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Farther Along ATTENTION: CHANGE IN SUNDAY SNOW CANCELLATION NOTICES In the event of Sunday snow storm cancellation or other emergency, notification will be by email for those on our email list. Others may call the church office 634-2100 after 7:00AM for Steve’s recorded notice. ***************** WCCC AND EMAIL Two important efforts are underway to bring our congregation into the wireless age.
***************** OPENING HEAVENS TO ALL Let the heavens be opened and gold light Shine down and its radiance cover the earth Let the angels brake out in magnificent chorus Praising God in the highest and glory to all life And have it be heard with all ears and seen with All eyes and known to all life plus each spirited Soul Help it to spread like wild fire and fly like an Angel to be witnessed, loved and by all Let it rain of Gods love to all life as it’s known let it prosper our Spirited souls have it touch your very heart with every Feeling of joy happiness or comfort that he the lord Brings to you to all life as it’s known By, Erin Rose Messenger [age 14] ***************** WHICH SURROUNDS US we give thanks for the snow which surrounds us, the snow which astounds us; which chills us, sometimes, to the spine; which we struggle with, sometimes, all alone; for the snow which makes us do sometimes desperate things with a shovel, with a prayer; for the snow which takes us full circle and with this ring of bright and delighted air promises us a future breathless and without end; for the snow which mends even the wind; snow which shows the hard shape of our landscape and answers -- by lovingly covering form -- the quiet in our hearts, as well as the storm; we give thanks for the love which surrounds us, the love which astounds us; which chills us, sometimes, to the spine; which we struggle with, sometimes, all alone; for the love which makes us do sometimes desperate things with a prayer, with a shovel; for the love which takes us full circle and with this ring of bright and delighted air promises us a future breathless and without end; for the love which mends even the wind; love which shows the hard shape of our landscape and answers -- by drifts like breasts like the bounty of snow but warm -- the quiet in our hearts, as well as the storm; we give thanks. ~~ Stephen Philbrick ***************** An Advent 2008 Sermon Stephen Philbrick, December 2008 Parents: You have worked so hard to develop qualities in your children: honesty, courage, humility, boundaries (who they are; where they end; how they fit in the universe; that they matter.) And children, you have also worked so hard to develop these qualities. In some cases you’ve needed to encourage honesty, courage, humility and boundaries in your parents: To remind them that you exist, that you matter, but that you are not a suitable object of worship.
BUT
On the whole, the culture we contribute to, and partake of, doesn’t value honesty, courage, humility and a sense of self. The culture rewards defending, protecting, amassing, winning . Oh, the world may pay lip service to them, but the world doesn’t give up money or power or privilege for these virtues. Look: Your honesty doesn’t make the world stop lying. Truth doesn’t make the world listen. Sure doesn’t listen to truth. (you’ve been that voice in the wilderness.) Your courage doesn’t stop people or governments from lashing out in fear. Boundaries? Made to be invaded. Humility? There’s no such thing as bad publicity. All that we treasure individually (like our kids) doesn’t seem to matter collectively in the world we send them into. But we send them: out to play, out to work, off to school (the yellow bus that first time!) into battle, into life. And it can be discouraging. We may turn back, turn in. The culture tempts us to become selfish. Sometimes the greater the cause you dedicate your life to (peace, nonviolence, justice) the more it feels like wasting your life on its opposite (war or prejudice or violence.) Hold on; remember, it’s a paradox. You have what it takes to save the self-destructive world, as well as your self: that same truth, honesty, humility and courage. The world needs it; you have it; the world flees it. And here is our great cultural offer of hope: that the country valued truth, courage, honesty enough to elect a black and white man with a Muslim name born in the furthest, newest, most multi-colored and cultured state. Here is the great annual confession of hope: that the world is worth Jesus/ is worth every child/is worth your child/ is worth you; that we are worth the earth we live on; that the darkness is worth the candle. That life is, finally and fully, worth living. That’s the conundrum where parents live. That’s the heartbreak of caring-and-trying that children inherit. But don’t give up, children or parents: you’ve been here before. And you know the way: The way is dark and leads to light. Hearts must break and waters must break and the body must give to the point of breaking. And the body must compress to the point of breaking --- and then light breaks into the eyes and air breaks into the lungs and lives open into each other. When we celebrate baptism, we acknowledge how thin the difference between life and death is -- for mother, for baby. When we celebrate Christmas or solstice, we acknowledge the dark, the cold, the way the story goes --- and the hope it nevertheless contains, like the grain, the kernel, the acorn, the egg which contains the future and can feed upon itself to start. That’s what the hope is: the self-contained start, the gesture toward/ that links us to the future. So it is neither strange, nor easy that
