Members Tim Carter and David Guerra will present a fun, creative puppet drama this Sunday. It features several Martians visiting planet earth trying to understand what Thanksgiving and gratitude are. They discover it includes not only “abundance,” “food,” “pumpkin pie,” “cranberry sauce”, “pilgrim,” and “Indian,” but also…“turkey!!!”
They encounter a very upset giant turkey (Mr Tim Turkey), who helps them understand the deeper meaning of giving thanks!
Join us as we explore the deeper meaning of gratitude and Thanksgiving as an inter-generational community.
Bring your children and friends and your appetite for fun!
Also, at the service we are collecting pies for the Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless and non-perishable food donations to Alameda County Community Food Bank, so please share whatever abundance you can. Thank you!
As Al Jarreau once sang it so beautifully, We’re in this thing together!
Nearly every week, at some point in the service, Pastor Laurie tells us, “Whoever you are, and wherever you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” Sometimes, I let the sentiment fly by, but sometimes, it hits pretty hard. That’s a profound statement.
What a beautiful worship service last Sunday, lifting up the sacredness and preciousness of water in our bodies and on this planet, our deep interdependence upon it, and the infinite lessons it teaches us about movement and change and going with the flow in our lives.
Sunday, October 21 – Sunday, Nov 18
Sun, Nov 4 • 11:45 am
Last week, we focused upon the miraculous sacredness and the growing scarcity of rich fertile soil. In light of this perspective, 
One of the deep spiritual truths that undergirds all of us is our connection with water. “Throughout human history, the quest for God has often been connected with a quest for fresh water,” Diana Butler Bass writes in her book, 
An atheist friend of mine is fond of saying, “I just don’t believe that God is an old man sitting on the throne in Heaven.” Nor do the millions of people who still trust in God, yet reject this particular conception of God. McFague calls it the “transcendent sky-God tradition.” As Diana Butler Bass writes, “Instead of seeing God as distinct and distant from the world, we are acquiring a new awareness that the universe itself is God’s body, a complex and diverse interdependent organism, animated by God’s breath, the spirit of creation. We are with God and God is with us because – and some people may find this shocking – we are in God and God is in us. Maybe the far-off Heavenly Father is finally retiring, replaced by a far more down-to-earth presence, a presence named in Hebrew and Christian scriptures as both love and spirit.” As Wendell Berry puts it “The idea of Heaven doesn’t take religion very far,” because the distance makes for too great an abstraction. “Love,” as the very being of God, he continued, “has to wear a face.” And that “face” is “our neighborhood, our neighbors and other creatures, the Earth and its inhabitants.
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood,
