate rules let usbring love;
where injury, pardon; where discord, union; where doubt, faith;where despair, hope; where darkness, light; where sorrow, joy. Letus strive more to comfort others than to be comforted; to understandothers--than to be understood; to love others--than to be loved. For itis in giving, that we receive, and in pardoning, that we are pardoned; itis in dying that we are raised to eternal life.

Prayer of Confession: Gracious and Loving God, we acknowledge to you, toone another, and to ourselves that we are not what you have called us to be. Wehave stifled our gifts and wasted our time. We have avoided opportunities tooffer kindness, but have been quick to take offense. We have pretended that wecould make no contribution to peace and justice in our world and have excusedourselves from risk-taking in our own community. Have mercy on us, forgiveus our sins, and help us to live our lives differently. We long for peacewithin and without, for harmony in our families, for the well-being of ourneighbors, and to love our enemies. Yet we have too often not made the hardchoices that love requires. Show us how to walk in your path of faithfulness,hope, and love. Amen.
Words of Assurance: One fact remains that does not change: God loves all,for all time. This is the good news that brings new life. Thanks be to God.Amen.

Now we joinin saying the prayer Jesus taught for all those who would follow in his way ofradical compassion, courage, conscience, and commitment.
Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy willbe done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread, andforgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead usnot into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and thepower, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Communion
Prayer: O God, in the loving and liberating spirit of Jesus, we gather atthis welcoming table open to all, remembering how Jesus gathered people fromall the walks of life, stranger and friend and enemies, gave thanks to you,offered all the bread of life and the cup of blessing and proclaimed a covenantof love for all in your name. We remember too the wonder of his life, as weremember the wonder of all of Creation given unto us and how all are One. Weremember the agony of his death, and all the terrors and the tyrannies thatoppress people today. And we remember the power of resurrection, the mystery offaith in the everlasting Spirit, the triumph over fear. Help us to remember topractice resurrection everyday, as we remember all those who have given Love theultimate trust and the last word and who have worked to create the belovedcommunity of renewed and abundant life. Help us to remember with this mealespecially all those who are hungry, and may we treat all our meals as sacredand to be shared. Take us, bless us, so that even in and with our brokenness wemay serve others. Amen.
Jesus said I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave medrink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. Iwas sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. And they said,Lord, when did we do this? And he said, You did this for me when you did it forthe least of these. Here is the bread of life, food for the spirit. Let allwho hunger come and eat. Here is the fruit of the vine pressed and poured outfor us. Let all who thirst now come and drink. We come to make peace. Wecome to be restored in the love of God. We come to be made new as an instrumentof that love.

Let us Break Bread Together on our knees, let us break bread together on ourknees when I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun o Lord have mercyon me Let us drink wine together on our knees let us drink wine together on ourknees when I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun o Lord have mercyon me let us praise God together on our knees let us praise God together on ourknees when I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun O Lord have mercyon me.
Passing the Plate and Cup of Communion

“We’re Going to Sit At the Welcome Table”
1.We’re gonna sit at the welcome table, we’re gonna sit at the welcome tableone of these days halleluia We’re gonna sit at the welcome table, gonna sit atthe welcome table one of these days 2.All kinds of people round that table, allkinds of people round that table one of these days halleluia, all kinds ofpeople around that table, gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days 3.Nofancy style at the welcome table, no fancy style at the welcome table one ofthese days halleluia, no fancy style at the welcome table, gonna sit at thewelcome table one of these days.

Benediction
Let us go out into the highways and byways. Let us give the peoplesomething of our new vision. We may possess a small light, but may weuncover it, and let it shine. May we use it to bring more light andunderstanding to the hearts and minds of men and women. May we give them nothell but hope and courage. May we preach and practice the kindness andeverlasting love of God. Amen

Occupying Thanksgiving

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This past Sunday at the Welcome Table Community we had our Thanksgiving worship service co-led by Christy Moore, founding pastor of StoneSoup community in Tulsa, using a missional worship common meal, singing and sharing prayers and readings and sharing meal preparation and cooking and sharing communion and conversation about food and justice and the environment around us. You can read all about it at http://progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/2011/11/this-sundays-thanksgiving-meal-worship.html

We ended our worship with our reverse offering where we gave away money, even to people who showed up to be with us for the first time, and commissioned them to find ways to change the world with the money. We then blessed our compost and our recycling, and we prayed a prayer of confession for the trash we were sending to the landfill, which is very much a part of our home here in the Trash Mountain that has risen up over Turley as a rival to the God given Turley Hill. We followed all this with the movie about the missional monastic community in "Of Gods and Men" and the blessings they found, even unto death, serving God by serving people of a different faith in a spirit of cooperation and trust. (I will put an appendix here that includes the final letter written by one of the monks that embodies what the movie's message of common service and forgiveness is all about; powerful words to be thankful for).

All in all from 9 am to 4 pm we were enacting and embodying what an alternative community is like, an "anti Black Friday" community where success is measured in what you give away, not what you get, and by the love in the giving.

Tomorrow we will create "fictive family" by throwing open our doors at noon at our community center at 5920 N. Owasso Ave. to see if anyone, or you, is in need of a Thanksgiving meal community, or simply community. We don't plan these out; we don't make the newspaper listings of free dinners; we spread the word person to person through our contacts, through our biweekly food pantry days. We trust in the theology of potluck, that who and what arrives will be enough to provide. Movies will be watched; we have games; and conversation. This past week we have fed many with giveaways of turkey dinners, as a way we will help them be at welcome table community wherever they are and with whomever they are; we have been giving fresh vegetables away through our pantry that have been grown in our kitchengardenpark and orchard so many of you have helped us with.

The Thanksgiving Communion words were about vulnerability. As we break open the bread, as we break the vine and pour out its juice, as Jesus' life was broken open and the status quo of the world then and now is broken open, so our lives and communities must be grown through being opened to one another, risking being hurt, disappointed, and in fact being hurt and disappointed, and yet in the sharing comes the strength and sustenance of community. We talked about how being vulnerable was back then, and still is today, a counter-cultural God kind of way to live, when all about us in the media and in institutions seeks to make a virtue out of self-containment, strength, showy status, appearances, competition.

When we ate our meal this past Sunday we fixed a plate and gave it to another, and we received the plate and bowl made up for us by another. Receiving opens us up, makes us vulnerable, grows the spirit of trust and permission giving that is the heart of any community that exists for something beyond itself. We sat down with people we had not met before and ate with those we did not know, and otherwise might not ever meet, and we made a virtue of vulnerability, the same way Jesus lifted up vulnerability in his ministry, and how God lifted up Jesus and turned the cross from what it was meant to be, a symbol of shame, and made it a symbol of hope that nothing can separate us from the love of God, not even that, not even what we face today.

We talked about the vulnerability of those souls who came to rest at Plymouth in 1620, our religious ancestors, and the pewter cup and plate we used for communion came in fact from the Plimouth Plantation, and how the covenant and committing of walking together they shared in the spirit of the One who is on a mission to be with those most vulnerable is a covenant and commitment for us today. That vulnerability is always at risk of being lost and turned into a fortress,as it was so often for those who came to power in this country, but at its heart what the legend of the Plymouth Thanksgiving gives us is a lesson of the welcome table's vulnerable radical hospitality, a lesson that goes back to the act of Jesus sitting down with tax collectors and sinners, a re-enactment itself of the prophetic call to live as strangers in a strange land, welcoming any who need shade and a meal, because in doing so we welcome God. And we hope as we leave and return to our lives that we take some of the vulnerability, some of the practice of the welcome table, out with us.

The root of the word vulnerable comes from a latin word for wound. It reminds me of the root of the word blessed going back to a meaning of being marked with blood as a sign of sacredness; in french blesse still carries the meaning of being hurt. Part of our mission then as a people of God is to live lives of vulnerability, first because that is how we open up to God, how we honor the spirit of the vulnerable Jesus, but also because true trust can only come from a place of being vulnerable, and without trust community that is authentic can not be created, and without a community we cannot take on the great tasks and work of transforming that we are called to bring about in our neighborhoods and lives.

It is a hard path for many of us raised precisely to be not vulnerable, or whom have been wounded by others or ourselves and sought protection and our very definition of self in how we avoid vulnerability. It is hard when all the messages and rewards around us are for those who find victory in strength and self, in convenience and contentment. From our political systems to our financial systems to our cultural systems of stardom, even to our religious systems and how we view our churches and their mission, there is an underlying focus on "the elect", the striving to be the one percenters, or like the one percenters, those who will never know vulnerability. This focus, as understandable as it might be in a time of great change in history, is still not the way of life truly abundant and everlasting Jesus pointed to.

This Thanksgiving may we find ways to land on shores we never thought we would call home, to be strangers, never fully at ease, helping to make a space in our world with others for the surprises that bless us. Call that space occupying the world with God's vision. Or call it doing what some followers of Jesus have always done, going to be with people in and for the places others turn away from.

On Sunday, Nov. 27 beginning at 9:30 am we will hold the first of our Advent worship services as we begin our walk toward Bethlehem. We will be watching the video Justice for the Poor featuring Sojourners editor Jim Wallis, a call to always put the real needs of the growing poor first in our spiritual lives and spiritual communities. We will watch a different part of this video series each Sunday in December, for the way to prepare the way for the birth of Jesus is to seek ways to focus on that which he focused on.

On Tuesday, Nov. 29, we will help at the community meeting at 7 pm at OBrien park as we learn more about the lives around us and we focus on business development in our area at the Vann Green Park project, and we finish working with the community on dreams and ideas and plans for reclaiming the abandoned Cherokee School building and property.

On Thursday, Dec. 1 we will begin the first of our 6:30 pm Advent Vespers Services. At both our Sunday and Thursday worship services we will be discussing sections of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Advent and Christmas sermons, and selections from the new book "Christmas Is Not Your Birthday" by Mike Slaughter, both calls to re-orient our lives during these sacred days of the year.

We are also raising funds for McLain High School parent program and Greeley Elementary School programs, and for our food pantry and needs for the computer center, and getting ready for keeping the building heated as a place for people to come in from the cold again. Thanks for all holiday donations through www.turleyok.blogspot.com.

Finally, Here, as an added Thanksgiving bonus to this meal of words from our community to yours, we include the letter of deep thanksgiving and forgiveness and hope for a better world that was the last will and testament of one of the murdered monks who stayed and served in an abandoned place during the midst of a civil war in Algeria: His words are my benediction, or my prayer for you on this day:

“If the day comes, and it could be today, that I am a victim of the terrorism that seems to be engulfing all foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, and my family to remember that I have dedicated my life to God and Algeria.

"That they accept that the Lord of all life was not a stranger to this savage kind of departure; that they pray for me, wondering how I found myself worthy of such a sacrifice; that they link in their memory this death of mine with all the other deaths equally violent but forgotten in their anonymity. My life is not worth more than any other—not less, not more. Nor am I an innocent child. I have lived long enough to know that I, too, am an accomplice of the evil that seems to prevail in the world around, even that which might lash out blindly at me. If the moment comes, I would hope to have the presence of mind, and the time, to ask for God’s pardon and for that of my fellowman, and, at the same time, to pardon in all sincerity he who would attack me.

"I would not welcome such a death. It is important for me to say this. I do not see how I could rejoice when this people whom I love will be accused, indiscriminately, of my death. The price is too high, this so-called grace of the martyr, if I owe it to an Algerian who kills me in the name of what he thinks is Islam.

"I know the contempt that some people have for Algerians as a whole. I also know the caricatures of Islam that a certain (Islamist) ideology promotes. It is too easy for such people to dismiss, in good conscience, this religion as something hateful by associating it with violent extremists. For me, Algeria and Islam are quite different from the commonly held opinion. They are body and soul. I have said enough, I believe, about all the good things I have received here, finding so often the meaning of the Gospels, running like some gold thread through my life, and which began first at my mother’s knee, my very first church, here in Algeria, where I learned respect for the Muslims.

"Obviously, my death will justify the opinion of all those who dismissed me as naïve or idealistic: “Let him tell us what he thinks now.” But such people should know my death will satisfy my most burning curiosity. At last, I will be able—if God pleases—to see the children of Islam as He sees them, illuminated in the glory of Christ, sharing in the gift of God’s Passion and of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to bring forth our common humanity amidst our differences.

"I give thanks to God for this life, completely mine yet completely theirs, too, to God, who wanted it for joy against, and in spite of, all odds. In this Thank You—which says everything about my life—I include you, my friends past and present, and those friends who will be here at the side of my mother and father, of my sisters and brothers—thank you a thousandfold.

"And to you, too, my friend of the last moment, who will not know what you are doing. Yes, for you, too, I wish this thank-you, this “A-Dieu,” whose image is in you also, that we may meet in heaven, like happy thieves, if it pleases God, our common Father. Amen! Insha Allah!"

(Written in Algiers by Dom Christian of Abbaye Notre-Dame de l'Atlas, December 1, 1993; two years prior to his murder)

blessings for a deep Thanksgiving spirit in your life,

Ron

This Sunday's Thanksgiving Meal Worship order of service: a menu/liturgy; followed by missional movie "Of Gods and Men"

2011-11-18T21:29:00.001-08:00

This Sunday Nov. 20 beginning at 9:30 am (but of course come when you can for as long as you can, worship is more party than program, but you definitely get more out the more you can contribute with your presence) come be with us at our community center, 5920 N. Owasso Ave., as we will have a very special worship experience for Thanksgiving (see the liturgy below).

We are creating liturgy around our common meal preparation and serving and eating in a sacred mindful conversational way, full of singing, prayers, interesting questions to discuss, sharing of stories from our lives, bringing items from home from our kitchens or lives to put on the altar, bringing items for salad and for soup, making our bread for communion and to share for the Thanksgiving dinner, potlucking any other items we want to contribute, and will close our meal worship gathering in time to also host a 1 pm (ish) showing of the movie "Of Gods and Men" based on a true story of French monks serving their Muslim neighbors, not trying to convert them, and being caught between corrupt government forces, terrorists, and their own crises of faith in what it means to follow Jesus even in dangerous times and places.

Here is our order of service to help shape and deepen our customary and beloved holy chaos; this worship meal experience will, it is hoped, help individuals and families to make all their meals more sacred, by affording models to use, and even after this special Thanksgiving Service we will adapt a modified version of the liturgy for use at all our common meals.

Thanks to missional progressive colleague Christy Moore for inspiration, participation and co-leading this first of our worshipful meals or meals of worship.

We hope to see you there, as we seek to make our worship more missional as well as our service in and with community, even if it is your first time to gather with us. Come and see. This is Reverse Offering Sunday, our annual giving out of money to persons and families to take and be a blessing in the community, to be creative and start something lasting, or contribute to something new, to say thanks to someone, to surprise someone and yourself; we will hear stories back from our reverse offering when we gather in January on Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday. Even if this is your first time, please come and take a reverse offering back into the world with you.

The Welcome Table Gathering

free.universalist.christian.missional.community

Thanksgiving WorshipMeal

Liturgy/Menu

Experiencing God in RadicalHospitality and Service To Others

“While at Levi’s House, Jesus atewith tax-collectors and sinners (today we would say he was eating withterrorists and child sex offenders); when the religious authorities saw himdoing so, they asked his followers why he was shaming himself and them andtheir whole community by doing so; on overhearing this, Jesus stepped in(reminding them by his action that if anyone had a problem with another theyshould go directly to that other with it and not to someone else) and he said, “Anyonecan eat with those who are like them, and who they like and are liked by them, butthose of us especially who follow our God of Israel, a God who commands us totreat the strangers as one of us because we were once strangers in anotherland, we must do more than that in order to do God’s will. After all, eventhough the world of the Empire may think and do otherwise, should doctors treatonly the well and not the sick? Our meals are like doctors for the soul. If you are full and happy and think you areperfect and have brought nothing togive, you won’t understand God is at this table, that God is for the ungodly. Butif you are not well, take off your heavy burdens and lay them down, and comerest and be nourished at this table and yes, even by these people of God.” ---arendering of the gospel based on Mark 2

“We’ll stay hungry if we eat alone.We’ll starve if we believe that a community is a supernatural kind of miracle,or a product we can buy—not something we create by offering ourselvesrecklessly to others. We’ll never feel truly fed if we’re constantly competingto get our share, if we believe that love is scarce, and are afraid to give itaway.”---Sara Miles

Invocation andGathering

Today is theday which God has made. Let us rejoiceand be glad therein. For what does the Eternal require of us? To live justly, love mercy, and walk humblywith our God. We covenant to walk together with one another not in creed,but in deed, to walk together in the ways of God known and to be made known. In the light of truth, and the loving andliberating spirit of Jesus, we gather in freedom, to worship God, and serveothers.

Responsive Reading 425: from Psalm 65

First Movement: Washing and Blessing The Hands and Preparing the Meal

Blessed areyou, Holy One. You hold us in your hands. Be with us in THIS day. Bless our hands, that we might holdothers as dearly as you hold them. Blessedbe the hands that grow food and those that prepare meals. Blessed be the hands that wash dishes and clean floors. Blessed bethe hands that anoint the sick and offer blessings. Blessed be the hands that guide the young. Blessed be the hands thatgrow stiff with age. Blessed be the hands that comfort the dying and have heldthe dead. Blessed be the hands that greet strangers. Blessed be the hands for all the work, all the play, all the love,that we give. Blessed be the hands intowhich we receive life; bless be the hands into which we pass the future.Blessed be the hands that pass peace.

Greetings

Preparing the Meal and Conversation:Where did our components of the meal come from? Do we just eat with anassumption of food that just appears? Sharing Stories of where our foodingredients came from, whether shopping or gardens. How have we prepared thespace for our meal? How does food grow community? Where is God in the garden,in the slaughterhouses, in the factories, in the transport, in the stores, inthe kitchen?

Responsive Reading: We Give ThanksThis Day, #512

Songs of Thanksgiving: For The Beautyof The Earth, #21, Tis A Gift to Be Simple #16, Come Thou Fount of EveryBlessing, #126

Second Movement: Deepening Our Lives At The Tables and The Altar

Setting the Altar and Moments ofSilence and Sharing Stories with items that have meaning from our homes and ourlives. What kind of tables did Jesus gather? Where have our tables come from?What makes the communion table different and the same? What is a blessing? Whatdo we bring to the table, of blessings?

Songs of Meditation and Mindfulness:

Find A Stillness, #352

Prayers of Community

Dona Nobis Pacem, #388

The Prayer Jesus Taught Those WhoWould Follow in his Radical Compassionate Way:

Our Father, who art in heaven,hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is inheaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as weforgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliverus from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, foreverand ever. Amen.

Responsive Reading: We Lift Up OurHearts in Thanks, #515

Third Movement: Breaking Bread/Pouring Cup/Eucharist/Meal

Songs of Communion: We’re Gonna SitAt The Welcome Table, #407

Responsive Reading: Food For theSpirit, #726

Conversation: Vulnerability asVirture. How do we break open our lives to share with others?

