Skyline Invites the Oakland Community to Attend Easter Sunrise Service

Come celebrate the Spirit of Easter where we welcome ALL of God’s people.

Experience fabulous music and an inspiring message with a spectacular view of the morning light on the Oakland hills.

April 21, 6:30 AM

Rise and shine to the uplifting music of the Oakland Gay Men’s Chorus! Experience sunrise from our Sanctuary which rests on the summit of the Oakland hills and has windows spanning 30 feet high! As you look out on a stunningly beautiful view listen to inspiring preaching, heavenly music and feel welcomed into the warmth of a loving progressive and inclusive faith community.

Rev. Laurie says, “The music in this service sings out about a God of love, of freedom, of liberation… and that the world is more wonderful with the great diversity of all of humanity. This is good news!”

Join us for our Annual Earth Day Sunday here at Skyline.  We honor God’s creation and celebrate the world’s momentum to preserve it.

Featuring: Cantori, a an acclaimed after-school training choir for the Grammy Award winning Pacific Boychoir Academy Troubadours –http://www.pacificboychoir.org/choir.

Sunday, April 28, 2019 @ 10 a.m. 

At Skyline Community Church, UCC

Come to listen to these young people’s beautiful music with a soaring view of the Oakland Hills to Mt. Diablo as a backdrop. The concert is in the midst of and following a special abbreviated service. 

See you there and bring a friend!

I return to you having shared many deeply human and meaningful moments with my east coast family and friends. On the flight back, rather than watch the in-flight entertainment, I came across an uplifting aspiration from  Tara Brach; a Buddhist teacher, author, and psychologist. May we all find mindful compassion and freedom in our experience of being fully human.

If you can start the day without caffeine or pep pills,
If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches & pains,
If you can resist complaining & boring people with your troubles,
If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you time,
If you can overlook when people take things out on you when, through no fault of yours, something goes wrong,
If you can take criticism & blame without resentment,
If you can face the world without lies & deceit,
If you can conquer tension without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs…

Then you are probably a dog.

-Unknown

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

Join Skyline friends and neighbors in reflecting on the Gospel of John, and we will make sense of being 21st century Christians with a 1st century scripture. We’ll be meeting at 7 pm in the church Friendship Room, on Wednesdays,  April 3, 10 and 17.

Consider the following two points of view on the Gospel of John.  Does one of them match your own perspective better than the other one?  

 First:  “My experience…as a Christian, is that Jesus is for me the bread of life, the living water, the door, the way, and the resurrection, but I am confident that the Jesus of history never literally claimed to be any of these things.  So that the Johannine “I Am sayings were never literally spoken by this Jesus. Indeed for him they would have been all but unthinkable. I find the literal Jesus of history to be only dimly present in the Fourth Gospel, yet having said that, I still need to register that this gospel continues to feed my faith more deeply than any other.” ……..by Bishop John Shelby Spong in “Liberating the Gospels”, pages 178-179.

Second:  “The historical tradition preserved by the beloved disciple…is independent of those traditions represented in the Synoptic Gospels, but no less authentic…The historical tradition was not simply preserved by John and his disciples.  The sayings of Jesus and incidents from his ministry which it inshrined formed the basis for further meditation, instruction and preaching; it flourished as a living and growing tradition, but remained faithful to its historical basis.”.…by F. Bruce, The Gospel of John, pp. 5-6

As a faith community, we believe that migration and the need to seek asylum are sacred acts of faith.  As people of faith we believe that God is with the migrant, the refugee,  and we are called to welcome them. 
 
We are living in a season when the threats to unity are many. Talks of walls that mark refugees as threats, overt racial bias that normalizes fear and hatred, a pandemic of abuse to women, and to LGBTQ people have made it harder and harder to recognize our faith. It is one thing to read about their experiences. It is another to meet someone who’s lived through it. 
 
This Sunday, March 10th, the first Sunday in Lent, we are pleased to welcome  Charlotte to our service, a courageous trans woman who fled  Honduras because of  fears from death threats.  She sought asylum in the US. She was held in a detention center for months, under horrible conditions. Join us to hear Charlotte’s story, meet her lawyer, and learn more how we can provide support as people of faith. 

Charlotte and her legal assistant, Elaina Vermeulen,  will be presenting her story as part of worship. In addition, we will be gathering after worship for an extended conversation about the plight of refugees from Central America, the current conditions in detention centers, especially for trans people, and what we can do to advocate for them.  

Elaina Vermeulen the Transgender Detention Release Specialist for the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, where she organizes advocacy groups, service providers and community members nationally to create networks of support and sponsorship for transgender asylum seekers detained in Cibola County Correctional Center and South Texas Detention Facility. Within this role, Elaina was responsible for directing on-the-ground legal accompaniment and services for the LGBTQIA+ exodus in November 2018.

Elaina also works the Post Release Accompaniment Project Coordinator at Centro Legal de la Raza. Within this role, she works with detained immigrants seeking asylum and other forms of relief from deportation before the Immigration Courts and U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services. She co-coordinates the Post Release Accompaniment Project to secure the release of eligible, detained immigrants on bond and parole from Mesa Verde Detention Facility in Bakersfield, CA.

The Skyline Justice and Witness Team invites you to volunteer to support these groups and organizations.  

 

A Su Lado/ By Your Side is a one-day volunteer opportunity to accompany immigrants in need of community support at their immigration court hearings in San Francisco. Email Hugo at hlopez@im4humanintegrity.org to sign up.

 

Become a Sponsor for an Immigrant in a Detention Center

Interested in helping release an immigrant from ICE detention that has recently arrived with a caravan? Please consider being a sponsor. Contact Samantha Vazquez for more information: svazquez@im4humanintegrity.org.

 

LGBTQ+ Sponsors:  There’s a great need for sponsorship of LGBTQ+ individuals currently in ICE detention. Email Elaina Vermeulen, Transgender Detention Release Specialist for more information: [email protected].

 

Friends Afuera (Outside)

Join our Friends Afuera letter-writing program to write to those in detention at ICE facilities and donate to their commissary account once a month. Email us at: friendsafuera@im4humanintegrity.org

 

Compassion has no Walls Interfaith Immigration Vigils: Join our monthly vigils every 2nd Friday at ICE building, 630 Sansome Street, San Francisco from 11:30 am – 12:30 pm.  Sponsored by Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity.