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Archive for Messages from the Pastor – Page 3

Our Story: We Are in this Together

September 2, 2020

Image by ElisaRiva from Pixabay

Can you believe it? This weekend is Labor Day! Where has the summer gone? Where has 2020 gone? I imagine far fewer of us are “getting away” for Labor Day weekend, so perhaps you’ll have time to remember the unique origins of how and why the US decided to change Labor day from May 1st, ’International Worker Day, from the rest of the world, to a sleepy weekend at the end of the summer.

As is so often with history, there is a political battle for who gets to tell the story. In fact, it often is HIS story (a white wealthy, male landowner) telling the story. Far too often, history is told by the winners, while the voices of the marginalized and the oppressed are hidden. We are wise to learn from these hidden histories, so as not to repeat it.

Related to our stories, and the importance of hearing everyone’s perspectives about OUR stories, I want to share with you a beautiful quote that Nancy Taylor lifted up in our bible study today. The context was that we were lamenting about how hard it is to connect with people, including beloved friends and family members, because we are so far apart on issues, (especially when our stories and the media perpetuate the belief that we are separate). We were discussing what is at stake when we fail to remember that we are all in this together. The quote is by Michael Meade, D.H.L., is a renowned storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, anthropology, and psychology (follow the link or see text below).

Last week in our McLaren discussion I challenged each one of us, as hard as it might be, to seek to connect with someone with whom we are are far apart on issues, and seek to empathically connect with them. I look forward to our continued conversation about this!

May we be moved to go out to the margins and the edges of life, and in doing so, find each other.

with love, Pastor Laurie

“There’s an old Irish myth about how when the center falls apart, when there is no big unifying story that can be told in public so that everyone remembers, yes, we all are in this together, when that happens, when the center cannot hold, the old story says then it’s time for each person to go to the margins and the edges of life. Because the center when it’s missing does not completely disappear. Rather, the elements of the center are then found at the margins and edges of life. And so it becomes a time for each person to go to the edge that attracts them and at the same time causes them to be fearful.

And the old story says that if each person goes in the direction that is both attractive and fearful to them, they will find that at the edge of their life a thread, and if each person would then pick up that thread and begin to pull it back towards the center, then the unifying center can be remade from the weaving together of many individual threads of life. In the greater myth that serves life, not death, no one has to be heroic and do it all or claim that they are the only one who can do it. Each person is just responsible to find their thread and find a way to weave it back into life. And the key to this narrative of the great way is that no one can be excluded for any reason, not because of their age, or their origin, or their race, or their economic disposition. Because each person has a life thread that has vitality and meaning and creativity in it.

And the point isn’t to indulge in some kind of magical thinking that would say that no one is going to die on this troubled path that we all share at this point. And certainly, the point cannot be that we’re all going to go back to life and business as usual. The understanding of the bigger myth right now is the world as we knew it is already gone. The point now is to be inhabiting a bigger, unifying living myth in which the words that we are all in this together have genuine, heartfelt meaning. We are in a time of radical change throughout the world, where life and death are struggling on a daily basis. And that requires each of us to change and come out of the crisis as greater souls not smaller people.”

– Michael Meade

Categories : Community, Messages from the Pastor

Tags : Brian McLaren, Meade

In the Name of Love, It’s Time to Change the Story

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August 25, 2020

I recently posted this on my Facebook page: In a sense, this is a “burning bush” moment for us, as a country, especially here in California. Can we see the signs? Do we have the patience and faith to embrace it, understand it, and be inspired to come together to liberate all people, all life, and our very planet from this captivity? Your thoughts?

The responses ranged from “climate hoax” to NY times articles explaining the causes, and critiques of NY Times articles, to the importance of prayers, to the need to do so much more than pray. WE are living in a country with radically different visions for our country and our world.

So it is in within our political parties. the Democratic and Republican National Conventions offer us radically different visions for these “United” States, and the world.

Today, our unity is fractured. Our shared story as a country is breaking down. It needs to break down. For too long our story has excluded the voices of minority voices, interests and values, it is crumbling from a lack of integrity. The Story that is emerging around the world requires us to include those we have ignored in the past, on the democratic left and the republican right. We are being called out for our bias and hoarding of power. It’s scary for the privileged and vital for those without.

Author and futurist, David Korten, writes in his book, Change the Story, Change the Future: “Choice-making beings of many possibilities, we humans live by shared cultural stories. They are the lens through which we view reality. They shape what we most value as a society and the institutions by which we structure power.