Communion Prayer: O God, we gather at this welcomingtable open to all no matter what, remembering how Jesus gathered people fromall the walks of life, stranger and friend and enemies, gave thanks to you,offered all the bread of life and the cup of blessing and proclaimed a covenantof love for all in your name. Weremember too the wonder of his life, as we remember the wonder of all ofCreation given unto us and how all are One, and all lives sacred. We remember his death and how on the nightbefore he died he still gathered in love to share a meal and the hope for abetter world, and we remember all the terrors and the tyrannies that oppresspeople today. In the mystery of faith in the everlasting Spirit, the triumphover fear, help us to remember to practice resurrection everyday, as weremember all those who have given Love the ultimate trust and the last word andwho have worked to create the beloved community of renewed and abundant life.Help us to remember with this meal especially all those who are hungry, and maywe treat all our meals as sacred and to be shared. Take us, bless us, so thateven in and with our brokenness we may serve others and receive Your Spirit. Amen.

Breaking and Passing the Bread ofLife, Pouring and Passing the Cup of Hope

Song of Communion: Let Us Break BreadTogether, #406

Passing Our Plates and Serving OneAnother

Dinner and Food Justice Conversationon Questions

Fourth Movement: Taking Home

Unison Prayer for Our Composting andRecycling: Creator God, we thank you for the abundance of resources with whichwe are blessed. We repent the abuse and overuse of these gifts. And we now askfor your guidance in restoring the face of the earth. Amen.

Song of Thanksgiving: We Sing NowTogether, #67

Reverse Offering Blessings: #702,distributing envelopes, #704

Song of Benediction: Go Now in Peace,#413

You are invited to stay for the movieand discussion of the film “Of Gods and Men” based on a true story of amonastery of French monks caring for Muslim neighbors and caught betweencorrupt government forces and terrorists.

About The Welcome Table MissionalCommunity

We seek to freely follow the radical Jesusin deeds not creeds. Join us in service to our community throughout the week. Thatis the primary way we become church. Our Welcome Table of Worship is open toall who welcome all, regardless of belief or denomination, race, gender, sexualorientation, age, physical abilities, economic status, or politicalaffiliations. We don’t think Jesus wouldhave it any other way.

Free.Universalist.Christian.Missional. Community.

Free because we are non-creedal. We don’t give theological tests foradmission, but encourage you to test us and try us to see if this way is foryou. Universalist because webelieve God is Love and All who abide in Love abide in God, and God’s love isfor all for all time and nothing can separate us from the Love of God. Christian because the generouscompassionate way and story of Jesus, is our primary, but not exclusive,pathway opening up to God. Missional because we are sent to serve othersmore than ourselves, building up God’s beloved community more than our own,putting our time talent and treasure more into the world than into our ownorganization. Community because we are made not to be autonomousindividuals but to be a people of God.

Our Mission, Vision, Values

We are created by and for the Missionof God. We seek to make the spirit of Jesus visible in the world, especiallythrough small acts of justice done with great love. To heal the sick, feed thehungry, give drink to the thirsty, invite the stranger, visit the prisoner, freethe captive and the oppressed, give sight to the blind, clothe the naked, andproclaim the year of God’s Jubilee Forgiveness of Debts.

We are a simple church, but it can bea deep struggle to live toward true freedom, to practice God’s love for all, to follow the liberatingJesus who was crucified for his radical ways of hospitality and justice, to livefor and serve others more than self, and to put community first. We invite those who wish to struggle with us,to fail with us, and to continue struggling with us. Worship gatherings and common meal are ourtimes to refresh our spirits for the service of God. We will at some time breakone another’s hearts and not be what and who we want ourselves to be; we beginagain in love.

We encourage one another in commonpractices: daily acts of random acts of beauty and kindness; daily prayer andmeditation; weekly worship; monthly spiritual accountability; annual retreat;lifetime pilgrimage. Striving to find ways to Relinquish wealth and privilegeand Living Simply so that others may simply live. Working for the Relocation ofour lives and resources to the abandoned places of the American Dream Empire.Redistribution of Goods and the Common Good. Reconciliation throughRelationships with those who are different from us.

5920 N. Owasso Ave. Turley/NorthTulsa,OK 74126 918-691-3223 918-794-4637

Learning More About Us and OurAssociations and Links

www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com

www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.comwww.redpillbrethren.tumblr.com

www.turleyok.blogspot.com

www.uuchristian.org

www.ccda.org

www.uua.org

www.tcpc.org

www.cccuua.org

www.christianuniversalist.org

www.ptstulsa.edu

www.tumm.org

Where We Have Come in Five Years of Missional Community Life: An All Souls Message, Events, Prayer

2011-10-29T10:00:00.000-07:00

Hi all. It has been a long time since my last letter from here.

Part of that has been because of all the project and partnerships and the presence we are making here in our area of far north Tulsa; a lot of that you will see just a glimpse of in the report of things going on today and in the coming days here; but it also continues to be a time of grief here and that has kept me busy too. During these past few weeks my mother has died after many years of Alzheimer's (she had spent her entire life here, and was bedfast for these past five years that so much has been happening by us here, and yet I know her presence has been with us and will be), and more suddenly our board member and community activist in north Tulsa Linda Taylor died, keeping as busy as possible in heart and mind and soul right up to the end with us and with O'Brien Park here where she had served for 35 years. We had wonderful celebrations of life for both my mom and for Linda. With Linda's death, we have lost two of our board members recently; I am pleased to report that Elaine McDondle, one of our partners in the McLain high school area who has started Sarah's Residential Living center, for seniors who thrive on a small home setting, will be joining our board in Gwen's position; we will be looking for another board member this month too in Linda's position. As we approach All Souls/All Saints Day, we keep them especially in our hearts, and all others who have gone before us, but left so much with us, and for us.

Tonight, Saturday Oct. 29, we have our annual big community celebration we offer each year for Halloween; this will be our first time in our new and still being renovated space at 5920 N. Owasso Ave.; but we have a great haunted house and will have scary food, costume contests, treats and more; come between 6 and 8 pm. Pass on this news and our other coming events below. And see the commentary afterwards.

1. Food Pantry, Food Justice, and Sustainability Space Open Every Tuesday and Thursday, 3 to 6 pm at the community center. Excited to be recertified in our new space and even though the food bank has been hit hard with a drop off in donations, we are working to develop several new streams of donations; and we are planning for a visit from the Mobile Food Van in December and we hope in months after that as well. Besides giving out food, we will give out information on nutrition, on growing healthy food, recipes and more.

2. Turley Area Leadership Planning Group: working on creating the Disaster Response Network, Incorporation, and Infrastructure planning: Friday Nov. 4, 2 pm, every First Friday at the community center. This is our deep connections and keeping the important before us, and not just the constant urging needs. We have lost so much in school and post office closing and fires and businesses that we need these times to go deep in our planning and look for ways to plant seeds for generations to come beyond us. All welcome.

3. TownHall and Community Connections Meeting with State Rep. Seneca Scott and other officials, Friday, Nov. 4, 5:30 pm, Tulsa Comm College NE Campus, Apache and Harvard

4. McLain High School Homecoming Game and Events Friday, Nov. 4, 4949 N. Peoria Ave. We had a great 400 plus turnout for the Taste of North Tulsa; we have wonderful plans for the new McLain Foundation for the Spring. We need to show our support for the school and no better way than an old fashioned rooting for the team at homecoming. McLain last Spring had 89 of 104 seniors accepted into college, an amazing turnaround record, but this year with new graduation standards and testing requirements we are looking at many students and families being hit hard and possibly not being able to graduate at all. To that end we in our welcome table community are one of the major sponsors this year of a GEAR UP event at McLain Thurs. Nov. 17 6:30 to 8:30 pm for parents and students and staff to focus on what will be needed to be able to respond to the new guidelines that have come down from Oklahoma City.

5. What To Do with Cherokee School building? Community Forum and Workshop with OU Graduate Design Studio, Sat. Nov. 5, Noon to 4 pm at the community center with Free Lunch For Participants. This will be our big monthly event for November. Need a big turnout as we dream of what we can do as a community with this newly abandoned property complex in the heart of our community and not just wait for what the school district may have planned. We had a great tour of the building with OU and with a representative of an area health care center looking at grant possibilities. We are also working to make sure the alumni reunion for Cherokee can still take place. Many ideas still to explore not only for how this can be a turnaround for our community but how this wonderful resource can be a miracle for the whole Tulsa area.

6. Community Fall Festival, Sat. Nov. 19, O’Brien Park Recreation Center. This is a testament in action to Linda Taylor. Because of her illness and death she was unable to lead the usual fall festival in October so her colleagues in the wider park system are grouping together to offer this to our northside community. Show up and keep Linda's spirit alive. Several of us from our community are also on the Park Advisory Board and we have been working in the garden Linda started and looking at other ways to help keep her grassroots spirit and service going.

7. Movie Night, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 6:30 pm at the Center, “Restrepo” documentary on the War in Afghanistan through soldiers’ eyes, and discussion of Veterans issues and creating a veterans support room at the Center.

8. Turley Area Alliance Against Crime: Personal, Home, and Neighborhood Safety meetings Thursday Nov. 17, 6:30 pm at the center. This group has been active in getting the word out this past month in the news media about neighborhood watch.

9. Turley Area Public Town Hall Meeting and Community Association, Tues Nov. 29, 7 pm O’Brien Park Recreation Center, 6147 N. Birmingham

10. Community Garden Taste and Teach Gatherings Free Every Saturday 9am, the Welcome Table Community Park, 6005 N. Johnstown Ave. Keep coming to see the ongoing transformation of this blighted area into a place of beauty, connections, healthy food, and recreating community space. We are giving firewood away too. We hosted yesterday a visit to the park by the North Tulsa Leadership Development Council to share our visions and needs; we hosted a visit by a couple touring the country looking at healing in abandoned places through sustainable agriculture and community.

11. Recovery 12 step Saturdays, 5 pm Jerks Anonymous, 7:30 pm, Alcoholics Anonymous, community center

12. Turley Water Board Public Meeting, LAST WORKING DAY OF MONTH 8:30 AM AT THE WATER DEPT. 6108 N. Peoria Ave.

13. Turley Fire Dept. Meetings THURSDAYS 7 PM, Fire Station, 6408 N. Peoria.

14. The Welcome Table Missional Community, Sundays beginning 9:30 am, conversation on progressive Christianity and justice for the poor, community service, communion, common meal, other worship and prayer classes coming up; look for vespers, for a series on the beatitudes as a call for social justice, an Advent series from Jim Wallis and Sojourners. This past Sunday we did some guerilla gardening and work on the food pantry in between Saving Jesus video and discussion and our worship and meal and afterwards too. Worship here is more like a party than a program and so drop in anytime as something will most likely be happening. In November 11-13 I will be at the fall leadership training conference in Texas co-teaching a track on exploring and engaging with your mission field; if you are interested in coming with us let me know; should be fun. For more go to www.swuuc.org.

15. Call about Thanksgiving Meal. 918-794-4637. Not sure what we will be doing again this year; we often provide a meal the Sunday before Thanksgiving and/or on Thanksgiving itself too. I do know we are planning two things for the Nov. 20 Sunday kicking off Thanksgiving Week: a special worshipful meal and conversation on how to make all our community or personal meals done in the spirit of gratitude and justice, facilitated by Christy Moore, one of our missional progressive partners here; and we will have our annual Reverse Offering Sunday when we give back money to those in worship to use between then and Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday when we will give reports on how we spent the money to make the radical loving and liberating spirit of Jesus more visible in the world, which is our simple mission.

We have also been planning and working with our neighbors Greeley Elementary School as our partner here now once Cherokee closed, and we are paying for its monthly student of the month lunch programs; plus we have been working with OU Graduate Social Work partners on our service learning projects for the Spring semester here, so look for more events during the winter months; which means we have to get that $1000 gas deposit paid for and all the heating equipment ready to go. For your partnership with us to make all of the above possible, and all that is coming, we thank you. Donations to us can be made at www.turleyok.blogspot.com. We don't send out thank yous nearly often enough and for that we apologize, but know that each one received is a prayer we hear from you, and a prayer we give back to you.

Commentary

I just wanted to close by saying it was five years ago this month that I began to get a vision after listening to you all in our community, a vision refined at a workshop I was in with Reggie McNeal, a Southern Baptist missional church leader from South Carolina, a vision about turning our church inside out and becoming an organic missional community; by Spring a few months later we had moved out of our then first space here in Turley on North Peoria and were in our then much bigger space also on North Peoria, wondering and worrying how we would ever pay its higher rent and utilities, creating then our library and clothing room and food pantry and computer center and simple meeting space. We had first talked about what we thought our community needed, and then we transformed ourselves so that we could help our community be transformed. Five years later we have lost so much more than we could have even back then envisioned as we were listening to people talk about how much had already been lost in our area; and yet five years later we can write of the things we have just written about above; amazing; we have changed the spirit of our community, not fully, not ever fully, maybe only in many ways just a drop in the bucket, a drop of God's "reign" in the bucket, as we have created a space for building a spirit of abundance and not scarcity, we have connected partners, we have celebrated and partied amid the ruins, and we have surprised even ourselves. We keep failing our way to success. We have been, for five years, to coin a current phrase, Occupying Turley and Far North Tulsa. So much of our time together is spent in dealing with the urgent daily stuff that comes up around us, and spent on all of our projects, but it will all be for nothing if we ever forget that we are blessed to be, to be here in this place, to be here in this place even now, to be here in this place even now with one another, to be here in this place even now with one another for others.

Because of all our grief of late, and the many losses, and because it is coming up on All Souls/All Saints Day, All Hallow's Eve, here are a few excerpts of prayers for these weeks that come from the book Praying by Heart by Tulsan Kay Northcutt that have spoken to me of late:

"Great, living God, for all the families of this world, we ask your abiding and steadfast love: that father, mother, stepparent, sister, brother, child, might be to one another an ever-present help in time of need; that we might know strength in time of sorrow, encouragement and joy in daily relationships and work...Abide with us in health and in illness as we abide with one another. Embrace us in our mourning and fears. Strengthen us, that we might know your strength and sustenance in danger and safety, in laughter and in sorrow. Be with us, God. Be our rest...Abide with us as we attend to the falling of leaves, watching the faithful turning of your creation earth in its cycle of life, birth, fulfillment, and death. We long to be as faithful in our lives as your creation is in its turning to you...Let Wisdom build herself a home in which our hearts can heal and be healed from wounds, heartaches of those we have sinned against, and our pain from those who have broken our hearts. God, we will never understand illness and suffering; and so, failing understanding, we will bring our presence to bear like the Marys at the foot of the cross. But you must bring the light unto our path as we go, or we will not carry your comfort in our visit. For it is your peace that heals, your rest that quiets our hearts...Amen.

Portals To The Welcome Table Church

2011-10-12T13:53:00.000-07:00

A Variety of Portals and Welcome Statements About The Welcome Table Church. Free Universalist Christian Missional Community. see also www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com

I.
Following the radical Jesus in deeds not creeds; though we may gain much wisdom from the historic creeds, we are not bound by them. Join us in service to our community throughout the week. That is the primary way we become church. Our Welcome Table of Worship is open to all who welcome all, regardless of belief or denomination, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical abilities, economic status, or political affiliations. We don’t think Jesus would have it any other way.

Free because God works in freedom so we are non-creedal. We don’t give theological tests for admission, but encourage you to test us and try us to see if this way is for you. Universalist because we believe God is Love and All who abide in Love abide in God, and God’s love is for all for all time. Christian because the generous compassionate way and story of Jesus, is our primary pathway opening up to God. Missional because we are sent to serve others more than ourselves, building up God’s beloved community more than our own, putting our time talent and treasure more into the world than into our own organization. Community because we are made not to be autonomous individuals but to be a people of God.

We are a simple church, but it can be a deep struggle to live toward true freedom, to practice God’s love for all, to follow the liberating Jesus who was crucified for his radical ways of hospitality and justice, to live for and serve others more than self, and to put community first. We invite those who wish to struggle with us, to fail with us, and to continue struggling with us. Worship gatherings and common meal are our times to refresh our spirits for the service of God.

II.
Here is a rewrite of the principles from The Center for Progressive Christianity, signalling our approach to religion.

1. The radically loving and liberating Jesus is central to our community's experience of God.
2. Jesus isn't the only way to experience God. It is good to let other experiences of God into our lives.
3. Communion is the way we worship, and is about God's welcome table for all, and our committment to a life of hospitality and justice throughout the week.
4. We will worship and work with anyone toward creating a just and more loving world; we don't give theological tests for being with us.
5. How we live in love deepens and reveals our faith more than our particular beliefs do. We honor the uncertainty, and change, of beliefs, but also the risk of committment.
6. Freedom is rooted in community, not in individual likes and dislikes, and must be nurtured in community.
7. We are called to resist evil done against Creation and against all of the most vulnerable, and must look to our own blessings and privileges of life that are contributing to injustice.

III.
The Covenanted Community, adapted and extended from Tich Nhat Hanh:
1. We show up.
2. We pay atttention
3. We speak truth in love
4. We stay focused on mission, and flexible on how to accomplish it
5. When we fail at 1 through 4, We show up.

IV.
The five smooth stones, adapted and altered from James Luther Adams and several sources:
1. Truth and meaning is ever being revealed anew, but this can mean also finding truth and meaning in forgotten or neglected or discarded ways.
2. Our relationships rest on mutuality and free consent and persuasion, not coercion.
3. Our committments are aimed at a just community.
4. Goodness must be incarnated in life if it is to be real.
5. We acknowledge the power of evil but believe hope and love and an abundant Universe are ultimate.

V.
The Three R's of Christian Community Development:
1. Relocate to the abandoned places of Empire (or remain, or return)
2. Redistribute goods and The Good
3. Reconcile peoples who are divided, broken, separate.

VI.
The Four Paths of Missional Church: World, We, I, God
1. First, Scatter out into the world beyond ourselves and Serve others. We are Sent People because God is a Sending God.
2. As we do the first, next Grow loving community, in order to do the first path more fully, and to reflect that God is always a Relational God.
3. Then focus on Growing Your Soul, in one's heart, mind, body, and spirit. The more we grow personally the more we have to give along the second path of community.
4. Finally, Respond with Worship: Gather together in Gratitude for being able to walk the first three paths and for the Renewal of self needed to sustain our walk with God found in all of these paths.

VII.
The Six Spiritual Practices of our Missional Community
1. Pray daily
2. Worship at least weekly.
3. Check in spiritually with another at least monthly
4. Go on Retreat at least annually.
5. Commit to going on a once in a lifetime pilgrimmage.
6. Practice random acts of kindness and beauty daily.

VIII.
The 3 Characteristics of an Emerging Church
1. Focus on the life of Jesus.
2. Blur the artificial boundaries and places of the secular and the spiritual
3. Live in Community.

Creation Sabbath Justice Bible Study in the GardenPark: using new translation of Genesis and Exodus

2011-09-24T14:33:00.001-07:00

For tomorrow's 10 am bible study on creation sabbath spirituality, being held in the community kitchengardenorchard miracle among the ruins park we are creating at 6005 N. Johnstown Ave., I am going to be using this translation from Everett Fox of Genesis 1-2:4a, otherwise known as the first creation story but the last genesis one composed, and of Exodus chapter 16; what do creation and sabbath have in common, and how are they ways we focus on living justly, in liberation solidarity with those most vulnerable, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God? feel free to stop by and join in and for our communion in the garden and our common meal.

Here is the Fox translation of these passages from The First Five Books of Moses. Fox is a Hebrew bible scholar; I like his poetic scholarly approach.