The way in, the way out, the salvation, the transformation, in this damaged world is through the broken-open heart, the opened mind, the lost hope, the abandoned plan, the dis-illusion. And when assumption and judgments and expectations are lost: why, YOU know what to do: Tell the truth, however painful. Hear the truth, however humbling. Keep the boundary, however frustrating. Don’t give up, however easy that would be. Love, however frightening. And give and give and give, until you receive. That’s how it seems, sometimes, but it’s really: “receive and receive and receive until you can give.” YOU are what the world fears, what the world yearns for, what the world needs -- each of you. It’s a heavy burden. On you, it looks good. Bless you. ***************** From Sandy Elia The Sunday School could use a few items. Here is our wish list. We would be greatly appreciative. Their may be more wished for items as we go along. Glue Pipe Cleaners Working Vacuum cleaner Toys- For ages 5 and under that are easy to clean. Play Mat with roads or other designs. Baby Corral ***************** Announcing Agape Meals "There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open." — Martha Graham In the name of getting to know each other better and beginning/continuing a dialogue about the direction in which our church is heading, members of the congregation will be hosting Agape meals during Lent. I am hoping to post an information/sign-up sheet in the Parish house in early February. (Lent runs from Wed. Feb. 25-Sunday April 12). The meals will be potluck, and a sheet of discussion topics will be provided. Please email Nerissa (Nerissand@gmail.com, or call 413-584-7736) if you are interested in hosting a meal and provide the following information:
1.
Name
2.
Location
3.
Phone/email
4.
How many diners you can host! (6-8 is probably a good number to aim for)
5.
Which date(s) you could host. Love, Nerissa ***************** Hi folks, I write to you with a simple request—would you engage with me in dialogue? I have been trying to make sense of the effect that Obama’s speeches have had on me over this past year. He has moved me to tears by his words. Here is the only poem I have ever written. The words feel inadequate. I have tried to use history, religion, and sociology as my guide, yet feel that I have come up short. What would you add to capture this historic event in verse? I feel so blessed to live in this time. Keith Wright If you see my tears by Keith Wright January 17, 2009 On Inauguration Day I may cry, but I will not be sad. On this day I will not feel the sadness of the slave nor the sadness of the black veteran who returned home from brave battles for freedom only to find how little freedom he himself had. On Inauguration Day I may cry, but I will not be sad. On this day I will not feel the sadness of the black prisoner nor that of the black child who saw his friend gunned down in a drive-by in the street on which they used to play. On Inauguration Day I may cry, but I will not be sad. On this day I will not have the sadness of the civil rights veterans who were convinced after Jesse that this day would never come, nor will I have the sadness of the families of Medgar, or Martin, or Malcolm who gave great sacrifice that their people might be free. No. On Inauguration Day if you see my tears know that these are the tears channeling through my soul of countless good people who marched and struggled, and they are the tears that come when something is so beautiful it overwhelms a meager soul, with the joy and hope and realization that all things are possible, amen.
Keith was an active member of WCCC and served us as Treasurer until a teaching job in Springfield to him and his wife Wendy away from us. ***************** At the WCCC Meeting on 1/18 the congregation adopted a resolution that on Communion Sundays (1st Sunday of each month) we share the loose (cash) offering with a cause beyond our own. On Sunday, February 1, we’ll share our offering with the Goshen .Food Pantry Goshen Food Pantry The pantry is open every Wed. 1-3 P.M. and on the third Wed. of each month we have extended hours of 1-6 P.M. We are open to residents with lower incomes in the towns of Chesterfield, Cummington, Goshen, Plainfield, Westhampton, Williamsburg, and Worthington. We are a program of the Northampton Survival Center. Proof of residency (a driver's license or a current utility bill, etc.) is all that is needed if you fall within the income guidelines. On average we serve 75 households a month. Recipients may pick up one large box[es] of food once a month and a smaller amount weekly. Some of the items included in the large box are canned foods, bakery items, fresh produce, frozen meats, breakfast cereal, personal care and household items. The amount a household receives is based on the number of people in the household. People can choose items with the assistance of a volunteer. The annual budget for the pantry is about $20,000, the majority of which is provided by the Survival Center. Our W. Cummington church is one of seven members of Loaves and Fishes, a consortium started by the Worthington Church, to support the Food Pantry when its funding was cut by the State in 2005. Our donations are part of our Broader Mission