This Sunday, very much related to this theme of living waters, we renew our baptismal vows and connect deeply with  the truth that we are God’s beloved. Related to this theme, I offer you this poem, by Nobel Prize winner for literature, Derek Walcott, entitled “Love after Love”.

May the rains renew your souls this week.

Blessings, Pastor Laurie 

Love After Love by Derek Walcott
The time will come 
when, with elation 
you will greet yourself arriving 
at your own door, in your own mirror 
and each will smile at the other’s welcome, 

and say, sit here. Eat. 
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart 
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you 

all your life, whom you ignored 
for another, who knows you by heart. 
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, 

the photographs, the desperate notes, 
peel your own image from the mirror. 
Sit. Feast on your life.

As a new year begins, we turn inward to reflect about the state of our lives:

• What lessons have we learned in the past year and which new ones now call us forward?
• To whom do we still owe an apology or expression of thanks?
• And with whom must we draw fresh boundaries?

As we pause from our regular rhythms of rush-rush-rush, we open ourselves to new perspectives and possibilities. We give thanks for these moments and for the wisdom they afford us. May they help bring us together in the sacred dynamics of life so that we—as individuals and as members of this community—might reach our full potential.

As we step across this threshold, let this new year be a year of greater awe and gratitude, deeper kindness and acceptance, and more courageous acts of conviction.

For a kinder, more equitable and sustainable world is not only possible, she is on her way. And in the quietness of this sacred community, we can even hear her breathing.
Amen.

Join us for Mirtha’s story of her pilgrimage to the Nogales Arizona/Mexico Border as part of School of the Americas Watch Border Encuentro.  Mirtha was one of nine women in the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity journey lead by Rev. Deborah Lee, Miriam Noriega and Hilda Cruz.

Sunday, December 3 after the service.  

Come one and all -families, children, grown-ups are welcome to be part of the fun and festivities! Come to church in clothes that you can help in!  We’ll have a beautiful tree to decorate thanks to Dorothy, and holiday cheer to spread around the sanctuary.   If you have evergreens in your yard and can spare some branches, please bring them!  Contact Pastor Laurie with ideas, suggestions!   

It’s getting awfully cold and dark, isn’t it? For some of us, cold and dark bring forth the deep grief of sickness, of loneliness, of endings, or of death. Why, then, is this the season where we begin the new liturgical year? Because we need the hope of new beginnings, especially now. 

Whatever losses and hardships we have endured personally this year, in addition to these,  2017 has been quite a year!… Inaugurations, investigations, mass protests and counter-protests. Hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires.  Muslim travel bans, transgender rights rollbacks, open assault on the poorest and sickest people in America through cruel legislation. Two of the largest mass shootings our country has ever seen.  White supremacists openly on parade, with torches, and without masks. Nuclear holocaust nightmares, redux.

Yet, It’s also been the year of: the largest single-day protest (the Women’s March on Jan 20). The annulment of much of that cruel legislation by an engaged electorate.  The takedown of wealthy and powerful sexual predators, and the unmasking of sexual harassment and assault nationwide by women on the political left and the right. White people awakening to their privilege and showing up in greater numbers to protest white supremacy.  And, soon, the seating of newly elected trans folks, women, and people of color in political office throughout the land.

This is the season of Advent… not just about the coming of baby Jesus in the manger, but the season of Apocalypse.  Which means, not only the second coming of of the adult Jesus (look busy!) in judgment, but also, uncovering.  It brings to mind the uncovering of the snow in the deep of winter, that with the sun’s love, in the spring, becomes the rose blossoming into the fullness of life. May it be so, in our lives, individually, and collectively. 

I leave you with the hopeful words from Bette Midler’s beloved song, the Rose, https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bettemidler/therose.html

After Service this Sunday, Nov 12, 11:30-12:30

Pastor Laurie will do a short slide presentation of what she learned at the Climate Reality Leadership Training last month with Al Gore.  Lora Jo Foo will give an update on the No-Coal-in-Oakland issues, especially about their campaign to get the coal interests to dismiss their lawsuit against Oakland. 

Ms. Foo is a retired labor organizer and attorney, nature photographer, author, and climate justice activist.  She devoted seven years to organizing workers in the garment and hotel industries, and litigated for 15 years representing unions and individual workers in sweatshop industries. Because the impact of climate change is greatest on people of color and low-income families, she has devoted the next decade to keeping our earth habitable for our children and their children.  She has worked towards bringing community choice energy for the East Bay, led a ballot measure campaign that successfully banned fracking in San Benito County, and in 2016 helped lead the successful campaign in her hometown of Oakland that stopped the building of what would have been the largest coal export terminal on the West Coast.