Genesis
Chapter 1
Genesis 1:1 At the beginning of God's creating of the heavens and the earth,
Genesis 1:2 when the earth was wild and waste, darkness over the face of Ocean, rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters-
Genesis 1:3 God said: Let there be light! And there was light.
Genesis 1:4 God saw the light: that it was good. God separated the light from the darkness.
Genesis 1:5 God called the light: Day! and the darkness he called: Night! There was setting, there was dawning: one day.
Genesis 1:6 God said: Let there be a dome amid the waters, and let it separate waters from waters!
Genesis 1:7 God made the dome and separated the waters that were below the dome from the waters that were above the dome. It was so.
Genesis 1:8 God called the dome: Heaven! There was setting, there was dawning: second day.
Genesis 1:9 God said: Let the waters under the heavens be gathered to one place, and let the dry land be seen! It was so.
Genesis 1:10 God called the dry land: Earth! and the gathering of the waters he called: Seas! God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:11 God said: Let the earth sprout forth with sprouting-growth, plants that seed forth seeds, fruit trees that yield fruit, after their kind, (and) in which is their seed, upon the earth! It was so.
Genesis 1:12 The earth brought forth sprouting-growth, plants that seed forth seeds, after their kind, trees that yield fruit, in which is their seed, after their kind. God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:13 There was setting, there was dawning: third day.
Genesis 1:14 God said: Let there be lights in the dome of the heavens, to separate the day from the night, that they may be for signs-for set-times, for days and years,
Genesis 1:15 and let them be for lights in the dome of the heavens, to provide light upon the earth! It was so.
Genesis 1:16 God made the two great lights, the greater light for ruling the day and the smaller light for ruling the night, and the stars.
Genesis 1:17 God placed them in the dome of the heavens
Genesis 1:18 to provide light upon the earth, to rule the day and the night, to separate the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:19 There was setting, there was dawning: fourth day.
Genesis 1:20 God said: Let the waters swarm with a swarm of living beings, and let fowl fly above the earth, across the dome of the heavens!
Genesis 1:21 God created the great sea-serpents and all living beings that crawl about, with which the waters swarmed, after their kind, and all winged fowl after their kind. God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:22 And God blessed them, saying: Bear fruit and be many and fill the waters in the seas, and let the fowl be many on earth!
Genesis 1:23 There was setting, there was dawning: fifth day.
Genesis 1:24 God said: Let the earth bring forth living beings after their kind, herd-animals, crawling things, and the wildlife of the earth after their kind! It was so.
Genesis 1:25 God made the wildlife of the earth after their kind, and the herd-animals after their kind, and all crawling things of the soil after their kind. God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:26 God said: Let us make humankind, in our image, according to our likeness! Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the heavens, animals, all the earth, and all crawling things that crawl about upon the earth!
Genesis 1:27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God did he create it, male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:28 God blessed them, God said to them: Bear fruit and be many and fill the earth and subdue it! Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the heavens, and all living things that crawl about upon the earth!
Genesis 1:29 God said: Here, I give you all plants that bear seeds that are upon the face of all the earth, and all trees in which there is tree fruit that bears seeds, for you shall they be, for eating;
Genesis 1:30 and also for all the living things of the earth, for all the fowl of the heavens, for all that crawls about upon the earth in which there is living being- all green plants for eating. It was so.
Genesis 1:31 Now God saw all that he had made, and here: it was exceedingly good! There was setting, there was dawning: the sixth day.
Chapter 2
Genesis 2:1 Thus were finished the heavens and the earth, with all of their array.
Genesis 2:2 God had finished, on the seventh day, his work that he had made, and then he ceased, on the seventh day, from all his work that he had made.
Genesis 2:3 God gave the seventh day his blessing, and he hallowed it, for on it he ceased from all his work, that by creating, God had made.
Genesis 2:4 These are the begettings of the heavens and the earth: their being created.

They moved on from Elim, and they came, the entire community of the Children of Israel, to the Wilderness of Syn, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day after the second New-moon after their going-out from the land of Egypt.
Exodus 16:2 And they grumbled, the entire community of the Children of Israel, against Moshe and against Aharon in the wilderness.
Exodus 16:3 The Children of Israel said to them: Would that we had died by the hand of YHVH in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, when we ate bread till (we were) satisfied! For you have brought us into this wilderness to bring death to this whole assembly by starvation!
Exodus 16:4 YHVH said to Moshe: Here, I will make rain down upon you bread from the heavens, the people shall go out and glean, each day's amount in its day, in order that I may test them, whether they
will walk according to my Instruction or not.
Exodus 16:5 But it shall be on the sixth day: when they prepare what they have brought in, it shall be a double-portion compared to what they glean day after day.
Exodus 16:6 Moshe and Aharon said to all the Children of Israel: At sunset you will know that it is YHVH who brought you out of the land of Egypt;
Exodus 16:7 at daybreak you will see the Glory of YHVH: when he hearkens to your grumblings against YHVH- what are we, that you grumble against us?
Exodus 16:8 Moshe said: Since YHVH gives you flesh to eat at sunset, and at daybreak, bread to satisfy (yourselves); since YHVH hearkens to your grumblings which you grumble against him- what are we: not against us are your grumblings, but against YHVH!
Exodus 16:9 Moshe said to Aharon: Say to the entire community of the Children of Israel: Come-near, in the presence of YHVH, for he has hearkened to your grumblings!
Exodus 16:10 Now it was, when Aharon spoke to the entire community of the Children of Israel, they faced the wilderness, and here: the Glory of YHVH could be seen in the cloud.
Exodus 16:11 YHVH spoke to Moshe, saying:
Exodus 16:12 I have hearkened to the grumblings of the Children of Israel- speak to them, and say: Between the setting-times you shall eat flesh, and at daybreak you shall be satisfied with bread, and you shall know that I am YHVH your God.
Exodus 16:13 Now it was at sunset a horde-of-quail came up and covered the camp. And at daybreak there was a layer of dew around the camp;
Exodus 16:14 and when the layer of dew went up, here, upon the surface of the wilderness, something fine, scaly, fine as hoar-frost upon the land.
Exodus 16:15 When the Children of Israel saw it they said each-man to his brother: Mahn hu/what is it? For they did not know what it was. Moshe said to them: It is the bread that YHVH has given you for eating.
Exodus 16:16 This is the word that YHVH has commanded: Glean from it, each-man according to what he can eat, an omer per capita, according to the number of your persons, each-man, for those in his tent, you are to take.
Exodus 16:17 The Children of Israel did thus, they gleaned, the-one-more and the-one-less,
Exodus 16:18 but when they measured by the omer, no surplus had the-one-more, and the-one-less had no shortage; each-man had gleaned according to what he could eat.
Exodus 16:19 Moshe said to them: No man shall leave any of it until morning.
Exodus 16:20 But they did not hearken to Moshe, and (several) men left some of it until morning; it became wormy with maggots and reeked. And Moshe became furious with them.
Exodus 16:21 They gleaned it in the morning, (every) morning, each-man in accordance with what he could eat, but when the sun heated up, it melted.
Exodus 16:22 Now it was on the sixth day that they gleaned a double-portion of bread, two omers for (each) one. All the exalted-leaders of the community came and told it to Moshe.
Exodus 16:23 He said to them: It is what YHVH spoke about: tomorrow is a Sabbath/Ceasing, a Sabbath of Holiness for YHVH. Whatever you wish to bake-bake, and whatever you wish to boil-boil; and all the surplus, put aside for yourselves in safekeeping until morning.
Exodus 16:24 They put it aside until morning, as Moshe had commanded, and it did not reek, neither were there any maggots in it.
Exodus 16:25 Moshe said: Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath for YHVH, today you will not find it in the field.
Exodus 16:26 For six days you are to glean, but on the seventh day is Sabbath, there will not be (any) on it.
Exodus 16:27 But it was on the seventh day that some of the people went out to glean, and they did not find.
Exodus 16:28 YHVH said to Moshe: Until when will you refuse to keep my commandments and my instructions?
Exodus 16:29 (You) see that YHVH has given you the Sabbath, therefore on the sixth day, he gives you
bread for two days. Stay, each-man, in his spot; no man shall go out from his place on the seventh day!
Exodus 16:30 So the people ceased on the seventh day.
Exodus 16:31 Now the House of Israel called its name: Mahn. -It is like coriander seed, whitish, and its taste is like (that of) a wafer with honey.-
Exodus 16:32 Moshe said: This is the word that YHVH has commanded: An omer of it for safekeeping throughout your generations, in order that they may see the bread that I had you eat in the wilderness when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.
Exodus 16:33 Moshe said to Aharon: Take a vat and put an omer of mahn in it, and put it aside in the presence of YHVH, in safekeeping throughout your generations.
Exodus 16:34 As YHVH had commanded Moshe, Aharon put it aside before the Testimony, in safekeeping.
Exodus 16:35 And the Children of Israel ate the mahn for the forty years, until they came to settled land, the mahn they ate, until they came to the edge of the land of Canaan.
Exodus 16:36 Now an omer-it is a tenth of an efa.

Where In The World Is The Church? The Stillwater Sermon, with readings

2011-08-29T20:30:00.000-07:00

Readings:

From Jorgen Moltmann's "The Source of Life"...Moltmann saw the devastation first hand of whole communities in Europe during and after World War Two:
The ideology of “there is never enough for everyone” makes people lonely. It isolates them and robs them of relationships. The opposite of poverty isn’t property. The opposite of both poverty and property is community. For in community we become rich: rich in friends, in neighbours, in colleagues, in comrades, in brothers and sisters. Together, as a community, we can help ourselves in most of our difficulties. For after all, there are enough people and enough ideas, capabilities and energies to be had. They are only lying fallow, or are stunted and suppressed. So let us discover our wealth; let us discover our solidarity; let us build up communities; let us take our lives into our own hands and at long last out of the hands of the people who want to dominate and exploit us.
From John Perkins, Welcoming Justice:
“So what does it take to make beloved community happen? I really believe that it begins with a place. I’ve preached relocation all my life because the communities I’ve been a part of have been abandoned. Everybody left, so I called them to come back. But my real concern is for the place. If the church is going to offer some real good news in broken communities, it has to be committed to making a good life possible for people in the place where we are.
It may sound simple but I think you’ve got to have neighbors you talk to and get to know before you can love your neighbor as yourself. As we commit to our communities, we also need to learn how to see them as economic places. It’s not enough to just move into a place, plant some flowers and be nice to your neighbors. All of that is good, but that won’t address the brokenness of people’s lives because the structures of the community are broken. People need work, good housing, education and health care. So the church has to invest its resources in developing the community. We also need to use our influence to get businesses and government to invest in the community. ..I wish churches spent more time thinking about how their members could love one another and share a common life by working together as a community. Part of the reason our churches are so individualistic is that we just accept the economic systems of our culture without question. We assume that the people who can get the good jobs should go wherever they have to and the people who can’t get the good jobs should just take what they can get. But churches that want to interrupt the brokenness of society ought to be about creating jobs in the community and giving neighbors an opportunity to work together. If we take our communities seriously as economic places, we’ll spend more time thinking about creating good work than we spend thinking about more relevant worship styles or bigger church buildings."
Matthew 16: 24-26
24Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

Sermon: Where in the World is the Church?

Where in the World is the Church? This question itself carries within it the seeds of the future that is emerging now for the church.
The questions used to be how to get the world into the church. So we produced a “come to us” church based on the model of the Marketplace, the dominant culture and myth of our time; the question was how do we attract and keep more people so we can build bigger buildings and more staff to attract and keep more people, or to even just stay the same, all so we can get more and more people in tune with our message, get them thinking like us, which we believed would change the world.
Now the world has changed all right, into an unchurched postdenominational, definitely not one size or kind fits all world, and the churches that will be sustainable and influential in the new environment are those who either have loads of resources to compete in the come to us religious marketplace culture, where rewards are fewer and fewer all the time at higher and higher costs, or they are ones who are changing from a “come to us” church to being part of a “go to them” church, or even more radically, becoming “come out of them” church that erases distinctions between us and them.
These new, actually also ancient, kinds of church expressions in the world have different measures of success; instead of being about ourselves, they will be about others. Not how many do we count as part of us, but how many are we serving, and serving with, beyond ourselves.
The new measures of success will be more aligned with what have been called the Three R’s of Community Development, which I think are also the Three R’s of a Spiritual Life. Instead of how many people come to our place, the first R is about how are we relocating ourselves to the places where there is the most suffering and wholeness needed. Instead of how big a budget and building and staff and programs for us can we create, the second R is about how many ways are we working to redistribute goods, and The Good, to those without. Finally, instead of making religion foremost about what an individual thinks and feels, about what one believes, and about getting that into a marketable message to get others to think and feel like us, the third R is about how much Reconciliation is going on, about how are we, as a finite imperfect in process hurting broken people ourselves, engaged with the problems and issues and histories and messiness of ourselves and others as a people, for the mutual healing and transformation of all of us.
These Three Rs of Relocation, Redistribution, and Reconciliation come out of the life and work of John Perkins. He was born some 80 years ago in rural Mississippi into his poor African American family. His father left when he was very young trying to find work; as a young man, John saw his older brother, a returning WWII veteran, killed while standing in line, unarmed, at a movie theater, gunned down by a white police officer. John was full of anger, a ticking time bomb; he also hated church because it seemed to do nothing for the community in the face of such injustice. He had had quit school at third grade to work. He married but continued to drink and party. His family, seeing his anger and despair and fearing for his life, managed to send him out of Mississippi to work in California.
There he began to settle his life and became part of the black middle class of the time and in that place; then through his young son Spencer he began attending a church, one that had a prison ministry; and there in meeting with the inmates and encountering the bible for really the first time in depth he began taking seriously a new Jesus he was meeting for the first time. A prophetic Jesus that calls out for justice for the poor and oppressed, and who goes where they are rather than waiting for them to come to him.
This was in the late 50s, in the thick of the growing civil rights era in the South, but the Jesus he was now following, who calls us to pick up crosses, to risk all for justice for the poor, this Jesus now pointed him back home to rural Mississippi, back away from the relative safety of California. At first he was only going back to teach this new understanding of the Bible and its justice mandate, primarily to the youth, he told himself, so they would get the message earlier than he had when he lived there. But soon the needs of the community, and the voice of this Jesus, were calling out to give the people more than a message:
So the church began a community center and then a farm, food was distributed, health care given, child care provided, adult classes begun, and worship held, and civil rights supported. But then the more public his ministry became the more it was seen as a threat by the powers of the status quo. One night he and a van full of youth coming back from a rally were stopped on a rural road by police who arrested him for contributing to the delinquency of minors and took him to jail where he was beaten and tortured near to death.
There, In the hospital, in the caring response of a white nurse coming so soon after his treatment by white jailers, he received an epiphany that helped him to put his hatred into a larger vessel of God’s love, and gave him a new focus or aim to his work, reconciliation, especially among the races.
It all begins with the realization that Where We Are Matters.
Our church couldn’t do what we have done and what we will do if we had stayed in the fast growing suburb where we began, where certainly there is a need for a spiritually progressive message, but where our meager resources were dust in the wind at even trying to get that across to a culture that likes their churches like their box stores, fully equipped from the get go. And besides, more importantly, was that the Mission that most needed us? When nearby was the far northside Tulsa area. A healthy food desert where 55 percent worry about how much food they have and 60 percent say they can’t afford healthy food. Where Our average household income keeps going down and is now just barely above $20,000; where our life expectancy is the lowest in our metropolitan area, fourteen years lower than the highest area that is just six miles to the south of us along the same Peoria ave.
If church is about finding and gathering in people like us, then this is the last place to be; but if church is about being sent to serve among others and finding ourselves there, then this is the first place to be.
A phrase has sprung up to describe places like where John Perkins lives and where we live, the abandoned places of Empire. It harkens back to the Roman Empire, there at a time when the Empire was crumbling, and new communities on the edges were being created as small alternative socieites with values of cooperation instead of conquering. But now The Empire we feel at odds with is a contemporary American Consumer Entertainment Marketplace with dominant cultural values that champion Appearance, Affluence, Achievement, Uniformity, Coolness, Convenience, Comfort, Strength and Safety. And above all, perhaps, this Empire prizes personal autonomy full of choices never ending. This Empire says the good life, even the spiritual life, is found in being surrounded by the so-called best things, smartest people. The goal of this Empire is for places like ours to exist only as places people leave, as places where people live as a kind of punishment for not being able to buy into all the Empire provides us.
John Perkins says think of the shame people fall into who have remained with constant reminders they have not been good enough or smart enough or lucky enough or young enough to leave as they should. That shame breeds a paralysis that makes it hard for people to become active with others for their own and their community’s behalf. It makes it hard for them to see the counter-truth, that as theologian Jorgen Moltmann says, the opposite of poverty is not property but the opposite of both poverty and of property is community.
Our mission as church responding to the world, rather than expecting the world to respond to us as church, our mission is to initiate and imitate beloved community in places and people others abandon.
What might these “go to them” or “emerge out of them” churches look like and do?
Well, If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the photograph of me that was on the cover of this past Spring issue of the Unitarian Universalist World magazine answers much better and more completely that question, and captures the essence of our mission on the northside of Tulsa, and of the missional reformation of the church underway.
The cover photo showed a room inside a building. The building is an abandoned rundown exposed to the elements vandalized woodframe ruin. It used to be a parsonage, the home for the ministers of the oldest church in our community on the northside of Tulsa. The parsonage sets on a corner of the same property as that church’s former building, a redbrick complex itself having likewise been abandoned, rundown, exposed, vandalized and foreclosed.
And as the church had once been near the actual center of the community, one of the largest and oldest of buildings of the community, it is no surprise that the community itself has in large measure become abandoned, rundown, vandalized, and closed. Since the magazine issue was published just a few months ago, our community’s oldest school across the street has been closed, and our post office has been ordered closed.
The photo shows the room with broken and boarded up windows, and a recliner which has either been left behind by a previous owner, or equally possibly, it is one that had been dumped on the road and left for months until someone decided to drag it into the old parsonage to use as they camped out there. It is the only piece of furniture in the building.
The photograph is both a literal representation of a real place in our community, and it is a metaphorical representation of the whole community, evoking its history and evoking its current state, and I hope a little of its future too. Because there in the photo I sit on the recliner, looking very much at home, a representation of our group’s hopeful presence in the ruins.
There are a lot of homes and businesses in that kind of shape where we live, but the photograph was taken there because our church, our missional community, and the nonprofit foundation we created to better reach out to our neighbors, was at the time in the process of buying the house and the old church building. We have since moved in and we are, amid the still vandalized structures, relaunching our community center, food pantry, clothing room, computer center, library, and health hub there, and soon we hope a room dedicated to veterans and their needs, and perhaps even becoming a postal home, and perhaps a school of sorts, filling in the gaps of what has been closed.
And the center is just one of the projects we are engaged in. With the help of many others, our small group also bought an acre of abandoned homes nearby and are actively turning that space into a community kitchengardenpark where we have recently added a 40 fruit tree orchard. And we have other sites nearby that we are turning from blight to beauty, and we have partnered with the University of Oklahoma on a radical new health care for the poor initiative, aimed at training some residents of our zipcode to be medical mentors, or master patients, and connect them with others in their neighborhoods who are repeat and unwarranted users of the emergency rooms. It is a way to turn medical clinics inside out the way we have turned our church inside out.
And with other partners we are addressing other aspects of the life and death matters in our zipcode. For example, this week we host another meeting trying to organize people and resources to bring some simple things like sidewalks and better street lights to our area where a neighbor was recently killed by a truck while he was pushing a shopping cart load of groceries in Peoria, which is also a state highway where we are, at twilight. We have families where the mother or father is in a wheelchair and they are without transportation except for it and whole families, including children, often walk around the mom or dad in the motorized wheelchair in the lane of Peoria on their way to the store or other businesses.
To us this is being church; we talk about all our community work as the body, the arms and legs, hands and feet of the church, what we do with people of many different faiths or none at all, with our own worship time in a small group as the heart of the church. The important thing to me is that we have done all this with no paid staff, some of us have jobs elsewhere and some of us have no jobs, and we have usually just from four to fourteen in worship on Sunday mornings. It is always enough. We are always enough. Sometimes in fact you need to become smaller to be able to do more to change the world.
It is all part of the new missional reformation of the church; something we as participants in the original radical reformation of the church in the 1500 and 1600s should know something about. Or as our theologian James Luther Adams once wrote, our church history is a history of always reforming. The church is dead. Long live the church.
The new reformation says the church should not worry about itself and its own life but worry first and foremost about the life of the world dying around it; not worry about having a mission and trying to create a statement to describe it in order to attract people to come to an organization and building called the church; instead, it should worry if a Mission has it, and if that Mission is worthy of the precious lives that will be called to serve it, and if that Mission is dedicated to serving others in the world, including those who may never seek to become its members, and especially those most vulnerable, most abandoned.
A reformation that asks not how can a church get more of the world to come to us and become like us, but ask where and how, in the world, is the church finding and making and sharing itself? A Reformation that even says don’t talk about the church and its problems before you talk about the world around you and its problems; because they will then lead you into the kind of church you need to become.
Here is what we need to remember: The church is not, at heart, or need to ever be, fundamentally, a 501c3 nonprofit religious organization; it can and has existed, ancient and emerging times, without bylaws, boards, budgets, and buildings, and clergy. Church does not have to be thought of as “a” church, that one “goes to” on the corner of this and that, and is even named a certain thing—what the modern culture made its dominant traits--but church can be lived out organically as a way people, two or more at a time, participate as expressions of “the church.” Imagine. Church anywhere, anytime. Random acts of Church.
For some groups in order to become church, become disciples of love and justice, means having no name, fearing, with some cause, that even naming inevitably turns us toward ourselves and turns us more into an organization than an organic movement.
My favorite story in this category comes from Australia where a young man named Sean had grown up having a hard time, as a sufferer of ADD, sitting still in worship every Sunday in the spectator-manner of his church, and so when he became a young adult he decided that he didn’t have to keep “going to church” and so one Sunday he followed the invitation of a friend to go out on the lake in a boat; while out there, in a lull from swimming, his old habits reared up and he felt guilty for not “being in church” and he asked his friends if he could say part of a psalm and then say a short prayer, and his friend said sure, and he asked his friends if there was anything he could include in his prayer for them, and he did so. And he went back swimming and partying. Next Sunday the same thing happened, but this time he had also brought a Bible with him, and after a short time reading and praying they kept on partying. Gradually more and more friends were joining them. Gradually the prayers had more things mentioned. Soon they were spending time at the lake helping tow boats that had broken down, and were cleaning the park, looking for other ways to do random acts of kindness. They began to take time out for more bible reflection and they held communion on the picnic tables, and they kept partying before and during and after. Pretty soon worship was more party than program. And all the while his worried family kept bugging him to “come back to church.” They thought church is something you attend; but it is something you become.
Now imagine Sean hadn’t accidentally created this way of being church, but if he and others had been intentionally sent by his church to the lake to serve, create community, and celebrate. Some churches now tell some of their members to stay away from church and take their money away from the established church for a year and go build relationships and serve and be the church outside of their worshipping community, perhaps in apartment complexes, one of the most unchurched places of culture, or a garden in a food desert, or a school where the children have many strikes against them, and they only ask them to then come back and share their stories of how community has been formed and their church has been renewed and grown outside of itself.
Another time there was a church of 80 members and it had of late always struggled to grow, to make building expenses, to pay a minister; it just seemed stuck, and turned inward, turning on itself. Then one day the minister called them all together and divided them up into eight groups of ten based on where they lived. Then announced that he was downsizing and simplifying and moving into a poor part of town and going to work part time at a body shop where he could make the money he needed in his new environment, and he told them to look around at their group, and he announced this was their new church; they were to meet in homes and where they could near where they lived and worship together weekly and serve their neighborhood and one another, and he would be their minister and help coach and connect them and they would come together as they had just every so often, now to hear and celebrate their stories in worship.
Reggie McNeal, author of Missional Renaissance, writes: “An explosion of missional communities…will occur…They will range in size from a handful of participants to a few dozen. Gatherings will take place in homes and restaurants, bookstores and bars, office conference rooms and university dorm rooms, hotel meeting space and downtown Ys, and yes, even churches. Their community life will center on an intense desire to grow spiritually and to aid the community. Some will be connected to churches; many will not be.”
I hope some of these communities seeded by churches or networked as grassroots missions by groups of two or more people will be from our free churches, because we have a tradition and faith stance of openness and embracing freedom and abundance and hope for all that others could be enriched by, especially others in abandoned places and abandoned times in their lives when reactions of not having and being enough, and feelings of fear, so often rule how their world is seen.
But first, like John Perkins, like Sean, like those who Jesus said would follow him, we must go to the deserted places, and there be willing to be changed without knowing into what, trusting when we do the counter-intuitive, when we let go and turn ourselves and our churches and other groups inside out, that this is when new life comes, when crosses become communities with a cause.