which is: To offer the West Cummington Congregational Church opportunities to respond to needs of our community both locally and globally. Our mission is to raise awareness through compassionate action, thus promoting stronger threads of local connection and a greater sense of global consciousness. NOTES: Checks for the Pantry only may be made to “WCCC-Food Pantry.” Cash will be split 50/50. Pledge payments & checks made to “WCCC” go directly to the church. Thank You! Thank You! ***************** Christmas In August A sermon offered by Erin White for Lay Sunday, January 18, 2009 In a few weeks I will pack up our girls and fly with them across the country to the town where I grew up. I have done this every winter since Grace was born, because I need to remember what the sun looks like, and what it feels like to live in a place where you can walk out your door and down the street to buy a cup of coffee. And when we get there, we will unpack and we will look at the toys that my mother has bought for the girls and then we will go out for a walk though the neighborhood, like we always do. We will walk past the houses of people we know well and people we don’t, and she will tell me who just got married and who just had a grandbaby and who just moved to Tucson. And then, near the end of the walk, we will come to a big grey stucco house with green trim and a wrought iron fence. And in the grand front picture window there will be a Christmas tree. A Christmas tree that has been up, fully lit and decorated, for nearly five years. “He’s still not home?’ I will ask. “No,” my mother will say. “Not yet.” The tree is up because there is a boy who used to live in that house who is a young man now and he has been in Iraq for a long time. And his mother will not take down the tree until he comes home. I should stop here and explain a little something about this town where I grew up. There are two army bases there and the Air Force Academy and long long ago it stopped mattering if you are for this war or against it. In this town, the war belongs to everyone. Everyone went to high school with someone who lost his legs and everyone works with a father who is worried about his daughter who has been home for three months and won’t come out of her room. The war belongs to everyone—no matter how much money you make or who you voted for or where you went to college or if you went to college at all. And to visit this town, even for a little while, is to be reminded of how easy it is to confuse being against the war with ignoring the war; and how easy it is to forget that no one wants this war to be over more than the people whose children and brothers and high school sweethearts are fighting it. The first time I saw the tree was in February. A Christmas tree in February looks a little funny, and a little sad, but it seems to stand for nothing other than a very busy winter, or a distracted household, or maybe even just a new year’s resolution to not “sweat the small stuff.” But have you ever seen a lit Christmas tree in someone’s window in the third week of August? It is an oddity. It is an absurdity. It stands out, it looks wrong. It stops you in your tracks. Which, I have to believe, is the whole point. I know the name of this waiting mother, this mother with the Christmas tree, although I would not recognize her if I saw her on the street. And I do not know which one of her five sons is in Iraq. So I am left to wonder: Is the tree up because her boy loves Christmas? Did he ship out one Christmas Eve? And how exactly did she decide that the tree was here to stay? Did she make an announcement at dinner one January night, or did she just keep saying, oh, no, not this weekend, maybe next, until her family stopped asking? And when the lights burn out does she replace them? Or does her husband or one of her other sons make a ritual of inspecting the wires and bulbs? Do they check for wear and do repairs late at night while she sleeps, so that the tree is never anything but lit for her? When I think of what it means to have a child in a war, I think it means different things to different mothers, of course it does, but I can’t help but focus on of all the work—the endless work-- it takes to grow a child, and how it must feel to have dedicated your life to keeping someone alive only to watch that someone venture off into a danger you can scarcely imagine. My children are still young and the care of them still so consuming, so that when I think of this boy, this young man in Iraq, I think of this mother changing diapers and snapping snaps, I think of her blowing the snow out of mittens dropped on the sidewalk, and of cutting up pieces of tofu so he doesn’t choke and cutting out hearts to make valentines so that she doesn’t strangle him on the winter’s tenth snow day. I think of her stopping at the store for yogurt for tomorrow’s lunch and stopping by the thrift shop for next year’s rain boots and I think of her rinsing out bottles and rinsing out swimming suits and rinsing out shampoo with the long spout of a teapot so that the soapy water does not drip into his eyes which he can’t seem to keep closed. I think of hours she might have hoped to spend working that she spent spooning broth and wiping noses and waiting for a call back from the nurse. I think of how it is possible to have a child and still have your own life, but that your life, the value of it is inevitably, blessedly, cursedly, secondary to the value of theirs.