The United Church of Christ General Synod 2017 has just overwhelmingly approved the Climate Resolution calling on clergy and congregations across the denomination to take action to protect the environment, and churches are lining up to stand behind it publicly.

 Thank you to  Skyline, to our  NCNCUCC conference,  and to our UCC General Synod, for their  full support for this resolution. We stand with the rest of the world and commit ourselves to protect and defend the earth for the generations to come, because we are called to be lovers of creation.

Rev. Laurie  Manning  is  the NCNCUCC  conference rep for climate justice,  and a member of the UCC Council on Climate Justice.  She has already planted a sign in front of her church in support of the resolution and the Paris Climate Accord. “This sign expresses who we are now and how we pledge to live.”

Churches interested in the sign can download it here.

In honor of July 4 weekend, I want to lift up an excerpt of a presentation given by former President Barack Obama at the 2016 national prayer breakfast.  It is a prayer for our country that I believe is particularly relevant now. 

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.  I pray that by His grace, we all find the courage to set such examples in our own lives —  not just in the public piety that we profess, but in those smaller moments when it’s difficult, when we’re challenged, when we’re angry, when we’re confronted with someone who doesn’t agree with us, when no one is watching.  I pray,  that our differences ultimately are bridged; that the God that is in each of us comes together, and we don’t divide.  

I pray that our leaders will always act with humility and generosity.  I pray that my failings are forgiven.  I pray that we will uphold our obligation to be good stewards of God’s creation — this beautiful planet.  I pray that we will see every single child as our own, each worthy of our love and of our compassion.  And I pray we answer Scripture’s call to lift up the vulnerable, and to stand up for justice, and ensure that every human being lives in dignity.

Blessings to all who love you, on this weekend when we’ll remember who we are called to be; as individuals and as a nation, at our best.

with love, Pastor Laurie

Last week President Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords.  In response, the UCC President, Rev. John C. Dorhauer, asked Rev Jim Antol, Massachusetts conference minister and environmental justice advocate, to write an emergency resolution, “The Earth is the Lord’s Not Ours to Wreck” , to take a stand as the UCC denomination. 

The resolution was the topic at the monthly National Environmental Justice conference call June 7  (that Pastor Laurie attended as the NCNCC Rep). Laurie was inspired by her role as the Environmental Justice Rep to bring this resolution to the NCNCC Regional Conference next weekend so Northern California could take an active, grass roots role in support of it at General Synod. In order to submit a resolution to a conference a church can sponsor it, so she sent her idea to Skyline’s Council this week, proposing that Skyline Church sponsor the resolution at the NCNCC Conference.  Since there’s not time for a congregational vote before the NCNCC Regional Conference, the church Council leaders voted to support the resolution and that we ratify this “after the fact” by a congregational vote at our annual meeting on 6/25.  It does not ask for any financial commitment.

Thank you Skyline, for your leadership in environmental justice.

Skyline Council

April 29, 11 AM, Lake Merritt Amphitheater, Lake Merritt Blvd.

Join the Skyline contingent going to the Oakland March under the People’s Climate March on Saturday, 4/29.  We will meet at Lincoln Square in front of the liquor store at 10:00 am and carpool to Lake Merritt.  Contact Catherine Kessler for more info and Nancy Taylor and click here  for the full schedule of 4/29 in Oakland.

From the website:

On the 100th Day of the Trump Administration, we will be in the streets of Washington D.C. to show the world and our leaders that we will resist attacks on our people, our communities and our planet.

We will come together from across the United States to strengthen our movement. We will demonstrate our power and resistance at the gates of the White House. We will bring our solutions to the climate crisis, the problems that affect our communities and the threats to peace to our leaders in Congress to demand action.

We invite you to join the Peoples Climate Movement on Saturday, April 29th as we march to:

• Advance solutions to the climate crisis rooted in racial, social and economic justice, and committed to protecting front-line communities and workers.
• Protect our right to clean air, water, land, healthy communities and a world at peace.
• Immediately stop attacks on immigrants, communities of color, indigenous and tribal people and lands and workers.
• Ensure public funds and investments create good paying jobs that provide a family-sustaining wage and benefits and preserve workers’ rights, including the right to unionize.
• Fund investments in our communities, people and environment to transition to a new clean and renewable energy economy that works for all, not an economy that feeds the machinery of war.
• Protect our basic rights to a free press, protest and free speech.

March with us on April 29th as we come together to resist and march for our families, our communities and our planet.