To help go to this link....see post below for more.

2011-08-21T14:13:00.000-07:00

To help us replace the air conditioning in the building, which wore out from the use during the fire response and heat wave, or to help with the replacing of the computers and phones and television and a volunteer's guitar that were stolen after we were open as a red cross center during the fires, or to help in general with our food pantry and purchase of bottles of water to hand out, or for the plumbing work, or the community celebrations and community health project, or the kitchengardenorchard park project, and more, go donate easily and safely at...

www.turleyok.blogspot.com for our community foundation, A Third Place Community Foundation, and our mission of renewing community, empowering residents, growing healthy lives and neighborhoods, all through small acts of justice done with great love....

A Ministry of Presence in the Fires and Heat Wave

2011-08-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

CBS Radio just interviewed, after AP did yesterday, about our church and community center response during the heat wave, fires, and all here in our community lately; not sure I do well with sound bites and blurbs that fit though so not sure what all will be used because once you get me wound up :)....

about life in poverty areas especially when heat wave makes it even tougher on folks without ac, without cars, without access to malls, who walk without sidewalks to grocery stores and schools, and then the shutting down of post office coming after shutting the school, and the fires and home losses and depletion of resources for the fire department and the community center....and those with AC, like our situation, are having theirs breaking down and not able to replace; fortunately schools going back here this week so kids will have a cool place, though for many walking back in the heat is tough.

and then our center which acts as cooling station in afternoons and provides water, food, TV computers, games, etc. has its own AC wear down from so much use and eventually this past week wear out, plumbing breaks, and the breakin after the fires takes computers, phones..

....so with all that hard to contain to a cute blurb and hard to shut me up, but I do appreciate very much of the national news and attention, helping people perhaps to see what they don't in normal run of their day see or experience; like how hard it is for people in the heat wave who work day labor outdoors and rely on mowing lawns and small day jobs, working in heat or not being able to find work like they used to; worrying about paying electric and water bills so not eating but very little to save up for the bills to come....

but like we said at worship in the park this morning, being here is what counts, and doing things poorly but doing them is what counts and what lasts; so tomorrow we will be taking again the ice chests of bottled water out to the streets, and hope to get AC replaced asap and then find ways to pay for it later....and to learn from this summer and disasters how to be present even more and better; we will be meeting at the center thursday sept 1 at 2 pm, if AC gets replaced, with area leaders and those from Tulsa Partners about the disaster response plan ideas and process for next time we have mass evacuations from fires or possible floods tornadoes etc. And we are still out promoting all community events like the fund raiser for the Turley Fire Dept. Sat. Sept. 3 noon to 5 pm $5 per person bean dinner at the fire station 6408 N. Peoria; don't want to miss that chance to help and get some good food....And we will keep hosting community celebrations to remind us of the abundance of life together even in the midst of the things that try to drive us to thinking only about ourselves; and we have a community history and heritage lunch planned at the center for noon on Sat. Sept. 17 after a morning of service cleaning up our community. and our Sept. focus will be on educational justice, and our movie will be "October Sky" Wed. Sept. 28 6:30 pm.

...we will continue to look at the deeper systemic issues of justice at the same time we do the daily response of one to one needs that comes up; we will be talking Tuesday Aug. 23 at 1:30 pm with politicians about trying to get the post office to work with us to staff our own postal center with their help here in the center or with a local business interested in it ...On Wednesday Aug. 24 we keep our focus on Community health month here with the movie "Sicko" and discussion and free food at 6:30 pm and hope we can do it in the center but if AC not replaced by then will find another place for it...Then thursday evening Aug. 25 we host the local neighborhood leaders safety and watch meetings of the turley area alliance against crime...

....and speaking of community health month, we found out we can extend for a few more weeks our summer health survey program with OU where we give out to local residents gift cards to use for their time taking the surveys with us; so we get more data, can reach more areas of the community, and pump more money directly back to the people here in our neighborhoods, and build connections to our projects and one another at the same time; we hope to have more health events at school, community meeting, and again at the north tulsa farmers market to reach people living here on the northside....another reason to get our AC replaced in time for our the community meeting next week and the community leadership meeting....

...Even when the Center is shut down because of the AC out we take the Center to the Community as we did this past Wednesday providing a pizza and salad lunch for all the teachers at the Horace Greeley Elementary School, now our closest school; it was a time to promote reconciliation of teachers from two schools that had merged due to the closing of Cherokee school; allowing teachers time and place to eat together and visit all together is a rare thing for a school where schedules and more keep all so busy and apart, but we want to do more of this and find ways to promote teachers building relationships with one another in order to help foster that among the students who are going through all the changes of closed schools and new schools too.

....finally while all of this is the arms and legs hands and feet and body of the church being the church int he community for the community and with people of varying faiths and no faith communities, our worship circles, like this morning at the park in the relative cool of the early morn, are the heart, and we have real, relaxed, and relational times, sharing life, getting in touch with all that sustains us, so that we can share and be the church in many ways while we are out in the world....So this Thursday we will be sharing worship with Phillips theological Semianry, 905 N. Mingo, at 11:30 am followed by lunch as some of us in the Unitarian Universalist sphere provide the chapel liturgy for communion. You also get a good homily from PTS President Gary Peluso-Verdend....Then next Sunday The Welcome Table Universalist Church will go on the road to Stillwater as I will be preaching at the UU Church there; we will carpool and caravan and then have some fun in Stillwater after the fun of worship of course.

will try to post more links and updates at www.turleyok.blogspot.com and www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com

The Fires and More: Our Lives, Our Spirit, Our Mission

2011-08-07T14:51:00.000-07:00

Hi to all. When you see the stories below you will know why we haven't written lately...But let me put it in a few words: Because You Have Been With and For Us, from wherever you are, near or faraway, We Have Been Here For Others The Past Few Days in a Deep Way....so thank you...

On Tuesday afternoon, when the temperature was setting record 115 temperatures, our community began burning from grassfires that spread to homes and several hundred were ordered evacuated. The fires were concentrated two blocks from the community center but were moving the other way so within an hour we were the first home for the first response with red cross and fire officials and others setting up in our community center; we helped supply cold water and a cool place for all, including the bedfast who were brought here too. One of our volunteers who coordinates the clothing room, an 81 year old widow, lost her home; the first fire trucks responding ran out of water and her house burned before other trucks could arrive; others had their endangered and worked with the firefighters for hours to keep it from spreading. We were here through the evening and held a board planning party previously scheduled even amidst the response; by night the red cross had moved to a church with shower capabilities we don't yet have, thanks Antioch Baptist Church; we had planned a catered dinner for our board members and other volunteers for that evening already and so, in loaves and fishes style, we offered it to all who were at the center; thanks to Elote Restaurant for catering our event; it went much further than we had intended. We supplemented it with a free pizza dinner we purchased from our local pizza place.

On Wednesday we took ice and water out to the burned home area where folks were congregating, and on Thursday we dedicated most of our monthly area planning group here at the center with State Rep. Seneca Scott and Fire Chief of our volunteer fire dept and others to the fires and response and to launching a community wide emergency response so we can do even better the next time this or something like it happens. We will be collecting food and personal supplies here at the center and coordinating more with the Red Cross for followup, especially in the weeks after the immediate emergency response is over....We also continued our planning toward a small area plan involving the community, and moving toward incorporation of our community to give it more of a voice.

But during all the emergency response of the first days, we also had people come into the center and unlock doors we keep locked and don't check as often as we should, and they came back in during the night and stole a volunteer's guitar and our computer center equipment and a phone. One of the things we were glad to offer people on the day of the fires was the ability to get on computers and communicate with others.
Also the constant use of the air conditioners during this heat wave now in to its third month has caused our airconditioning unit to break down this weekend. Thanks for our partners who helped us with big oscillating fans on the day of the fire for the areas of the center we didn't have ac yet. And thanks to all of those of you who were able to find ways past the roadblocks to get here to the frontlines and bring assistance.

Also on Thursday we were able to pause and celebrate up at the kitchengardenpark, where the orchard has been planted too, as we received our $25,000 grant for the park and our production and distribution of healthy food in our zipcode here which has the lowest life expectancy of any area, by a wide fourteen years, in the Tulsa area. We look forward to it also being an economic stimulus for our community as well as a place for community connections. Thanks to Channel 6 News for covering the event. Last summer we were furiously trying to raise funds to just buy the abandoned homes on the acreage; this summer we are celebrating having bought the land, having cleared the homes, having planted garden beds and an orchard and kept both alive and productive in the worst summer in a long long time, and now with funds to keep the transformation going, with more to come in what we rightly call our Miracle Among the Ruins.

This week we are also keeping going our summer free daily lunch program for all under 18 years old, being held at Cherokee School. It was scheduled to have closed down on Friday but the Tulsa Schools asked us to keep it going because we are serving more children than any other area, and have been throughout the summer and not just when school is in session as at most sites; so it is costing us extra but we are keeping the program going an extra week and will finish on Friday, Aug. 12, closing down the last program in Cherokee School, the historic school for Turley which dates back into the early days of the 20th century but has been closed by school officials. We should find out this week Wednesday or Thursday if anyone has made a bid to the school district to buy the Cherokee building; if so we will begin evaluating that bid and its positive or negative effects on the community; we also are hoping the school district will work with us to allow us to keep up the grounds we have planted at the school in hopes it will decrease vandalism as the school sits empty in the heart of our community. Three summers ago I was writing about how kids in our area were going hungry in summer because they received free breakfast and lunch throughout the year at school but without school their families were not able to compensate in budgets; now we are feeding more than anywhere else, and even with Cherokee School closing, we are hoping to open up not just one but two more feeding sites for next summer.

We are into the thick of our efforts this summer for community based health in our area. We held our first focus groups this past Thursday, and this coming week we have three major events: Wednesday (note date change) Aug. 10 from 2 to 5 pm we will be doing our surveys on health with University of Oklahoma at the North Tulsa Farmers Market, inside at Tulsa Community College Northeast campus, giving our quick trip gift cards to those who participate; then Thursday, Aug. 11 we will have more focus groups at the Center (assuming we get AC fixed), and then we will finish with a Community Health FunFest of information and surveys and live music and garage sale and family fun and more at the center on Sat. Aug. 13 from 9 am to 1 pm. 5920 N. Owasso Ave. Come be a part of it, especially if you would like a table to set up info on a health related topic or group. Or to bring food clothing or donations. A year ago we were struggling to keep open our health clinic; now we are helping to develop and begin a radical health concept that will keep people out of clinics in the first based and use communities themselves again to foster health.

For the past few weeks we have been trying to let the public know that the Post Office is set on closing our local post office, even though it wasn't listed in the nationwide list of closures released through the media recently and which caused people here to celebrate falsely; finally the Tulsa World was able to track down a document proving the planned closure and stating publicly what had not been stated publicly before; only post office box holders had been made aware of,a possible closure. I had called officials in Oklahoma City and been told we definitely were being closed; the story that came out in the paper on Saturday seemed to leave open doubt or possibility they wouldn't be closed, but ours has been definitely determined to be closed on Sept. 10 regardless of any response from a community just now receiving media notice; just now has anything official been posted on the door of the post office about the closure for the community to see; we have already submitted 25 pages of petitions to the postal authorities and federal legislative offices protesting the closure on moral grounds and on the grounds that the government should help those who need help the most, not those who live in areas where they have the means to access alternatives and they have alternatives like computers and UPS and FEDEX which we don't here; there are no offices of those anywhere on the northside, especially not in our zipcode areas. To save funds the post office should shut the offices in Utica Square where people who frequent there have the means to drive here and who have other alternatives nearby, but folks here don't have the means to drive there, and it is going to be hard for them to even get the four miles to the nearest office on Apache. At the least we want the post office to talk with us and other community leaders about putting in a village post office at the community center and letting us staff it; we are exploring ways to designate a room for box offices too.

We celebrated all of this today in worship held up at the gardenpark because of the AC off in the Center; we broke the bread of communion into separate pieces, each piece stood for a spoken suffering, then we dipped each piece into the cup of hope and blessing during communion and named the signs of hope and thankfulness we have experienced too, and retold the story of Jesus walking on water, and how our community was entering into the chaos and storms of the world around us, called from our times of renewal and rest in summertime, how we were following a vision and trying to walk on water too and doing so, but also sinking down in the stormy waters, but how other hands were pulling us back up, back into community and out of our own separate egos and individual visions, restoring us with community, and we sang about putting down our burdens, and we sang about roses that will open one day, and we sang Dona Nobis Pacem, and Shalom Havyreem, and to Go Now in Peace, and we prayed the prayer of Jesus together, and then left our hilltop space around the picnic table and went to eat together and share more of our lives and our plans together for service together.

Social ethicist James Luther Adams wrote that the power of an organization is for the organization of power, to which I add, for the powerless. We are a pretty poor organization, in many ways here, but that vision of concentrating our abilities for the sake of those without power has shown itself lately to be a strong indicator of a strong organic community that exists not for itself but for its Mission, lifting up lives and neighborhoods, particularly those whom others have abandoned, and doing it through small acts of justice done with great love, all of which is how we strive to make visible in the world the spirit of the Sacred we find most definitely, though not exclusively, in the loving and liberating free radical Jesus way. We have so much still to develop here, in small and big ways, but we have been tested and we know the Spirit is deep and moving among us. And that each of you all is a part of that Spirit.

blessings, from all of us, and special thanks to the communities where I have been guest preaching lately, at Bay Area Unitarian Universalist Church in Houston, and Hope Unitarian Church in Tulsa; looking forward to preaching later this month at the UU Church of Stillwater OK, and to the start of a new semester at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, to a ministerial study group in the Dallas Fort Worth area next week, to friends from Pathways UU Church in DFW who came to help, to all those in my Missional Progressives Reimaging the World (and then the Church) workshop at the Southwest UU Summer Institute at Western Hills Lodge east of Tulsa, where next year I will be program director and where colleague Rev. Thomas Schade will be theme speaker, coming from First Church in Worcester, MA to Western Hills July 22-27, 2012, and where Rev. Tony Lorenzon of Pathways in DFW will be the Sunset Preacher. and as always, more to come,

Ron
www.turleyok.blogspot.com
www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com
www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com
www.uuchristian.org

The June issue Good News Online: Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, General Assembly Communion, Revival in D.C., Retreat at Glastonbury Abbey

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Here is a link to the latest monthly online Good News issue from the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship for Pentecost and Trinity Sunday and General Assembly and more this month. Latest news on all the exciting changes and programs for Revival 2012. Feel free to share with others.