When we get our story wrong, we get our future wrong.

We are in terminal crisis because we have our defining story badly wrong. Seduced by a fabricated Sacred Money and Markets story, we live in indentured service to money-seeking corporate robots and relate to Earth as if it was a dead rock for sale.

Communications technologies now give us the capacity as a species to choose our common story with conscious intention. This is a moment of unprecedented opportunity to create a future consistent with our true nature and possibility as living beings born of a Living Earth, born of a Living Universe”

Change the story, change the future”

Here are a book review and David Korten’s website on the book.

Yesterday Jacob Blake, an unarmed African American man, was shot in the back by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin in front of his three children. He is now paralyzed from the waist down. We add his name to a long list of black women and men shot by police that should not exist.

The prophets of old and the prophets of this day shout God’s timeless message: In the name of Love, it’s time to change the story.

Categories : Messages from the Pastor

Tags : Change the story, David Korten, story

If There Was Ever a Time to Conspire Together in Love, it is NOW

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August 21, 2020

Lighting, Fires, blackouts, a heat wave, a pandemic, economic recession, and the poorest people of color are suffering.

We are living in apocalyptic times . Early Sunday morning, lightning bolts lit up the Bay area sky. Within days, fast moving fires ignited across Northern California. We wake up each day: check the news, check our cell phones for area alerts about everything from air quality, PG&E rolling blackout alerts, & Covid updates, and then reach out to our loved ones, as the raging fires double in size. We wonder, what’s ahead this fall?

All this in the midst of a global pandemic and an economic recession that has resulted in 170,000 deaths in the US, unemployment rate at 10% and another enormous transfer of wealth to billionaires.

I am worried about us, especially those most vulnerable. Where is our hope? Could it be in the very midst of this apocalypse? The word itself, Apocalypse (ἀποκάλυψις, apokálypsis) is a Greek word meaning “revelation“, “an unveiling or unfolding of things not previously known and which could not be known apart from the unveiling”.

In fact, we are in the midst of apocalypse. It is a time of great unveiling, things not previously known are being revealed, if we have the eyes to not only see it, to hear it, to be transformed by it, and to take action, together, to participate in our collective salvation. Who will save us? If there were ever a time for a great spiritual migration, it is NOW. If there was ever a time to participate, to conspire together, in love, it is NOW.

Who would have ever imagined that the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, born right here in Oakland during the civil rights movement, would give her acceptance speech as the first woman of color on a major party ticket? She urged us to perceive the times and to take collective action together for justice for all people. Former President Barack Obama issued a grim warning about the durability of American democracy, and our role in participating in democracy as informed, engaged, voters.

A short time remains before the US elections on November 3. While churches can take no partisan stands, we can pray and work for a just common life as a natural extension of our faith.

Resources to assist with this are available at Our Faith Our Vote: https://www.ucc.org/ourfaithourvote)

Thank you my friends, for our leadership and migration together.

Love, Pastor Laurie

This Sunday:

I am so pleased to have as our guest preacher this Sunday, our very own Teresa Jenkins!.

After the service, we continue on our journey, continuing our book discussion of Brian McLaren’s the Great Spiritual Migration, facilitated by Tom Manley! (please review the article below for details)

Categories : Community, Messages from the Pastor

Tags : apocalypse, fire, vote

John Lewis Reflections, and Rev. Lynice Pinkard Preaching Aug 2

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July 21, 2020

Last weekend, wanting to linger with John Lewis for a bit after his death, I watched an old interview of him by Jon Batiste, the bandleader of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Batiste asked him for his best pearls of wisdom. Lewis answered simply, according to the same religion he has followed since he was a child, “Sometimes someone says something hostile to me and I say ‘You don’t believe that. Your mother didn’t teach you that.’” He told a story about a Klan member who visited his office at the Capitol with his son, 50 years after beating Lewis bloody during the Freedom Rides, to apologize. The Klan member wept, his son wept, and Lewis forgave him, hugged him and started crying himself. “Hate is too heavy a burden to bear. Love is a better way,” he told Batiste.

This Sunday, we are once again blessed by guest preacher, Rev. Lynice Pinkard, who will continue to bring us wisdom from Jesus’ parables about the power of believing and acting in faith, that there is enough for us all, in the face of overwhelming need.

Rev. Lynice Pinkard Rev. Lynice is a writer, speaker, UCC minister, chaplain and public intellectual operating at the intersection of Christianity, economics, and social change. She is a graduate of Pacific School of Religion with both an MA and MDiv and is the former pastor at First Congregational Church of Oakland.

