Check the great ideas for our church! You can download the Annual Report 2011 here.
Author Archive
Remember that we will have our annual meeting, including luch, right after the service this Sunday!
The Work of Christmas
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the Kings and Princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins.
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry
To release the prisoner,
To teach the nations,
To bring Christ to all,
To make music in the heart.
– Howard Thurman
On this blessed day, let us worship at the altar of joy, for to miss the joy of Christmas is to miss its holiest secret.
Let us enter into the spiritual delights which are the natural heritage of childlike hearts.
Let us withdraw from the cold and barren world of prosaic fact, if only for a season;
That we may warm ourselves by the fireside of fancy, and take counsel in the wisdom of poetry and legend:
Blessed are they who have vision enough
to behold a guiding star
in the dark mystery which girdles the earth.
Blessed are they who have imagination enough
to detect the music of celestial voices
in the midnight hours of life.
Blessed are they who have faith enough
to contemplate a world of peace and justice
in the midst of present wrong and strife.
Blessed are they who have zest enough
to take delight in simple things.
Blessed are they who have wisdom enough
to know that the Kingdom of Heaven is very close at hand,
and that all may enter in who have eyes to see
and ears to hear
and hearts to understand.
–Rev. David Rhys Williams
Mistletoe and Holly
Two hundred years before the birth of Christ, the Druids used mistletoe to celebrate the coming of winter. They would gather this evergreen plant that is parasitic upon other trees and used it to decorate their homes. They believed the plant had special healing powers for everything from female infertility to poison ingestion. Scandinavians also thought of mistletoe as a plant of peace and harmony. They associated mistletoe with their goddess of love, Frigga. According to a Christmas custom, any two people who meet under a hanging of mistletoe are obliged to kiss. The custom was described by Washington Irving in his 1820 ”The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon”:
The mistletoe is still hung up in farm-houses and kitchens at Christmas, and the young men have the privilege of kissing the girls under it, plucking each time a berry from the bush. When the berries are all plucked the privilege ceases.
The early church banned the use of mistletoe in Christmas celebrations because of its pagan origins. Instead, church fathers suggested the use of holly as an appropriate substitute for Christmas greenery.
From the Symbols and Traditions of Christmas and Christmas Eve and from Washington Irving, The Sketch-Book Of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.” (Rev. Ed. 1852), p.254.
In honor of Pete’s birthday 
Excerpt from Luke 1: 5 – 17
“Do not be afraid, Zechariah . . . . Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness.”
Reflection by Anthony B. Robinson
With these words the angel Gabriel told Zechariah that he and his wife, Elizabeth, were going to have their first child. It was an improbable announcement as both Zechariah and Elizabeth were by now far too old for such things and had given up hope. And yet, they would become the parents of John the Baptist.
Sometimes in the Christmas focus on children, on the young woman Mary and the birth in the manger, we miss another element in the story of Christ’s birth. There is grace here not just for the young, but for the old, or older, as well. It’s not hard, is it, to see the possibility of new life and new beginnings, when we are young or in the lives of the young? It may be more difficult to imagine such grace and newness when we are well beyond that time of life, when the future is no longer so open or full of promise as it once seemed. All the more reason then to receive the gift of this part of the story, the promise of grace and new life, not only for the young, but for no-longer-young, too. Grace happens, surprise and new life can come, no matter what our age. Look today for the surprise of God’s grace in your life, no matter what age you are.
Prayer
For the reminder, dear Lord, that you have the power to bring new life to us when we’ve given up thinking it possible, we give you thanks and praise. Amen.
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No one is ever really ready for Christmas.
If we were really all prepared:
If every gift we had contemplated had been obtained;
If every present was beautifully beribboned;
If all the goodies our friends deserve were baked and cooled, and stored just so;
If each and every person we love was gathered for our celebration;
If we never snapped at someone we care about, nor stopped short of being all that we
could be;
If our minds were 100 per cent loving and our hearts were 100 per cent generous;
They truly would be ready
—and truly we would not need Christmas quite so much.
So come, Christmas, most needed of seasons.
Come with the reminder that love does not depend on
Perfection but on willingness to risk connection.
Come into the unready manger of our hearts
That we may feel the warmth of new life
And give flesh to the promise of hope
That cries to bring healing into our world.
Come Christmas!
Come, Love,
Come, Hope.
Be born in our unready hearts
On this silent and holy night.
by M. Maureen Killoran
For So the Children Come
For so the children come
And so they have been coming.
Always in the same way they come
born of the seed of man and woman.
No angels herald their beginnings.
No prophets predict their future courses.
No wisemen see a star to show where to find the babe
that will save humankind.
Yet each night a child is born is a holy night,
Fathers and mothers–
sitting beside their children’s cribs
feel glory in the sight of a new life beginning.
They ask, “Where and how will this new life end?
Or will it ever end?”
Each night a child is born is a holy night–
A time for singing,
A time for wondering,
A time for worshipping.
– Sophia Lyon Fahs
It was a night much like last night when, two thousand years ago, the Roman ruler Augustus enjoyed doing whatever it was emperors did. The same night Quirinius, Rome’s governor in Syria, was worried about a census being gathered in the occupied territory called Palestine. Other officials, important and unimportant, were busy with their activities and plans sure that they were contributing to the efforts which would enable the empire to last throughout eternity.
Little did they know, or could they have known, that a baby being born of poor parents in a stable which would make their plans, expectations, and census insignificant. Here, where the poor gathered and the smell of life was everywhere, there was emerging a life which would affect the lives of their posterity in such a way as to divide eras.
The Nativity Story reminds us that history’s significant events are often hidden, and fame is an elusive quality. The mighty political and social acts of the First Century are now little more than footnotes in the world’s compendium of prominent events. Who, in that ancient time, would have dreamed that prayers of a mother would prove more lasting than the commands of Caesar?
Christmas, if it does nothing else, should teach humility. Who among us, no matter how wise of mighty, can assess the truly important event of our time and guarantee its immortality? The babe in the manger, after twenty centuries, still humbles us all.
– Rev. John A. Taylor
from “Tis the Season, c. First Unitarian Society of Ithaca
Poin
settias are native to Mexico. They were named after America’s first ambassador to Mexico, Joel Poinsett who brought the plants to America in 1828. So what does a poinsettia have to do with Christmas?
The Mexicans in the eighteenth century thought the plants were symbolic of the Star of Bethlehem, the heavenly body that led the three magi, to the place where Christ was born. A Mexican legend tells of a girl who could only offer weeds as a gift to Jesus on Christmas Eve. When she brought the weeds into a church, they blossomed into the beautiful red plants we know as poinsettias, known as Flores de Noche Buena in Mexico (Spanish for “flowers of the holy night”).
Adapted from http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/christmas-poinsettia1.htm