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=kzvsopdab&v=001XkDsT0Wlq8Gacw36jDlTwheUW0rcZ3AyznoI-2V7TCPZ-Hcyg_hq7oW0CAW7YfMO8SyLpI2NJH7yrWsDKzsw-VY6u02cCrZZAAGne7I-CkQYAIdBh7j1J1ZvN7FZ7aO5lRIHWQk-vbutEn1uBs8FWIAqiGJTIIjtB2vT1LPj2eJmuNn3dPjX8a5lZJXgH89AuupsLJzyGSCWKiQcMlFchBfAZjqU3P87cZ-cSlo6Okvg1mT0e_aISXNUl4EC6SBN7vwnzAmpxhBG1HLxYLqHngJJYvkKe0LYtOvcPdFI9wg64-HvxnWjwZZksSW6eBGc7ChQBWZtiefJEQ5GwQgGFgP0YtE_Vl0_ERIkmHHFWqi9lor6_MXe9Q%3D%3D&id=preview

Plus here is more on Pentecost Sunday and the liturgical season of Pentecost/Ordinary Time we have entered into, where the accent is on The Spirit moving into and through unexpected people and places...including sermons on progressive interpretations of Pentecost:

Pentecost
On Sunday, June 12 the church celebrated the Day of Pentecost and we entered the long liturgical season of Pentecost, or Ordinary Time. There has been, it seems, a resurgence of interest in the religious observance of Pentecost even among many different UU congregations. Many are coming to see what a powerfully particularly universalist message and story that we have been left in the Second Chapter of Acts. There are elements of our touchstone of continuous revelation, of visions and the ability to prophecy coming to all kinds of people, the affirmation of unity in diversity, and the yearning for a covenanted community focused on meeting real needs in the here and now, inspired by a Transcendent Spirit.

Here are just a few links to sermons and blogposts that delve into the spirit and the story of Pentecost in UU settings.
http://www.all-souls.org/sermons/20040606.htm"Found in Translation" by Rev. Rob Hardies of All Souls Unitarian Church of Washington, D.C.
http://www.frsuu.org/serm172.htm "Tongues of Fire" by the Rev. Harold E. Babcock at First Religious Society UU of Newburyport, Mass.
https://serenityhome.wordpress.com/tag/pentecost/ blogpost on Pentecost Day and Unitarian Universalism by the Rev. Fred Hammond, a UU minister in Mississippi and Alabama.

UUs Look at The Trinity

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Here are some resources used by Pathways UU church in the Dallas Fort Worth area which looked at the new ways to view the Trinity. For Trinity Sunday coming up; see post below. This class is a good lens to see how theology can still engage us, and help us engage the world, and shows how UUs bring a nice wide lens to look at issues of christology.

The Trinity for Unitarians - Week 1, Overview and Method
Rev. Tony Lorenzen

Method

“You might say that unitarianism has become dogmatic for us — the Trinity being something that a "good" UU simply cannot believe in because we are, by default, anti-Trinitarians. I'd suggest instead that UUs celebrate theological liberalism as a method rather than as a set of theological conclusions.” – Chris Walton, Editor UU World (Philocrities).

Biblical Studies – historical critical method and the use of reason become the hallmark of anti-trinitarian theological method, yet many if not most of the Unitarian, Universalist and other “heretics” we encounter will use an “uncritical” approach to scripture in their justification for theological positions, even using “proof-texting” or citing scripture texts uncritically to support their views, well into the 19th century.

Heresy/Hertics

Heresy comes from a greek work meaning “to choose.” A heretic is someone who has not given up the right to choose what to think or what to believe. Heresy is measured in juxtaposition to orthodoxy or “right” thinking.

Arianism - from Arius (256-336) north African priest (leader). Believed Christ was of a different essence/nature (ousia) than God. Denied the doctrine of homousias, that Christ is of one being with “the Father” eternally begotten of the father.” Christ is a lesser created being. Jesus is “more than human,” but not one with God from the beginning. This is Channing’s Christ. Does not deal as well with a theology of the holy spirit, but we’ll get that in week four.

Adoptionism – Not the same thing as Arianism. Jesus is born of human parents (Joseph and Mary) and adopted by God as son at his baptism. This is argued by some scholars as being the view of the author of the Gospel of Mark's view and Saint Paul's view. Also seen as the view of many early Jesus communities by some. This is the view of the non-canonical Gospel of Hebrews, Gospel of Ebionites and Gospel of Nazoreans.

Socinianism – named after Laelius Socinus (dies 1562) and his nephew Faustus Socinus (died 1604) Socinians presage the Transcendentalists. Their teaching led to the Rakovian Catechism in Poland (1605). They insist on interpreting scripture with the use of reason. Deny the doctrine of justification and atonement of the cross and reject the idea of hell and see sacraments as only symbols. God can not be completely omniscient and there can not be a pre-existence Logos (or Christ), therefore Jesus is human, although as a divinely appointed mediator (savior), he can be worshipped. The holy spirit is a power of God, not another entity. Socinians refused to bear arms or hold public office.

Resources

1. Philocrities - Isaac Newton's anti-Trinitarianism in the news. Sunday, July 29, 2007 - http://www.philocrites.com/archives/003651.html
Discussion on blog post at web site by Chris Walton, editor of UU World Magazine. Blog is now inactive, but Chris keeps the site up as a reference and it’s a great reference for all types of matters and things UU related. This discussion is on the Trinity from a UU perspective. The comments thread is wonderful.

2. Progressive Church Planting - The Welcome Table, a free universalist christian missional community “Trinity Talk”- http://progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/2007/08/trinity-talk.html
Blog of Rev. Ron Robinson, Executive Director of the UU Christian Fellowship.
This entry cites the Philocrities blog and names other resources for UU discussion of the trinity.
3. Park, David B. The Epic of Unitarianism. Beacon Press, Boston,1957. Out of Print.
4. Wintersteen, Prescott B. Christology in American Unitarianism: An Anthology of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Unitarian Theologians. UU Christian Fellowship, Boston, 1977. Out of Print. Copies still Available from the UUCF.
5. Ballou, Hosea. Ancient History of Universalism. Biblio BazaarReproduction Series. Originally published through Universalist publishing house, Boston, 1872.
6. Borg, Marcus. Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. Harper Collins: New York, 1994.
7. Gulley, Phillip. If Grace is True. Harper Collins, New York, 2003.
8. The Church Fathers - http://www.ccel.org/fathers.html - an online free library of all the early Christian Church writings.

The Trinity for Unitarians – Part One
Jeff E. Harris
(November, 2010)

The Christian Trinity

Traditional Christian theology asserts that God’s identity can be described as “three persons in one Godhead” (Guthrie, 1994, p. 71).

Christians came to believe that Jesus was God. “The first Christians could not talk about the God if Israel who was their God too without talking about a man named Jesus” (Guthrie, 1994, p. 78).

Christians came to believe that God was also the Holy Spirit who descended on Jesus at his baptism (Luke 3:22) and filled Jesus’ followers after his death on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2-1-4).

“The same God who is God over us as God the Father and Creator, and God with and for us as the incarnate Word and Son, is also God in and among us as God the Holy Spirit” (Guthrie, 1994, p. 80).

“Trinitarian theology ‘assigns’ or ‘attributes’ different works to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit...”
• “When we think about God the Father…we think about God’s work as a powerful Creator, just Ruler, Protector, and Preserver of the world and all living things in it.”
• “When we think about God the Son, we think of God’s loving, self-giving work in Jesus Christ to reconcile, save, and liberate needy, sinful creatures and the created world.”
• “When we think about God the Holy Spirit, we think of God’s work to renew and transform human beings, human communities, and our whole natural environment…” (Guthrie, 1994, p. 85).

It is important to remember that a theology of the Trinity emerged over centuries of reflection and debate. The Christian scriptures only hinted at this view of God. After Jesus’ resurrection, the Gospel of Matthew describes the way Jesus commissioned his disciples with these words, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28: 19, NRSV)

A Trinitarian theology was formalized in the Nicene Creed in 325 CE but, at this time, the role of the Holy Spirit was not clarified. The Nicene Creed was a compromise between debating factions that pleased Emperor Constantine, who wanted a unified theology to unify his empire. Theologically, the Nicene Creed resolved one problem but created another. “Now at Nicaea the Church had opted for the paradox of the Incarnation, despite its apparent incompatibility with monotheism” (Armstrong, 1993, p. 113).

The role of the Holy Spirit was more fully developed by the Cappadocian bishops later in the 4th century: “God had a single essence (ousia) which remained incomprehensible to us—but three expressions (hypostases) which made him known” (Armstrong, 1993, p. 115).

For many Christians, particularly in the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches, “the Trinity only made sense as a mystical or spiritual experience” and these believers find that “the contemplation of the Trinity is an inspiring religious experience” (Armstong, 1993, p. 117).

A Hindu Perspective on Multiple Images of God

Huston Smith suggests that Hinduism uses polytheistic images to imagine God while also remembering that God cannot be imagined.

“Hinduism’s myths, her magnificent symbols, her several hundred images of God, her rituals…are matchmakers whose vocation is to introduce the human heart to what they represent but themselves are not” (Smith, 1991 ,p. 34).

“A symbol such as a multi-armed image, graphically portraying God’s astounding versatility and superhuman might, can epitomize an entire theology” (Smith, 1991, p. 34-35).

Here’s a Hindu prayer that Smith (1991, p. 34) uses to capture the tension between polytheism and monotheism:

O Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations:
Thou art everywhere, but I worship you here;
Thou art without form, but I worship you in these forms;
Thou needest no praise, yet I offer you these prayers and salutations.
Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations.

An Early Unitarian Viewpoint

In 1819, William Ellery Channing preached a famous sermon entitled, “Unitarian Christianity”, in which he made the following claims:

“We believe in the doctrine of God's UNITY, or that there is one God, and one only…

“We object to the doctrine of the Trinity, that, whilst acknowledging in words, it subverts in effect, the unity of God.”

“With Jesus, we worship the Father, as the only living and true God. We are astonished, that any man can read the New Testament, and avoid the conviction, that the Father alone is God.”

“Having thus given our views of the unity of God, I proceed in the second place to observe, that we believe in the unity of Jesus Christ. We believe that Jesus is one mind, one soul, one being, as truly one as we are, and equally distinct from the one God. We complain of the doctrine of the Trinity, that, not satisfied with making God three beings, it makes; Jesus Christ two beings, and thus introduces infinite confusion into our conceptions of his character.”

http://www.americanunitarian.org/unitarianchristianity.htm
A Contemporary UU view of the Trinity
Rev. Roger Bertschausen preached about the Trinity in April, 2000 at Fox Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Appleton, WI. Here’s what he said:
“The strong, almost visceral reaction many Unitarian Universalists have to the Trinity sometimes mystifies me. Certainly this strong reaction is grounded in the roots of our faith: Unitarianism was, as its name boldly states, originally a strong reaction to the Trinity. But when I hear a strong UU reaction to the Trinity today--at least a good century or two removed from when the Trinity really mattered to most Unitarians--I'm perplexed. Don't you get it? I wonder. For most main-line Christians at least, the Trinity is a metaphor. It's a metaphor, a symbol. Just like the interdependent web is a metaphor for many of us Unitarian Universalists. The Trinity, like the multitude of Hindu gods, simply acknowledges the complexity of the divine and the need for humans to view the divine from multiple angles. One angle can't completely capture the divine. So often, though, we Unitarian Universalists take the Trinity literally, forgetting that it's a metaphor. When we take the Trinity literally, I think we make exactly the same mistake some fundamentalist Christians make when they take the Trinity literally.”
http://www.fvuuf.org/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,192/Itemid,127/
One implication of this view is that it suggests that we can deconstruct and reconstruct theology in a way that is most meaningful and helpful for us.
Our Personal Response

How do you see the Trinity?

What do you want to do with the Trinity?
• Affirm it as an essential truth
• Reject it as an outdated doctrine
• Embrace it as a spiritual mystery
• Modify it in a personal way that makes it more useful

Over the next three weeks, we are going to look more closely at three images of God. We will be encouraging you to decide what you want to do with each of these images of God. You will have the opportunity to affirm, reject, embrace, or modify each of these images.

Part Two – God as Loving Parent

• A brief history of monotheism
• The Judeo-Christian Image of God as Father
• Advantages of this Metaphor
• Disadvantages of this Metaphor
• Alternative images – goddess, maya
• How can we modify this image?

Part Three – God’s Incarnation into Humanity

• A brief history of Incarnation Theology
• Other religious perspectives
• Advantages of this metaphor
• Disadvantages of this metaphor
• Alternative images – suffering servant, teacher
• How can we modify this image?

Part Four – God as Indwelling Spirit

• A brief history
• The Spirit in World Religions
• Contemporary Images
• Advantages of this metaphor
• Disadvantages of this metaphor
• Alternative images – emptiness, interbeing
• How can we modify this image?

The Trinity for Unitarians Week 2 – GOD
Rev. Tony Lorenzen

Unitarianism - God is One
The Shema (Dueteronomy 6:4) The Jewish “profession of faith”
Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad. - Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.
Excerpts from Samuel Barrett, 1825 – Scriptural Arguments for Unitarianism:
1. 1.Because Jesus Christ is represented by the sacred writers to be as distinct a being from God the Father as one man is distinct from another.
2. 94. Because there are in the New Testament seventeen passages, wherein the Father is styled one or only God, while there is not a single passage in which the Son is so styled.
3. 95. Because there are 320 passages in which the Father is absolutely, and by way of eminence, called God; while there is not one in which the Son is thus called.
4. 96. Because there are 105 passages in which the Father is denominated God, with peculiarly high titles and epithets, whereas the Son is not once denominated.
5. 97. Because there are 90 passages wherein it is declared that all prayers and praises ought to be offered to Him, and that everything ought to be ultimately directed to his honor and glory; while of the Son no such declaration is ever made.
6. 98. Because of 1,300 passages in the New Testament wherein the word God is mentioned, not one necessarily implies the existence of more than one person in the Godhead, or that this one is any other than the Father.
7. 100. Because, in a word, the supremacy of the Father, and the inferiority of the Son, is the simple, unembarrassed, and current doctrine of the Bible; whereas, that of their equality or identity is clothed in mystery, encumbered with difficulties, and dependent, at the best, upon few passages for support.

Michael Servetus (1511-1553) – Burned at the stake by John Calvin in Geneva in 1553 for heresy for his On the Errors of the Trinity (1531). – Servetus is an Arian. His chief argument is with the ousias of the Nicene creed: “And so I admit one person of the Father, another Person of the Son, another Person of the Holy Spirit, three Persons in one Godhead and this is the true Trinity. But I should prefer not to use a word foreign to the scriptures, lest perchance in future the philosophers have occasion to go astray. And I have no controversy with the earlier writers because they employed this word sensibly.” Servetus doesn’t like the Greek ousias, implying God, Jesus and Holy Spirit share one BEING or ESSENCE. This concept is not found in the New Testament.

Francis David (1510-1579) – Transylvanian champion of Unitarianism. Studied for Catholic priesthood then converted to Lutheranism and Calvinism, before becoming Unitarian in theology. Was theologian to King John Sigismund and instrumental in the Diet of Torda (1568), establishing Unitarianism.
“Outside of God there is no other God, neither three, neither four, neither in substance, neither in persons, because the scripture nowhere teaches anything about a triple God.”
However, for David God gives Jesus divinity and Jesus is Christ is begotten by the holy spirit.

Universalism – All are Saved

Universalism is deeply and intimately tied to the idea of trinity, for there used to be a time (and for some it is still true) that if you didn’t believe in the Trinity the “right” way, God (all three parts of it) would damn you to hell forever. Universalism counters this with a God that seeks to save or love everyone and/or does away with the idea of hell. Thus the idea you have of the trinity isn’t as important as the experience you have of God.

“We assert that the Word, who is the Wisdom of God, shall bring together all intelligent creatures, and convert them to his own perfection, through the instrumentality of their free will and of their own exertions.” – Origen 185-254

“In the liberation of all, no one remains a captive.” Didymus, 309-395

“In the present life, God is in all, for his nature is without limits, but is not all in all. But in the coming life, when mortality is at an end and immortality granted, and sin no longer has any place, God will be all in all.” Theodoret the Blessed, 387-458

Since love in him was perfect and since love hates or envies no one, but includes everyone, even though we were all his enemies, surely he would not wish to exclude anyone.” Hans Denk, 1495-1527

“Every man has a measure of true and saving grace” – Robert Barclay, 1648-1690

“Give them not hell, but hope and courage. Preach kindness and the everlasting love of God” – John Murray, 1741-1813

“As to the justice of endless punishment, minds enjoying the liberty of free inquiry could easily detect the diabolical character of such justice as it is the exat opposite of the Divine nature, which is love. Such justice is evidently predicated on the false principle and ungodly practice of rendering evil for evil.” – Hosea Ballou 1771-1852

“Only when we se that we are part of the totality of the planet, not a superior part with special privileges, can we work effectively to bring about an earth restored to wholeness.” – Elizabeth Watson

The Trinity for Unitarians Week 3 – JESUS
Rev. Tony Lorenzen

Jesus - Christology – “Who do UU Say that I am?”

Mark 8:27-30
Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ And they answered him, ‘John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.’ He asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.’ And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

No where does Jesus claim that he IS God.

Stepping Stones to a Human Jesus and today’s liberal or progressive Christianity

Calvinism: John Calvin (1509-1564) French Protestant writes Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536). Calvin’s theology is summarized by TULIP – interestingly, a TULIP is a response to the Arminian challenge. T-total depravity. U-unconditional election, L- limited atonement, I-irresistible grace, P-perseverance of the saints.

Arminianism: Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius (1560-1609) - God calls all people to Himself through Christ, whether or not this call is effectual depends upon the individual’s libertarian free will. Still the doctrine of the atonement, but it Christ on the cross was universal (for everyone) and each person is the decider of salvation based on their free will acceptance of grace and salvation. Channing is an Arminian (and then also a Unitarian). “The Arminians condemned equally the orthodox insistence on creeds and confessions of faith of human origin and the deistic confidence in natural reason unassisted by divine revelation.” – Wintersteen pg. 6

Unitarianism:
The Orthodox Unitarians: William Ellery Channing (April 7, 1780 – October 2, 1842), Andrews Norton (December 31, 1786-September 18, 1853), Henry Ware, Jr. (April 21, 1794 - September 22, 1843). They are all basically Arians.