As a result of her rich heritage growing up in the African Methodist Episcopal church and the witness of her parents’ commitment to social justice, Rev. Lynice developed an early and keen sensitivity to the ways in which disparities of power and forms of oppression affect the quality of the lives of people around the world.

In recent years, Rev. Pinkard has co-founded several ministry-focused, community-based non-profits: Share First Oakland (addressing issues of hunger and structural food insecurity); Urban Sanctuary (building therapeutic collaborations between West Oakland activists and neighborhood residents, e.g., community gardeners and recyclers, artists and restorative justice advocates, marriage equality advocates and formerly incarcerated African American men in West Oakland neighborhoods); and Seminary of the Street (forming and training West Oakland neighborhood residents for faith-based critical justice work). Read more about Rev. Lynice HERE.

Rev. Lynice will preach from the lectionary; from Matthew’s gospel about the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven in contrast to the Kingdom of Ceaser and the Empire, then and now.

August 2 Bible verses.

We look forward to sharing this experience together.

Love,
Pastor Laurie (421-2646) [email protected]

Categories : Messages from the Pastor, Sunday Worship

Tags : lynice pinkard

Fourth of July: What is Liberty?

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July 1, 2020

Like many of us, as a child I have memories of a shining holiday, filled with family, friends, food, and fireworks, celebrating the 4th of July. I even remember on one family trip to New York city, seeing the fireworks over NY City harbor, bursting into spectrum of glorious light, like a halo behind the Statue of Liberty. I fell in love with the words of the that beautiful woman, that beacon of welcome, The New Colossus.

Like many of us, and especially now, I am more conscious of all that make that shining holiday less shiny. What is liberty? In the words of James Baldwin, “for black Americans in this country, the Statue of Liberty is simply, a bitter joke”. Our monuments, including the Statue of Liberty, are representations of myth, not fact. We must remember the history behind them, and all those for whom the promise of liberty has not been fulfilled.

I am more conscious of all that we didn’t learn in our “American history classes”:

All those who left their former countries to escape religious persecution, only to persecute others.
All those who felt justified to take the land of the Indigenous people, in the name of God,
All those who captured Africans and sold them into slavery in the name of God.

I am more conscious of all that we didn’t learn about our Founding Fathers and the Declaration of Independence, and all those who they did not have in mind when they wrote the document:

All those who didn’t have in mind setting folks like African Americans and Indigenous people free.
All those women, and people of color, who comprised the majority of the population who were excluded from the vote.

This Sunday we lift up courageous prophetic voices of the resistance, including Fredrick Douglas. Douglas was invited to give a talk in 1862 to a group of wealthy white republican woman on July 4th, and he refused. Instead he chose July 5th, and what he delivered was a blistering critique of this holiday, entitled, What to the Slave is the 4th of July? He berated pastors who refused to stand against the powers and principalities of that time.

peace, Pastor Laurie

Categories : Church in the World, Events, Messages from the Pastor

Tags : 4th of July, Frederick Douglass, liberty

“COVID 1619” – Racism, the 400 Year Old Virus

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June 17, 2020

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

The slow, brutal public execution of George Floyd has ignited international outrage. White people are becoming more conscious of what black people have known for centuries about the deep, violent, pervasive, structural, systemic racism within this country. I’ve been wondering, is this movement sustainable, and what can we do to sustain it?

Related to this desire, and as we consider our priorities as a church for this fall, I would like to share with you this week’s E-Letter reflection from our Conference Minister Diane Weible: (copied below)

Blessings upon your week, Pastor Laurie

Let’s Talk: About 8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

By Conference Minister Diane Weible

Each morning I spend 8 minutes and 46 seconds in silence. My thoughts go in many directions and over the next many weeks I hope to share some of those reflections here. Today I want to share two things that came up for me and one leads into the other.

I want to ask our churches in this Conference to seriously consider waiting until 2021 to return to their sanctuaries for worship. I am not making this ask just because I believe that the unknowns of COVID-19 makes it unsafe to consider returning too early. I am also not asking this just because it pains me to think that our communities of faith will be divided or members will feel excluded because they cannot safely return yet.

