GATHERING
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, Love divine;
Love was born at Christmas; star and angels gave the sign.
Worship we the Godhead, love incarnate, love divine;
Worship we our Jesus, but wherewith for sacred sign?
Love shall be our token; love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and neighbor, love for plea and gift and sign.
Christina Rossetti
December 29, 2019Years ago when my children were young, I taught the first grade Sunday School class with the Interfaith Families Project, and I told the kids the big stories about the Hebrew people and their God: Creation, Noah and the Ark, Abraham and Sarah, the Exodus, and so on. One year there was a precociously skeptical little boy in my class. After I told the story of, say, Noah’s Ark, he would ask, “Did that really happen?” And I would answer, “I don’t know if these things really happened. But what I do know is that there is so much truth in this story that people are still telling it, thousands of years later.”…
December 22, 2019This “No-Rehearsal Christmas Pageant” is borrowed from Rev. Dan Harper, who adapted and modified it for use at First Unitarian in New Bedford from Rev. Jory Agate of First Parish in Cambridge, who got it from someone else. This version was modified by Deborah Sokolove for Seekers Church from the Harper version found at https://www.danielharper.org/archive/?p=40, which says that it is in the public domain.
Parts: Mary, Joseph, Caesar Augustus, Herod, Wise Persons, Stable Animals, Star, Angels, Shepherds, Sheep
Places: Nazareth, Bethlehem, Fields, Jerusalem,
The Christmas story is rooted in old, old tales of the winter solstice.…
Optional follow-up class after church on Sunday, February 23
Anyone who would like to bring their own dinner is welcome to join us to eat dinner together at 6:45. The class will begin at 7:30 and end at 9:00.
Sign up on the clipboard in the sign-up area just outside the sanctuary or by emailing marciasprague(at)mindspring.com. Required text: How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price. Please indicate whether you would like to purchase the book at Busboys and Poets across the street (where we can order copies) or buy the book some other way.…
December 15, 2019After mission group last Wednesday night, I drove Deborah to the Silver Spring metro so she could catch her bus home. As we were driving, I told her that growing up, the Sundays leading up to Christmas (I am pretty sure the term Advent was never used) were easy. The first Sunday you got a sermon about the Annunciation, the second Sunday was about Joseph and the journey to Bethlehem, the third Sunday was about the shepherds and the choir of angels and the fourth Sunday was about the birth of Jesus and even the Wise Men might get squeezed into that already crowded barn, because more is always better, right?…