“We believe firmly in the divinity of Christ’s mission and office and that he spoke with divine authority...we believe God dwelt in him, manifested himself through him, taught men by him and communicated his spirit…In Christ’s words we hear God speaking, in his miracles we see God acting, and in his character and life we see an unsullied image of God’s purity and love….” HERE IS THE SPLIT WITH THE ORTHODOX…”We say that the son can not be the same being as his own Father; that he, who was sent into the world to save it, cannot be the living God who sent him.”
- William Ellery Channing, “Objections to Unitarian Christianity Considered,” 1819

The Transcendentalists: Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), Theodore Parker (August 24, 1810-May 10, 1860).

“It is hard to see why the great truths of Christianity rest on the personal authority of Jesus more than the axioms of geometry rest on the personal authority of Euclid or Archimedes. The authority of Jesus, as of all teachers, one would naturally think, must rest on the truth of his words, and not their truth on his authority.” - Theodore Parker, The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity, 1841

The Moderns: Clayton Raymond Bowen, William Wallace Fenn, Charles E. Park.

“The resurrection stories in our Gospels are one and all legendary. The earliest faith in his resurrection, which is amply attested for us is in the Letters of Paul, conceived his spirit or personality to have escaped from the underworld of the dead on the third day (which soon came to be taken quite literally) and to have risen into the heavenly life with God. This did not involve any reanimation of the dead body and had no concern whatever with the grave.” - Clayton Raymond Bowen

The Progressive Christians: Marcus Borg, John Shelby Spong, the Jesus Seminar, The Search for the Historical Jesus and Progressive Christianity - “What Manner of Man is This?”

“I began to see Jesus as one whose spirituality-his experiential awareness of Spirit – was foundational for his life. This perception became the vantage point for what I have since come to understand as the key truth about Jesus: that in addition to being deeply involved in the social world of the everyday, he was also grounded in the world of the Spirit.” Marcus Borg – Meeting Jesus Again for the The First Time pg 15

Borg sees Jesus at a “Spirit Person”

God’s Incarnation into Humanity
The Trinity for Unitarians – Part Three
Outline prepared by Jeff E. Harris (2010)

Reflection Questions
• Who was Jesus? What were you taught growing up? What do you believe now?
• Is Jesus similar to or different than other religious founders like Moses, Buddha, or Muhammad?

Christianity – God Becomes Human
• Orthodox Christianity claims that Jesus is the only Son of God, existed in a spiritual form before his human birth, was conceived in a spiritual and not a biological way, and returned to be with God the Father after his death and resurrection.
• Jesus is seen as fully God and fully human. Jesus’ identity as Son of God is unique in history.

A brief history of Incarnation Theology
• The church’s view of Jesus’ grew gradually over time.
• In the earliest Gospel (Mark), when Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter declares, “You are the Messiah” (Mark 8:29).
• When Matthew retells the same story a couple decades later, Peter declares, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16).
• By the time the fourth gospel (John) was written, Jesus was described as the “the Logos” (the word). “The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
• It was not until the council of Nicea (325 A.D.) that a majority of church leaders agreed that Jesus was divine and equal to God the Father. Even then, not everyone agreed. Here is what the Nicene Creed says about Jesus:
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

Other Religious Perspectives
• “In Hinduism, an Avatar means the form of a deity and usually refers to an incarnation of God or His aspects…” Hindus recognize ten primary avatars of Vishnu including Krishna who taught about the nature of the Supreme Being and the different processes of yoga. Some Hindus believe that the Buddha was another avatar of Vishnu. (www.hinduwebsite.com)
• The Bahai faith sees Jesus as one of many Manifestations of God. “Bahá'u'lláh explained that God, the Creator, has intervened and will continue to intervene in human history by means of chosen Messengers. These Messengers, whom Bahá'u'lláh called ‘Manifestations of God ,’ are principally the Founders of the major revealed religions, such as Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus, Muhammad, and so forth.” (info.bahai.org)
• Muslims recognize Jesus as an important prophet but firmly reject an incarnation theology and consider the Christian view of Jesus’ divinity as blasphemous. Allah has no son. (Qur’an 18:4-5).
Contemporary Scholarship
• Liberal New Testament scholars believe that Jesus “did not understand himself to be God, or God the Son, incarnate” (Hick, 2005, p. 27).
• Stephen Patterson (1998) described the experience of the earliest Christians: “In this person they had come to know who God is.” “The gospel writers saw in the events surrounding Jesus’ life a significance deep enough to be called ‘Immanuel…God with us.’ (p. 9)
• John Hick suggested that we can understand the incarnation as a metaphor demonstrating “that Jesus was a human being exceptionally open and responsive to the divine presence” (Hick, 2005, p. 105) indicated in these three ways:
o God was acting through him on earth and was in this respect ‘incarnate’ in Jesus
o Jesus ‘incarnated’ the ideal of human life in openness and response to God
o Jesus ‘incarnated’ a love that is a finite reflection of the infinite divine love
• Marcus Borg pointed out that all Christological affirmations are metaphors:
o “Jesus was not literally a door, a vine, a light, or a loaf of bread…
o “Jesus is the Word of God, Wisdom of God, Son of God, lamb of God, light of the world, great High Priest…
o “It is not that one of these is literally true and the rest ‘only’ metaphors. Rather, all are metaphors” (Borg & Wright, 1999, p. 150).
• Exclusive Christological claims about Jesus can be seen as “love language.” “And like all love language, it made spontaneous and abundant use of superlatives and exclusives: ‘You’re the most beautiful person in the world.’ ‘You’re the only one for me.’” (Knitter, 2009, p. 124)
• When Christians claim that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14.6) this can be seen as the church’s love language.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Incarnation Theology
• Incarnation theology makes God more tangible. It may be easier to imagine and love God in human form compared to an ineffable divine mystery.
• If Christians follow the only religious leader that is really God, they have an advantage over other religious traditions.
• If Jesus is seen as unique and superior, Christian’s may not be open to spiritual wisdom from other traditions.
• John Hick (2005) pointed out that exclusive claims about the superiority of Christianity have been used to support religious persecution, imperialism, and sexism.

Personal Response – What do you want to do with the idea of incarnation?
• Affirm it as an essential truth
• Reject it as an outdated doctrine
• Embrace it as a spiritual mystery
• Modify it in a personal way that makes it more useful

References
Borg, M. J. & Wright, N. T. (1999). The meaning of Jesus: Two visions.
Hick, J. (2005). The metaphor of God incarnate: Christology in a pluralistic age (2nd ed.).

God as Father
The Trinity for Unitarians Part Two – Outline prepared by Jeff E. Harris (2010)

Reflection Questions
• What does God look like? When you imagine God, what do you picture in your mind?
• Where do these images of God come from? How have they changed for you over time?

A Brief History of Monotheism
Egypt – A failed attempt to recognize a single deity
• Most ancient religions were polytheistic, worshipping many gods and goddesses, each performing different functions.
• The first attempt to create a monotheistic religion occurred in Egypt during the reign of Amenhoptep IV who became pharaoh in 1379 B.C. “The pharaoh changed his name to Akhenaten (the glorious spirit of Aten) and, in a ‘great Hymn,’ proclaimed Re-Herakhte, whose symbol is Aten, the solar disk, to be the ‘Sole God, like unto whom there is no other!’”(Stark, 2007, p. 157).
• “Re-Herakhte was not just a Supreme God ruling over a pantheon of lesser divinities, but the One God” (Stark, 2007, p. 157). Akhenaten’s theology stressed God’s goodness and his blessings. The new religion did not include a moral code but expected people to be grateful.
• Akhenaten shut down temples that worshipped other gods, put powerful priests out of work, and did away with popular religious festivals and public holidays in a way that “alienated the public as well as the elites” (Stark, 2007, p. 161).
• After Akhenaten’s death, pharaohs restored the old gods and goddesses, temples were rebuilt, and the polytheistic priesthood was restored (Stark, 2007). Monotheism was a failure.
Persia – Dualistic Monotheism
• Zoroaster was a prophet from Persia who may have lived in the sixth Century B.C. He was trained as a priest in the prevailing polytheistic religion but had a vision of Ahura Mazda at about age 30.
• “Having summoned Zoroaster to serve him, Ahura Mazda revealed that there is only One God—that he, Ahura Mazda, is the eternal creator and ruler of the universe” (Stark, 2007, p. 164).
• “Zoroaster’s revelation confronted the problem of evil—God is engaged in a battle with the inferior Angra Mainyu, the ‘Fiendish Spirit’ who causes calamities and leads human into evil” (Stark, 2007, p. 164-167).
• “Many regard dualistic monotheism as the most important contribution made by Zoroastrianism to the evolution of religion” (Stark, 2007, p. 165). Dualistic monotheism posits a good God struggling with another spiritual being who is evil. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam may have inherited dualistic monotheism from Zoroaster.
Judaism – From polytheism to monolatry to monotheism
• Early Judaism was polytheist. The Hebrew scripture depicts Yahweh competing for the attention of polytheistic gods like Baal. I Kings 18 records a show down that the prophet Elijah arranged between Baal and Yahweh (the LORD). Baal is unable to produce fire but Yahweh is able to answer Elijah’s prayer and consume a burnt offering with fire. After this contest, 450 of Baal’s prophets were killed.
• Afterwards, in I Kings 19, Elijah meets Yahweh on a mountaintop. Elijah experienced wind, an earthquake, and a fire, but Yahweh was not in these elements. And then Elijah experienced “a sound of sheer silence” (I Kings 19: 12 NRSV), representing Yahweh’s presence. “Unlike the pagan deities, Yahweh was not in any of the forces of nature but in a realm apart” (Armstrong, 1993, p. 27)
• Judaism came to advocate monolatry—allegiance to a single God. “Elijah wasn’t necessarily claiming Baal didn’t exist (the monotheistic position), just that he didn’t deserve the respect of Israelites” (Wright, 2009, p. 132).
• The late Jewish prophets—like Ezekiel and Isaiah—became monotheistic and described Yahweh as the only God, the creator of the universe, and often depicted him as a king.
• Jewish monotheism may have been heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism during the exile in Babylon. (Stark, 2007, ch. 4)

God as Father
Judaism
• Describing God as father is a very late development in Judaism.
• “For you are our father, though Abraham does not know us and Israel does not acknowledge us; you, O LORD, are our father; our Redeemer from of old is your name.” (Isaiah 63: 16 NRSV)
• “Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our ancestors?” (Malachi 2:10 NRSV)
Christianity
• Jesus taught his followers to pray to God as father: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…” (Matthew 6: 9-10)
• In many of his parables (such as the prodigal son in Luke 15:11-32), Jesus encourages us to think of God as a loving father.
• Father became the dominant image of God in Christianity. Paul follows Jesus’ lead in referring to God as our father: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (I Corinthians 1:3)
Advantages of Imagining God as Father
• Imagining God as father makes God more tangible. Most of us were cared for by loving parents. It is hard to relate to an ineffable divine mystery.
• Modern Americans don’t readily relate to the Jewish image of God as king.
Disadvantages of Imagining God as Father
• Imagining God as father is a form of anthropomorphism–attributing human features to a nonhuman.
• What is you did not grow up with a loving father? If your father was distant, absent, or abusive, imagining God as father may distort your image and create a barrier to spirituality.
• Imagining God as father encourages us to think of God as male rather than female.

Female Images of God
• Ancient religions often worshipped female deities like Gaia, the primal Greek earth goddess.
• Feminists like Merlin Stone (1976) believe that patriarchal religions like Judaism and Christianity replaced earlier Goddess religions throughout the ancient world. Matriarchal religions may have treated women better than patriarchal religions. How we imagine God may influence how we treat one another.

Our Personal Response
• What do you want to do with the image of God as father?
• Do you want to modify this image in a personal way that makes it more useful?

References
Armstrong, K. (1993). A History of God. New York: Ballantine.
Stark, R. (2007). Discovering God: The origins of the great religions and the evolution of belief. New York: HarperCollins.
Stone, M. (1976). When God was a Woman. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace.
Wright, R. (2009). The evolution of God. New York: Little, Brown and Company

Knittter, P. F. (2009). Without Buddha I could not be a Christian.
Patterson, S. J. (1998). The God of Jesus: The historical Jesus and the search for meaning

God as Spirit
The Trinity for Unitarians – Part Four
Outline prepared by Jeff E. Harris (2010)

Reflection Questions
• What is a spirit? What does it mean to you to be “filled with the spirit?”
• What does it mean to have a spiritual awakening or a spiritual encounter?

Popular Culture: Star Wars
Obi-Wan Kenobi teaches Luke Skywalker about the Force
• The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.
• A Jedi can feel the Force flowing through him... Let go your conscious self and act on instinct... Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them... Stretch out with your feelings.

God’s Spirit in Hebrew and Christian Scripture
• Genesis 1:1-2. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.”
• Isaiah 11:1-2. “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”
• Luke 3:21-22. “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (
• Acts 2:1-4. “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”
• One way to interpret the Pentecost story is to see that each of us can be filled with God’s Spirit in the same way that Jesus was.
Hokmah and Sophia
• In the Hebrew scripture, Hokmah was seen as a feminine personification of wisdom.
• The Jewish idea of Hokma may have evolved into the Christian idea of the Holy Spirit.
• In both Hebrew (Hokmah) and Greek (Sophia) the word for wisdom in feminine.
• The Spirit of God (pneuma tau theo) is seen by some as the feminine aspect of the Trinity.

Other Religious Sources
Hinduism
• Hinduism uses the word Brahman to name the absolute, outer, transcendent source. The word Atman is used to describe the human self.
• Wayne Teasdale described the relationship between Brahman and Atman in this way: “Through higher states of meditation, mystic seers contact Brahman, which opens the way to inner awareness of self, or Atman, the immanent presence of the Brahman within all beings and every particle of reality. Atman is Brahman and Brahman is Atman.” (Teasdale, 1999, p. 53)
• “Each of us can arrive at this same self-knowledge about our ultimate identity in God and as God—as Brahman….The mystic ‘hears’ and ‘feels’ God’s self-awareness, and shares in it to the level of declaring, with Brahman, ‘I am Brahman.’” (Teasdale, 1999, p. 54)
Buddhism
• The Buddhist term Sunyata can be translated as Emptiness (being able to receive) or as InterBeing. “It’s the interconnected state of things that is constantly churning out new connections, new possibilities, new problems, new life.” (Knitter, 2009, p. 12)
• Paul Knitter asked, “Is Emptiness or InterBeing an appropriate symbol for God? …Such a God of Emptiness and InterBeing is closer to what Christian mystics try to talk about when they describe their experiences of God.” (Knitter, 2009, p. 18)

Progressive Christianity
• Elizabeth Johnson (1992) described the Biblical view of Spirit: “When the Bible wants to speak about the transcendent God’s creative presence and activity in the world, it turns to words that carry the connotation of divine outreach, terms such as spirit, angel, wisdom, and word. Spirit, literally meaning a blowing wind, a storm, a stream of air, breath in motion, or something dynamically in movement and impossible to pin down, points to the livingness of God who creates, sustains, and guides all things and cannot be confined. Divine Spirit is not understood to be independently personal…but is the creative and freeing power of God let loose in the world.” (p. 82-83)
• Marcus Borg (1997) suggested that Spirit can be used as a primary image for God (rather than King/Lord/ Father): “As a root metaphor for the sacred, Spirit images God as a nonmaterial reality pervading the universe as well as being more than the universe. As used in the Bible (and as used here), its meaning is broader than the specific Christian doctrine of ‘the Holy Spirit’ which sees it as one aspect of God. But in the Bible, Spirit is used comprehensively to refer to God’s presence in creation, in the history of Israel, and in the life of the early church. Its meaning is sufficiently broad to make it a synonym for the sacred.” (p. 72)

Advantages and Disadvantages of Imagining God as an Indwelling Spirit
• This image allows God to be within us and we can let God work through us.
• God as Spirit is less anthropomorphic than images of “father” or “son.”
• It may be harder to relate to God if this Spirit can not be pictured in our mind.

Our Personal Response: Primary and Secondary Images of the Divine
• The Christian Trinity offers us three images of God. Do you want to personally embrace any of these as a primary image of the divine?
• Do you want to add images from other sources to complement or balance your primary image?

References
Borg, M. J. (1997). The God We Never Knew. New York: HarperCollins.
Johnson, E. A. (1992). She who is. New York: Crossroad.
Knittter, P. F. (2009). Without Buddha I could not be a Christian. Oxford, England: Oneworld.
Teasdale, W. (1999). The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions. Novato, CA: New World Library.

For Trinity Sunday: The truth in the Trinity, from Rev. Carl Scovel, a UU minister

2011-06-13T19:18:00.001-07:00

This Sunday, June 19, is Trinity Sunday in the liturgical year of many Christian churches, including those in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. I have increasingly referred to my own theology as a small t trinitarian large U Universalism. As a gift for all for this Sunday, I am reprinting here the essay "The truth in the Trinity: a re-examination of some cherished Unitarian views of God, with questions, by the Rev. Carl Scovel, minister emeritus of King's Chapel in Boston, receipient of the distinquished service award by the UUA and a Berry Street lecturer, originally printed in the Summer, 1973 issue of The UU Christian Journal.

At the end of the essay I will also provide links to contemporary discussions.

Here is the essay by Carl Scovel:

If God is Three
And three's a crowd,
Then only One
Can be allowed.
If God is One
and one's alone,
Then how can God
Come to his own?
If One is Three
Where's unity?
If three is One,
Then where's the fun?
But if God's free,
He might be three,
Or one, or four,
Or less, or more.
We keep on counting;
He keeps the score.

I suppose the question will arise: "Why discuss the Trinity anyway?" Who cares? Who is going to lose sleep over it? Does it make the slightest difference to the couples wandering in the park, to the bigwigs dickering in Moscow, or to the ballplayers on the athletic field? Does it really interest anyone who attends church nowadays--Unitarian or otherwise?

I asked myself this question a dozen times as I pored over Scripture and the church fathers. And the deeper I got into this doctrine, the more I read and scribbled, the more I encountered ideas and interpretations which ran headlong into each other, the more urgently did this question press itself upon me, until I realized that I was not looking for an answer, for a new doctrine or an old doctrine, but for a question. I was looking for the question which prompted four hundred years of profound and serious and sustained theological inquiry and debate, four centuries of history which have been summarily dismissed by many Christians and virtually all Unitarians as logic-chopping and vain speculation.

Yet we seek for the questions which will illuminate our faith. The issues which faced the church fathers during the first three centuries A.D. are here today, but they are badly put and badly argued. This is not surprising, for theology is hard and desperately unrewarding work. It is easier to spend one's time in committee meetings. But what the church--laity and clergy alike--needs today is clarity. We need to understand the promise that has been given to us. We need to know what is asked of us and what we have a right to ask. It is, therefore, not only proper but essential that we look at the church doctrines which we have so smoothly and arrogantly passed over before--and one of these is the doctrine of the Trinity. And if we need to go beyond the council of Nicea in 325 A.D. we need also to go beyond William Ellery Channing's 1819 Baltimore sermon on Unitarian Christianity.

The case for trinitarianismIn that sermon, Channing articulated the principal arguments against the Trinity which Unitarians have raised throughout Christian history. He said quite simply that the doctrine of the Trinity could not be found in the Bible. It was the same argument used by Michael Servetus three hundred years before and by Arius twelve hundred years before that. Channing wanted to go back to the simple religion of Jesus as he saw it in the Gospels and to bypass all the seemingly useless theological wrangling that followed.