I ask this because I believe making a decision now to not consider returning to our sanctuaries until 2021 will free up precious time for us to focus on the other virus that we are dealing—that we have been dealing with for 400 years—COVID 1619. Instead of spending time every month debating if now is the time and what safety measures still need to be put into place, we can engage in the hard work of addressing white privilege, dismantling white supremacy and racism, working for equity and justice and co-creating the new ministry that God has revealed to us through these months of sheltering in place and the movement for racial justice that has reached all of us in new and profound ways the past couple of weeks.

And that brings me to the other thing that came up for me that I lift up as an example of the kind of work I am doing in my own life so I can better show up with all of you in this sacred work. The other day during my 8 minute and 46 second time of silence, I started thinking about the concept of “whiteness.” When we say someone is black or brown, we are referring to their skin color. Very few of us who check the “white” box on ethnicity forms would call our skin color white.

A couple of years ago I was at the PAAM Convocation and a dear friend said, “Well, peach people like you…” I looked at her for a moment, confused. And, then I burst out laughing. She was right. In the crayon-box of life, my skin is a lot closer to peach color then it will ever be to white.

White is a construct. It was created to define who holds the power and privilege in a dominating society. It was created for bonded labor that came to the United States and had to work to get out of debt. The white construct allowed these labors to feel superior to newly arrived slaves from Africa. The owners were worried about an uprising if the laborers and the slaves, both desperate for basic human rights and dignities joined forces. If bonded laborers received benefits for being “white” they would feel superior to slaves and the owners could better control all of them.

I am white by a definition that was created to protect the wealthy and powerful in a dominating society that holds a single narrative as the only reality that counts. Anything that happens that doesn’t fit with what we expect from that narrative must be discredited, claimed as untrue, not believed. The cost to me as a person who shares many of the aspects of that single narrative is that my authentic and beautiful story and history is not told or shared because the culture I grew up in encouraged me to focus on how similar we are all—how connected we all are. It allowed me to call a story or reality I don’t understand as “weird” or “different.” It taught me that it’s ok to be so absorbed in my own story, my own reality, that I should expect that everyone shares the same reality as I do and if they don’t, the problem must be with their story, not mine.

People who do not share in the single narrative of society have to navigate both their own authentic story with the story that the dominating society has deemed THE narrative. The white construct is as fragile as a house of cards. If we begin to truly listen to someone else’s story and learn the truth and reality of what we have for four hundred years ignored, our house of cards will topple.

My hope and prayer is that this is what is happening today. The house of cards is falling. As people of faith, we have an important role to make sure that happens. We are learning that we are not white. Instead, we are infected with a virus that is not new but is also deadly. As a peach person, I have been infected with the COVID-1619 virus for four hundred years. There is a vaccine, but unfortunately, it takes a lot more work than just getting a shot.

It requires one (or many) conversations with a Person of Color to hear their story; to hear of their experiences in our society and world.
• It requires reading books by Authors of Color. It requires watching movies like “The Hate You Give.”
• It requires reading about the deaths of Black people for doing things that those of us with privilege take for granted. (https://demcastusa.com/2020/05/29/i-have-privilege-as-a-white-person-because-i-can-do-all-of-these-things-without-thinking-twice/ ).
• It requires that we read White Fragility, not because we think we already understand privilege and fragility but because there is always something more we need to understand about our privilege and what will be required to dismantle white privilege and white supremacy.
• It requires that we show up for protests now and we commit to showing up for protests and events that will happen in the future.
• It requires not just showing up for protests but that we show up in relationships. Silence in the face of bigotry and racism is equally brutal.
• It requires expanding your circle of relationships beyond those who share the same story or skin color. Who are your neighbors? Who are the people you call friends and why? Do you know their story? How has their story shaped your view of the world?

The time is now. Many of us understand a lot with our heads. We are being invited to embody that knowledge throughout our entire being so we can understand it in a new way. I envision a Conference-wide commitment to conversations within our churches and among all of us in the wider church. These conversations and commitment to action has the potential for transformation and co-creation. I pray you will join me.

Categories : Church in the World, Corona Virus, Messages from the Pastor

Tags : 8 minutes, Corona Virus, coronavirus, Covid 19

“Our Democracy Hangs in the Balance”

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June 11, 2020

We are living at an inflection point in the history of our country, and in the history of this planet.

Michelle Alexander; a writer, civil rights advocate, visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary, and author of The New Jim Crow; writes in the NY Times:

“Our democracy hangs in the balance. This is not an overstatement.

As protests, riots, and police violence roiled the nation last week, the president vowed to send the military to quell persistent rebellions and looting, whether governors wanted a military occupation or not. “

Is this the beginning or the end? Where lies our hope? Where do we begin? We must face our racial history and our racial present. We must re-imagine justice.