Before I had children I imagined I would be a Grace Paley sort of mother (and not just the acclaimed writer part). My children would only serve to highlight the injustices of the world and with a baby on my back and a sign in my hand I would protest, I would sit-in, I would demand, I would hold meetings in drafty church basements and serve just-warm coffee and donuts to other parents who needed to get fired up about the closing of the child care center down the block or the opening of that army recruitment branch up the road. I would make phone calls and write letters while my children played –and herein lies the real fantasy—quietly at my feet. But I am not that sort of mother. And the reasons why are as rich and complicated as my children are. They have to do with preservation of self and marriage and childhood on a psychic level and with exhaustion on a practical level. But I am trying, in my own way, with what time and heart I have, to speak up and act out against what frightens me about the world we are giving to our children. Which is why I have come to love that Christmas tree so much. The mother in that house, she is not Cindy Sheehan. She is furious and she is grief stricken, but she is in that house with her family and she is caring for the children still there with her and she is working and she is jogging or doing Pilates and eating chocolate cake and fighting with her husband and folding laundry. And all the while people are walking by her house. People are looking at her Christmas tree. They are looking, and those who know her are wondering about her son and those who don’t are simply wondering. And either way, those people are conjuring her son. He is on their minds and on their tongues and in their hearts. And while the grief of those who see the tree and do not know the boy cannot touch the depth of hers, it can be-- if we let it--a wider grief. We can see that tree and feel for a moment the absurdity of lost youth and able bodies, of talent, of humor and of hope. The tree makes an invisible war, and all its victims, visible. And it makes her private protest a public one. Rumi tells us that there are one hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground. And so, also, there must be one hundred ways to weep and rend your garments. And one hundred ways to end a war. This sermon, this story, is my way. It is my organizing, it is my protest, it is my vigil. And I am telling you so that it can be yours, too. Not because you don’t already hate this war and not because you don’t already want all our soldiers home. Not because I believe you need to be convinced of a single thing. But because I have come to believe that it is in the telling and the remembering and the sighing and the praying and the slow shaking of heads in the disbelief of all that can be lost to a person—it is in all this --that we inch ourselves quietly, slowly, hopefully, toward a different world and a distant time when everyone’s children are home. ***************** In Search Of The Elusive Balanced Budget January 11 The Second Meeting We had an inspiring meeting Sunday morning, November 23, to discuss the values of our church and how those values should guide us in preparing a budget. A follow-up meeting will be held on Sunday January 11 at 9:30 AM. (yes, during church. The meeting is church, also. You’ll see.) Responses To The QuestionnaireAt the first meeting, people responded generously to questionnaires prepared by the Finance Committee. Here is a rough summary of the suggestions in those questionnaires: 1. The Parish House. Some of the budget numbers, mostly utilities, were a concern to many parishioners. Some of the ideas for savings were: charge for private use when it is appropriate (perhaps create a fee schedule), cut office expenses, ask for donations of supplies, have the PH cleaned by volunteers. Keep the thermostat at 45 when the Parish House is not in use. (have been doing so, ever since. Also, Wil will donate a heater for Steve to use in his office when that is all that is needed.) Several requests that the Sherpas come up with ways to reduce heating costs, i.e. getting insulated drapes or shades for the windows. The hope is that these measures could lower the PH budget by $2000. 2. Kids’ Church. Since Polly is retiring to have foot surgery and others have volunteered to take her place, the budget in that area can be reduced. Polly’s share for this fiscal 15 month period will be $420. Other expenses will be supplies and snacks. 3. Sending Farther Along (and other congregation-wide messages, at least those not requiring return envelopes) by EMAIL to most recipients would also greatly reduce that budget item. 4. Fundraising Strongly suggested by Finance Committee and others that a fundraising committee, separate from the finance committee, be established to help Arnold in his efforts. The hardest task is to raise general support funds with general pledging. We also need to fund- raise for our different activities in distinct efforts. For example, for PH drapes, have a drapes party. And work parties, like the Souper Supper, where labor and in-kind donations are as valued as money, should be held more often. 5. Miscellaneous (i) substituting some volunteer labor for paid clean-up work: (ii) how/to what degree Steve should disseminate more info about his support for our non-Sunday communities, although a summary report on total Minister's Discretionary Fund expenditures seemed a good idea; (iii) whether to disclose the tiers of pledgors by $$ amounts; (iv) whether to continue our affiliation with the UCC. (v)Raise money by a Christmas Craft Bazaar. (vi) Ask people to pay for Farther Along. (vii) Ask for donations for Coffee Hour, perhaps more aggressively (??!) than in the past. (viii)Ask everyone to increase his/her pledge by 10%. (ix)Have “sponsored activities” for fundraising — buy a pew, that kind of thing. (x)Give time instead of money for Broader Mission. (xi) Ask for money less often. (xii) Ask for money more often. The overall response to the questionnaires was very positive, generous and encouraging. Everyone loves, values and believes in our Church. (Summary by Wil, Toni and Steve) ***************** |
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