And there's much to be said for Channing's side. The New Testament doesn't ever use the word "trinity." Tertullian coined it in the third century. Jesus refers to God as his father, says he must obey his father, return to his father, and so forth. He clearly subordinates himself to God. But what most Unitarians miss in the New Testament is the way in which Jesus identifies his work with God's work and his will with God's will (cf John 14:1-11). "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me." "He who has seen me has seen the Father." "Know you not," he says to Phillip, who has asked him for a big display of miracles, "know you not that I am in the Father and the Father in me?" This echoes the faith of the early church. "God was in Christ," says Paul, "reconciling the world to Himself." (2 Cor 5:19). And again: "For if there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist (1 Cor 8:6). The New Testament may not teach the Trinity, but it surely seems to pave the way for the idea of the Trinity. The texts just cited are simply ignored by most Unitarians when they talk about going back to that "simple religion of Jesus."

It is necessary to realize that Jesus' ministry per se did not make a tremendous impact on the world while he was alive. His impact came after he died, in the events which we call the Resurrection. He came alive in the remembering, in the reliving of his life, by those who felt his impact in a way that they did not seem to when he was alive and with them. In a sense, he was more alive after he died, alive to those who were so struck by him that now they did not quite know what to do with their traditional Father-God. Jesus now seemed more real to them. They knew Jesus had taught them of the Father-God, but he seemed so much more vital than the God of tradition--until it occurred to them that the reason he seemed so real was that it was this God who was with him and in him and through him, and through him was now with them. Emmanuel--God-with-us--came true in Jesus Christ. This, I submit, was the early Christian's experience of God.

The question which the early church was trying to answer was: How is God with us? And the church answered it by saying, "He is with us through Christ, God's spirit now moving and speaking in our church, among us, present in our hymns and prayers and preaching and in the breaking of bread." No, this in itself does not create a doctrine of the Trinity, but it is clear that the Christian experience was moving in that direction.

The Council of Nicaea

I will not attempt to describe here the two centuries of debate that preceded the council of Nicea. What the Council decided in 325 was that the Son of God was not an angel, nor a creature like other creatures, but was derived from the very essence of God Himself. Christ was "God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God; being of one substance (homo-ousios) with the Father."

Now of course the Council of Nicea was a highly politicized event. It was called by the emperor, Constantine, in order to bring about theological unity in his empire. He paid the expenses of the 318 bishops who attended, and it is likely that he neither understood nor really cared much about the arguments that filled the air. What he wanted was a unified statement of belief, and he got it. Only two of the bishops who attended the Council--one of them Arius, a proto-Unitarian--refused to sign it.

I am convinced that certain benefits resulted from this decision. The trinitarian style of thinking preserved both the majesty of God and his proximity to his children, asserting both his mystery and his love without compromising either. The trinitarian style of thinking kept a certain motion or dynamic in the center of God. There is a church in Constantinople (Istanbul) which has a mosaic depicting God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit dancing with each other hand in hand. Motion is essential to an understanding of God, unless you prefer to see God as a big clockmaker who winds up the clock and then goes to sleep.

But the political atmosphere of Nicaea and the harshly dogmatic debates turned Christianity into a religion of propositions which one either assents to or denies. I can appreciate the (small t) trinitarian style of thinking, but hardening this into the formula of (capital T) Trinity has hurt the Christian faith.

Servetus and afterwards

It was up to Michael Servetus 1206 years after Nicaea, to raise this question again when he published On the Errors of the Trinity in 1531. In this work, written in the midst of Protestant and Catholic inquisitions, Servetus affirmed that the Bible teaches the Father is supreme, the Son is coeternal with the Father but subordinate to him, and that the Son can save mankind without being equal to the Father. For these heresies Servetus was executed in 1553, but his ideass travelled across Europe and eventually reached England, where in 1714 a young minister named Samuel Clarke, rector of the church of St. James in Picadilly, wrote a book that might have come from the pen of Servetus himself. It was called On the Scriptural Doctrine of the Trinity, and with 1250 Scriptural citations attempted to prove exactly what Servetus had said. Just before his death, Samuel Clarke amended the Book of Common Prayer, removing the prayers to Christ and the Athanasian Creed, and substituting Scriptural doxologies for the Gloria Patri. It was this revision of the Service of Morning Prayer which 55 years later became the basis for James Freeman's revision of the prayerbook at King's Chapel. The prayerbook now used in King's Chapel, therefore, contains the classical Unitarian Christian theological position. The prayerbook protects this position and makes possible its enunciation every Sunday.

From Unitarian Christianity to Humanism

At one time Unitarian Christianity was the theological position of every American Unitarian church. Now it is the position of relatively few Unitarians, and those few are dwindling. There is a reason for this. Unitarian Christianity has sought simplicity. Simplicity is fine, but simplicity has its dangers. It tends to become a religion of that which is intellectually the easiest to grasp, and of what feels to be true at the moment. Furthermore, one God without dynamics and without a mediator becomes either the unmoved Never, utterly transcendent and remote from man, or else becomes solely the Father God, so anthropomorphic that he ceases to be believable as God. For example, the God whom Channing described in his Baltimore Sermon sounds for all the world like a benevolent New England merchant. Very anthropomorphic.

In this Unitarian Christianity, God becomes either too remote or too close, but in either case the same result ensues. Man takes God's place. Unchecked Unitarianism then leads to Humanism. As Robert Frost aptly stated it in a passage in his Masque of Mercy (describing a bookstore owner named Keeper):

Keeper's the kind of Unitarian
Who having by elimination got
From many gods to Three, and Three to One,
Thinks why not taper off to none at all,
Except as father putative to sort of
Legitimize the brotherhood of man,
So we can hang together in a strike.

Intellectual positions do have consequences: What has happened to American Unitarianism is no accident. And what is amazing is how much mysticism and God-talk and orthodox hymnology still remain in Unitarian churches--a witness to the spiritual hunger of the human heart.

The church in a godless world

If then, we are to go beyond Nicaea, we must also go beyond Channing. We cannot go back to what is called "the simple religion of Jesus." It is just not available to us, and, after all, Christian faith is the response to Jesus; it is in fact the religion about Jesus, and there is no escaping this.

But we must begin where we are--in an essentially godless world, a world that gets along by and large without a sense of God and probably will indefinitely. Yet we are a special community--we who call ourselves Christians. We have elected to stand within the promise that God is with us. By being members of the Christian church we assume that somehow this promise is true, although we do not understand how. In fact, our question is the same one the church fathers asked so many centuries ago: "How is God with us? What does it mean--to be in Christ? How can Christ be close to us and yet remain still God in all His, or Its, mystery?" I believe that if we have the courage to ask these questions, God in his time and in his ways will answer us.

------------

[Here are some more links for more recent conversation and exploration. The first is the link to an archived blog discussion on Chris Walton's Philocrites blog stemming from a post on the anti-trinitarianism of Isaac Newton and the place of responses to the Trinity in the UU history and tradition and contemporary setting. http://www.ctr4process.org/publications/Biblio/Thematic/Trinity.html...Much of the newer reconstruction of the Trinity comes from both liberation theologians, and missional church theologians such as Jorgen Moltmann, and also process theologians. For a bibliography of how process theologians approach the Trinity go to http://www.ctr4process.org/publications/Biblio/Thematic/Trinity.html...We have also had good discussions online of the Trinity and UUism in our UUCF-L and UUCF-bible email lists you can join through the www.uuchristian.org site.

An Orchard For An Abandoned Place

2011-05-19T14:35:00.000-07:00

Our Turley and North Tulsa, Oklahoma community is competing for a forty tree fruit tree orchard. Our organization A Third Place Community Foundation has been selected to be in a national online voting competition by the National Fruit Tree Foundation and Edy's Fruit Bars. Five orchards a month will be awarded to communities receiving the top votes in the contest. We want to win in the first round that ends May 31. Vote for us every day at http://www.communitiestakeroot.com/Plant/Index/. Many in our area do not have internet access so please vote on their behalf.

Our volunteer group raised $15,000 last summer to purchase a city block on North Johnstown Ave. and N. 60th St. overlooking downtown Tulsa where it is building The Welcome Table Community KitchenGardenPark on the site where abandoned houses once stood. The project is called the "Miracle Among The Ruins." Purchasing the site was the first miracle, getting the rundown eyesore homes removed was the next, and the fruit tree orchard will be another miracle on this site. The orchard is vitally needed not only to beautify the area and help complete the park as an asset in an area with few public amenities, but to add to the healthy food needs of the residents in our 74126 zipcode.

A recent nutritional survey conducted by the OU Graduate Social Work students and the A Third Place Community Foundation revealed the following statistics about health and nutrition in our area: ...55 percent worry about the amount of food they have ...6 percent use spoiled food ...29 percent use a food pantry ...31 percent receive food from church ...35 percent borrow food from family ...25 percent borrow food from friends ...25 percent adults skip entire day from eating ...29 percent adults skip meals ...26 percent did not eat and are hungry at time of survey ...43 percent eat less than they should ...60 percent eat low cost foods ...52 percent cannot afford nutritious meals ...57 percent run out of food ...60 percent cannot afford healthy food...29 percent have no affordable source of food in community ...63 percent know about a food pantry ,..56 percent rate the food quality in Turley area as fair or poor ...59 percent indicate food in Turley area expensive or very expensive relative to budget...56 percent not currently healthy ...41 percent health is fair or poor ...54 percent are overweight ...66 percent should weigh less ...47 percent smoke or use other tobacco.

A Third Place Community Foundation, a new 501c3 organization made up of volunteers with all funds going to mission, runs not only The Welcome Table park but also has recently purchased a large old historic abandoned church building at 5920 N. Owasso Ave. and is reclaiming and reopening it as The Welcome Table Community Center with free internet and computer center, library, game and meeting and program space, food pantry, 12 step recovery group, clothing giveaway, prayer and meditation room, and classrooms for a health hub. The center has now reopened on a part time basis in its first phase of remodelling. The ministry also runs the area free summer lunch meal program at Cherokee School for all under 18 year old, and do environmental reclaiming and promotion of native wildflower plants in this region at schools and public sites. A Third Place Community Foundation is also involved with the McLain High School Initiative, Cherokee School, OU Community Health Worker project, and other events and items as part of its mission of "renewing community, empowering residents, growing healthy lives and neighborhoods" through small acts of justice done with great love. For more on the group and area and to donate go to www.turleyok.blogspot.com. Or call 9186913223.

Below you can find all the links to the moving videos and the news clips and articles and design documents and more on our Welcome Table Community KitchenGardenPark in the North Tulsa and Turley area where our orchard will go if we win one in the national online competition.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20110509_11_A13_CUTLIN403855&archive=yes

http://www.kjrh.com/dpp/news/local_news/turley-struggles-to-survive-as-its-school-closes

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20100827_11_A11_CUTLIN485332

The most recent news story from channel eight: the clip shows us clearing the kitchengardenpark not the school though we had been planting there the day before, and the park and the orchard will be in a place where children walk by to school and families without cars on their way to the grocery store. http://www.ktul.com/video?clipId=5741176&autostart=true

The Channel Six news story is at http://www.newson6.com/Global/story.asp?S=12642450

For the OU social work students moving video about the place and the need for the project and for your donations, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhgFKD6_i_w .

For the OU Design Studio on what it will look like go to http://turleyok.blogspot.com/2010/05/miracle-among-ruins-welcome-table.html

For the background on why we are doing this community transformation project here go to http://turleyok.blogspot.com/2010/05/see-vision-miracle-among-ruins.html

and to http://turleyok.blogspot.com/2010/04/consider-thischange-this.html

For the bigger connect the dots link on how we have plans for all of our Four Directions area of Tulsa North and Turley go to http://turleyok.blogspot.com/2010/05/four-directions-initiative-tnt-vision.html

Stuck in Good Friday, waiting on Easter, Singing Alleluias Anyway

2011-04-24T07:08:00.000-07:00

There is much that will be happening at the community center and in our projects, reopening the center, working on community health projects, on the food pantry, on the computer center, on our monthly diversity movie night, on Easter gatherings, on the community association meeting this Tuesday at 7 pm at OBrien Park Recreation Center, on the new monthly neighborhood safety group meetings at our Center on the last Thursdays of the month at 6:30 pm, about mission trips with people from out of state coming in to work with us and our partners, and on our many beautification projects around the area at OBrien Park and the trail and of course the big news that you will be reading about soon in the Tulsa World about our national efforts to bring a 40 tree fruit orchard to our developing community park on North Johnstown at a time when so many parks and community centers are being closed by public officials. To help us win the orchard go vote for us at www.communitiestakeroot.com/Plant/Index/. Go to list of states scroll to Oklahoma and we are the only place in the state in the running for the orchard. We were in or close to fifth place out of 120 communities when I checked recently. You can vote everyday.

But, As I write this its only a few hours away from Easter morning, and here we seem stuck in Good Friday. This past week we found out that the Post Office is making plans to close our 74126 zip code postal office in all likelihood, and of course the shock and outrage continues over the unexplained decision still by authorities on closing Cherokee School and now Alcott School in our service area. Both by the way are sites where community members have been active especially in trying to make inroads on community gardening and outdoor classrooms to help bring back foundational skills to combat our continued lowest life expectancy difference in the Tulsa area, to give skills that will help families take care of their food needs without reliance on the powers to be to invest in our area, to take care of their health needs without resorting first to emergency rooms in other parts of the town or to rely on primary care clinics that come and go.

We have been expecting the post office decision for some time and have been collecting signatures on petitions; this will need to increase. They are going to meet with residents here on Thursday May 5 noon to 2 pm. The government is wanting to close a post office in the part of town where people have the fewest resources to get four miles to the nearest post office, where cars are few and reliable cars are few, and where there is a high percentage of those older or those who can't afford computers and email though they are the ones being punished as the postal system bears the effects of increased email and social networking media. Change happens, but the cost saving should be born by the people who live in areas where they can afford to drive to a different post office, and where they have alternatives such as fedex and ups for many of their postal needs; in the 74126 we have none of that. They have been as well neglecting the post office here, cutting back hours and service, and not promoting it with signage, and now taking action they say because of low volume.

The harder shock of abandonment comes with the plan to close Cherokee which seems to have been decided in a room with a few officials from the outset who do not appear to want to say why it was decided. Or Alcott which was not on the initial plan to be closed, while Whitman like Cherokee was on all three plans to be closed but remains open. All the criteria that was said to be used in the decision do not point to closing Cherokee while keeping others nearby open who have criteria which do not meet the goals as much. The result is a plan that will group together within a half mile three elementary schools at Houston Gilcrease and Greeley while closing Cherokee; the same is true for putting two elementary schools next to each other at Penn and Monroe while closing Cherokee. There is much good in the overall plan, though the process has seemed forced and the overall fact that not a single public school administrator has been able from the time the plan was first rolled out to this weekend to tell the parents and staff and community representatives and partners in education here why it has been chosen to be closed; that is the worst offense. Justify it. Be honest about it. Open up a dialogue about the issues of race and politics and class and location and property and history that go beyond the measurement criteria facts; it is the only way that communities will heal and grow, and without communities of diversity and transparency this area will not be repaired and the emptying out will continue.

Our plan was to work toward creating an elementary school of intentional ethnic diversity and ecological diversity that we had at Cherokee and help build back the link between our area of far northside with McLain. We were willing to have a change in school leadership to help make this kind of "Anytown" magnet elementary school happen. It was a plan backed by three state legislators who represent our areas. Cherokee was already accepted into the TPS Community School program process; what is envisioned for Gilcrease could easily have been started at Cherokee since Gilcrease as a middle school was phased out; Cherokee PK to 6 with one transition going to McLain 7-12 would have helped to create the kind of natural far northside integrated schools that I experienced in my time at Cherokee, Monroe,and McLain.

At least with full disclosure Cherokee's families, used to the ethnic diversity here which attracted them in the past few years to come or remain here, may want to move to one of the schools staying open; without it, I am afraid they will send their children elsewhere; and the continuing destruction of the social infrastructure that keeps neighborhoods together will continue to unravel even as we have been working to build back those ties.

I am not objective about community renewal and the place of public education; I live in the Greeley school district, my wife and I met in kindergarden at Cherokee, we have been partners in education, and I have helped found and fund the new Mclain Foundation. I like so much about the new plan, but I am concerned that it will continue to lead to the abandonment of our area in the Cherokee school boundaries that cover both the incorporated sections of Tulsa and the unincorporated urban areas in the county. And I know this for sure: when one area, be it in city limits or not, is neglected and turned away from and left to those who would come in and exploit it, it will not stay contained in this one area; what happens in the 74126 affects all of Tulsa area.

But mostly I want someone to be honest about the decision, and to come to the school and talk about it with the people here who have given so much to turning around this school and to getting community partners. Our community foundation alone has put in more than a thousand dollars of actual gardening to create a healthy food environment and to beautify the grounds to give the children and others a lift in spirit as they come to study and to make it a place of brightness in the midst of blight. As we put together our proactive plan we were told by school officials not to present it in public at the forums but let it be considered by the school project team. Now, in the grief, people mostly want answers and they want presence. That is why I call this a Good Friday continuing movement. So many have fled; so many will want to flee now whose talents and presence we need.

Let us see what shape the area around here is in and how many families are here and how much abandonment vandalism crime despair continues without any investment here. Who will track what happens to the children at Cherokee and where they go, and what happens when you close one of the schools if not the school with the most ethnic balance coming from the area itself and not from people who live elsewhere sending their kids to school. Let us see what happens to the school building itself that houses not only all the gardens but also the historical displays and the grounds have the Memorial Arch from the school here that was built in 1920.

I was once a hospice chaplain. I know what a theology of presence is and how much it means to help people make the movement from times of loss and scarcity to times of looking forward and drawing closer together. I am not seeing any of that yet.

Sometimes Easter Alleluia's do not come on time; and yet we gather together and we sing them each year, even this year, and we tell the old old story, and we wait for Easter, and for the tomb to be what empties out. And that is the best that we can do, and together it is enough....

For my more uplifting Easter message and interpretation of the story go to the link below where I have posted one of my recent reflections for the season, which I will remind all, just begins tomorrow morning. Easter begins but does not end tomorrow; the Season has just begun, and there are resurrection appearances to come....
http://progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/2011/04/dont-cling-to-me-easter-immersion-in.html

blessings, Ron Robinson
The Welcome Table Center and A Third Place Community Foundation
5920 N. Owasso Ave.

Easter Worship 2011 Common Liturgy

2011-04-24T06:53:00.001-07:00

Our order of service for today. First, words about our way of doing and being church; then the Easter liturgy.

The Welcome Table
A Free Universalist Christian Missional Community

About Us
Following the radical Jesus in deeds not creeds. Join us in service to our community throughout the week. That is the primary way we become church. Our Welcome Table of Worship is open to all who welcome all, regardless of belief or denomination, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical abilities, economic status, or political affiliations. We don’t think Jesus would have it any other way.

Free because God works in freedom so we are non-creedal. We don’t give theological tests for admission, but encourage you to test us and try us to see if this way is for you. Universalist because we believe God is Love and All who abide in Love abide in God, and God’s love is for all for all time Christian because the generous compassionate way and story of Jesus, is our primary pathway opening up to God. Missional because we are sent to serve others more than ourselves, building up God’s beloved community more than our own, putting our time talent and treasure more into the world than into our own organization. Community because we are made not to be autonomous individuals but to be a people of God.