Michelle Alexander continues:

My hope lies in the movement that brings together people of all ethnicities, genders and backgrounds as they rise up together, standing in solidarity for justice, protesting, marching and singing together, even as SWAT teams and tanks roll in. — a reflection of the best of who we are and what we can become. It is a glimpse, of a beautiful, courageous nation struggling to be born.

Let us, as people of faith, be inspired by this Spirit.

Blessings, Pastor Laurie

Take Action:

The Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III is the senior pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. He has recently recorded and posted two video messages about the killings of African Americans that have been fueled by white supremacy. I hope you will make, over the next couple days, the forty minutes it will take to watch and listen to them both.

The Trinity UCC YouTube channel suggests watching “When Is Someday?” first. The other video to watch, whatever order you watch them in, is “The Cross and the Lynching Tree: A Requiem for Ahmaud Arbery.”

May these two messages to awaken your spirit, open your hearts, and inspire you to action.

P.S. The petition Dr. Moss refers to in “When Is Someday?” can be found here.

Poor People’s Campaign Town Hall: In the context of the uprisings across the country against police killings of Black people and the devastation of COVID-19, people will come together across movements at a virtual town hall entitled “Poor People’s Campaign 1968-2020: Everybody’s Got A Right to Live! We Won’t Be Silent Anymore,” which will be held on Saturday, June 13, at 11:00 a.m. (Pacific time). Rev. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival will be the keynote speaker. RSVP to join the online town hall on Saturday, June 13, at 11:00 a.m.

Being Grateful in Difficult Times: Theologian and historian Diana Butler Bass is offering an online class on “Being Grateful in Difficult Times.” It includes mini-lectures, suggested practices, and conversations with other writers (including some surprise guests whose books you probably love!). It is a completely self-paced online course – you decide when you start and when you finish. The course goes live on June 22 and only costs $59 if you register by June 20. Learn more and register here.

Advocacy: For those of us who can’t take to the streets, we need to take to our phones and computers to make our opinions known to the politicians. Here are two ways you can do that:

Sign up to be part of the Poor People’s Campaign.
Become part of the United Church of Christ’s Justice and Peace Action Network.

Care for the Earth at Home: Undertake some (or all) of the environmental activities that can be done at home listed here. The list maker says they are activities kids can do; adults can do them, too.

Categories : Church in the World, Community, Events, Messages from the Pastor

Tags : democracy, George Floyd, Michelle Alexander, Poor People's, Racism

Pentecost – the Power and Mystery of the Holy Spirit

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May 27, 2020

This Sunday we celebrate the power and Mystery of the Holy Spirit!

She is that powerful, moving, invisible yet real presence, blowing into our lives as gently as each breath, or as powerfully as a hurricane. She is that energy heating up our lives as gently as a candle, or with the awesome power of a wildfire. Which version of the Spirit do you prefer?

This Sunday, we honor the moment when the disciples experienced the Holy Spirit and realized that they no longer needed the physical presence of Jesus. Each of them had his own inner conduit to God. So do we, if we dare to seek her.

Here’s how Luke (Acts 2:1-6) describes the moment, in the Message

When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.

There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run. Then when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongues being spoken, they were thunderstruck. They couldn’t for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, “Aren’t these all Galileans? How come we’re hearing them talk in our various mother tongues?

The Pentecost spirit is captured in a powerful poem by William Blake:

Unless the eye catch fire,
The God will not be seen.
Unless the ear catch fire
The God will not be heard.
Unless the tongue catch fire
The God will not be named.
Unless the heart catch fire,
The God will not be loved.
Unless the mind catch fire,
The God will not be known.

Dare we catch fire?

I look forward to seeing you in worship this Sunday!

Categories : Messages from the Pastor, Sunday Worship

Tags : Holy Spirit, Pentecost, William Blake

Re-Opening Skyline – Safely and Inclusively

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May 14, 2020

Can you believe it? It’s week 8 of SIP here in Alameda County.

So many of us in this country are engaged in the question, when will we open up again? How will we do so in a way that keeps us all safe? As states begin to open again and restaurants welcome patrons, offices reopen, and churches begin holding in-person activities, the question we face is: Who will we leave behind?

COVID-19 is with us until we have a vaccine or cure. Some of us are more vulnerable to being killed by this virus if we contract it. As a nation, we are caught between the tension of restarting our economy and risking the spread of COVID 19, that has already killed over 80,000 people in our country, disproportionately poor people of color. How do we re-open in a way that keeps all of us safe and leaves no one behind?

