About 10 minutes after worship ends, we’ll gather together for Aftertalk. We hope you’ll join us! Bring your questions, stories, insights, musings, imaginings and whatever else you need to Aftertalk. Join us for some food, fellowship, laughter and ample space for reflection and real questions to help us make the transition from worship to world. Themes for this week: Restoration of Community, Noticing, Prophecy
Reflection: "Hard as it may be to believe in these days of infectious greed and sabers unsheathed, scientists have discovered that the small, brave act of cooperating with another person, of choosing trust over cynicism, generosity over selfishness, makes the brain light up with quiet joy." - Natalie Angier "Lay hold of something that will help you, and then use it to help somebody else." - Booker T. Washington Lectionary Texts: 1 Kings 17:8-16 | Psalm 146 | Hebrews 9:24-28 | Mark 12:38-44 (...for further consideration):
0 Comments
About 10 minutes after worship ends, we’ll gather together for Aftertalk. We hope you’ll join us! Bring your questions, stories, insights, musings, imaginings and whatever else you need to Aftertalk. Join us for some food, fellowship, laughter and ample space for reflection and real questions to help us make the transition from worship to world. Themes for this week: Identity, Resolution, Heart
Reflection: "You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." - Mark Twain "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye." - Antoine de Sait Exupery "If there is a single definition of healing it is to enter with mery and awareness those pains, mental and physical, from which you have withdrawn in judgement and dismay." - Stephen Levine "Fairy tales are not responsible for producing in children fear... that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit... that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear." - George MacDonald Lectionary Texts: Jeremiah 37:1-9 | Psalm 126 | Hebrews 7:23-28 | Mark 10:46-52 (...for further consideration): About 10 minutes after worship ends, we’ll gather together for Aftertalk. We hope you’ll join us! Bring your questions, stories, insights, musings, imaginings and whatever else you need to Aftertalk. Join us for some food, fellowship, laughter and ample space for reflection and real questions to help us make the transition from worship to world. Themes for this week: Service, The Body of Christ, Sacrifice
Reflection: "Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love." - Martin Luther King Jr. "The x-factor of great leadership is not personality, it's humility." - Jim Collins "A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act." - Mahatma Gandhi Additional Reading: Much Ado About Nones? Growing, Diverse Body Offers Few Easy Answers Lectionary Texts: Isaiah 53:4-12 | Psalm 91 | Hebrews 5:1-10 | Mark 10:35-45 (...for further consideration): About 10 minutes after worship ends, we’ll gather together for Aftertalk. We hope you’ll join us! Bring your questions, stories, insights, musings, imaginings and whatever else you need to Aftertalk. Join us for some food, fellowship, laughter and ample space for reflection and real questions to help us make the transition from worship to world. Read Lectionary Texts: Amos 5:6-7, 10-15 | Psalm 90:12-17 | Hebrews 4:12-16 | Mark 10:17-31 Themes for this week: Security, Goodness, Stewardship Ask
Explore Stated Clerk of PCUSA Issues Letter to Donald Trump on refugees, immigrants. Didn’t make it onto the yearly roll call of the mega-wealthy? Now’s your chance to find out where you actually sit in comparison to the rest of the world. Median Household Income Worldwide (Gallup) How to Own Land Morgan Farley (From Sabbath, Wayne Muller) Find a spot and sit there until the grass begins to nose between your thighs. Climb to the top of a pine and drink the wind’s green breath. Track the stream through alder and scrub, trade speech for that cold sweet babble. Gather sticks and spin them into fire. Watch the smoke spiral into darkness. Dream that the animals find you. They weave your hair into warm cloths, string your teeth on necklaces, wrap your skin soft around their feet. Wake to the silence of your own scattered bones. Watch them whiten in the sun. When they have fallen to powder and blown away, the land will be yours. It’s easier for a camel to get on the cover of a lifestyle magazine than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. About 10 minutes after worship ends, we’ll gather together for Aftertalk. We hope you’ll join us! Bring your questions, stories, insights, musings, imaginings and whatever else you need to Aftertalk. Join us for some food, fellowship, laughter and ample space for reflection and real questions to help us make the transition from worship to world. Themes for this week: Acceptance, Peacemaking, Health Community, Courage, Vulnerability 38 John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” 42 “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me…"
Esther and others in her story lend their voice and their power to those who are under threat of violence – “little ones” perhaps in her context.
Additional Reading: On Courage Lectionary Texts: Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22 | Psalm 124 | James 5:13-20 | Mark 9:38-50 (...for further consideration): Greatness and Humility: A False Paradox?
About 10 minutes after worship ends, we’ll gather together for Aftertalk. We hope you’ll join us! Bring your questions, stories, insights, musings, imaginings and whatever else you need to Aftertalk. Join us for some food, fellowship, laughter and ample space for reflection and real questions to help us make the transition from worship to world.
Themes: Qualities of Character, Faithfulness, Humility, Sustainability in Relationships
In the News: The Case of Ahmed Muhamed Stephen Colbert: His Faith, Islam, and the Pope Lectionary Texts: Proverbs 31: 10– 31 ● Psalm 1 ● James 3: 13– 4: 3, 7– 8a ● Mark 9: 30– 37 (...for additional consideration):
Or have a look at "Why Gender Equality is Good for Everyone" from Michael Kimmel (TED).
AFTERTALKS BEGINS...We have a new format for Sunday, beginning this week. Worship will begin at 10 AM. About 10 minutes after worship ends, we will group together for Aftertalk. Bring you questions, stories, insights, and whatever else you need to Aftertalk. Join us for some food, fellowship, laughter, and ample space for reflection and real questions to help us make the transition from worship to the world. We hope you'll join us! This week we focus on Wisdom, Discipline, and Guidance.
Further Reflection: "A man who won't die for something is not fit to live." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "Jesus had no romantic notion of the cost of discipleship. He knew that following Him was as unsentimental as duty, as demanding as love." - Brennan Manning "I am an average Good Christian, when you don't push my Christianity too far. And all the rest of you — which is a great comfort — are, in this respect, much the same as I." - Wilkie Collins Lectionary Texts: Proverbs 1:20-33 - James 3:1-12 - Psalms 19 - Mark 8:27-38 In the News: Clerk in Kentucky Chooses Jail Over Deal on Same-Sex Marriage Most Americans Support Sending Kim Davis To Jail, Poll Shows Insane Things Republicans Say: Ted Cruz Edition We Don’t Need Kim Davis to Be in Jail (...and some additional media for consideration): |