We are a simple church, but it can be a deep struggle to live toward true freedom, to practice God’s love for all, to follow the liberating Jesus who was crucified for his radical ways of hospitality and justice, to live for and serve others more than self, and to put community first. We invite those who wish to struggle with us, to fail with us, and to continue struggling with us. Worship gatherings and common meal are our times to refresh our spirits for the service of God.

Easter Worship

Invocation
Today is the day which God has made: Let us rejoice and be glad therein.
What does the Eternal require of us? To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.
This is our covenant as we walk together in life in the ways of God known and to be made known: In the light of truth, and the loving and liberating spirit of Jesus, we gather in freedom, to worship God, and serve all.

Gathering Together
First Reading:
Later Jesus and his disciples were at home having supper with a collection of disreputable guests. Unlikely as it seems, more than a few of them had become followers. The religion scholars and Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company and lit into his disciples: "What kind of example is this, acting cozy with the riffraff?" 17Jesus, overhearing, shot back, "Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I'm here inviting the sin-sick, not the spiritually-fit."…Mark 2 (The Message)

“Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”
What a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms;
what a blessedness, what a peace is mine, leaning on the everlasting arms.
Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms;
leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.
O how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way, leaning on the everlasting arms;
O how bright the path grows from day to day, leaning on the everlasting arms.
(Refrain)
What have I to dread, what have I to fear, leaning on the everlasting arms?
I have blessed peace with my Lord so near, leaning on the everlasting arms.
(Refrain)

I. At The Welcome Table Celebrating The Last Supper
Second Reading: When it was time, he sat down, all the apostles with him, and said, "You've no idea how much I have looked forward to eating this Passover meal with you before I enter my time of suffering. It's the last one I'll eat until we all eat it together in the kingdom of God."Taking the cup, he blessed it, then said, "Take this and pass it among you. As for me, I'll not drink wine again until the kingdom of God arrives."Taking bread, he blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body, given for you. Eat it in my memory."
One: I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. And they said, Lord, when did we do that? And he said, When you did it for the least of these, you did it to me. Here is the bread of life, food for the spirit. Let all who hunger come and eat. Here is the fruit of the vine, pressed and poured out for us. Let all who thirst now come and drink.
All: We come to break bread. We come to drink of the fruit of the vine. We come to make peace. May we never praise God with our mouths while denying in our hearts or by our acts the love that is our common speech. We come to be restored in the love of God where All are welcome and All are worthy. (Robert Eller-Isaacs, based on Matthew 25, alt. Singing The Living Tradition hymnal)
Third Reading:
"Who would you rather be: the one who eats the dinner or the one who serves the dinner? You'd rather eat and be served, right? But I've taken my place among you as the one who serves. ”Luke 22
“Let Us Break Bread Together” #406, SLT hymnal
Passing the Bread of Life Everlasting and the Cup of Hope Eternal
Fourth Reading:
At the end of his last supper with his disciples, Jesus said: Let me give you a new command. Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciple—when they see the love you have for each other.
Reflection

II. At The Table With The Cross
Fifth Reading:
“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”….”It was about the sixth hour and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, While the sun’s light failed and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice said, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last.”
Prayer of Confession: Gracious and Loving God, we acknowledge to you, to one another, and to ourselves that we are not what you have called us to be. We have stifled our gifts and wasted our time. We have avoided opportunities to offer kindness, but have been quick to take offense. We have pretended that we could make no contribution to peace and justice in our world and have excused ourselves from risk-taking in our own community. Have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and help us to live our lives differently. We long for peace within and without, for harmony in our families, for the well-being of our neighbors, and love for our enemies. Yet we have too often not made the hard choices that love requires. Show us how to walk in your path of faithfulness, hope, and love. Amen.

Words of Assurance: One fact remains that does not change: God loves all, and will for all time. This is the good news that brings new life. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Hymns: “Precious Lord” #199 and “Dona Nobis Pacem” #388
Sharing Prayers of Sorrows, Cares, Concerns
The Prayer of Jesus: 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, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen

III. Entering into a time of Silence, of Emptying, of Stillness

IV. The Table of Resurrection
Sixth Reading:
Early in the morning on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone was moved away from the entrance. She ran at once to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, breathlessly panting, "They took the Master from the tomb. We don't know where they've put him." Peter and the other disciple left immediately for the tomb. They ran, neck and neck. The other disciple got to the tomb first, outrunning Peter. Stooping to look in, he saw the pieces of linen cloth lying there, but he didn't go in. Simon Peter arrived after him, entered the tomb, observed the linen cloths lying there, and the kerchief used to cover his head not lying with the linen cloths but separate, neatly folded by itself. Then the other disciple, the one who had gotten there first, went into the tomb, took one look at the evidence, and believed. No one yet knew from the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead. The disciples then went back home. But Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. As she wept, she knelt to look into the tomb and saw two angels sitting there, dressed in white, one at the head, the other at the foot of where Jesus' body had been laid. They said to her, "Woman, why do you weep?" "They took my Master," she said, "and I don't know where they put him." After she said this, she turned away and saw Jesus standing there. But she didn't recognize him. Jesus spoke to her, "Woman, why do you weep? Who are you looking for?" She, thinking that he was the gardener, said, "Mister, if you took him, tell me where you put him so I can care for him." Jesus said, "Mary." Turning to face him, she said in Hebrew, "Rabboni!" meaning "Teacher!" Jesus said, "Don't cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go to my brothers and tell them, 'I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.'" Mary Magdalene went, telling the news to the disciples: "I saw the Master!" And she told them everything he said to her.

Seventh Reading:
Jesus said [to Thomas], "So, you believe because you've seen with your own eyes. Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing." (Gospel of John)
Reflection

I Thank You God For Most This Amazing Day #504, by ee cummings
Sharing of Blessings and Thanksgivings in our Lives and Community
Easter Hymns
Jesus Christ Is Risen Today #268
Amazing Grace #205
We’re Gonna Sit At The Welcome Table #407
Benediction
Go out into the highways and byways. Let us Give the people something of our new vision. We may possess a small light, but we will uncover it and let it shine. We will Use it to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men and women. We will Give them not hell but hope and courage. We will Give them Easter all year round. We will Preach and practice the kindness and everlasting love of God.
Closing Songs “Shalom Havyreem Shalom Havyreem” and “Go Now In Peace” #413

Don't Cling To Me: An Easter Immersion in the Christ of Faith

2011-04-23T11:54:00.000-07:00

"Don't Cling To Me": An Easter Immersion in the Christ of Faith

The Text: This year on Easter Sunday, one of the texts from the Revised Common Lectionary is from the Fourth Gospel, of John, from the original finale of that gospel. It is the section narrating Mary of Magdala's discovery of the empty tomb, of Jesus, and faith. The story of Mary’s encounter at the tomb in John, goes like this, from Eugene Peterson's The Message interpretation:

“ Early in the morning on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone was moved away from the entrance. She ran at once to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, breathlessly panting, "They took the Master from the tomb. We don't know where they've put him." Peter and the other disciple left immediately for the tomb. They ran, neck and neck. The other disciple got to the tomb first, outrunning Peter. Stooping to look in, he saw the pieces of linen cloth lying there, but he didn't go in. Simon Peter arrived after him, entered the tomb, observed the linen cloths lying there, and the kerchief used to cover his head not lying with the linen cloths but separate, neatly folded by itself. Then the other disciple, the one who had gotten there first, went into the tomb, took one look at the evidence, and believed. No one yet knew from the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead. The disciples then went back home.

But Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. As she wept, she knelt to look into the tomb and saw two angels sitting there, dressed in white, one at the head, the other at the foot of where Jesus' body had been laid. They said to her, "Woman, why do you weep?" "They took my Master," she said, "and I don't know where they put him." After she said this, she turned away and saw Jesus standing there. But she didn't recognize him. Jesus spoke to her, "Woman, why do you weep? Who are you looking for?" She, thinking that he was the gardener, said, "Mister, if you took him, tell me where you put him so I can care for him." Jesus said, "Mary." Turning to face him, she said in Hebrew, "Rabboni!" meaning "Teacher!"

Jesus said, "Don't cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go to my brothers and tell them, 'I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.'" Mary Magdalene went, telling the news to the disciples: "I saw the Master!" And she told them everything he said to her.

The Turning Points: This is a text full of turnings, and of naming. When we get into the story deeply, it is literally spinning us around, as good faith will, as for the early church the whole world was now being turned around, being named, being created anew….It is the turning of the day from darkness to light, so important in the Johannine gospel and view of Christ as the light of the world. Mary comes to the tomb, probably slowly, mournfully, dutifully, then sees the stone gone and fearing the body has been stolen, more mocking, more shaming, she immediately turns and runs quickly to the male disciples. Then she presumably turns again and follows the beloved disciple and Peter back to the tomb where they do their dance of authority on who will go inside the tomb first and what conclusions of belief and remaining doubt they will have, and then they turn again and leave.

Mary stays this time. Mary weeps. She kneels to get a closer look this time. And she sees two angels whom no one had seen before, located at the two ends of where Jesus’ body had been; had they been there before when Jesus’ body had been laid out there before, had they gone when the two male disciples showed up but returned when Mary came back? Mary continues still, not turning back and prompting an angel to call her Woman, exerting power by the name used, and the angel calls into question her very weeping, as if accentuating here emotions, perhaps her gender, and her reason for being there.

There the story takes a quick turn itself. She expresses her fear that the authorities have taken, have spirited, the body away. The body is important to Mary. Blessing the body is important. And then she turns again, as if toward a presence just around the turn of a corner, just out of sight, and sees someone she doesn’t recognize. Should she? Is her emotion blinding her? Is it another example of her not being a true disciple as much as the male disciples or else she would have recognized Jesus right away? Has her old default mode of believing dead is dead, that the Empire always wins, blinded her instead? In the presence of two angels, which biblical witness says is often a scary fearful thing, and in the presence of someone she doesn’t know, right away at least, and who calls her also by the dismissive title of “Woman” and questions her state, why she weeps, all of this in the realm of the dead and buried, still Mary does not turn and flee mute and terrified, even if awestruck here, as in Mark.

And as if her standing her ground is standing on holy ground, she is rewarded by the pivotal question, the question that turns all of our Easters upside down for us: Who is it she is looking for? Who are we looking for on this day and in this season, this year, this day? Mary, still not recognizing Jesus, answers back, that powerful act of speaking from her heart and truth to the power of those in her midst, turning his question back on him: Mister, she says directly to the nameless man she thinks may hold the keys to her despair, if it is you who has done this, undo it, return the body to me, so I may care for it. So I may do what needs to be done. So I may act in an “as if” world, as if the community of love and support and traditions still exists even despite the crucifixion, anointing the body of Jesus as Jesus anointed and blessed so many bodies in pain himself.

And then Jesus symbolically turns on the light, revealing himself in response to her attention, her faithfulness to love, even justice in caring for the shamed body of an executed criminal. Jesus does this by calling her by her name, that powerful act of relationship, breaking through the boundaries of the system of power and the honor/shame mode, becoming present in the vulnerability of the mutual relationship. That is all it took for Jesus to be revealed, saying her own true name. And she turns toward him. And she names him Rabbi. What had been, which had been taken, has now been restored.

Then the story turns again: She has gone to him and has taken hold of him, for Jesus says “Don’t cling to me.” Peterson and more liberal biblical scholars agree that this is a more accurate phrase than the “Don’t touch me” phrase. It definitely implies there is something there to hold onto, yet as Jesus goes on to explain, his new body is in transition; he is the old body and he is the new body. Don’t cling to the old body. Don’t cling to what was. Let him go to God, as he tells Mary to turn one more final time and go tell the other disciples that he is going on, returning to God. And so she does, telling, teaching them what her Teacher has just taught her.

The Take Away: There is much of what has been thought of as “the feminine” in this story foundational to Christianity, even if much of John overtly may try to sideline Mary’s role and lift up male disciples. Vulnerability, persistence, intimacy, bodily caring; elements present in Jesus as well, though here as in other parts of the gospel of John particularly Jesus himself is revealing of himself through encounters with strong women (such as his mother at the wedding of Cana). Even deeper though this resurrection story seems to signal to us that it isn’t just what we know about Jesus, what we have experienced of Jesus in the past, what we think we can recognize as his shape and his voice, or argue about, but that we shouldn’t cling to all that precisely because Jesus is becoming something new for us, something we will only perhaps be able to understand and appreciate in community, in teaching one another and sharing our experiences of empty tomb moments.

It is as if Jesus is saying if you want to be in my presence from now on, go cling to one another, and cling to those I brought close to me. It might not even be your own personal encounter with me that I am now desiring; it is your becoming me in community with others.

That is what I call the Christ of faith, the shape of the historical Jesus becoming and unfolding in new ways, becoming clear and powerful, giving that power away to others, all in the midst of others. Especially on Easter do we celebrate the truth of this transformation, especially in the places and through the people who are like tombs where we witness the stones being rolled away and the shame give way to Love and we hear our own name called, and turn toward it to be restored and to go restore others. Especially right here, right now, with you.

By Their Fruits Shall You Know Them: The Orchard Vote for North Tulsa, the Tulsa World story and True Value, and Call For Riding Donkeys

2011-04-17T14:11:00.000-07:00

The Welcome Table Community Center, Church, KitchenGardenPark, A Third Place Foundation projects... 5920 N. Owasso Ave. Turley, OK 74126, 9186913223 or 7944637 or 430-1150 http://www.turleyok.blogspot.com/, http://www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/, http://www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com/, http://www.uuchristian.org/, http://www.ptstulsa.edu/, http://www.redpillbrethren.tumblr.com/, http://www.ccda.org/, http://www.tcpc.org/, http://www.tumm.org/

..........................1. The Vote Is On: Let everyone in your organizations, families, social networks know that they can help bring a 40 tree fruit orchard to far northside Tulsa, to our food desert, simply by taking a minute to register online and then voting once every day easily and quickly for our project, the only one in Oklahoma in the running. Five orchards per month will be given away, including planting and helping set up irrigation system, by the National Fruit Tree Foundation. We were one of 120 communities selected for the competition; of course most of the others are in heavily populated areas, with backing of staffed organizations, and where residents have easy access to internet in order to vote; we have none of that, but great need, and great dreams, and great love putting our dreams and miracles into action.

Go to and send others to http://www.communitiestakeroot.com/Plant/Index. Take a second to register with name and email address and a password specific to the competition then go to the vote page where you click on list of states and scroll down to find Oklahoma and that's us. Vote and then share with others that you have and you want them to do the same also and then bookmark the page to come back each day for a few seconds to do it again whenever you get on the computer. If you know someone with an email address who isn't able to do it, you can vote for them with their name and email address and a chosen password. If you would rather support us through a donation than the voting to win the orchard, send $40 toward a tree and the labor of planting to A Third Place Foundation, 5920 N. Owasso Ave., Turley OK 74126 or donate online at the button above this post. Put the information out via your business, civic group, church email, newsletters, social media pages, etc. ................If you want to help people get a sense of why we feel this so urgently, as well as all of our community renewal work, then send them to http://www.turleyok.blogspot.com/ where they can see the nutrition survey results pretty shocking even for a food desert, and also the videos of what the kitchengardenpark looked like before we bought it last year, with your help, and what its vision will be, and how the work is progressing already. ......................... 2. Our Annual Palm Sunday Demonstrating God's Way Not the Empire Way Project: Today we have been doing our guerilla gardening project transforming an old neglected poisoned corner of our community at the busy 66th and N. Lewis intersection. We are mulching paths, planting more flowers, and continuing to reclaim it and let people know this is a real community they are entering, or living in, and not just a disposable society. One person stopped and we ended up giving him some of our daffodils and irises we were going to plant there, and another person stopped and said thanks and gave us five dollars and drove on. It shows the real wealth and real community here so vital to the real life. Same for our work at Cherokee School with outdoor classrooms, with advocacy, with the summer feeding program. ................................ The values we try to foster, and live up to, of community that is the opposite of both poverty and of property, are in stark contrast these days. In today's front page of the Tulsa World, lead story, it talks about how part of Tulsa County is increasing in property values and lists the top ten areas that are, and it lists the top ten areas where there is the most decline in property values. No surprise to see where I live as the number two spot in the "worst" value area, just one tenth of a percent behind the neighborhood with the sharpest decline in property values. http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20110417_11_A1_CUTLIN721489 ..................................Siderant: The article spends time talking with people who live in the areas where the property values are increasing, but there is not one interview with a family in one of the neighborhoods like ours where the property values are decreasing. What is up with that, journalistically and morally? Come talk to us. We will talk about purposefully moving here, into a house that had been abandoned for around three years like so many of those in our area; we will talk about having to argue with the bank to get the loan to buy here because they didn't believe we were going to live here (who with our degrees, income, jobs, perhaps color of skin, would move here? was the undercurrent); we will talk about why we could live anywhere else but wouldn't; because we know real life is in community, and real lives of faithfulness to the Jesus way, anyway, means finding a way of living with those others abandon. ........................ Part of our conversation in worship today was about how we have made Palm Sunday a part of our everyday community life, as in all we try to do with all of our projects and with all of our partners is to demonstrate the Palm Sunday message that "Another World Is Possible". Jesus riding into the capital city on top of a nursing donkey, a sign of vulnerability and a different kind of power than was being displayed by dominant culture of Caeser and the religious authorities collaborating with Caeser, reminding people that God's Anointed is about love, peace, justice, serving others, risk-taking, and about the decisions we make for those most endangered, that is all about showing another world is possible. Easter is about the revelation that such a world is not only possible but it is real and here for those with eyes to see and hears to hear and hearts to open and hands to serve. .......................................We always have projects to do in our community center with its services and events, in our gardens, and connecting with partners. Let me know how I can help you find ways to help those we serve. We are looking for places for people who come serve with us from out of town to be able to take showers; so if you have ideas or resources please let me know. If you would like to help directly, let me know, either as an individual, family, or group you sponsor or are a part of. ...................... Easter and its season (we always remind people that like Christmas, Easter is not a one day, one morning, or one hour event; but is a full season of the year to reorient toward a Risen Life) is always here full of surprises as we try to surprise the world around us, so stay tuned or just plan to come experience the many ways we are witnessing to the resurrection of life here in the 74126. Alleluia's take many different forms. I do know that next Sunday we will be having a three-act worship focusing on feast, funeral, and freedom, or life, death, and resurrection. ............................And go vote for us and the fruit tree orchard for our neighborhoods here, and keep our partners in education and health and service and especially our northside schools in prayer and in your advocacy, that those in power may enlarge their vision and be open to creative opportunities that see abundance and not just scarcity, and that all those who are rightfully upset be rightfully upset at those who make decisions in Oklahoma City that people in our neighborhoods have to deal with, that our rallies end up in their hallways and on their doorsteps, so that their decisions not go unchallenged to try to gut public institutions in favor of private schools, churches, corrections, charities, health care, workers, etc. which only perpetuate the abandonment of those most in need. There is a concentrated assault on the very notion of a public civic society that pledges its common wealth to take care of one another. It is time to ride nursing donkeys into the places of power once again. Ron feel free to share with others, to follow on facebook at www.facebook.com/revronrobinson