by Amy Norton, March 23, 2023
Dear Ones, When was the last time you “ugly cried”? Screamed in your car? Visited a rage room? What if I told you that all of those activities could be incorporated into a spiritual practice? This Sunday, we’re diving into the concept of Lament. Lament is an action word, not an emotion; it’s how we use our bodies to express and metabolize emotions such as grief or anger, and it’s how we share those feelings with God most authentically and unabashedly. We’ll hear a reading of Psalm 6, and explore how lamenting is truly an embodied practice that we can engage in… Read More
by Kent French, March 15, 2023
During Lent (February 22-April 8), we are steeping ourselves in the Psalms, this ancient poetry of generations of the faithful, as an entryway for our personal and collective prayer lives. The psalms are full of all sorts of emotions, including the unpleasant and hard ones: anger, lament, fear, depression, revenge, retaliation. Many of us grew up learning to avoid expressing these hard emotions and sometimes feeling bad about ourselves if we did. And when the psalms express revenge and retaliation, even the destruction of our enemies, it’s a little hard to take. But anger, lament, fear, revenge and the like… Read More
by Iuliana Mogosanu, March 09, 2023
REMINDER: Daylight Savings begins this Sunday, set clocks forward one hour. During this season of Lent (February 22-April 8) we are immersing ourselves in the rich poetry of Psalms as a way to explore how it can deepen our spiritual lives and connection to God. On the Third Sunday of Lent, we’ll hear the well-known Psalm 23 that talks about our personal relationship with God through the famous metaphor “The Lord is MY shepherd”. We will ponder the meaning of this metaphor by asking ourselves: How does the relationship between shepherd and sheep work? To David, who was a shepherd before becoming… Read More
by Kent French, March 02, 2023
During Lent (February 22-April 8) we are steeping ourselves in the Psalms, this ancient poetry of generations of the faithful, as an entryway for our personal and collective prayer lives. The poetry of the 150 psalms covers a broad range of human emotion: praise, elation, awe, remorse, despair, anger, frustration, gladness, revenge, love. When we’re willing to enter into them, to make them a regular part of our lives, they show us in poetic ways what it means to be human. And what it means to long for God. The writer of Psalm 42 gave us the classic line: Just like a… Read More
by Amy Norton, February 23, 2023
This Sunday marks the first Sunday of Lent, the 40 day period of reflection, repentance, and spiritual deepening that leads us towards Holy Week and Easter. This year we are diving into the book of Psalms as our Lenten theme, exploring how these ancient songs can help us grow closer to God not only in our individual spiritual lives, but also as a community seeking to follow God’s call toward justice, compassion, and peace. Our first focus Psalm is number 119- we’ll hear excerpts of it in worship (if we read the whole thing, we might not have time for… Read More
by Kent French, February 17, 2023
The Transfiguration is a peculiar story set down in the middle of Jesus’ ministry in three of the Gospel accounts (Matthew 17:1-13, Mark 9:2-13; Luke 9:28-36). It describes a defining moment in Jesus’ ministry, when his closest disciples could see for sure that he was connected to something heavenly, other-worldly. It shows up in the Protestant liturgical year on the last Sunday before we enter Lent. On Sunday, we will hike up the mountain again with Jesus, Peter, James and John. And we’ll remember what they experienced there, even though Jesus warned them to tell no one about it. I wonder… Read More
by Cantor Hollis Schachner, Temple Shir Tikva in Wayland, February 09, 2023
This week’s blog is written by our friend, Hollis Schachner from Temple Shir Tikva: Each year, the adult choirs of Temple Shir Tikva in Wayland and the United Parish in Brookline join together in leading song for collaborative, interfaith worship. Given the national attention that United Parish’s Negro Spiritual Royalties Project continues to receive, we felt this year’s collaboration was a great opportunity for the Shir Tikva community to learn more about it, while considering and sharing our own musical parallels in the Jewish tradition with the United Parish. Negro Spirituals are deeply imbedded in American music, most especially in houses of… Read More
by Kent French, February 02, 2023
During Epiphany, our worship follows our Church School curriculum, Seeking God Together, as we learn in worship alongside the youngest members of our community. This week, we’re learning about the centrality in our faith of Serving Others. On Sunday we will hear a story from the Book of Acts, the history of earliest followers of Christ, the movement known as The Way. It’s about a woman raised from the dead (Acts 9:36-43) named Tabitha or Dorcas. Apparently, she knew how to serve others. It says: Her life overflowed with good works and compassionate acts on behalf of those in need. The people around her… Read More
by Amy Norton, January 26, 2023
Dear Ones, For the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, we continue to follow along with the Church School curriculum and read a story from the Gospel of Luke. This story is a parable that Jesus tells at a dinner party…about a dinner party. A little pointed, no? The parable introduces a banquet host, who, upon discovering that all his invited guests have bailed at the last minute, instructs his servant to go out and invite anyone he can find, but especially those who would never expect a dinner invitation from anyone: the poor, the disabled, the outcast, etc. Where do we see that… Read More
by Iuliana Mogosanu, January 19, 2023
For the third Sunday after the Epiphany we continue to follow along with the Church School curriculum and read a story from the Book of Nehemiah. Have you ever been a part of a six-hour communal Scripture reading? Would you want to? Does it sound like drudgery or intriguing? (Nehemiah 8) The story that we will read is about the Jewish community in the 5th century BCE Jerusalem after their return from the Babylonian exile, learning and understanding God’s word as part of their gathering to renew the covenant with God. We will imagine participating in an almost six-hour communal Scriptural… Read More
