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Sermons from 2015 (Page 2)

June 7, 2015: “Make Every Moment an Opportunity”

Time for All Ages, Rev Denis Letourneau Paul The summer of 1976 was kind of magical. It was remarkably quiet. The Vietnam war, which had been festering for twenty years finally ended the year before. Somehow, the cold war felt less scary. The only war we talked about at that point, was the Revolutionary War, as we celebrated the bicentennial, the 200th…

May 10, 2015: “The Tenderness of Mary”

Reading “The Good Enough Mother,” by Anna Quindlen (Jason) There was a kind of carelessness to my childhood. I wandered away from time to time, rode my bike too far from home, took the trolley to nowhere in particular and back again. If you had asked my mother at any given time where I was, she would likely have paused from spooning…

April 5, 2015: “Easter and Other Springtime Passages”

Reading “And a side of fried okra, please…” by Patricia Smith How’s this for poetic inspiration? At about 3 a.m., when I should have been snoozing contentedly, dreaming stanzas, I was in the back seat of a cab hurtling toward Gladys Knight’s Chicken & Waffles because- I’m in Atlanta, where they fry everything but chairs. I’ve always been fascinated by the pairings-hot,…

March 15, 2015: “Working Around Limitations”

Centering Thought: I call upon you to be maladjusted. Well you see, it may be that the salvation of the world lies in the hands of the maladjusted.” Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Reading “The Village with a Hole in the Middle,” adapted from Yassir Chadly NARR: Imagine a beautiful village, close enough to the ocean to see it and occasionally…

March 1, 2015: “Seeing Resources”

Time for All Ages Who knows the story of Noah’s Ark? [Engage] Is the story factually correct? [Engage] Here’s something to consider: before having the tools for scientific discovery, early humans may have looked at the world, the wet jagged mountains and the arid, rolling desserts, and knew that something huge had happened. Something catastrophic that wiped out all life. And, when…

February 22, 2015: “Many Kinds of Love”

Centering Thought: The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love. – Margaret Atwood Reading “Love Poem,” by Andrzej Luckwitz My mind is conflicted with thoughts and feelings that come all of a sudden. I stop right where I was walking as a shiver runs along my spine. Color blooms on my…

February 1, 2015: “The Light From Our Beacon”

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”— Albert Einstein Time for All Ages “The Little Red Lighthouse” There’s a little piece of land that juts out into the Hudson River, on an island called Manhattan. The piece of land, called Jeffrey’s Hook, is more of a bump than a peninsula, but it protrudes out into an area of the…

January 18, 2015: “Making God”

Centering Thought: “The tears I shed yesterday have become rain” — Thich Nhat Hanh Call to Worship and Chalice Lighting Octavia Butler writes, When apparent stability disintegrates,All that you touch You Change.All that you Change Changes you.The only lasting truth is Change.God is Change.” We gather this morning to celebrate change, to honor the value of changing times. While we find comfort…

January 11, 2015: “Spheres of Influence”

Reading From the Eulogy of James J. Reeb, by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.1  (Ron) One day the history of this great period of social change will be written in all of its completeness.  On that bright day our nation will recognize its real heroes.  They will be thousands of dedicated men and women with a noble sense of purpose that enables them…