It’s a particularly challenging question for Skyline as a faith community. The Skyline community, like many protestant churches, is older and most at risk. How do we open the church and carry on knowing that our oldest members, already struggling to engage new technology, will be left out of important moments of being a community together? Who will we leave behind? I’m reminded of how often Jesus promised: I will not abandon you, whether you’re a lost sheep, or an orphan. Let’s not leave anyone behind!

It’s also a particularly challenging question for Skyline as a small church, that also owns a preschool and offers our venue for rentals and weddings. The challenges of maintaining social distancing and sanitary conditions will be formidable in such gatherings. How do we plan to open up in a way that maximizes the safety of us all, and balance this with our economic reality that most of our revenues come from our preschool and weddings?

I don’t have an easy answer for us, as a country or as Skyline. We are continually monitoring the guidelines from the CDC and local Alameda County health department for both church and preschool openings.

But I do have faith that we can do this if we engage in this process together. You’re invited to consider the gifts that you have in this important conversation. Get involved!

As we begin reopening, let us do so with deep compassion and measured patience. We have much to learn about how to be together right now. Let’s make sure we discern the way forward together.

Categories : Community, Corona Virus, Messages from the Pastor

Tags : church, corona, Covid 19

God is with us through this Storm

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April 24, 2020

These are days in which we feel tossed about by the rough winds and waves, like boats at sea. These are times of change, loss and confusion. And times of living with so many unanswered questions: When do we open? Do we stay home? Will my job be there when this is over? Will my child be going to school in the fall? Will I run out of money this month? Can my family help me if I should need it? What will I do if I get sick and don’t have insurance?

It’s hard to find our bearings, hard to predict the winds, and hard to see the shore. Life feels adrift, and while we are sharing the experience of disorientation, we are not all experiencing the same vulnerabilities. We are in this together, but our journeys are uniquely our own.

I am grateful to ride out the winds and waves together. My comfort comes not in an expectation that God will perform some great miracle, but that God is with us through it all. We can trust this journey because we are not alone.

I recently read a piece that conveyed this sense of isolated connection that I’ve been experiencing:

I heard that we are all in the same boat, but it’s not like that. We are in the same storm, but not in the same boat. Your ship could be shipwrecked, and mine might not be.

Or vice versa.

For some, quarantine is optimal. A moment of reflections, of re-connection, easy in flip-flops, with a cocktail or coffee. For others, this is a desperate financial and family crisis.

For some that live alone, they’re facing endless loneliness. While for others it is peace, rest, and time with their mother, father, sons and daughters.

With the $600 (US) weekly increase in unemployment, some are bringing in more money to their households than they were working.

Others are working more hours for less money, due to pay cuts or loss in commissioned sales.

Some families of four just received $3400 from the stimulus package, while other families of four saw $0.

Some were concerned about getting a certain candy for Easter, while others were concerned if there would be enough bread, milk, and eggs for the weekend.

Some want to go back to work because they don’t qualify for unemployment and are running out of money. Others want to kill those who break quarantine.

Some are at home spending two to three hours a day, helping their child with online schooling, while others are doing the same on top of a 10–12 hour work day.

Some have experienced the near death of the virus, some have already lost someone from it, and some are not sure if their loved ones are going to make it.

Others don’t believe this is a big deal.

Others say the worst is yet to come.Some have faith in God and expect miracles this year.

We are not in the same boat. We are going through a time when our perceptions and needs are completely different.

Each of us will emerge, in our own way, from this storm. It is important to see beyond what is seen at first glance. Not just looking, actually seeing.

We are all on different ships during this storm, experiencing a very different journey. — Unknown Author

Categories : Community, Messages from the Pastor

Tags : Cornoavirus, Covid 19, quarantine, shelter in place, SIP

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Archive for Messages from the Pastor – Page 3

Our Story: We Are in this Together

In the Name of Love, It’s Time to Change the Story

If There Was Ever a Time to Conspire Together in Love, it is NOW

John Lewis Reflections, and Rev. Lynice Pinkard Preaching Aug 2

Fourth of July: What is Liberty?

“COVID 1619” – Racism, the 400 Year Old Virus

“Our Democracy Hangs in the Balance”

Pentecost – the Power and Mystery of the Holy Spirit

Re-Opening Skyline – Safely and Inclusively

God is with us through this Storm

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